Book contents
- The Cambridge History of The Second World War
- The Cambridge History of The Second World War
- The Cambridge History of the Second World War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contents
- Maps
- Contributors to Volume II
- Maps
- Introduction to Volume II
- Part I Ideologies
- Part II Diplomacy and alliances
- Part III Occupation, Collaboration, Resistance and Liberation
- Introduction to Part III
- 15 Wartime occupation by Germany
- 16 Collaboration, resistance and liberation in Western Europe
- 17 Wartime occupation by Italy
- 18 Collaboration, resistance and liberation in the Balkans, 1941–1945
- 19 Soviet liberations and occupations, 1939–1949
- 20 Collaboration, resistance and accommodation in Northeast Asia
- 21 Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia, 1941–1945
- 22 The British Empire, 1939–1945
- 23 France and its colonial civil wars, 1940–1945
- 24 The Muslim world in the Second World War
- Bibliographical essays
- Index
- Plate Section (PDF Only)
22 - The British Empire, 1939–1945
from Part III - Occupation, Collaboration, Resistance and Liberation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2015
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of The Second World War
- The Cambridge History of The Second World War
- The Cambridge History of the Second World War
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contents
- Maps
- Contributors to Volume II
- Maps
- Introduction to Volume II
- Part I Ideologies
- Part II Diplomacy and alliances
- Part III Occupation, Collaboration, Resistance and Liberation
- Introduction to Part III
- 15 Wartime occupation by Germany
- 16 Collaboration, resistance and liberation in Western Europe
- 17 Wartime occupation by Italy
- 18 Collaboration, resistance and liberation in the Balkans, 1941–1945
- 19 Soviet liberations and occupations, 1939–1949
- 20 Collaboration, resistance and accommodation in Northeast Asia
- 21 Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia, 1941–1945
- 22 The British Empire, 1939–1945
- 23 France and its colonial civil wars, 1940–1945
- 24 The Muslim world in the Second World War
- Bibliographical essays
- Index
- Plate Section (PDF Only)
Summary
When France went to war in September 1939, it did so as a global imperial power. The French Empire emerged from the Second World War mired in crisis, and only partially intact. Between 1939 and 1945, this empire experienced three types of armed conflict, world war, civil war and contested decolonization. Much of this was unanticipated by the empire's rulers before the calamitous French defeat of June 1940. The empire's governing elites were bitterly divided about the causes of France's defeat, about its implications for republican democracy, about the probable outcome of the war. Economic crisis proved no barrier to the embrace of Vichy's 'National Revolution' by colonial regimes. With an empire wracked by violent internal division, the ebullience of French imperialism in 1945 seems puzzling. France moved in rapid succession from a nation defeated and occupied to one liberated and resurgent. A longer wartime constant was the state of undeclared civil war in its colonies.
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- The Cambridge History of the Second World War , pp. 558 - 580Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015
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