Run before the Tempest: The Wind of Change and the British World

TY - JOUR

T1 - Run before the Tempest

T2 - The Wind of Change and the British World

AU - Ward, Stuart James

PY - 2011

Y1 - 2011

N2 - Harold Macmillan's "Wind of Change" speech of February 1960 is widely regarded as a defining moment in the history of British decolonisation. Indeed the words themselves have become shorthand for the sweeping changes that transformed the political and ideological landscape of the post-imperial world. What is less understood is the complex reaction of white British settler communities to Macmillan's message. This essay explores the rhetorical afterlife of the "wind of change" as a means of gauging the settler-colonial dimensions of decolonisation. By tracing its ambivalent usage among settler communities in South Africa, Rhodesia, Kenya, and further afield in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, it is argued that the wind of change acquired distinctive settler connotations as a synonym for the dissolution of white Commonwealth solidarity. The wind of change challenged long held assumptions that had governed the political, social and cultural networks of "Greater Britain", and confronted its constituent communities with unprecedented dilemmas of self-definition.

AB - Harold Macmillan's "Wind of Change" speech of February 1960 is widely regarded as a defining moment in the history of British decolonisation. Indeed the words themselves have become shorthand for the sweeping changes that transformed the political and ideological landscape of the post-imperial world. What is less understood is the complex reaction of white British settler communities to Macmillan's message. This essay explores the rhetorical afterlife of the "wind of change" as a means of gauging the settler-colonial dimensions of decolonisation. By tracing its ambivalent usage among settler communities in South Africa, Rhodesia, Kenya, and further afield in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, it is argued that the wind of change acquired distinctive settler connotations as a synonym for the dissolution of white Commonwealth solidarity. The wind of change challenged long held assumptions that had governed the political, social and cultural networks of "Greater Britain", and confronted its constituent communities with unprecedented dilemmas of self-definition.

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0340-613X

VL - 37

SP - 198

EP - 219

JO - Geschichte und Gesellschaft

JF - Geschichte und Gesellschaft

IS - 2

ER -