Читать книгу Anglo-American Cultural Studies - Jody Skinner - Страница 102

disintegration and devolutiondevolutionYou could claim the very first event leading to the disintegration of the British EmpireBritish Empire was also the first step to creating the title of our book: the Anglo-American War (from the British point of view) or the War of IndependenceWar of Independence (from the American perspective). But we’re now in the section “Contemporary Britain,” so we’ll have to fast forward to the countries that declared themselves independent of Britain after World War IIWorld War II, thus shrinking the British Empire very quickly. IndiaIndia and Pakistan were the first a couple of years after the end of World War II, followed by other colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. The handover of Hong KongHong Kong to ChinaChina in 1997 was regarded as the end of the Empire. Yet there are still some scattered territories, some of which have even provoked wars. But we’ll be looking at those as well as at the present status of the CommonwealthCommonwealth (Cromwell)Commonwealth, in some ways the successor to the British Empire, in a later appropriately named chapter ( 6).

“Devolution” rhymes with “revolution” (at least in American English) and the effects of devolutiondevolution could very well bring about the first true revolution in the United KingdomUnited Kingdom since the Glorious RevolutionGlorious Revolution more than three centuries ago. But is “Untied” [76]Kingdom merely a typographical mistake? Not if the countries of the United Kingdom loosen and then lose their ties to one another. And this is just exactly what could happen. We’ll be looking at other aspects of devolution a little later ( 5).