The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth-Century History

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The foundations of the British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496, King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot to lead an expedition to discover a northwest passage to Asia via the North Atlantic. [10] Cabot sailed in 1497, five years after the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, and made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland. He believed he had reached Asia, [11] and there was no attempt to found a colony. Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but did not return; it is unknown what happened to his ships. [12] Britain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations. [99] It was not only Britain's position on the world stage that was at risk: Napoleon threatened to invade Britain itself, just as his armies had overrun many countries of continental Europe. [100] Edgerton rightly points out that these critiques were based on a series of false assumptions. In a highly impressive and striking series of well-documented and authoritative chapters he shows that Britain had modernized in the decades after 1945: it had a very productive agricultural sector, a new road network (the motorway system, most of which was constructed between 1958 and 1988), an efficient power generation and distribution system based initially on its coal resources but, increasingly, also on State-owned nuclear power and gas industries, and a successful high-tech sector where computing and aerospace were especially successful at home and in overseas competition. Scientists and experts played key roles in developing new industrial processes and running advanced technical industries such as the Atomic Energy Commission. Between 300,000 and 400,000 houses were built each year for most of the time from the 1950s until the 1970s. From the early 1960s at the latest there was large-scale investment in schools, universities and hospitals. The nation's growth rate was high by the standards of its own history, there was full employment and declining inequality; living standards, especially those of the working class and the middle class, rose steadily. In Cyprus, a guerrilla war waged by the Greek Cypriot organisation EOKA against British rule, was ended in 1959 by the London and Zürich Agreements, which resulted in Cyprus being granted independence in 1960. The UK retained the military bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia as sovereign base areas. The Mediterranean colony of Malta was amicably granted independence from the UK in 1964 and became the country of Malta, though the idea had been raised in 1955 of integration with Britain. [241]

Main articles: History of Australia (1788–1850) and History of New Zealand James Cook's mission was to find the alleged southern continent Terra Australis. Young, Harold A. (2020). The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the Caribbean Court of Justice: Navigating Independence and Changing Political Environments. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4985-8695-5. Archived from the original on 24 March 2021 . Retrieved 27 January 2021. Slavery Abolition Act 1833; Section XXIV". pdavis. 28 August 1833. Archived from the original on 24 May 2008 . Retrieved 3 June 2008. Original, opinionated, scholarly, complex and immensely stimulating ... this ambitious and provocative book achieves something remarkable. It provides a striking new perspective on our past, one that future historians may not accept but will be unable to ignore. (Piers Brendon Literary Review) Go, Julian (2007). "A Globalizing Constitutionalism?, Views from the Postcolony, 1945-2000". In Arjomand, Saïd Amir (ed.). Constitutionalism and political reconstruction. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-15174-1. Archived from the original on 1 August 2020 . Retrieved 30 October 2020.Pascoe, Bruce (2018). Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture. Magabala Books. ISBN 978-1-925768-95-4. Archived from the original on 14 August 2021 . Retrieved 17 January 2021.

Brown, Derek (14 March 2001). "1956: Suez and the end of empire". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 19 December 2018 . Retrieved 19 December 2018. Rothermund, Dietmar (2006). The Routledge companion to decolonization. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-35632-9. Forget almost everything you thought you knew about Britain ... You will not find a better informed history' David Goodhart, Evening Standard The Rise and Fall of the British Nation aims to dispel the myths which, David Edgerton claims, envelop his subject, chief among them the notion that Britain’s relative decline after 1945 had its roots in the anti-industrial culture of a gentleman-amateur governing elite. Today, a much diminished Ukania cannot possibly go it alone, Edgerton insists. Post-war Britain, on the other hand, was sufficient unto itself, and far more successful than standard accounts allow. The record of one of the capitalist world’s most prodigious economies lies ‘buried in mountains of evidence of what supposedly thwarted it’. Despite a largely positive critical reception for Rise and Fall, neither the historian David Kynaston writing in the ft nor the journalist and commentator Neal Ascherson in the lrb could quite reconcile its depiction of a technological forcing house with their impressions of the period.

