The idea that Britain sought to manage and shape the process of decolonization is well-founded in the historiography of empire, yet historians nonetheless see the date of independence as a decisive break. This panel challenges that bifurcation. Not only did British officials on the ground and in London seek to impose their chosen candidates as the heads of postcolonial states, they further sought to manage every aspect of the transition of power according to the political and economic priorities of the new postcolonial world. Taking in case studies from across the empire in Burma, Egypt, and India, this panel will highlight the ways that British imperialism endured across the boundary of decolonization. It shows how the priorities of the Cold War often existed in a historical continuity with colonial and anti-colonial activity rather than representing an entirely new phenomenon. Dr. Bowser examines how British priorities in a decolonizing Burma were virtually identical to the Cold War Containment policy that followed. He argues that before and after the date of independence, their priority of containing the Burmese Communist movement steered the nascent Burmese leadership into a decades-long post-colonial conflict that would ultimately empower the Burmese military in the long run. Dr. Abu Sarah explores how British attempts to maintain control over the Suez Canal in an independent Egypt continued to reflect colonialist tropes by weaponizing the emotions of protest as “fanaticism.” Her paper shows how Egyptian anti-colonial activists undercut these British charges by battling the British on the emotional front. Building on scholarly conversations of such scholars as Sara Ahmed and Neetu Khanna, the paper debates the framework of “decolonizing emotions,” recovering surprising internal Egyptian debates about “emotional liberation.” Finally, Amrita DasGupta identifies how the Sundarbans in the Bengal delta formed yet another site of British dissection of both human and ecological geographies in the 1947 Partition. It is the aim of DasGupta’s project to argue that, the riverine networks of the Bengal delta – which connects the hinterland to the Indian Ocean – has always been a pathway for commerce and the transfer of humans along the mangrove coastline running from South Asia to South East Asia. The Partition’s division of the fluvial delta now adds layers of legal and psychological complexities in people’s lives. Though there had been unending debates about divisions on religious lines, as to which areas should fall on which side – India or Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) – there was no stir about ecological considerations of the littoral Bengal delta in birthing one such border. Altogether, these papers demonstrate how imperial and local priorities very much formed a continuity across the arbitrary line of independence, and how the processes of decolonization and containment were not restricted to one temporal side or the other.