After India was granted independence from British rule in 1947 a succession of other countries pressed towards the same goal. The pace was fastest and most furious in Africa. In 1957 the Colonial Empire in Africa was intact - ten years later it had disappeared - except for rebel-administrated Rhodesia, and Swaziland - soon to be independent. In those ten years, 12 African States had gained their independence and joined the Commonwealth. Where there had been little or no white settlement the process was comparatively painless, but wherever the British presence had held the balance - as between European and African in Kenya - withdrawal was to prove more difficult. In these cases, British soldiers were called in to play as vital a role in the dissolution of Empire and its transformation into a new multi-racial Commonwealth, as they had in its creation.