The End of the British Empire and the Break-Up of Britain: Cause and Effect?

In an explanation that borders on obsessive neatness, historians, sociologists, political scientists, journalists and pundits of all kinds have found something particularly appealing about the idea that it was the decline of Britain’s Empire that caused Britain’s territorial unravelling.This essay is an attempt to guide readers though the complexities of the historiography of end of empire as it relates to the apparent decline of the United Kingdom at the end of the twentieth century.