From Empire to Commwealth
On the eve of the First World War, the British empire stretched from Canada to India, from Africa to Australia. Through its colonies and dominions, Britain exercised authority over one fifth of the world's entire population.
And British school-children proudly noted how much of the map of the world was coloured red - to denote the British empire. Today, Britain has just 14 overseas territories, including the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar and the Cayman islands.
Most of the countries which once made up the British empire are now members of the Commwealth, a loose association of states which retains the Queen as its head, but over which Britain has no direct control.
While largely peaceful, the loss of empire was a profound shock to Britain. Old certainties about Britain's role in the world were replaced by new questions - many have yet to be answered.
British politicians at first hoped to contain the loss of empire, by giving Dominion status to long established colonies such as Australia and Canada.
They reluctantly conceded independence to India in 1947, and by the early 1960s, it became clear that Britain's position in Africa was no longer defensible.
Following the famous "wind of change speech" by the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, Britain gradually handed back its nineteenth century acquisitions.
All the while, Britain agonised over its place in the new world order: should it remain at the heart of the burgeoning Commwealth; should it look towards the United States (traditionally suspicious of imperalism) or direct its attention closer to home, to Europe?
"The end of empire was not just a change for Britain but signalled a transformed world," says the Open University's William Brown: "Numerous new independent states in place of subject colonies; co-operation and integration in Europe in place of warring imperial powers; the rise of new international organisations like the UN in place of the failed League of Nations; World War replaced by Cold War, Cold War by US global leadership."
Renewed uncertainties since the end of the Cold War have revived debates about Britain's place in the world.
How far should Britain go in supporting American foreign policy now that the enemy of Communism, supported by the Soviet bloc, has disintegrated?
Politicians and strategists have been searching for a new coherence to Foreign Policy, since the end of the Cold War, as we shall see.
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