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The Last Thousand Days of the OLD diaries can prompt new insights, says Peter Clarke. His book reflects perspectives of a score of diaries kept by some of the most important individuals connected with the events related to the three major developments treated in the book: Anglo-American relations during the World War II, independence of the Indian subcontinent and creation of a Zionist state in Palestine. Their mutually corrective perspectives are seen in the light of archival records and old newspapers, notably The Times, the Daily Mail and the Chicago Tribune.
For more than two centuries, Great Britain had ranked as a great power. In the 1920s, the British controlled a quarter of the globe and a quarter of its total population—much of it in the Indian subcontinent. Much before the World War First, Lord Curzon had said, "As long as we rule India, we are the greatest power in the world. If we lose it, we shall drop straightaway to a third-rate power." World War II, like the first one, was an "imperialist war". The empire was a major reason for it. In November 1942, Churchill made it clear: "I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire." Nobody predicted the rapidity with which Britain’s position in the world was to be diminished. The empire survived the war but only to expire in the post-war world. Some of the British blamed the Soviet Union, some others the US; and some blamed the Labour Government. Few, then or later, blamed Churchill. Nevertheless, the abrupt decline of British power had decisively gathered pace under his wartime premiership. There was a great disparity between Great Britain and its allies in terms of human and material resources. Roosevelt remarked in August 1944: "I had no idea that England was broke. I will go over there and make a couple of talks and take over the British Empire." This was said lightly, but there was a serious issue involved. Great Britain received from America a $5billion loan for munitions and $5billion for other supplies. Keynes commented in May 1945 that the British had accepted during the war a post-war financial burden entirely disproportionate to what was fair. The migration of power across the Atlantic was bound to happen, sooner or later. The shift in power made the American perspective on the British Empire all the more important. The Chicago Tribune underlined in August 1945 the crucial importance of the empire to the British and went on to add: "we have no interest in maintaining the oppressive empire". The Anglo-American confrontation had a close bearing on the endgame. In Palestine, the British generally chose the Arabs and the American chose the Jews. That was surely why a Zionist state came up in Palestine but no Arab state. Clarke says that "all imperial historians are at the mercy of their own concept of the empire". He reiterates traditional wisdom about the crucial significance of the demise of the Indian empire. The essence of Cripps’ offer was to bring the main political parties together to enlist their support for the war on the basis of their immediate participation in the government, pending full independence after the war. Both Churchill and Cripps blamed the Indian National Congress, especially Mahatma Gandhi, for the failure of Cripps’ mission. And again, in 1946, Mahatma Gandhi failed to rise to the political challenge. "Perhaps no scheme for the Indian Union would have survived in the long run", not because of the British policy to divide Hindus and Muslims but due to the authenticity of Muslim identity. In appreciating and justifying the imperial politicians and blaming the Indian national leaders in his treatment of Indian independence, Peter Clarke does not remain merely an "imperial historian", he becomes an "imperialist historian". Notwithstanding its epical dimensions, The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire is eminently readable.
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The
book is divided into four parts. The first part sets out the themes
and gives the historical background from 1941 to 1944. The second part
gives a detailed narrative of events from September 1944 to February
1945, when the British Empire ceased to exert dominant influence in a
world polarised by the US and the Soviet Union. The third part of the
book tells the story of transition to peace that brought its own
disappointments for the British, shattering their dreams of parity
with the Americans and the Russians. Related to the liquidation of the
British Empire, the fourth part shows how the British limped into the
post-war era saddled with financial obligations well beyond their
capacities to meet. The military, political and economic weakness of
Great Britain had serious implications for the endgame of the empire
in India and Palestine.