Concerned principally with the consequences rather than the causes of British decolonization, Sarah Stockwell's excellent monograph is a leading contribution to the existing end-of-empire historiography. Stockwell focuses on the late colonial and postcolonial transitions and adaptations of five institutions which had become central to the imperial enterprise—the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the Bank of England, the Royal Mint, and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Indeed, notwithstanding withdrawal from South Asia and Palestine between 1947 and 1948 and increased autonomy for the “White” Dominions from the interwar years, chapter 1 demonstrates an extended imperial role for these institutions in the “second colonial occupation” (93–94) era of the mid-twentieth century. The Bank of England exercised a new “financial imperialism” (40) in the formalized Sterling Area of World War II, which became even more tightly controlled post-1947. Concurrently, the bank took an increasing role on colonial currency boards. The expanded adoption of colonial currencies and an upturn in commodity prices after the war boosted demand at the Royal Mint. At Oxbridge from 1946, the rejuvenated imperial ideal led to a “new, enhanced training regime” (26) for the colonial service. Meanwhile, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst opened in 1947 with a clear empire-Commonwealth training mandate on the back of the massive mobilization of overseas manpower between 1939 and 1945.

Through a projection to the 1980s, Stockwell analyzes the protracted nature of decolonization for these institutions. As political independence accelerated in Africa, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia in the 1950s and 1960s, all were involved in a “secondary [decolonization] process” (59), particularly through providing technical assistance. The Royal Mint, for example, helped establish a Nigerian equivalent. Meanwhile, new currencies, commemorative coins, and medals for independent states represented good business. Colonial service training at Oxbridge transformed into courses for Commonwealth bureaucrats, the curricula of which became development-oriented rather than administration-oriented by the 1970s. As per India and the Dominions in the interwar years, Bank of England officials came to promote central banking in the colonial empire on UK, not US, lines—another corrective to William Roger Louis and Ronald Robinson's notion of an Anglo-American coalition in decolonization. Indeed, the Bank of England remained remarkably Commonwealth-minded long past the United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community. As late as 1989, Commonwealth attendees of Threadneedle Street's central banking course outnumbered Europeans more than ten to one. By the mid-1950s, the localization of armed forces was considered inevitable. The logic of the British chiefs of staff was to try to control this process rather than resist it—in parallel with the Bank of England's thinking about central banks in decolonizing states. Deployment of expatriate army personnel post-independence and the training of an indigenous military were seen also as important means of maintaining defense sales. Shorter training courses at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the 1970s probably increased Commonwealth demand, and, as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office recognized, the preponderance of military regimes in Africa made postcolonial armies “key to influence” (285).

Hence, much of this activity was geared toward maintaining influence, trying to preserve British modus operandi post-independence via a UK-trained indigenous professional class. Yet, although chiefly concerned with British initiatives and drawing upon much untapped UK archive material (notably at the Royal Mint), Stockwell is alive to how autonomous developments in former colonies shaped postcolonial relationships (helped by use of Ghanaian and Zambian archives as well as those of international organizations like the International Monetary Fund). Continuities of personnel and roles emphasize the “colonial roots of the postcolonial development industry” (27), but this was no static neocolonialism: the “British model rarely proved fully sustainable” (166). Examples of the model's limits are plentiful: first, the Anglo-Nigerian defense agreement was abrogated in 1962. Ghana and Nigeria adopted new banking statutes between 1962 and 1963 that deviated from the Bank of England's recommendations and led to reductions in sterling reserves. Limits to the bank's influence were manifest also in the failure to introduce a common central bank and currency for Anglophone East Africa. Tanzania developed a penchant for seeking German banking advice. Successor states also diversified their coin suppliers or developed local production facilities. The United Kingdom's funding cuts in the 1970s and 1980s, meanwhile, meant that less could be done in the field of technical assistance anyway.

Whitehall and Westminster do loom in the background of this study, but Stockwell innovates in taking her decolonization narrative beyond the state—at once below policy making and above the individual, reflecting what she calls the “pluralistic nature of British imperialism” (8). There were “distinct institutional cultures and dynamics” in these semi-official organizations: the Bank of England policy was not dictated by Her Majesty's Treasury; Oxbridge academics were not Colonial Office tools; staff of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst regretted Whitehall interference. Nevertheless, one of Stockwell's most original observations concerns her notion of the “Janus-faced … late imperial state” (137), being both colonial and postcolonial simultaneously. Just as there was increased demand for colonial coinage after the war, the first wave of political independence occurred as Jordan, Burma, and Libya ordered new coins from the Mint. Cadets from newly independent South Asia and Burma trained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the late 1940s rubbed shoulders with colonial recruits. A mix of continued expatriate recruitment to prop up empire and indigenes to prepare for decolonization characterized the Oxbridge administrative courses into the 1960s.

More could have been said about the economic impact of decolonization on Britain given the opportunities provided at the end of empire. Albeit nongovernmental, the spotlight on elites in this study of decolonization at home might not please social and cultural historians. Meanwhile, in terms of recipients, Stockwell's analysis concentrates heavily on tropical Africa. These are minor issues, however. Meticulously researched and equipped with a masterful overview of previous historiography, this study is also well written and full of fresh insights. A concluding sentence on the Mint, for example, has wider applicability for end-of-empire studies generally: “Decolonization was a staggered process in which flag independence marked a starting rather than an end point in a European retreat” (233).