The Empire Departs: The Partitions of British India, Mandate Palestine, and the Dawn of Self-Determination in the Third World

Abstract

This article argues that the political system established by the United Kingdom in British India and Mandate Palestine contributed to their partition in 1947. This is not to suggest that other factors – nationalism, anticolonialism, the Second World War, and the early Cold War, did not also play a part in strategic calculations. It is merely to suggest that the formation of national identity in British India and Mandate Palestine were both linked to British policies and the political system Britain established in those territories that contributed to the failure to come up with a scheme that would satisfy their political aspirations when Britain left. The problem was systemic, and was not merely due to British calculations in the final hours although these calculations undoubtedly shaped the final borders.