Colonial empire after 1945: a view from the USA

No research in the colonial system issues during the Cold War would be complete without studying the press of the participating parties. In order to give a detailed analysis of the international relationships in terms of the global transformations from the American point of view, the author draws relevant newspaper articles published after the World War II. The results have shown changes to priority schemes as viewed in American social discourse during 1945. Roosevelt’s plan for the dismantling of the colonial empires was gradually replaced with less radical plans, which presupposed using the colonial experience for foreign policy of the USA. Immediately after the end of the Second World War, the US press began to re-examine its attitude towards the colonial issue. The US media were clearly shifting from criticism to a deeper and more comprehensive analysis of both the system itself as a whole and British colonial management experience, openly acknowledging that in this context, historic ties, conflict resolution and local elite management experience may have turned out to be more useful than loyalty to abstract principles. At the end of 1945–1946 there were tendencies in the US press to change from the position of an interested observer to an active participant in the colonial problem.