Systematized violence punctuated the end of the British Empire in the aftermath of the Second World War. While Britain cut its losses in some parts of its empire, as in India, it also sought to establish itself in the shifting world order through imperial resurgence in other parts of the globe. From Palestine and Malaya to Kenya and Cyprus, British colonial and military forces, along with MI5, fought wars to defend economic and geopolitical interests, all the while positioning the island nation in the shifting landscape of the Cold War. By examining the movement of people and ideas from one counter-insurgency theater to the next, Britain's uses and logics of violence and torture against local populations emerge, as do the mutually constitutive ideologies of liberalism and imperialism.

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