Book contents
- Untied Kingdom
- Untied Kingdom
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Introduction
- Part I Prologue
- Part II Registers
- 4 ‘We Mustn’t Use the Word “Empire”’: The British Name
- 5 Homes Away from Home: The Houses of Windsor
- 6 Imperial Welcome: The British Subject
- 7 The Wind Changes: Human Rights after Smuts
- 8 Pride in the Goods: The Moral Economy of the Common Market
- 9 Uncommon Law: The Reach of British Justice
- Part III Repercussions
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
7 - The Wind Changes: Human Rights after Smuts
from Part II - Registers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2023
- Untied Kingdom
- Untied Kingdom
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Introduction
- Part I Prologue
- Part II Registers
- 4 ‘We Mustn’t Use the Word “Empire”’: The British Name
- 5 Homes Away from Home: The Houses of Windsor
- 6 Imperial Welcome: The British Subject
- 7 The Wind Changes: Human Rights after Smuts
- 8 Pride in the Goods: The Moral Economy of the Common Market
- 9 Uncommon Law: The Reach of British Justice
- Part III Repercussions
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
South Africa furnishes one of the most complex examples of the eclipse of Greater Britain, on account of the sheer diversity of peoples and political forces that shaped events in the post-war era. English South Africans experienced a period of prolonged disorientation as their paradigmatic status dwindled, caught between an Afrikaner majority determined to override their totems of British loyalty, and a burgeoning Black resistance calling time on the bogus liberties invested in the British Crown. In the decades after 1945, a uniquely opportune climate for humanitarian and anti-colonial claim-making was forged — not least for the empire’s First Peoples. All over the world, settler communities were confronted with insistent demands to redress the injustices flowing from the pioneering intrusions of their forebears, challenging their foundational myths and raising nagging questions about their security of tenure. For the minority of white, professedly ‘liberal’, English-speaking South Africans, bent on combatting Afrikaner political dominance, the advent of Indigenous demands rooted in universal rights would ultimately pose the more severe test to their British affinities and allegiances.
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- Untied KingdomA Global History of the End of Britain, pp. 194 - 226Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023