The Afterlife of Empire

383 Pages·2013·3.51 MB·English

UC Berkeley
GAIA Books
Title
The Afterlife of Empire
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2tp0d3gp
ISBN
9781938169045
Author
Bailkin, Jordanna
Publication Date
2012-11-15
Copyright Information
This work is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License, availalbe at
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

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University of California
The Afterlife of Empire
Jordanna Bailkin
Published in association with the
University of California Press
“Quietly dazzling. . . . In this gripping account of welfare’s
postcolonial history, Jordanna Bailkin throws the archives
wide open and invites us to walk through them with new
eyes—and with renewed appreciation for the intimate
connections between empire and metropole in the mak-
ing of contemporary Britain. The Afterlife of Empire chal-
lenges us to reimagine how we think and teach the twen-
tieth century in Britain and beyond.” ANTOINETTE BURTON,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
“A brilliant contribution to the history of twentieth-century Britain. It does what no other
book has done: narrating the end of empire and the rise of the postwar welfare state to-
gether, while placing the stories of ordinary people—children, adolescents, parents, hus-
bands, and wives—at the heart of this account. With this book, Bailkin transforms our un-
derstanding of how some of the most critical issues of twentieth-century British history
were not just perceived, but lived.” STEPHEN J. BROOKE, York University
The Afterlife of Empire investigates how decolonization transformed British society in the
1950s and 1960s. Although usually charted through diplomatic details, the empire’s col-
lapse was also a personal process that altered everyday life, restructuring routines and
social interactions. Using a vast array of recently declassified sources, Jordanna Bailkin re-
casts the genealogy and geography of welfare by charting its unseen dependence on the
end of empire, and illuminates the relationship between the postwar and the postimperial.
JORDANNA BAILKIN is Giovanni and Amne Costigan Professor of History and Professor of
History and Women’s Studies at the University of Washington.
Berkeley Series in British Studies, 4

The Afterlife of Empire
The Berkeley SerieS in BriTiSh STudieS
Mark Bevir and James Vernon, University of California, Berkeley, editors
1. The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain,
edited by Simon Gunn and James Vernon
2. Dilemmas of Decline: British Intellectuals and World Politics, 1945–1975,

by Ian Hall
3. The Savage Visit: New World People and Popular Imperial Culture in
Britain, 1710–1795, by Kate Fullagar

4. The Afterlife of Empire, by Jordanna Bailkin
5. Smyrna’s Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide, and the Birth of the Middle
East, by Michelle Tusan
The Afterlife of Empire
Jordanna Bailkin
Global, Area, and International Archive
University of California Press
Berkeley loS angeleS london
The Global, Area, and International Archive (GAIA) is an initiative of
the Institute of International Studies, University of California,
Berkeley, in partnership with the University of California Press, the
California Digital Library, and international research programs
across the University of California system.
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University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2012 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of
Congress
Manufactured in the United States of America
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of anSi/niSo z39.48–1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper).
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. The Birth of the Migrant: Pathology and
Postwar Mobility 23
2. Young Britons: International Aid and “Development”
in the Age of the Adolescent 55
3. Problem Learners: Overseas Students and the
Dilemmas of Cold War Education 95
4. Much Married Men: Polygamy, Culture, and
the State 132
5. The Postcolonial Family? Problem Parents and Children 164
6. Leaving Home: The Politics of Deportation 202
Conclusion 235
Notes 243
Bibliography 309
Index 355

Illustrations
1. Chris Tipple Teaching in Akropong, Ghana 56
2. Alec and Mora Dickson 57
3. Rehearsing Chekhov in Ghana 70
4. Building a Community Center in Jamaica 71
5. “Kwame, and Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Appiah” 81
6. Sir Gerald Templer 85
7. “Congrats” 102
8. “In Quest of ‘Golden Fleece’ ” 103
9. “They Return with ‘Golden Fleece’ ” 103
10. “A Nigerian Ports Authority Instructor Himself Receives
Instruction” 104
11. Mrs Lake Bakaar and Miss Grimilda Johnson Trying On
Sierra Leone Masks in London 104
12. “Calling Nigeria from Belfast” 105
13. “Preparatory Course for Students” 109
14. From Tom Picton, “Oh Mary, This London” 111
15. From Tom Picton, “Oh Mary, This London” 112
16. Oswald K. Laryea 128
17. Melvine Stuart Spinning Wool at Cambridge University 166
18. Melvine Stuart Giving Tea at Cambridge University 167
19. “Career Women of West Africa” 168
20. Rosamund Ahiama 168
vii