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Entry 220 of 240Collapse

The End of the British Empire

1947–1956 CE/Global/British Empire
Today India, and across the former empireSpan Decolonization · 1945–1965

Bankrupted by two world wars and confronted by mass movements demanding freedom, Britain let go of the empire on which the sun had famously never set — starting with India in 1947 and accelerating after the humiliating Suez crisis of 1956 proved it could no longer act as a world power alone. Within two decades, dozens of new nations were born. It is imperial overstretch meeting a collapsing justification — Rome and Spain's exit from history, on a 20th-century timetable.

◆ Worth knowingThe border partitioning British India was sketched in just five weeks by a lawyer who had never been east of Paris — and the migration that followed uprooted some 15 million people and triggered massacres that killed perhaps a million.
◆ The mechanismImperial overstretch

A state's commitments outrun the resources and logistics needed to hold them; the margin fails first.

Also: Legitimating-narrative collapse · Debt / credit cycle

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