Decolonization suffers from a relative paucity of studies that integrate theory and illustrative case studies. Dr Shipway's book is a useful, if slightly flawed, attempt to do so. Theories of decolonization are often reduced to three crude generalizations: these are usually categorized as (1) metropolitan – the impetus came from the rulers rather than the ruled, owing to the changing social and economic needs of European decision-makers and their electorates; (2) international – the cold war, the rise of the superpowers, and the relative declining power of the European powers in the aftermath of the Second World War doomed the European empires; and (3) nationalist pressures within colonies drove the Europeans out. The nationalist discourse, emphasizing the heroic and wise nature of the nationalist leaders, tended to dominate in the newly independent states as part of the processes of nation-building. The metropolitan theory, unsurprisingly, dominated in the metropoles, as historians waded through the voluminous records of the colonizers.

In this book, Dr Shipway attempts to triangulate between top-down (metropolitan) and grass-roots (nationalist) perspectives and to construct an entity that he calls the ‘colonial state’, which he can then put under the microscope and from which he can draw conclusions. He is much less interested in international factors other than the Second World War. The introduction and conclusion deal with theoretical approaches. Chapters 1–3 deal with the ‘fundamentally parsimonious’ (p. 29) pre-1939 colonial state, colonial politics, and the impact of the Second World War. In many of the Asian and North African colonies, there were already serious problems prior to the War, with more than seventy peasant revolts and violent outbreaks recorded. Nonetheless, there was also resilience, notably from the British in India, who used the 1935 Government of India Act to forestall Indian nationalism. Under this, the Indian colonial state was ‘transformed into purpose built constitutional engineering on a grand scale, intended to retain British control of a gradually evolving Indian polity for the foreseeable future’ (p. 46). However, of overwhelming importance, according to this study and other historians such as John Darwin, is the impact of the Second World War, which effected ‘a profound shift in the perceptions of both colonizers and colonized concerning the purpose and future of empire’ (p. 13). For shorthand purposes, Shipway describes this as the ‘late colonial shift’. The War shifted colonial rule from being normal, stable, and successfully resistant to change to suddenly being unstable and subject to radical and often violent disturbance. In Asia, Japanese victories discredited Western notions of superiority. Furthermore, Japan (as it faced defeat in the last year of the war), for a variety of reasons – tactical spoiling of the allied advance, emotional empathy with fellow Asians, and a genuine desire to see independence for Southeast Asia – encouraged and, in places, armed nationalists. And while India was not occupied, there was a major ‘impact on the structures and mentalities of British rule in India’, which forced the British to quit just two years after the conclusion of the war (p. 75).

On the other hand, there were ambiguities in the impact of the Second World War. For instance, never was the British Empire more successful at mobilizing the empire for warfare. The Free French movement and France's ultimate revival sprang from her imperial territories. Indeed, the War demonstrated the value of empires. There was little military activity in Africa (apart from the North. Nonetheless, there was a major mobilization of the resources of the continent to fight the Axis. This mobilization, which oriented Africa economically into a key producer of primary goods for the West, together with a profound change from a parsimonious and light-touch colonial administration to one that was heavy handed, remained a legacy, in some ways as important as decolonization. In British and French West Africa, post-war plans for slow and deliberate reform, accompanied by development aimed at helping the metropole's often perilous balance of payments problems, were unsuccessful. Instead, reform had to be speeded up in the face of a rising tide of nationalism. In Central Africa, the British put in place a Federation that would combine progressive advancement for the natives with a future for the large population of white settlers. This would implode with disastrous consequences in the mid 1960s.

Chapter 4–8 describe the twenty-year crisis of decolonization via a series of case studies. Chapter 4 focuses on Indochina and Indonesia. Chapters 5 and 7 examine the late colonial state and politics in Africa. Chapter 8 describes the final endgame, after 1958, of the British, French, and Belgian empires in Africa. A process, envisaged just a couple of years earlier as stretching on for decades, was compressed into little more than five years. Chapter 6 is an excellent discussion of the late colonial state at war. What Shipway brings to light is that, with the exception of Indochina, the colonial state was rather good at defeating nationalist insurgencies. Mau Mau in Kenya was crushed and, even in Algeria, ‘a settlement emerged far more favourable to the Algerian cause than the situation ‘on the ground’ might have suggested’ (p. 142). He also usefully summarizes some of the recent research on the dirty wars fought by the British in Kenya and the French in Algeria. There are dispassionate discussions of terror and torture. The lesson drawn is that torture and brutality would sometimes facilitate tactical victories, such as the French in the Battle of Algiers, but inevitably discredit the already morally dubious cause of the colonial state both in the colony and in the metropole.

However, there are weaknesses. There is little engagement with the problem of the Middle East. It is arguable that Britain's retreats from Iran, Palestine, and Egypt are important for understanding decolonization and British post-war strategy. Nor is there any real attempt to discuss British and French attempts to retain informal empires. Decolonization was not simply about territorial empire; it was fundamentally bound up with the possession of bases and unequal treaties. Similarly, there is relatively little mention of the role of the superpowers and the Cold War in decolonization, apart from in Indochina (pp. 108–11). Also, while there is a good account of Mau Mau, drawing on recent work by Anderson and Elkins, Kenya receives only brief attention after the insurgency's defeat in 1955. Why did the British give up in a colony where they had very much destroyed the insurgency? Surely it is a question worth returning to in more detail than that which is given here. Does the Hola Camp scandal (pp. 170–1) explain everything? The struggle for Rhodesia after 1965 is dealt with in a few lines; Portuguese Africa is, in the main, ignored; there is little discussion of the Federation of Malaysia or the confrontation with Indonesia. Indeed, the author's conciseness, which in the main is a boon, gives the last two chapters a slightly rushed feel. The addition of another chapter on post-1965 developments would have allowed a fuller treatment of at least some of these issues.

The book is based on secondary literature and documentary collections such as the exceptional British documents on the end of empire series. It is also useful that the author's research interests lie in French decolonization, where the printed sources are not as good as for the British Empire. The author quotes widely and appositely, which will encourage many readers to delve deeper. He also has a good feel for nationalist politics, particularly in the French colonies. The book might have been made more user friendly by the addition of a list of abbreviations to guide one through the alphabet soup of political parties in Francophone Africa and of a more expansive chronology than the one provided. Nonetheless, these cavils aside, it is one of the better attempts to grapple with the problem of decolonization and deserves a wide readership.