What the break-up of the British Empire can tell us about Brexit

IF THE current crop of Whitehall mandarins think they have their hands full negotiating an exit from the European Union, they should spare a thought for their predecessors. Britain’s withdrawal from its empire in the 1940s-60s required its civil service to negotiate exits from dozens of different territories, often in months. The arch-imperialist Winston Churchill called it a “scuttle”.

Yet the winding up of empire for the most part achieved what many considered impossible: breaking up and staying friends. Many peoples labouring under the yoke of British imperialism hated the colonialists, yet few of the former colonies refused to join the Commonwealth as newly independent countries. What might Britain’s Brexit negotiators learn from that relatively painless transition?

The aims in most imperial exit negotiations were threefold, as summarised by one official: to ensure an orderly withdrawal, to maintain political stability and to “safeguard our own trading and investment interests”. The second point was important as the backdrop to the end of empire was, as it is now, a...