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Decolonization or decolonisation is the undoing of
colonialism Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colony, colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose the ...
, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on
independence movements Presented below is a list of lists of active separatist movements: * List of active separatist movements in Africa * List of active separatist movements in Asia *List of active separatist movements in Europe * List of active separatist movement ...
in the
colonies In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...
and the collapse of global colonial empires. Other scholars extend the meaning to include economic, cultural and psychological aspects of the colonial experience. Decolonisation scholars apply the framework to struggles against
coloniality of power The coloniality of power is a concept interrelating the practices and legacies of European colonialism in social orders and forms of knowledge, advanced in postcolonial studies, decoloniality, and Latin American subaltern studies, most promin ...
within settler-colonial states even after successful independence movements.
Indigenous Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention *Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band *Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...
and post-colonial scholars have critiqued Western worldviews, promoting
decolonization of knowledge Decolonization of knowledge (also epistemic decolonization or epistemological decolonization) is a concept advanced in decolonial scholarship that critiques the perceived hegemony of Western knowledge systems. It seeks to construct and legitim ...
and the centering of
traditional ecological knowledge Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) describes indigenous and other traditional knowledge of local resources. As a field of study in Northern American anthropology, TEK refers to "a cumulative body of knowledge, belief, and practice, evolving by ...
.


Scope

The
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...
(UN) states that the
fundamental right Fundamental rights are a group of rights that have been recognized by a high degree of protection from encroachment. These rights are specifically identified in a constitution, or have been found under due process of law. The United Nations' Sustai ...
to self-determination is the core requirement for decolonization, and that this right can be exercised with or without political independence. A UN General Assembly Resolution in 1960 characterised colonial foreign rule as a violation of human rights. In states that have won independence,
Indigenous people Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...
living under
settler colonialism Settler colonialism is a structure that perpetuates the elimination of Indigenous people and cultures to replace them with a settler society. Some, but not all, scholars argue that settler colonialism is inherently genocidal. It may be enacted ...
continue to make demands for decolonization and self-determination. Although examples of decolonization can be found as early as the writings of
Thucydides Thucydides (; grc, , }; BC) was an Athenian historian and general. His '' History of the Peloponnesian War'' recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of " scienti ...
, there have been several particularly active periods of decolonization in modern times. These include the breakup of the Spanish Empire in the 19th century; of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
empires following
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
; of the
British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...
, French,
Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...
,
Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...
,
Belgian Belgian may refer to: * Something of, or related to, Belgium * Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent * Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German *Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...
,
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...
, and
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
colonial empires following
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
; and of the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
at the end of the Cold War. Early studies of decolonisation appeared in the 1960s and 1970s. An important book from this period was ''
The Wretched of the Earth ''The Wretched of the Earth'' (french: Les Damnés de la Terre) is a 1961 book by the philosopher Frantz Fanon, in which the author provides a psychoanalysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization upon the individual and the nation, and d ...
'' (1961) by Martiniquan author
Frantz Fanon Frantz Omar Fanon (, ; ; 20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961), also known as Ibrahim Frantz Fanon, was a French West Indian psychiatrist, and political philosopher from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have b ...
, which established many aspects of decolonisation that would be considered in later works. Subsequent studies of decolonisation addressed economic disparities as a legacy of colonialism as well as the annihilation of people's cultures.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (; born James Ngugi; 5 January 1938) is a Kenyan author and academic who writes primarily in Gikuyu and who formerly wrote in English. He has been described as having been "considered East Africa’s leading novelist". His wo ...
explored the cultural and linguistic legacies of colonialism in the influential book '' Decolonising the Mind'' (1986). Decolonization has been used to refer to the intellectual decolonization from the colonizers' ideas that made the colonized feel inferior. Issues of decolonization persist and are raised contemporarily. In
Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...
and
South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
, such issues are increasingly discussed under the term
decoloniality Decoloniality ( es, decolonialidad) is a school of thought used principally by an emerging Latin American movement which focuses on untangling the production of knowledge from a primarily Eurocentric episteme. It critiques the perceived universali ...
.


