The Ex-Empire Builders

• Department of History

PhD thesis defence by Rebecca Orr

This thesis explores how formal decolonisation led to new ways of organising working life and the workplace in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century. During this period, approximately two million migrants arrived in Britain from newly independent nation-states, with around one-third classified as being of ‘European’ descent. I focus on the constitutive role played by a group of ‘European’ migrants of decolonisation, specifically former colonial civil servants, as employees in emerging sectors of the service and non-profit economy.

By highlighting the interconnection between work and postcolonial migration, this study challenges the scholarly consensus that decolonisation had minimal or no economic impact in Britain. As I show, the arrival of postcolonial migrants resulted in the creation of new infrastructures for re-employment across Britain. Resettlement boards directed former colonial civil servants into high-status employment in education, non-governmental organisations, government departments and private companies. The rich archival records of these institutions illustrate how colonial civil servants managed the evolution of these growing institutions, which I argue were central to the post-imperial economy, between the 1950s and 1970s.

In addition to highlighting the role played by colonial civil servants in specific workplaces transformed by decolonisation, this thesis places broader structural changes in conversation with the intimate and familial. Interviews with second-generation migrants reveal how decolonisation shaped memory, identity and politics within colonial service families late into the twentieth century. Ultimately, by drawing together the literature on the end of empire and post-war economic history, I show how the economic consequences of decolonisation reverberated at the level of the state, family and individual. In doing so, the thesis provides a new framework for understanding how postcolonial migration shaped work and the workplace in Britain, as one example in European history.