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rainsfordlast Sunday at 9:31 PM1 replyview on HN

That's an interesting case because the collapse of the British Empire lined up pretty well with the rise the US as first one of two global superpowers and then the global superpower. It seems likely that the experience of imperial collapse might be different when you're replaced with a power that more or less is politically, militarily, economically, and linguistically aligned with you. I haven't conducted an exhaustive study, but I imagine that's not necessarily the common experience.


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hermitcrablast Sunday at 10:04 PM

The British empire didn't really collapse, as such. Britain just couldn't maintain it after the financial stress of WWII. Also independence was implicit in the WWII support of some of the colonies. So a war weary Britain (grudgingly) granted independence to it's former colonies. It went better in some countries than others. The partition of India was a disaster.