The Revolt against the West: Decolonisation and its Repercussions in British International Thought, 1945-75

Abstract

It has been suggested that British intellectuals were either indifferent to decolonisation or sought to downplay its impact. As a consequence, historians of international thought have overlooked the extensive debates that occurred among scholars and intellectuals concerned with British foreign policy and international relations. This article addresses those debates, examining the responses of internationalist, whig, realist, and radical thinkers to decolonisation and to what they thought to be the changes it brought about in contemporary world politics. It argues that far from being indifferent to decolonisation, many British students of international relations were deeply worried about what some called ‘the revolt against the West’, and that those concerned helped shape the distinctive character of British international thought in the formative period of the discipline of International Relations (IR).