The Late Colonial State Revisited

Abstract The idea of a ‘late colonial state’ has been surprisingly durable. It is also the case that the meaning and significance of decolonisation – indeed our understanding of when it took place and how long it lasted – has been widened and deepened. We no longer tend to think of it as a purely political let alone constitutional event, but as a much broader shift in the relations between the ‘colonial world’ and its (former) masters and as having many more dimensions: economic, cultural, demographic among them. Needless to say, we are no closer to an agreed explanation than we were twenty-five or fifty years ago: the primacy of nationalist resistance, or of metropolitan politics or of geopolitical change still have their adherents even if it was the ricochet effect of all three on each other that offers the most plausible analysis. However, regardless of which account is favoured it seems clear that the nature of the ‘end game’ of the colonial state is the best place in which to search for answers. The late colonial state still has work to do.