Empires of the Mind

Book at Lunchtime: Empires of the Mind 'The empires of the future
would be the empires of the mind' declared Churchill in 1943,
envisaging universal empires living in peaceful harmony. Robert
Gildea exposes instead the brutal realities of decolonisation and
neo-colonialism which have shaped the postwar world. Even after the
rush of French and British decolonisation in the 1960s, the strings
of economic and military power too often remained in the hands of
the former colonial powers. The more empire appears to have
declined and fallen, the more a fantasy of empire has been conjured
up as a model for projecting power onto the world stage and
legitimised colonialist intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq, and
Syria. This aggression, along with the imposition of colonial
hierarchies in metropolitan society, has excluded, alienated and
even radicalised immigrant populations. Meanwhile, nostalgia for
empire has bedevilled relations with Europe and played a large part
in explaining Brexit.