Book excerpt: This volume looks at the impact on the wider world of the end of the European empires and their replacement by a new international order dominated by East-West rivalries. After surveying the decolonization process, the book looks successively at the different patterns of experience in Southern Africa, South East Asia and India, East Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East, and the Americas. It concludes with a sustained analysis of the International System -- the functioning of international organizations and the global role of money and trade.