Settlers at the end of empire traces the development of racialised migration regimes in South Africa, Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) and the United Kingdom from the Second World War to the end of apartheid in 1994.
While South Africa and Rhodesia, like other settler colonies, had a long history of restricting the entry of migrants of colour, in the 1960s under existential threat and after abandoning formal ties with the Commonwealth they began to actively recruit white migrants, the majority of whom were British. At the same time, with the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, the British government began to implement restrictions aimed at slowing the migration of British subjects of colour. In all three nations, these policies were aimed at the preservation of nations imagined as white, revealing the persistence of the racial ideologies of empire across the era of decolonisation.
By:
Jean Smith
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
Spine: 14mm
Weight: 517g
ISBN: 9781526145482
ISBN 10: 1526145480
Series: Studies in Imperialism
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 12 July 2022
Audience:
General/trade
,
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
ELT Advanced
,
Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction 1. ‘The height of my ambition is to be a Springbok’: Wartime travel to southern Africa, race and the discourse of opportunity 2. ‘We want new settlers of British stock’: Planning for post-war migration 3. ‘Immigration on a Selective Basis’: The competing imperatives of minority settler colonialism, 1945-1953 4. From Britons to ‘New Rhodesians’ and ‘New South Africans’: The consolidation of racial nationalism in the 1950s 5. The demographic defence of the white nation, 1960-1975 6. ‘The last bastion of the British Empire’: The politics of migration in the final days of Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa, 1976-1994 7. ‘I still don’t have a country’: The southern African settler diaspora after decolonisation Epilogue Select bibliography -- .
Jean P. Smith is a Lecturer in British Imperial History at King's College London.
Reviews for Settlers at the End of Empire: Race and the Politics of Migration in South Africa, Rhodesia and the United Kingdom
‘The way this book brings together histories of immigration and emigration from Britain, and shows how these were often intertwined, makes this an important contribution to British and imperial history, as well as a counter to contemporary understandings of migration.’ Duncan Money, Reviews in History -- .
