Uncommon Wealth - Britain and the Aftermath of Empire

Britain is in crisis. A century ago, it was the home of the largest empire the world has ever known. Now it is struggling to hold itself together. With spiralling inequality, an endless constitutional crisis, racial and ethnic tensions and the runaway power of global capitalism, across the country, people no longer feel in control of their lives. However, mainstream politics is failing to provide an adequate lens through which to understand these changes.What if the source of these problems lay within a period that the country has long tried to repress? The era of decolonisation fundamentally shifted Britain's relationship with the world, yet we know almost nothing about events and actors that drove this transformation. Crucially, we also ignore the policies and practices that were left in place following the end of empire. These systems gave British imperialism a strange afterlife, one that is now returning to haunt the old 'mother country.In this book, Ghanaian-British writer Kojo Koram tells the story of what happened in the aftermath of empire, showing how the economic and political battles that were happening in Britain's former colonies a few decades ago, created the conditions for many of the problems Britain itself is facing today. Tracing as never before the legacy of empire, Uncommon Wealth is the story of how Britain's treatment of former colonies has returned to haunt it...