Reviewing Britain's Presence East of Suez (PDF)

Maike Hausen presents a transnational, multi-perspective review of strategic and security discussions among the former British white settler colonies Australia, Canada and New Zealand in the 1960s. Focusing on the foreign policy debate surrounding the British decision to withdraw their military 'East of Suez' from Southeast Asia, she reviews extensive source material to examine the transformation of political, diplomatic and strategic ties between Great Britain and Australia, Canada and New Zealand. By embedding the East of Suez discussion into a larger framework of long-term postcolonial transformations and developments of the Cold War and decolonisation, the study traces how the British decision upset the traditional conduct of concerted foreign policy and led to notions of crisis and uncertainty as well as to reviews that would ultimately contribute to more independent national outlooks and policies.

Born in 1989; studies in History and Historical and Cultural Anthropology (BA) at the University of Tübingen and the University of Bologna; 2015 MA in Modern History (Tübingen); doctoral researcher at the Collaborative Research Centre 923 'Threatened Order - Societies under Stress' at the University of Tübingen; 2019 PhD; since 2021 editor at the 'Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Baden-Württemberg.'