Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain

This book investigates a piece of unspoken conventional wisdom: since the loss of the empire, the British people have become unsure what their country represents, an uncertainty that may well trigger the dissolution of the United Kingdom itself. Oddly, given that the author fixes on this hypothetical future, the book itself is almost entirely about the past. Indeed, it barely touches on the current movement for devolution within the United Kingdom. Rather, the author, an imperial historian, details with telling anecdotes how “British” many imperial and formerly imperial subjects felt themselves to be over the past century, not least those who immigrated to the United Kingdom over the past half century. Many of these individuals did not reject the United Kingdom but were rejected by the British, who refused to recognize them as equal co-nationals of the British Commonwealth. That rejection encouraged the process of decolonization that resulted in the independence of dozens of countries across the world in the twentieth century. Today we see the melancholy result of this complex process: a post-Brexit United Kingdom, unsure of its own identity, beset with challenges from within, and struggling unsuccessfully to retain the sovereign position in world politics it once held.