[This chapter – summarising some intensive research – occupies a central position among my papers, both by intention and in its effect. Written in homage to my principal mentor in imperial history, ‘Robbie’ Robinson, it played an unexpected but crucial role leading to my appointment with the British Documents on the End of Empire Project, commissioned to edit the large four-part volume on The Labour government and the end of empire, 1945–1951 (1992). Ironically though, despite being carefully designed to reflect Robinson's main interests and commitments, replete with several of his best-known concepts and aphorisms, and even a private joke (‘bananas to Battersea’), the essay failed to appeal to him as much as another of mine written at about the same time, ‘The geopolitical origins of the Central African Federation’ (for which see The lion and the springbok). It is reproduced here with only minor amendments from the original version in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 16 (1988), special issue, Theory and practice in the history of European expansion overseas: essays in honour of R.E. Robinson. The references have been updated, for example to subsequent publication of BDEEP documents.]