This book offers an intellectual history of colonial Buganda, using previously unseen archival material to recast the end of empire in East Africa. It will be ideal for researchers, upper-level undergraduate and graduate students interested in the cultural, intellectual, religious and political history of modern East Africa.

The negative legacy of the British empire is often thought of in terms of war and economic exploitation, while the positive contribution is associated with the establishment of good governance and effective, modern institutions. In this new analysis of the end of empire in Uganda, Spencer Mawby challenges these preconceptions by explaining the many difficulties which arose when the British attempted to impose western institutional models on Ugandan society. Ranging from international institutions, including the Commonwealth, to state organisations, like the parliament and army, and to civic institutions such as trade unions, the press and the Anglican church, Mawby uncovers a wealth of new material about the way in which the British sought to consolidate their influence in the years prior to independence. The book also investigates how Ugandans responded to institutional reform and innovation both before and after independence, and in doing so sheds new light on the emergence of the notorious military dictatorship of Idi Amin. By unpicking historical orthodoxies about 20th-century imperial history, this institutional history of the end of empire and the early years of independence offers an opportunity to think afresh about the nature of the colonial impact on Africa and the development of authoritarian rule on the continent.

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 transformative processes: the end of formal empire and the acceleration of global integration, market reorganization, cultural exchange, and migration. The End of Empires and a 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; and it reshaped North-South dynamics. Globalization promised the decolonized greater access to essential resources, to wider networks of influence, and to worldwide 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.

This book is the first major attempt to examine the cultural manifestations of the demise of imperialism as a social and political ideology in post-war Britain. Far from being a matter of indifference or resigned acceptance as is often suggested, the fall of the British Empire came as a profound shock to the British national imagination, and resonated widely in British popular culture. The sheer range of subjects discussed, from the satire boom of the 1960s to the worlds of sport and the arts, demonstrates how profoundly decolonisation was absorbed into the popular consciousness. Offers an extremely novel and provocative interpretation of post-war British cultural history, and opens up a whole new field of enquiry in the history of decolonisation.

Despite their historical importance, empires have received scant attention from social scientists. Now, Alexander J. Motyl examines the structure, dynamics, and continuing relevance of empire—and asks, "Why do empires decline? Why do some empires collapse? And why do some collapsed empires revive?" Rejecting choice-centered theories of imperial decline, Motyl maintains that the very structure of empires promotes decay and that decay in turn facilitates the progressive loss of territory. Although most major empires have in fact declined in this manner, some, such as the Soviet Union, have collapsed suddenly and comprehensively. Motyl explains how and why collapse occurs, why such an outcome is hard to foresee, and why some collapsed empires revive. While broad-ranging historically and empirically, Imperial Ends focuses on five modern empires: the Soviet, Romanov, Ottoman, Habsburg, and Wilhelmine. Examining the possibility of a revival of the Soviet empire, Motyl points out that the expansion of NATO and the European Union, along with increasing globalization, will isolate Russia and its neighbors, promoting their dependence upon one another and perhaps facilitating the rise of the former core. With boldly stated conclusions and concise analytical interpretations, Imperial Ends cohesively illustrates to policymakers and social scientists alike the importance of possible imperial revivals and the rise of future empires.

Available in paperback for the first time, this first book-length study explores the history of postwar England during the end of empire through a reading of novels which appeared at the time, moving from George Orwell and William Golding to Penelope Lively, Alan Hollinghurst and Ian McEwan. Particular genres are also discussed, including the family saga, travel writing, detective fiction and popular romances. All included reflect on the predicament of an England which no longer lies at the centre of imperial power, arriving at a fascinating diversity of conclusions about the meaning and consequences of the end of empire and the privileged location of the novel for discussing what decolonization meant for the domestic English population of the metropole. The book is written in an easy style, unburdened by large sections of abstract reflection. It endeavours to bring alive in a new way the traditions of the English novel.

Is the West to blame for the agony of Uganda and its neighbors? In this powerful account of Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni's 30 year reign, Helen Epstein chronicles how Western leaders' single-minded focus on the War on Terror and their naïve dealings with strongmen are at the root of much of the turmoil in eastern and central Africa. Museveni's involvement in the conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan, Rwanda, Congo, and Somalia has earned him substantial amounts of military and development assistance, as well as near-total impunity. It has also short-circuited the power the people of this region might otherwise have over their destiny. Epstein set out for Uganda more than 20 years ago to work as a public health consultant on an AIDS project. Since then, the roughly $20 billion worth of foreign aid poured into the country by donors has done little to improve the well-being of the Ugandan people, whose rates of illiteracy, mortality, and poverty surpass those of many neighboring countries. Money meant to pay for health care, education, and other public services has instead been used by Museveni to shore up his power through patronage, brutality, and terror. Another Fine Mess is a devastating indictment of the West's Africa policy and an authoritative history of the crises that have ravaged Uganda and its neighbors since the end of the Cold War. "A stunning new book of reportage and analysis." --Pankaj Mishra, Bloomberg