Book ID: CBB001552187

Mapping the End of Empire: American and British Strategic Visions in the Postwar World (2014)

unapi

Husain, Aiyaz (Author)


Harvard University Press


Publication Date: 2014
Physical Details: 364 pp.
Language: English

By the end of World War II, strategists in Washington and London looked ahead to a new era in which the United States shouldered global responsibilities and Britain concentrated its regional interests more narrowly. The two powers also viewed the Muslim world through very different lenses. Mapping the End of Empire reveals how Anglo--American perceptions of geography shaped postcolonial futures from the Middle East to South Asia. Aiyaz Husain shows that American and British postwar strategy drew on popular notions of geography as well as academic and military knowledge. Once codified in maps and memoranda, these perspectives became foundations of foreign policy. In South Asia, American officials envisioned an independent Pakistan blocking Soviet influence, an objective that outweighed other considerations in the contested Kashmir region. Shoring up Pakistan meshed perfectly with British hopes for a quiescent Indian subcontinent once partition became inevitable. But serious differences with Britain arose over America's support for the new state of Israel. Viewing the Mediterranean as a European lake of sorts, U.S. officials---even in parts of the State Department---linked Palestine with Europe, deeming it a perfectly logical destination for Jewish refugees. But British strategists feared that the installation of a Jewish state in Palestine could incite Muslim ire from one corner of the Islamic world to the other. As Husain makes clear, these perspectives also influenced the Dumbarton Oaks Conference and blueprints for the UN Security Council and shaped French and Dutch colonial fortunes in the Levant and the East Indies.

...More
Reviewed By

Review Fain, W. Taylor (2015) Review of "Mapping the End of Empire: American and British Strategic Visions in the Postwar World". American Historical Review (pp. 585-586). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001552187/

Similar Citations

Book Daniel Foliard; (2017)
Dislocating the Orient: British Maps and the Making of the Middle East, 1854-1921 (/isis/citation/CBB192403503/)

Book Kurgan, Laura; (2013)
Close up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics (/isis/citation/CBB001421350/)

Book Sabine Clarke; Alan Lester; (2018)
Science at the End of Empire: Experts and the Development of the British Caribbean, 1940-62 (/isis/citation/CBB623700377/)

Book Grant, Ben; (2009)
Postcolonialism, Psychoanalysis and Burton: Power Play of Empire (/isis/citation/CBB000951861/)

Article Demhardt, Imre Josef; (2009)
Paul Langhans und der Deutsche Kolonial-Atlas, 1893--1897 (/isis/citation/CBB001024650/)

Article Petronis, Vytautas; (2011)
Mapping Lithuanians: The Development of Russian Imperial Ethnic Cartography, 1840s--1870s (/isis/citation/CBB001221478/)

Book José María García Redondo; (2019)
Cartografía e Imperio: El Padrón Real y la representación del Nuevo Mundo (/isis/citation/CBB890653008/)

Book Emiralioglu, Mevhibe Pinar; (2014)
Geographical Knowledge and Imperial Culture in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (/isis/citation/CBB001551680/)

Book Hecht, Susanna B.; (2013)
The Scramble for the Amazon and the “Lost Paradise” of Euclides da Cunha (/isis/citation/CBB001551649/)

Article Daniel Foliard; Nader Nasiri-Moghaddam; (2020)
Contested Cartographies: Empire and Sovereignty on a Map of Sistān, Iran (1883) (/isis/citation/CBB269970523/)

Article Bivins, Roberta; (2013)
Coming “Home” to (post)Colonial Medicine: Treating Tropical Bodies in Post-War Britain (/isis/citation/CBB001213405/)

Authors & Contributors
Foliard, Daniel
Dalia Deias
Lester, Alan
Nasiri-Moghaddam, Nader
Redondo, José María García
Haag, Carlos
Concepts
Imperialism
Geography
Maps; atlases
Cartography
Postcolonialism
Colonialism
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, late
21st century
20th century, early
18th century
16th century
Places
Great Britain
United States
Russia
China
Mato Grosso (Brazil)
Middle and Near East
Institutions
Royal Geographical Society
Royal Society
Observatoire de Paris
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment