Description

When uprisings against colonial rule broke out across the world after 1945 Britain responded with overwhelming and brutal force Although this period has conventionally been dubbed postwar it was punctuated by a succession of hardfought longrunning conflicts that were geographically diffuse morally ambiguous and impervious to neat endings or declarations of victory

Age of Emergency traces facts and feelings about violence as torture summary executions collective punishments and other ruthless methods were employed in states of emergency It examines how Britons at home learned to live with colonial warfare by examining activist campaigns soldiers letters missionary networks newspaper stories television dramas sermons novels and plays Some contemporaries cast doubt on facts about violence Still others aestheticized violence by celebrating visions of racial struggle or dramatizing the grim fatalism of dirty wars Through their voices Erik Linstrum narrates what violence looked heard and felt like as an empire ended a history with unsettling echoes in our own time

Vividly analyzing how faroff atrocities became domestic problems Age of Emergency shows that the compromising entanglements of war extended far beyond the conflict zones of empire