Because it is a time-past, time-present hybrid, decolonisation exercises on contemporary historians the same kind of excitement of revelation as does, for example, the study of recent wars: not the Gulf War and perhaps not yet the Falklands Campaign both being too close for objective interpretation, and sadly no longer Gallipoli or the Boer War; but certainly the 'Emergencies', as they were called in post-war Malaya and of Mau Mau in the 1950s, and, of course, the Second World War. These all share an element of 'I was there', 'I remember', or, regardless of whether as actor or spectator, 'I often used to wonder why or how...'. As Lord Bullock has said, he considers himself to be in a uniquely fortunate position as a historian of the Second World War: not only did he live through the events and had access to many of the relevant documents, he has also lived long enough to gain the perspective normally granted to historians of earlier times.
The end of British hegemony in Africa and the decolonisation of the continent enjoys a paradoxical dual attraction: by definition a past event, it nevertheless remains a matter of recent experience, current interest and contemporary debate, however incomplete in the record, and ambivalent in its interpretation. Decolonisation excites our interest by manifesting the past in the present.
Much of this open-mindedness over Britain's colonial withdrawal from Africa can be attributed to the nature of the sources for its study. Because decolonisation was primarily an official phenomenon – revolving around governments and bureaucracies, ministers and constitutions, Whitehall and Westminster, with territorial counterparts in the Secretariats and Government Houses in Lagos, Nairobi and Lusaka, etc. – its primary evidence must lie in official files deposited with the Public Record Office: Cabinet memoranda, Premier's Office papers, Colonial Office minutes, and so on. Access to this archive is, of course, governed by the thirty-year rule.
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