Roosevelt wanted Britain to survive Nazi Germany while also imagining a postwar order less centered on European empires. That outlook resembled Wilsonian internationalism rather than a contradiction in American policy. If the British and French empires disappeared, large territorial states would appear to become the natural principal decision-makers. The continued existence of the Commonwealth upset that expectation because former colonies retained voluntary institutional connections with Britain after independence. Postwar decolonization did not follow a single model of complete political and diplomatic separation.
Notable Point · 56:56-58:57
Roosevelt's anti-imperial vision and the unexpected Commonwealth
Roosevelt's wartime choices reflected an anti-imperial postwar vision, while the Commonwealth's survival shows how decolonization confounded expectations about former imperial relationships.