15 - ‘Cosmologies of Our Own’: After Britain

Summary

The final chapter ties the argument of the book to the many pathways out of empire, and the often-hesitant process of civic reinvention and readjustment as popular energies were redirected to post-imperial modes of belonging. This, too, brought patterns of social division and public dispute that were replicated (and modified) across multiple contexts and settings. The need to reconstitute history itself brought a clamour for new national symbols, without garnering and real consnensu abut what those new emblems should be. The frequent use of referendums to resolve questions of civic identity was itself a major legacy of the break-up of Greater Britain, affeting the ‘four nations’ of the United Kingdom as much as the former holdings of the British empire.