Harold Macmillan's 'Wind of Change' speech, delivered to the South African parliament in Cape Town at the end of a landmark six-week African tour, presaged the end of the British Empire in Africa. This book, the first to focus on Macmillan's 'Wind of Change', comprises a series of essays by leading historians in the field.

"The essays contained within The Wind of Change provide an unparalleled exploration of Harold Macmillan's famous speech and its effects on the wider British world, from South Africa and Northern Rhodesia through Central Africa and the United States, to the United Kingdom itself. Written with clarity and elucidation throughout, this powerful work will take its essential place on the bookshelves of all historians of Britain in the twentieth century, decolonization, and the post-colonial legacy." Ben Grob-Fitzgibbon, Cleveland C. Burton Professor of International Programs, University of Arkansas, USA

Autorentext
Simon Ball, Professor, University of Leeds, UK Saul Dubow, Professor, Queen Mary, University of London, UK Stephen Howe, Senior Research Fellow, University of Bristol, UK John Kent, scholar Joanna Lewis, Lecturer, LSE, UK Sue Onslow, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies Nicholas Owen, Lecturer, University of Oxford, UK Martin Shipway, Former Head of the Department, Birkbeck, University of London, UK Simon C. Smith, Reader, University of Hull, UK Martin Thomas, Professor, University of Exeter, UK Richard Toye, Professor, University of Exeter, UK

Inhalt
Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction; Sarah Stockwell & L. J. Butler 1. Macmillan, Verwoerd, and the 1960 'Wind of Change' Speech; Saul Dubow 2. Whirlwind, Hurricane, Howling Tempest: the Wind of Change and the British World; Stuart Ward 3. 'White Man in a Wood Pile': Race and the limits of Macmillan's great 'Wind of Change' in Africa; J.E. Lewis 4. The Wind of Change as Generational Drama; Simon Ball 5. Four Straws in the Wind: Metropolitan Anti-Imperialism, January-February 1960; Nicholas Owen 6. 'Words of Change: the rhetoric of Commonwealth, Common Market, and Cold War, 1961-3'; Richard Toye 7. A path not taken? British perspectives on French colonial violence after 1945; Martin Thomas 8. The Winds of Change and the Tides of History: de Gaulle, Macmillan and the Beginnings of the French decolonising Endgame; Martin Shipway 9. The US and Decolonisation in Central Africa: 1957-1964; John Kent 10. Resistance to 'Winds of Change': The emergence of the 'unholy alliance' between Southern Rhodesia, Portugal and South Africa 1964-1965; Sue Onslow 11. The wind that failed to blow: British policy and the end of empire in the Gulf; Simon C. Smith 12. Crosswinds and Countercurrents: Macmillan's Africa in the 'long view' of decolonisation; Stephen Howe