Liberal Ideals and the Politics of Decolonisation

Liberal Ideals and the Politics of Decolonisation explores the subject of Liberalism and its uses and contradictions across the late British Empire, especially in the context of imperial dissolution and subsequent state-building.

H. Kumarasingham is Senior Lecturer in British Politics and a Political Historian at the University of Edinburgh, UK. His research is especially concerned with the constitutional and political manifestations of decolonisation in multiple parts of the British Empire.

Introduction: Liberal Ideals and the Politics of Decolonisation 1. The Plural Society: Labour and the Commonwealth Idea 1900-1964 2. Imperial Citizenship or Else: Liberal Ideals and the Indian Unmaking of Empire, 1890-1919 3. Written Differently: A Survey of Commonwealth Constitutional History in the Age of Decolonisation 4. An Acutely Embarrassing Affair: Whitehall and the Indian-South African Dispute at the United Nations (1946) 5: A Liberal Ghost? The Left, Liberal Democracy and the Legacy of Harold Laski's Teaching 6. The Post-Colonial Constitutional Order of the Commonwealth Caribbean: The Endurance of the Crown and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council 7. Primitive Liberals and Pirate Tribes: Black-Flag Radicalism and the Kibbo Kift 8. Imperial Liberalism and Institution Building at the End of Empire in Africa