Decline and fall

For the Indian reader, the title and cover photograph of the book are a trifle misleading. Published in the 60th year of Indian independence, it is easy to assume that the book is about the last days of the Raj. The notion is strengthened by the familiar photo of the Mountbattens and Nehru in an open carriage on August 15, 1947, on the dust jacket.

The book actually focuses on the decline of British imperial supremacy and the changing balance of global power after World War II.

The author, a former professor of modern British history at Cambridge, chooses 1944 as a loose starting point as the defeat of Germany became inevitable and parleys for the shape of the post-war world began.

Indeed, more of the book is devoted to the politics and foibles of the last few years of the war than to the decline of empire though the two are admittedly linked. In that sense, the book would have profited from a different title.

Britain's post-war decline as a global power is hardly a novel subject. But the book takes forward the healthily revisionist view of World War II as ultimately an imperialist war for which Hitler and his Holocaust provided the Allies with a moral scapegoat.

Nothing highlighted this better than the amorality of war-time politics. The contradictions of European powers with colonies in Asia and Africa resisting German expansionist policies in Europe escaped most politicians at the time "" except perhaps the Americans and Indians.

Thus, Churchill, Hilter's most steadfast opponent, was able to declare in 1942 with no sense of irony that, "I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire".

Yet five years later, India was independent and the Palestinian Mandate was disintegrating under the moneyed onslaught of the powerful American Jewish lobby.

The new global order was born of the formidable military-industrial complex of the US and the brute power of Stalin's Red Army that helped win the war for the Allies.

Clarke's history suggests, a little narrowly perhaps, that much of the shaping was a product of the twists and turns of Anglo-American relations as seen in the fate of two major agreements: Lend-Lease and the Atlantic Charter.

Both had stings in their post-war tails. A bankrupt Britain was called to account on Lend-Lease, the basis of American supplies to the Allies, and a key pledge of the Atlantic Charter.

The latter had to do with respecting "the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they will live". While Churchill understood this as applying to European countries like Poland, the Labour Party newspaper the Daily Herald starkly pointed out that "it means dark races as well".

Fulfilling these agreements included dismantling the system of Imperial Preference that would have deprived post-war Britain's emasculated economy of both markets and preferential raw material sources.

A little acknowledged view is that the empire and Dominions were major contributors to British military strength. And with Britain owing India more than £1.5 billion at the end of the war, its case to continue to rule a major creditor was considerably weakened.

The chapters on Indian independence do not add significantly to the sum total of knowledge, but are interesting because they are set against global politics of the time. Clarke suggests that more negotiating flexibility on Gandhi's part might have helped avert the bloody aftermath of independence.

This is a difficult book to review in brief because it says many cogent things about the politics of the forties that shaped so much of latter 20th century politics.

Clarke uses familiar sources "" contemporary diaries, newspaper reports, biographies and autobiographies "" but interpreted with dispassionate clarity and a prodigious attention to detail.

The result is a splendidly readable book that deftly pulls together the different strands of history "" military, political, economic and personal "" to provide a thought-provoking analysis of a critical periods. The pity is that the author did not develop the debate a bit more.

---

THE LAST THOUSAND DAYS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE

Peter Clarke
Penguin/Allen Lane
Price: Rs 750; Pages: 592