Methods and stages

A momentum for decolonization followed
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, in particular through the
League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...
for European territories that were under the control of the Ottoman and Austria-Hungarian empires. Under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, a number of mandates were created. The expressed intention was to prepare these countries for self-government, but the mandates are often interpreted as a mere redistribution of control over non-European former colonies of the defeated powers, mainly the German Empire and the
Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...
. This reassignment work continued through the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...
, with a similar system of trust territories created to adjust control over both former colonies and mandated territories. The United Nations' 1960
Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, also known as the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1514, was a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly during its fifteenth session, that affi ...
was a crucial landmark in decolonization.


Theories for trends in decolonization

Scholars have proposed various explanations for trends in decolonization. Two prominent explanations emphasize the state of the world economy (such as whether there is
hegemony Hegemony (, , ) is the political, economic, and military predominance of one State (polity), state over other states. In Ancient Greece (8th BC – AD 6th ), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of the ''hegemon'' city-state over oth ...
and economic growth or stagnation) and
World Polity theory World polity theory (also referred to as world society theory, global Neo-institutionalism, and the "Stanford school" of global analysis) was developed mainly as an analytical frame for interpreting global relations, structures, and practices. It wa ...
(which emphasizes the diffusion of the nation-state model from Western Europe to its dependencies and contagion processes whereby decolonization in one instance prompts subsequent decolonizations in other cases). Other explanations emphasize how the lower profitability of colonization and the costs associated with empire prompted decolonization. Some explanations emphasize how colonial powers struggled militarily against insurgents in the colonies due to a shift from 19th century conditions of "strong political will, a permissive international environment, access to local collaborators, and flexibility to pick their battles" to 20th century conditions of "apathetic publics, hostile superpowers, vanishing collaborators, and constrained options."


Independence movements

Beginning with the emergence of the United States in the 1770s, decolonization took place in the context of
Atlantic history Atlantic history is a specialty field in history that studies the Atlantic World in the early modern period. The Atlantic World was created by the discovery of a new land by Europeans, and Atlantic History is the study of that world. It is p ...
, against the background of the American and French revolutions. Decolonization became a wider movement in many colonies in the 20th century, and a reality after 1945. The historian
William Hardy McNeill William Hardy McNeill (October 31, 1917 – July 8, 2016) was an American historian and author, noted for his argument that contact and exchange among civilizations is what drives human history forward, first postulated in '' The Rise of the Wes ...
, in his famous 1963 book ''
The Rise of the West ''The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community'' is a book by University of Chicago historian William H. McNeill, first published in 1963 and enlarged with a retrospective preface in 1991. It explores world history in terms of the eff ...
'', appears to have interpreted the post-1945 decline of European empires as paradoxically being due to
Westernization Westernization (or Westernisation), also Europeanisation or occidentalization (from the ''Occident''), is a process whereby societies come under or adopt Western culture in areas such as industry, technology, science, education, politics, econo ...
itself, writing that In the same book, McNeill wrote that "The rise of the West, as intended by the title and meaning of this book, is only accelerated when one or another Asian or African people throws off European administration by making Western techniques, attitudes, and ideas sufficiently their own to permit them to do so". Great Britain's Thirteen North American colonies were the first colonies to break from their colonial motherland by declaring independence as the United States of America in 1776, and being recognized as an independent nation by France in 1778 and Britain in 1783.


Haitian Revolution

The Haitian Revolution was a revolt in 1789 and subsequent slave uprising in 1791 in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. In 1804, Haiti secured independence from France as the Empire of Haiti, which later became a republic.


