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The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization
A capacious history of decolonization, from the decline of empires to the era of globalization
Empires, until recently, were everywhere. They shaped borders, stirred conflicts, and set the terms of international politics. With the collapse of empire came a fundamental reorganization of our world. Decolonization unfolded across territories as well as within them. Its struggles became internationalized and transnational, as much global campaigns of moral disarmament against colonial injustice as local contests of arms. In this expansive history, Martin Thomas tells the story of decolonization and its intrinsic link to globalization. He traces the connections between these two globally transformative processes: the end of formal empire and the acceleration of global integration, market reorganization, cultural exchange, and migration.
The End of Empires and the World Remade shows how profoundly decolonization shaped the process of globalization in the wake of empire collapse. In the second half of the twentieth century, decolonization catalyzed new international coalitions; it triggered partitions and wars; it reshaped North-South dynamics. Globalization promised the decolonized greater access to essential resources, to wider networks of influence, and to global audiences, but its neoliberal variant has reinforced economic inequalities and imperial forms of political and cultural influences. In surveying these two codependent histories across the world, from Latin America to Asia, Thomas explains why the deck was so heavily stacked against newly independent nations.
Decolonization stands alongside the great world wars as the most transformative event of twentieth-century history. In The End of Empires and a World Remade , Thomas offers a masterful analysis of the greatest process of state-making (and empire-unmaking) in modern history.
Empires, until recently, were everywhere. They shaped borders, stirred conflicts, and set the terms of international politics. With the collapse of empire came a fundamental reorganization of our world. Decolonization unfolded across territories as well as within them. Its struggles became internationalized and transnational, as much global campaigns of moral disarmament against colonial injustice as local contests of arms. In this expansive history, Martin Thomas tells the story of decolonization and its intrinsic link to globalization. He traces the connections between these two globally transformative processes: the end of formal empire and the acceleration of global integration, market reorganization, cultural exchange, and migration.
The End of Empires and the World Remade shows how profoundly decolonization shaped the process of globalization in the wake of empire collapse. In the second half of the twentieth century, decolonization catalyzed new international coalitions; it triggered partitions and wars; it reshaped North-South dynamics. Globalization promised the decolonized greater access to essential resources, to wider networks of influence, and to global audiences, but its neoliberal variant has reinforced economic inequalities and imperial forms of political and cultural influences. In surveying these two codependent histories across the world, from Latin America to Asia, Thomas explains why the deck was so heavily stacked against newly independent nations.
Decolonization stands alongside the great world wars as the most transformative event of twentieth-century history. In The End of Empires and a World Remade , Thomas offers a masterful analysis of the greatest process of state-making (and empire-unmaking) in modern history.
672 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2024
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About the author
Martin Thomas
87 books8 followersDr. Martin Thomas is a British historian and academic. He studied Modern History at Oxford University, graduating in 1985. He returned to Oxford for his graduate studies, earning his doctoral degree (D.Phil.) in 1991.
Professor Thomas began his academic career in 1992 at the University of the West of England (Bristol). In 2003 he accepted a post in the history department of the University of Exeter. He is also the director of the Centre for the Study of War, State and Society.
Professor Thomas is considered one of the leading academic specialists on French colonial history, colonial intelligence & security services, and the history of decolonisation.
Professor Thomas began his academic career in 1992 at the University of the West of England (Bristol). In 2003 he accepted a post in the history department of the University of Exeter. He is also the director of the Centre for the Study of War, State and Society.
Professor Thomas is considered one of the leading academic specialists on French colonial history, colonial intelligence & security services, and the history of decolonisation.
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September 20, 2024Although I don't like journalistic style writing, especially in a book, I know this style tends to be liked by political readers. It doesn't give a ton of background on each country they reference but kind of throws you into events where decolonial thought gets extrapolated via similarities of violence in colonial regimes, treaties, racial disparities, and of course - the academic and political elite who were sitting at the table. The analysis of the psychology of colonial powers is intriguing, and the rebels they discuss are interesting and frankly need more air time. However, although it's necessary to discuss this visible violence, the overemphasis on immediate violence obscures the structural violence, and the dialectic of the imperial's structural violence within and without, a dialectic that could be an antidote to an identification with the imperial core (which as Walter Rodney had succinctly put - the imperial core had more issues with psychosis and insomnia than the periphery). I think the authors conclusion - that we might not have empire anymore - is a symptom of this lack of dialectic. It's not a question of if we still have empire - it's a question of how it works differently and more insidiously than before - and in such a way that would cause many to say - ah empire? That was the past - not today. However, if you do something against the empires of today, the invisible becomes violently visible...
August 31, 2025
This is a superb work of prodigious scholarship. Its scope is wide, nearly comprehensive of 20th century histories of the ‘oceanic’ colonial orders (of Britain, France, Portugal, &c; thus not the land-based empires of Turkey, Russia &c.) and of the struggles by opposition movements within and among those colonies.
Complementing its wide scope is deep-going attention to colonial and post-colonial settings and actors in specific places and times, often in detail. There’s no slippage into unqualified generalizations, or into describing decolonization in the past tense. Indeed the author recognizes that processes of decolonization continue to this day:
These processes are perhaps easier to understand not as waves, which come and go, but as currents, whose intensity might change but whose flows never stop.
Hence, extreme violence of the kind seen today in the Occupied Territories of Palestine can’t be dismissed as something wholly out of the ordinary; a full sub-chapter on Israel/Palestine, written before the genocide, explains why. Likewise the book pays attention to continuing exploitation at the behest of Western economic interests, crippling authentic decolonization. The author poses a question in the title of his concluding chapter "A World Remade by Decolonizattion?" and procedes to explain why the answer must be no:
the unmaking of empire did not mean the end of colonialism. We still have some way to go.
I noted a few missed opportunities. Perhaps a deeper discussion of figures, beyond the case of Houphouët-Boigny, the author briefly refers to as interlocuteurs valables or ‘constructive nationalists,’ puppets (sometimes with armed followings) employed by colonial/settler powers to sidetrack decolonization? Or of how Western food dumping distorted decolonization in Africa? But those are minor quibbles.
This book and the scholarly findings it assembles, underpinned with copious footnotes, make it a work of reference for me, one I will want to revisit and recommend to others.
Complementing its wide scope is deep-going attention to colonial and post-colonial settings and actors in specific places and times, often in detail. There’s no slippage into unqualified generalizations, or into describing decolonization in the past tense. Indeed the author recognizes that processes of decolonization continue to this day:
These processes are perhaps easier to understand not as waves, which come and go, but as currents, whose intensity might change but whose flows never stop.
Hence, extreme violence of the kind seen today in the Occupied Territories of Palestine can’t be dismissed as something wholly out of the ordinary; a full sub-chapter on Israel/Palestine, written before the genocide, explains why. Likewise the book pays attention to continuing exploitation at the behest of Western economic interests, crippling authentic decolonization. The author poses a question in the title of his concluding chapter "A World Remade by Decolonizattion?" and procedes to explain why the answer must be no:
the unmaking of empire did not mean the end of colonialism. We still have some way to go.
I noted a few missed opportunities. Perhaps a deeper discussion of figures, beyond the case of Houphouët-Boigny, the author briefly refers to as interlocuteurs valables or ‘constructive nationalists,’ puppets (sometimes with armed followings) employed by colonial/settler powers to sidetrack decolonization? Or of how Western food dumping distorted decolonization in Africa? But those are minor quibbles.
This book and the scholarly findings it assembles, underpinned with copious footnotes, make it a work of reference for me, one I will want to revisit and recommend to others.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews