Out of Empire

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The history of decolonization is usually written backward, as if the end-point (a world of juridically equivalent nation-states) was known from the start and the only question was the obstacles to be overcome in order to get there. But if we ask how leaders in France, Britain, and their African colonies saw the political possibilities at the end of World War II, the routes out of colonial empire appear more varied. Some Africans sought equal rights within empire, others to federate among themselves, some sought independence. In London or Paris, officials realized they had to reform colonial empires, but not necessarily give them up. The idea of "development" became a way to assert that empire could be made both more productive and more legitimate. Frederick Cooper explores how these alternative possibilities narrowed between 1945 and approximately 1960. The idea that polities were composite gave way to the fiction of a world of juridically equivalent nation-states. Some African leaders predicted that a world so divided might perpetuate rather than eliminate the powerlessness and poverty against which they were mobilizing.