Spanish America

The chaos of the
Napoleonic wars The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...
in Europe cut the direct links between Spain and its American colonies, allowing for the process of decolonization to begin. With the invasion of Spain by Napoleon in 1806, the American colonies declared autonomy and loyalty to King Ferdinand VII. The contract was broken and the regions of the Spanish Empire had to decide whether to show allegiance to the Junta of Cadiz (the only territory in Spain free from Napoleon) or have a junta (assembly) of its own. The economic monopoly of the metropolis was the main reason why many countries decided to become independent from Spain. In 1809, the independence wars of Latin America began with a revolt in La Paz, Bolivia. In 1807 and 1808, the Viceroyalty of the River Plate was invaded by the British. After their 2nd defeat, a Frenchman called Santiague de Liniers was proclaimed a new Viceroy by the local population and later accepted by Spain. In May 1810 in
Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
, a Junta was created, but in Montevideo it was not recognized by the local government who followed the authority of the Junta of Cadiz. The rivalry between the two cities was the main reason for the distrust between them. During the next 15 years, the Spanish and Royalist on one side, and the rebels on the other fought in South America and Mexico. Numerous countries declared their independence. In 1824, the Spanish forces were defeated in the
Battle of Ayacucho The Battle of Ayacucho ( es, Batalla de Ayacucho, ) was a decisive military encounter during the Peruvian War of Independence. This battle secured the independence of Peru and ensured independence for the rest of South America. In Peru it is co ...
. The mainland was free, and in 1898, Spain lost
Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
and
Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...
in the
Spanish–American War , partof = the Philippine Revolution, the decolonization of the Americas, and the Cuban War of Independence , image = Collage infobox for Spanish-American War.jpg , image_size = 300px , caption = (cloc ...
. Puerto Rico became an
unincorporated territory Territories of the United States are sub-national administrative divisions overseen by the federal government of the United States. The various American territories differ from the U.S. states and tribal reservations as they are not sove ...
of the US, but Cuba became independent in 1902.


Portuguese America

The Napoleonic Wars also led to the severing of the direct links between Portugal and its only American colony,
Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
. Days before Napoleon invaded Portugal, in 1807 the Portuguese royal court fled to Brazil. In 1820 there was a
Constitutionalist Revolution The Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932 (sometimes also referred to as Paulista War or Brazilian Civil War) is the name given to the uprising of the population of the Brazilian state of São Paulo against the Brazilian Revolution of 1930 whe ...
in Portugal, which led to the return of the Portuguese court to Lisbon. This led to distrust between the Portuguese and the Brazilian colonists, and finally, in 1822, to the colony becoming independent as the
Empire of Brazil The Empire of Brazil was a 19th-century state that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil and (until 1828) Uruguay. Its government was a representative parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the rule of Emperors Dom ...
, which later became a republic.


