British territorial abdication following WWII caused disasters around the world. Two were particularly grievous.
First, the British failed to prevent partition of India and Pakistan or create conditions of safe passage for the religion-based mass migration that occurred. Hatred and fear during the exchange of 15 million people between the two new nations resulted in between 200,000 and 1 million deaths. The over-hasty British abdication on the subcontinent also caused a half-century of suspicion and war, now overhung with nuclear threat.
Second, the British let the Jews and Arabs fight it out in Palestine. The result was a tenuous state, surrounded by enemies, with millions of universally unwelcome refugees just across its borders.
Tired after WWII, and incapable of sustaining Empire, the British around the world just left. I do not quibble with their decision to depart; but for the tragedies their abdication of responsibility invited, we are more than fair to blame Britain.
Addendum: Pankaj Mishra’s excellent recent review of Indian Summer by Alex von Tunzelmann concludes, “The rival nationalisms and politicized religions the British Empire brought into being now clash in an enlarged geographical arena; and the human costs of imperial overreaching seem unlikely to attain a final tally for many more decades.”