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Original, opinionated, scholarly, complex and immensely stimulating ... this ambitious and provocative book achieves something remarkable. It provides a striking new perspective on our past, one that future historians may not accept but will be unable to ignore. -- Piers Brendon * Literary Review * Britain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for self-governing Southern Rhodesia, were all granted independence by 1968. British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was not a peaceful process. Kenyan independence was preceded by the eight-year Mau Mau uprising, in which tens of thousands of suspected rebels were interned by the colonial government in detention camps. [239] Throughout the 1960s, the British government took a " No independence until majority rule" policy towards decolonising the empire, leading the white minority government of Southern Rhodesia to enact the 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain, resulting in a civil war that lasted until the British-mediated Lancaster House Agreement of 1979. [240] The agreement saw the British Empire temporarily re-establish the Colony of Southern Rhodesia from 1979 to 1980 as a transitionary government to a majority-rule Republic of Zimbabwe. This was the last British possession in Africa. Britain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany in September 1939 included the Crown colonies and India but did not automatically commit the Dominions of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland and South Africa. All soon declared war on Germany. While Britain continued to regard Ireland as still within the British Commonwealth, Ireland chose to remain legally neutral throughout the war. [184] The 1980s saw Canada, Australia, and New Zealand sever their final constitutional links with Britain. Although granted legislative independence by the Statute of Westminster 1931, vestigial constitutional links had remained in place. The British Parliament retained the power to amend key Canadian constitutional statutes, meaning that effectively an act of the British Parliament was required to make certain changes to the Canadian Constitution. [251] The British Parliament had the power to pass laws extending to Canada at Canadian request. Although no longer able to pass any laws that would apply as Australian Commonwealth law, the British Parliament retained the power to legislate for the individual Australian states. With regard to New Zealand, the British Parliament retained the power to pass legislation applying to New Zealand with the New Zealand Parliament's consent. In 1982, the last legal link between Canada and Britain was severed by the Canada Act 1982, which was passed by the British parliament, formally patriating the Canadian Constitution. The act ended the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian constitution. [9] Similarly, the Australia Act 1986 (effective 3 March 1986) severed the constitutional link between Britain and the Australian states, while New Zealand's Constitution Act 1986 (effective 1 January 1987) reformed the constitution of New Zealand to sever its constitutional link with Britain. [252] British Nationality Act 1981, Schedule 6". legislation.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 1 April 2019 . Retrieved 18 March 2019.

Latimer, Jon (2007). War with America. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02584-4. Archived from the original on 3 January 2014 . Retrieved 22 July 2009. Reynolds, Paul (24 July 2006). "Suez: End of empire". BBC News. Archived from the original on 30 August 2017 . Retrieved 19 December 2018. Porter, Andrew (1998). The Nineteenth Century, The Oxford History of the British Empire Volume III. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-924678-6. Archived from the original on 11 May 2021 . Retrieved 22 July 2009. Sheldon, Richard (2009). "Development, Poverty & Famines: The Case of British Empire". In Duffield, Mark; Hewitt, Vernon (eds.). Empire, Development and Colonialism: The Past in the Present. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer. pp.74–87. ISBN 978-1-84701-011-7. JSTOR 10.7722/j.ctt81pqr.10.

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Every so often a book comes out that the entire political class needs to read ... Edgerton is Britain's most exciting and arresting late-modern historian ... Thanks to this rich and compelling book, we now have a proper map and compass. (Colin Kidd New Statesman) At its height in the 19th and early 20th century, it was the largest empire in history and, for a century, was the foremost global power. [1] By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412million people, 23per cent of the world population at the time, [2] and by 1920, it covered 35.5millionkm 2 (13.7millionsqmi), [3] 24per cent of the Earth's total land area. As a result, its constitutional, legal, linguistic, and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was described as " the empire on which the sun never sets", as the sun was always shining on at least one of its territories. [4] How the Westminster Parliamentary System was exported around the World". University of Cambridge. 2 December 2013. Archived from the original on 16 December 2013 . Retrieved 16 December 2013.