Australian History
Book Details

Losing the Blanket

Australia and the End of Britain’s Empire

David Goldsworthy

Losing the Blanket shows how Australia’s foreign policy during the 1950s and 1960s was affected by the end of empire.

Opinion

‘This clearly written and well-researched book . . . is a comprehensive and insightful juxtapositioning of historical and foreign policy material that portrays the complex evolution of our relationship with the UK.’ (Law Society Journal, July 2003)

‘One of the excellent features of this book is Goldsworthy’s sure hand with the zoom lens that occasionally widens out into the bigger framework . . . the format sustains a nicely measured and easily digested book.’ (The International History Review, June 2003)

About this Title

When Britain’s sprawling empire wound down with unexpected speed in the 1960s, Australia lost a comforting ‘security blanket’. We had to struggle to re-establish and protect ourselves in a volatile and threatening world.

Australia’s interests in empire had taken many forms—strategic, economic, cultural and psychological. Indeed Australia had used British experience as a template for its own ‘mini-imperialism’, in Papua and New Guinea for example. The most important connnections between Britain’s imperial interests and Australia’s regional ones were in Southeast Asia, but they extended to the Indian and Pacific oceans and even to Africa.

The effects of the end of empire upon Australia’s external relations have tended to be eclipsed by historians’ emphasis on Cold War imperatives and Australia’s consequent alignment with the United States.

Losing the Blanket rights the balance by showing how Australia’s foreign policy during the 1950s and 1960s was affected by the end of empire. Under the thirty-year rule, vital primary sources in both Britain and Australia are now accessible. They reveal the effects of post-imperialism upon Australian policies in key areas such as defence planning in Southeast Asia, the politics of the Commonwealth, European union, Australia's own colonial policy, and relations with Britain itself.

David Goldsworthy’s account is both clear and thorough. As first Menzies and then Holt looked to protect Australia’s interests, the groundwork was laid for our involvement in Vietnam and for the pattern of Australia’s foreign relations today.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction

Part 1: Living with Britain’s empire
1 Empire: the view from Canberra
2 Australia and Britain as colonial powers
3 British islands, Australian ambitions
4 Australia discovers Africa

Part 2: Coping with the end of empire
5 Things falling apart: Menzies, Britain and the new Commonwealth
6 Menzies, Macmillan and Europe
7 Confrontation in Southeast Asia
8 The troops go home

Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

David Goldsworthy is an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University. His most recent books include The Conservative Government and the End of Empire (HMSO 1994) and Facing North: A Century of Australian Engagement with Asia, vol. 1 (MUP 2001).

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978-0-522-85028-4