By Dr. Anubha Anushree
Dr. Anubha Anushree reviews Martin Thomas’s The End of the Empire and the World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization, Princeton University Press, NJ, March 2024, 608 pages.
Dr. Anubha Anushree is editor at the Review of Democracy.
The title of Martin Thomas’s The End of the Empire and the World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization signals the ambitious and unconventional nature of his now widely acclaimed project. From the outset, Thomas frames decolonization not simply as a linear dismantling of empires, but as a complex and often contradictory process—one that simultaneously disintegrated old hierarchies and gave rise to new, and sometimes equally exclusionary, national orders. His emphasis on decolonization as a reintegrative force highlights how the collapse of imperial structures often yielded unstable, improvised formations of authority and belonging. The process was deeply entangled with the rise of nationalism and the promise of democracy—two forces that could be emancipatory but also repressive, generative yet limiting. Offering a global history of decolonization is no small task—it requires navigating this terrain of ambivalence, where the struggle for freedom often reproduced new forms of domination, and where the language of democracy could both expand and foreclose political possibilities.
What distinguishes Thomas’s book is precisely this encyclopaedic ambition to capture decolonization in its mutating forms across various parts of the world. Spanning a vast geographical terrain and the turbulent decades between the 1940s and 1990s, the book begins with a striking anecdote: the celebration of Kenyan independence in Nairobi on December 11, 1963. Seen through the eyes of Labour MP Barbara Castle, a vocal advocate for Kenyan independence in the British Parliament, the scene encapsulates the contradictions of decolonization. A regimental band plays Auld Lang Syne, evoking the solemn grace of British ceremonial tradition, even as Castle herself arrives late, scrambling over a fence and tearing her dress in the process. This chaotic juxtaposition—the orchestrated rituals of empire alongside the messy reality of postcolonial transition—mirrors the broader argument of the book: decolonization was not simply the rejection of colonial rule but an unpredictable leap into nation-building, improvisation, and disorder.
Thomas’s study interrogates these contradictions by expanding the definition of decolonization. It is not merely, as he writes, “the concession of national self-determination to sovereign peoples” (13), but also a generative force that “energized different ideas of belonging and transnational connections” (4).
In his introduction, he frames decolonization as “the biggest reconfiguration of world politics ever seen” (7). This is not only due to the exponential growth of independent states—from 51 UN members in 1945 to 193 by 2011—but also because decolonization restructured global engagements with law, culture, politics, and identity in enduring ways.
Crucially, Thomas contends that decolonization must be understood as “one globally connected process” (3), one that was “intrinsically connected to globalization” (4). He argues that globalization furnished both intellectual and material resources to the proponents of decolonization, amplifying local struggles and fostering new forms of transnational solidarity. Yet, this same globalizing force often undermined decolonial aims—particularly in securing economic sovereignty and achieving racial justice. By entwining decolonization with globalization, Thomas challenges the conventional view of decolonization as merely a corrective to colonial injustices. Instead, he prompts readers to consider the enduring continuities between imperialism and globalization—an open secret within academic circles—while also attending to the many ways these continuities have been contested. This analytical framing pushes the history of decolonization beyond the confines of isolated imperial narratives and toward a systemic understanding of how the unraveling of empires produced deeply interconnected political, social, and cultural transformations.
The structure of the book reflects this call for comprehensiveness. Divided into two parts — “Globalizing Decolonization” and “Tracing Paths of Empire Destruction”—the book’s fifteen chapters track the crises and forces that propelled the global momentum of decolonization.
Where much existing scholarship narrows its focus to particular decades (typically the 1940s–70s) or specific regions, Thomas extends his analysis from the end of the First World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall, covering regions as diverse as the Gulf States, sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, and South and Southeast Asia.
The book concludes with reflections on nations like Bangladesh, Nigeria, Indonesia, Mozambique, Angola, and Vietnam.
As Thomas notes in an interview, global histories of the World Wars, the Cold War, and globalization abound, but few scholars have treated decolonization as a comparably formative process in shaping the postwar world order. By doing so, he not only reorients decolonization as a central historical force but also highlights its influence on the transnational institutions and ideological divisions—especially between the West and non-West—that continue to shape global politics.
The first part of the book lays the conceptual foundation: What is decolonization? How have disciplines like history and international relations approached it? How are the collapse of empires and the emergence of new states connected? What global linkages did decolonization forge? Here, Thomas makes two essential claims: first, decolonization cannot be reduced to the formal granting of independence; and second, it released political and social energies that far exceeded the confines of national sovereignty.
The second part investigates the diverse and sometimes contradictory consequences of these energies. Thomas foregrounds the partial, fragmented visions of postcolonial futures that emerged—visions shaped not only by state actors but also by grassroots movements, transnational solidarities, and local communities. Though never explicitly stated, the book implicitly critiques the nation-state, portraying it as a contingent and contested form, constantly negotiated by global and local forces rather than emerging as a stable or inevitable outcome of independence.
To understand decolonization beyond ceremonial independence, Thomas calls for a deeper exploration of how it incited new political aspirations, both domestic and international. He notes that decolonization spurred “bold experiments in social, racial, and gender equality,” reshaped ideas of sovereignty and citizenship, and fueled social activism and international cooperation among non-state actors (6–7). These transformations operated simultaneously at macro and micro levels, encompassing both institutional frameworks and personal lives.
Thomas’s narrative weaves together conventional themes—violence, race, class, economy, labor, and international relations—with less common perspectives, including environmental history, food politics, youth movements, gendered insurgencies, and disability activism. For instance,
he details how “scientific imperialism” after WWI redefined populations through demography and nutrition, culminating in transnational efforts like “caloric internationalism.”
This rationalized imperial governance while also exposing its failures—such as Indian soldiers fighting for the British in Java during WWII, who contributed to famine conditions in 1944 while India itself reeled from the Bengal famine. Scientific rationality extended beyond material regulation to psychological justification. In colonial Madagascar, for example, Thomas explores how psychological theories pathologized anticolonial resistance as immature, legitimizing colonial control. Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952) was a direct response to such thinking, challenging the paternalist logic of figures like Octave Mannoni.
One of the book’s most compelling contributions is its treatment of civil liberties and rights as a significant force during decolonization. Rather than fixating on whether colonial or anticolonial forces were more violent, Thomas centers “the civilian as both victim and agent of decolonization” (223). This move broadens the narrative beyond state violence and toward the lived experience of political transformation. Women, the elderly, and rural populations often bore the brunt of violence—both colonial and anticolonial—due to their strategic roles in militarized and gendered economies. In places like Palestine, Algeria, Vietnam, and Mozambique, violence served not as ideological confirmation but as a tactic employed by multiple actors for different ends.
Decolonization also reshaped humanitarian categories. Concepts like “refugee” and “aid” expanded as both colonial and postcolonial violence prompted new institutional responses. Meanwhile, the ideology of development—which many hoped would be the antidote to colonialism—often reinforced coercion and displacement. Whether promoted by colonial powers seeking to appease restive subjects or by postcolonial states pursuing modernization, development frequently aligned with authoritarianism. Thomas cites examples such as the European Community Fund’s support for autocratic regimes in Francophone Africa and critiques how former colonial powers like the UK benefitted from global offshore capitalism enabled by decolonization.
The End of the Empire and the World Remade presents decolonization as an ongoing and deeply ambivalent process. While it unleashed profound democratic aspirations and offered new vocabularies of rights and justice, it also entrenched national frameworks that often marginalized minority voices and suppressed pluralist futures.
Decolonization, in Thomas’s telling, is not a story of neat liberation but of fractured transitions—where the collapse of empire was not always accompanied by the expansion of democratic life, and where nationalism often became the vessel for consolidating new forms of exclusion.
Its effects still reverberate through persistent global inequalities in race, gender, and class, revealing how the end of formal empire did not necessarily mean the end of imperial logics. By refusing to romanticize either colonial rule or national independence, Thomas provides a nuanced account of how the 20th-century world was remade—and why, for many, its promises remain unfulfilled.
