These essays are in honour of David Fieldhouse, economic historian of the modern British empire. The subjects range across the economic and administrative fields of British imperial history from the late 1700s, embracing Africa and Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Many essays address Fieldhouse's own areas of scholarly engagement: colonialism, economics and business, strategies of rule, and decolonization. Others survey Fieldhouse's published work and assess it historiographically in the context of theories of imperialism and post-colonial studies.

Current interest in Britain's imperial past and the loss of her formal empire since World War II is substantial. This book, the second of a two-part study, brings together a collection of original and hitherto unpublished source material, throwing light on the approaches of those politicians, civil servants and expert advisers who were responsible for Britain's changing relations with her colonies and the Commonwealth. Major themes touched on include the impact on the empire of the international upheavals of the 1950s, the place of colonies in Britain's strategic defence planning, problems of...