The Collapse of the British Empire and the Beginning of European Integration. Review of: Khakhalkina, E. V. (2017). Velikobritaniia i problemy integratsii, bezopasnosti i dekolonizatsii vo vtoroi polovine 1940-kh — nachale 1960-kh gg. [Great Britain and Issues of Integration, Security, and Decolonisation in the Second Half of the 1940s — Early 1960s]. Tomsk: Tomsk University Press. 384 p.

Abstract

This paper provides a critical review of the monograph Great Britain and Issues of Integration, Security, and Decolonisation in the Second Half of the 1940s — Early 1960s, published by Tomsk University Press in 2017. The book analyses the main changes in the foreign policy of the British Governments after World War II in the context of issues of European integration, new aspects of security, and the appearance of immigration policy. The Cold War transformed the traditional priorities of British foreign policy from the defence of the colonial empire to a “special relationship” with the United States of America and then to the integration policy with European countries. At the same time, there were some crises in the UK, the 1956 Suez Crisis being the most well-known of them. In the book reviewed, the author tries to put forward the study of different aspects of British foreign policy of the period both by means of developing the traditional system of approaches, and by introducing new sources which demonstrate the evolution of these different interconnected processes. The review considers some of the results of this approach.

Keywords

• Великобритания
• деколонизация
• интеграция
• внешняя политика.