Currently Reading:" The Last 1000 Days Of The British Empire" By Peter Clarke

[Strike For The South]

So far so good, I find myself fasicnated by Churchill and the American averison to imperialism (at least the British version)

[Louis VI the Fat]

Thank you for taking the time to type all of that out.


The book has three great themes:

I

First, that the ever-renewed debates over "what went wrong", why Britain declined after 1945, are largely irrelevant and misplaced. The die was already irrevocably cast (or in Clarke's metaphor, the cards all dealt) during the war years. The end of Empire, and Britain's effective subordination to the US, were made inescapable by the enormous costs of defeating Germany and Japan. Britain did not "win" the world war, but merely, and barely, survived it. At its end, the crises of indebtedness, overstretch and imperial retreat were preordained. "Virtually everything was worse than it looked" in 1945-
6, Clarke insists.

II

The second big motif is Anglo-American relations, on which Clarke offers a sharply revisionary account. America's malevolent view of the British Empire doomed it. A principled anti-imperialism, at least as much as self-interest, drove the US policy which many in Britain saw as little better than a stab in the back.
"Power politics" was the standard 1940s American term of disapproval for everything they disliked about the way Old Europe, and Britain, operated – something amoral and supposedly distinct from the more idealistic US philosophy of international affairs. It all reads very ironically today; Clarke's view is obviously shaped by present-day concerns. In an age of US unilateralism, he has produced a reinterpretation of 1940s US policy that pushes close to seeing it also as unilateralist. The book is, in large part, a sustained attack on the myth of the special relationship.

III

The third crucial focus is, quite simply, Winston Churchill. He is not only the central character but – as the greatest symbol of the old imperial Britain – provides the common thread to its multiple storylines. In some ways, Clarke's picture of Churchill is notably harsh. Apart from his doggedly doomed, unrealistic, even childishly romantic, diehard imperialism, he is shown as cantankerous, clumsy, even downright lazy: as Prime Minister he rarely bothered to read Cabinet papers, and regularly reduced key meetings to rambling, sometimes drunken, monologues. Yet the Great Man is not entirely stripped of heroic stature. Clarke recognises that however flawed Churchill was, he was – in the worst days of the war – indispensable. The story of his, and Britain's, lonely, desperate, finally triumphant stand against tyranny has many elements of myth about it, but it was a necessary myth.

[al Roumi]

[/INDENT][/INDENT]II

The second big motif is Anglo-American relations, on which Clarke offers a sharply revisionary account. America's malevolent view of the British Empire doomed it. A principled anti-imperialism, at least as much as self-interest, drove the US policy which many in Britain saw as little better than a stab in the back.
"Power politics" was the standard 1940s American term of disapproval for everything they disliked about the way Old Europe, and Britain, operated – something amoral and supposedly distinct from the more idealistic US philosophy of international affairs. It all reads very ironically today; Clarke's view is obviously shaped by present-day concerns. In an age of US unilateralism, he has produced a reinterpretation of 1940s US policy that pushes close to seeing it also as unilateralist. The book is, in large part, a sustained attack on the myth of the special relationship.

Reminds me of the US definition of SEAC: "Save English Asian Colonies"

[Strike For The South]

Thank you for taking the time to type all of that out.


The book has three great themes:

I

First, that the ever-renewed debates over "what went wrong", why Britain declined after 1945, are largely irrelevant and misplaced. The die was already irrevocably cast (or in Clarke's metaphor, the cards all dealt) during the war years. The end of Empire, and Britain's effective subordination to the US, were made inescapable by the enormous costs of defeating Germany and Japan. Britain did not "win" the world war, but merely, and barely, survived it. At its end, the crises of indebtedness, overstretch and imperial retreat were preordained. "Virtually everything was worse than it looked" in 1945-
6, Clarke insists.

II

The second big motif is Anglo-American relations, on which Clarke offers a sharply revisionary account. America's malevolent view of the British Empire doomed it. A principled anti-imperialism, at least as much as self-interest, drove the US policy which many in Britain saw as little better than a stab in the back.
"Power politics" was the standard 1940s American term of disapproval for everything they disliked about the way Old Europe, and Britain, operated – something amoral and supposedly distinct from the more idealistic US philosophy of international affairs. It all reads very ironically today; Clarke's view is obviously shaped by present-day concerns. In an age of US unilateralism, he has produced a reinterpretation of 1940s US policy that pushes close to seeing it also as unilateralist. The book is, in large part, a sustained attack on the myth of the special relationship.

III

The third crucial focus is, quite simply, Winston Churchill. He is not only the central character but – as the greatest symbol of the old imperial Britain – provides the common thread to its multiple storylines. In some ways, Clarke's picture of Churchill is notably harsh. Apart from his doggedly doomed, unrealistic, even childishly romantic, diehard imperialism, he is shown as cantankerous, clumsy, even downright lazy: as Prime Minister he rarely bothered to read Cabinet papers, and regularly reduced key meetings to rambling, sometimes drunken, monologues. Yet the Great Man is not entirely stripped of heroic stature. Clarke recognises that however flawed Churchill was, he was – in the worst days of the war – indispensable. The story of his, and Britain's, lonely, desperate, finally triumphant stand against tyranny has many elements of myth about it, but it was a necessary myth.

God forbid I liven this backwater up.

The thanks I get.

[Strike For The South]

Books going good so far