Europe after Empire: Decolonization, Society, and Culture (New Approaches to European History)
Cambridge University Press, 3/24/2016
EAN 9780521131889, ISBN10: 052113188X
Paperback, 564 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
Europe after Empire is a pioneering comparative history of European decolonization from the formal ending of empires to the postcolonial European present. Elizabeth Buettner charts the long-term development of post-war decolonization processes as well as the histories of inward and return migration from former empires which followed. She shows that not only were former colonies remade as a result of the path to decolonization: so too was Western Europe, with imperial traces scattered throughout popular and elite cultures, consumer goods, religious life, political formations, and ideological terrains. People were also inwardly mobile, including not simply Europeans returning 'home' but Asians, Africans, West Indians, and others who made their way to Europe to forge new lives. The result is a Europe fundamentally transformed by multicultural diversity and cultural hybridity and by the destabilization of assumptions about race, culture, and the meanings of place, and where imperial legacies and memories live on.
Introduction
Part I. Decolonization for Colonizers
Europe's Transition to the Postcolonial Era
1. Myths of continuity and European exceptionalism
Britain, decolonization, and the Commonwealth family ideal
2. Occupation, resistance, and liberation
the road to Dutch decolonization
3. Soldiering on in the shadow of war
decolonizing la plus grande France
4. Long live the king?
Belgium, the monarchy, and the Congo between the Second World War and the decolonization years
5. From Rose-Coloured Map to Carnation Revolution
Portugal's overseas amputations
Part II. Migrations and Multiculturalisms in Postcolonial Europe
6. Ending empires, coming home
the ghost worlds of European colonial repatriates
7. Ethnic minority immigration from empires lost
8. Reconfiguring nations
identities, belonging, and multiculturalism in the wake of postcolonial migration
Part III. Memories, Legacies, and Further Directions
9. Remembering and forgetting empires
Epilogue
thoughts toward new histories of contemporary Europe
Further reading
Index.