By Oliver Green
The main factor behind this being that the United States did nothing to support the British Empire financially, militarily or strategically after World War II because it wouldn’t, and more importantly couldn’t even if it had wanted to. Firstly, the Americans would never have supported the British Empire’s continuation under any circumstances, because it was not in America’s political or economic interests to do so. Before the war the Empire had a tremendous monopoly over world trade, due to the preferential trading system it had which was in place to prevent any competition with Britain from any foreign powers trading with its colonies, as it was vital to ensuring it remained economical in the face of growing competition from the US and Japan at that time.
This meant that America was effectively barred from exporting the massive excess of its productive capacity to much of the world, which was still heavily monopolised by the European Empires at that time that existed to trade within themselves and keep out competition, this in my view was a major indirect cause of the Great Depression, as America had all this excess capacity that it could do nothing with. Consequently, there came the roaring 20’s era of vast distortions and asset bubbles in the US economy which were unsustainable, and once burst resulted in the stock market crash and the subsequent worldwide depression, which then in turn produced Nazi Germany and another global war.
The Americans themselves would also never support something which they saw as an anachronistic and imperialistic system that America had fought a revolutionary war to not be a part of, and which was in their minds the complete opposite of what America and her values of freedom and self-determination were supposed to stand for. So from an historical, cultural and political view point, America’s leaders would not have wanted to be seen to be supporting the Empire, even if that had included its reform for the post war era.
Secondly, they couldn’t have done so even if they had wanted to, since the Empire itself was completed spent having been bled dry from fighting two world wars, with Britain not being in any position to underwrite it any longer due to her post war debt in 1945 amounting to 250% of GDP.
Furthermore, the very preferential trading system mentioned above that was so vital for keeping it economical had been negotiated away by Winston Churchill in his negotiations with Franklin D Roosevelt. Prior to America’s entry into the war, Churchill obtained 50 American destroyers and further material aid, in return for handing over eight of Britain’s overseas bases to America and the dismantling of the Empire’s preferential trading system with its colonies, leaving the Empire heavily over indebted and massively uneconomical, providing no barrier any longer to American global trade and competition. However, this decision to negotiate away British Imperial Hegemony reflected Churchill’s firm conviction and resignation that Nazi Germany had to be totally and utterly defeated at any price and that all other considerations were secondary, and that if British Imperial might was destined to meet an inevitable demise, that he would rather it occur in the pursuit and realisation of a great and just cause, a position evidenced by a point he made in a speech to the Canada Club in London on 20th April 1939 when stating the following;
“If the British Empire is fated to pass from life into history, we must hope it will not be by the slow process of dispersion and decay, but in some supreme exertion for freedom, for right and for truth.”
It would also have been politically and militarily impossible for America to have supported it too, as many of its subject peoples were now unreservedly committed to achieving their political independence in return for the sacrifices and efforts they had made to fight the war and were now fully battle hardened and militarily trained, and not just in the British colonies but also other European colonies including French Indo-China/ later Vietnam, which was the one place where the Americans had a stab at trying the reverse the tide through subsidizing 80% of the French campaign costs to retake it, followed by direct involvement themselves, resulting in total military and political humiliation for both France and America. Therefore, by 1945 the disintegration of the British Empire was inevitable and its prolongation impossible!
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