In the last decades, an increasing number of studies, inspired by the work of Frederick Cooper, have begun to revise the process of decolonization and to consider the post-Second World War period as a time of ‘possibilities and constraints’. In line with this historiographic trend, the chapters included in this volume ‘consider micro-history, memories and transnational debates, all of which are situated within the years around the end of empire’ (p. 5). The volume is the result of a conference organized by the editors, Andrew W. M. Smith and Chris Jeppesen, at University College London in 2014, and its declared purposes are to ‘account for, to measure and to analyse the messiness and fluidity’ of decolonization and ‘to explore when and why … [some] possibilities emerged, and also chart their disappearance during the period from around 1945 to 1970’ (p. 2). Overall, the chapters provide a good exercise in rethinking the period and in stressing the importance of the so-called ‘late colonial shift’. However, the collection is less successful in delivering its stated objectives.

The book includes an editors’ introduction and conclusion, seven chapters, and an afterword by Martin Shipway. The chapters are divided into three parts: ‘Development’, ‘Contingency’ and ‘Entanglement’. The first part includes a compelling survey of different historiographical trends in decolonization studies by Michael Collins, Charlotte Lydia Riley's analysis of the ways in which the Labour Party (UK) approached the issue of overseas development, and Marta Musso's persuasive discussion on the diplomatic struggle for control of hydrocarbon resources during the Algerian War of Independence. The second part of the book consists of Andrew W. M. Smith's survey of different visions of colonial futures in relation to their ‘ideational contexts’, and Robert Skinner's discussion of how international anti-apartheid activists used and interpreted ideas of human rights. The final section comprises a chapter by Chris Jeppesen on career recruitment and ideas of duty and service in the late colonial state, and a compelling chapter by Joanna Warson on how the French responded to migratory flows of francophone Africans to British West Africa.

All the case studies noted above are certainly informative, and, on the whole, the collection offers some stimulating points, such as Martin Shipway's final remarks and the editors’ efforts to conceptualize the period under investigation through the notion of ‘future imperfect’. Nevertheless, in many ways the volume is inconclusive. In the introduction, the editors remind us that ‘one of the great challenges of explaining the late twentieth century decolonization in Africa is how to capture the diversity of local particularity while threading this into a coherent overstretching narrative’. A way to rise to the challenge, they argue, is to build on Martin Shipway's suggestion to triangulate between ‘top-down’, ‘grass-roots’ and ‘comparative’ perspectives and to adopt a ‘more openly comparative analytical approach’ so as to ‘break down the conceptual borders of formal empires (p. 4). But despite some notable, yet sporadic, exceptions (Warson's contribution, for instance), the volume offers very few comparative and ‘grass-roots’ perspectives. In fact, the single chapters remain very much defined by and confined within French or British imperial units and their focus lies on the ‘official mind’ and ‘high politics’ of the ‘late colonial shift’.

The reader is then left with a series of fundamental yet unaddressed issues: what do we learn from comparing the processes of decolonization in British and French colonies? Why British and French colonies and not others? Moreover – and, in the view of this reviewer, more importantly – why British and French Africa? In fact, its focus on ‘Africa’, or the lack thereof, constitutes the biggest limitation of the whole book. Admittedly, there are a number of sketchy references to different colonial contexts throughout the volume, but these are vague and extremely superficial. In a way, the volume's approach to ‘the decolonization of Africa’ is best epitomized by the somewhat odd choice for the book's cover: that is, the choice to use a picture that gives a great deal of significance to the contents of the book but that remains unacknowledged. (The cover features two unknown electors contemplating a poster with voting instructions in Hausa – though this is my guess, as there is no indication of where the picture was taken, nor is the image discussed in the text.) Those who are interested in knowing more about this significance and, more generally, about the different ways in which the ‘late colonial shift’ played out in emergent African nations will have to look elsewhere.