The End of the British Empire

1947–1956 CE — Global, British Empire

Today: India, and across the former empire

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 knowing: The 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.

Pattern: Imperial overstretch — A state's commitments outrun the resources and logistics needed to hold them; the margin fails first.

Entry 220 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.