The Vision of a Postwar British Superpower 

Volatility today leads us to look at the foundations of the international world that is now being transformed. The key decade was the 1940s, the period of the establishment of American superpower status, the destruction of the German, Italian, and Japanese empires, the expansion of the Soviet empire, and the Communist conquest of China. Most of these states of affairs have lasted to the present, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989–91 challenged recently by Vladimir Putin, who has sought to revive this empire, beginning with his attack on Georgia in 2008. Russia is the nation-state as empire.

There were also paths not taken. Freed from German rule, the Dutch and French sought to benefit from the Japanese collapse by reviving their imperial power, only for both to fail in Southeast Asia, the Dutch by 1949 and the French by 1954. The French continued a comparable struggle in Algeria until 1962.

This context makes the British case more understandable. In their welcome book Superpower Britain, Ashley Jackson and Andrew Stewart focus on the international and imperial ambitions of Britain in 1945 and the challenges she faced, notably from the colonies, the Dominions, America, and the Soviet Union, as well as the reasons for the failure to fulfill hopes, as expectations unraveled in a changing world. The international and imperial ambitions of the wartime coalition government and of the Conservatives were far from identical to those of the Labour governments of 1945–51, not least over independence for India and (initially) relations with the Soviet Union. Indeed, the authors possibly fail to assess adequately the tensions in what they present as a bipartisan working relationship. Yet what Churchill termed in March 1944 the “Bay of Bengal strategy” was one of imperial assertion, as were his considerations of annexing Libya and the Kra Peninsula of Thailand. Jackson and Stewart discuss Labour’s interest in Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia. Indeed, Italian Somaliland remained under British administration until 1950. British interest made geopolitical sense given the already-existing presence in Sudan, Kenya, British Somaliland, and Aden—a world that now appears as distant as Imperial Rome. There was also discussion of control over Lampedusa and Pantelleria, Italian islands in the central Mediterranean, as part of Britain’s determination to continue as the leading Mediterranean power.

So it was also with South Asia. In 1946, Sir Francis Tucker, the head of Eastern Command, proposed a British protectorate from Nepal to Bhutan. There were also ideas of extending British influence in Tibet and even Xinjiang as a form of forward protection for India. This had been an important theme in British government for nearly two centuries.

At the same time, as the authors amply demonstrate in a work at once scholarly and accessible, the Labour governments saw the British Empire as a vital resource as well as a moral purpose, for they were committed to moving the peoples of the empire toward self-government. Here was a nifty piece of politics: the Labour Party could present itself as anti-imperialist but not as opposed to the British Empire, a contrast that is ably probed by the authors. Here was a parallel with a society that in the eighteenth century had proclaimed its commitment to freedom but, at the same time, was imperial and slave-trading.

The Commonwealth as a vehicle for renovated British imperialism and great-power status attracted the Labour governments and, notably, Prime Minister Clement Attlee. To a degree, this ambition prefigured the later hopes of those who supported Britain’s joining the European Economic Community (now the European Union) that membership would foster such status.

In turn, like their Labour predecessors, the Conservatives who came to power in 1951 saw independence for India in 1947 as prefiguring not the end of empire but, rather, a continued international presence and identity based on persisting links, albeit more in the shape of cooperation and informal control than hitherto. In the 1950s, British troops were to be used to fight for empire in Cyprus and Kenya, Malaya and Suez. Indeed, despite the commitment, through NATO from 1949, to the defense of Western Europe—which led to the continued presence of British forces in West Germany after the end of post-war occupation—the British defense effort in the 1950s was dominated by concerns about imperial security and that of allies outside Europe, such as Jordan. This remained the case until the late 1960s (and later for Oman) and was matched by French policy.

At the same time, there were important divisions within political leaderships, and these can be underplayed by authors who aggregate accounts. Thus the Labour cabinet was divided over employing force against Iran in the oil-nationalization crisis of 1951. In turn, the “Suez Group” among the Tories pressed, at that stage unsuccessfully, for a firmer stance toward Egypt in 1954 when Colonel Nasser was seen as a threat to British interests, including across the Arab world. In contrast, the Conservative government argued that an agreement to withdraw from the Suez Canal Zone would lessen the strain on Britain’s military situation.

Jackson and Stewart offer much to the reader but only have so much space. Five wide-ranging chapters on what the Second World War did to the British Empire are very interesting and highly important, not least in probing the disruptive consequences of the conflict. Opportunities to compare and contrast fully with other European powers are, however, left to future work. This is unfortunate in an analysis of British imperialism, as the Dutch and Portuguese empires had in part been dependent on British backing and, in turn, had contributed to the British position. Britain played a major role in the reintroduction of Dutch and French power into Southeast Asia, opposing nationalist groups to do so.

Very differently, the end of other major wars is also instructive: both those in which there was success and an expansion of horizons—international, imperial, and domestic—and others in which there was failure, for example the British wars of 1775–83 that resulted in American independence. All wars, regardless of outcome, are followed by attempts at domestic and international regeneration.

The years from 1945 on can be located in this context, but there was also what the French diplomat Jean Monnet termed the “illusion of victory.” The supreme achievement in unitedly defying Germany in 1940 led in 1945 to a greeting of military victory as an unmitigated triumph. This was notwithstanding Britain’s massive disparity in capabilities compared to America and the Soviet Union. Britain depended significantly for these capabilities on what Jackson and Stewart correctly depict as a precarious imperial unity, although empires always involve an inherently unstable coalition of jockeying interests. With far less justification than in 1919–22 (although inspired in part by the security crisis of 1940 and by fresh fears of the Soviet Union), this “illusion” led to a chronic overextension of British power, high expenditure on defense, and a continued effort by Britain to “punch above its weight” in international relations. This situation is ably examined in Superpower Britain.

This important work deserves notice. It is certainly instructive. British governments, however, arguably have devoted insufficient attention to problems on the home front, including excessive trade-union power and low productivity, while their strategic grasp of the international scene has frequently been inadequate. The collapse of international trust in the American government has brought both aspects far more to the fore than was widely anticipated even a year ago.

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Our Reviewer: Jeremy Black, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Exeter, is a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of an impressive number of works in history and international affairs, frequently demonstrating unique interactions and trends among events, including The Great War and the Making of the Modern World, Combined Operations: A Global History of Amphibious and Airborne Warfare, and The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon. He has previously reviewed The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century, Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939, War: How Conflict Shaped Us, King of the World, Stalin’s War, Underground Asia, The Eternal City: A History of Rome in Maps, The Atlas of Boston History, Time in Maps, Bitter Peleliu, The Boundless Sea, On a Knife Edge. How Germany Lost the First World War, Meat Grinder: The Battles for the Rzhev Salient, Military History for the Modern Strategist, Tempest: The Royal Navy and the Age of Revolutions, Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare, Sing As We Go: Britain Between the Wars, Maritime Power and the Power of Money in Louis XIV’s France, Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe, Why War?, Seapower in the Post-Modern World, Mobility and Coercion in an Age of Wars and Revolutions, Augustus the Strong, Military History for the Modern Strategist, The Great Siege of Malta, and Hitler’s Fatal Miscalculation.

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Note: Superpower Britain is also available in audio & e-editions.

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