British Empire

The emergence of Indigenous political parties was especially characteristic of the
British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...
, which seemed less ruthless than, for example, Belgium, in controlling political dissent. Driven by pragmatic demands of budgets and manpower the British made deals with the local politicians. Across the empire, the general protocol was to convene a constitutional conference in London to discuss the transition to greater self-government and then independence, submit a report of the constitutional conference to parliament, if approved submit a bill to Parliament at Westminster to terminate the responsibility of the United Kingdom (with a copy of the new constitution annexed), and finally, if approved, issuance of an Order of Council fixing the exact date of independence. After
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, several former German and Ottoman territories in the Middle East, Africa, and the Pacific were governed by the UK as League of Nations mandates. Some were administered directly by the UK, and others by British dominions – Nauru and the
Territory of New Guinea The Territory of New Guinea was an Australian-administered United Nations trust territory on the island of New Guinea from 1914 until 1975. In 1949, the Territory and the Territory of Papua were established in an administrative union by the na ...
by Australia,
South West Africa South West Africa ( af, Suidwes-Afrika; german: Südwestafrika; nl, Zuidwest-Afrika) was a territory under South African administration from 1915 to 1990, after which it became modern-day Namibia. It bordered Angola (Portuguese colony before 1 ...
by the
Union of South Africa The Union of South Africa ( nl, Unie van Zuid-Afrika; af, Unie van Suid-Afrika; ) was the historical predecessor to the present-day Republic of South Africa. It came into existence on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the Cape, Natal, Tran ...
, and
Western Samoa Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa; sm, Sāmoa, and until 1997 known as Western Samoa, is a Polynesian island country consisting of two main islands ( Savai'i and Upolu); two smaller, inhabited islands ( Manono and Apolima); ...
by
New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
. Egypt became independent in 1922, although the UK retained security prerogatives, control of the Suez Canal, and effective control of the
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan Anglo-Egyptian Sudan ( ar, السودان الإنجليزي المصري ') was a condominium of the United Kingdom and Egypt in the Sudans region of northern Africa between 1899 and 1956, corresponding mostly to the territory of present-day ...
. The
Balfour Declaration of 1926 The Balfour Declaration of 1926, issued by the 1926 Imperial Conference of British Empire leaders in London, was named after Arthur Balfour, who was Lord President of the Council. It declared the United Kingdom and the Dominions to be: Th ...
declared the British Empire
dominion The term ''Dominion'' is used to refer to one of several self-governing nations of the British Empire. "Dominion status" was first accorded to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, South Africa, and the Irish Free State at the 192 ...
s as equals, and the 1931 Statute of Westminster established full legislative independence for them. The equal dominions were six–
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, Newfoundland, Australia, the
Irish Free State The Irish Free State ( ga, Saorstát Éireann, , ; 6 December 192229 December 1937) was a state established in December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921. The treaty ended the three-year Irish War of Independence between ...
,
New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
, and the
Union of South Africa The Union of South Africa ( nl, Unie van Zuid-Afrika; af, Unie van Suid-Afrika; ) was the historical predecessor to the present-day Republic of South Africa. It came into existence on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the Cape, Natal, Tran ...
; Ireland had been brought into a union with Great Britain in 1801 creating The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922. However, some of the Dominions were already independent de facto, and even de jure and recognized as such by the international community. Thus, Canada was a founding member of the League of Nations in 1919 and served on the council from 1927 to 1930. That country also negotiated on its own and signed bilateral and multilateral treaties and conventions from the early 1900s onward. Newfoundland ceded self-rule back to London in 1934.
Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
, a League of Nations mandate, became independent in 1932. In response to a growing
Indian independence movement The Indian independence movement was a series of historic events with the ultimate aim of ending British Raj, British rule in India. It lasted from 1857 to 1947. The first nationalistic revolutionary movement for Indian independence emerged ...
, the UK made successive reforms to the
British Raj The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was him ...
, culminating in the Government of India Act (1935). These reforms included creating elected legislative councils in some of the
Provinces of British India A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions outsi ...
.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti- ...
, India's independence movement leader, led a peaceful resistance to British rule. By becoming a symbol of both peace and opposition to British imperialism, many Indians began to view the British as the cause of India's problems leading to a newfound sense of
nationalism Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: The ...
among its population. With this new wave of Indian nationalism, Gandhi was eventually able to garner the support needed to push back the British and create an independent India in 1947. Africa was only fully drawn into the colonial system at the end of the 19th century. In the north-east the continued independence of the
Empire of Ethiopia The Ethiopian Empire (), also formerly known by the exonym Abyssinia, or just simply known as Ethiopia (; Amharic and Tigrinya: ኢትዮጵያ , , Oromo: Itoophiyaa, Somali: Itoobiya, Afar: ''Itiyoophiyaa''), was an empire that historical ...
remained a beacon of hope to pro-independence activists. However, with the anti-colonial wars of the 1900s (decade) barely over, new modernizing forms of
Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
n Nationalism began to gain strength in the early 20th century with the emergence of Pan-Africanism, as advocated by the Jamaican journalist
Marcus Garvey Marcus Mosiah Garvey Sr. (17 August 188710 June 1940) was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African ...
(1887–1940) whose widely distributed newspapers demanded swift abolition of European imperialism, as well as republicanism in Egypt. Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) who was inspired by the works of Garvey led
Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
to independence from colonial rule. Independence for the colonies in Africa began with the independence of Sudan in 1956, and
Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
in 1957. All of the British colonies on mainland Africa became independent by 1966, although Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence in 1965 was not recognized by the UK or internationally. Some of the British colonies in Asia were directly administered by British officials, while others were ruled by local monarchs as
protectorate A protectorate, in the context of international relations, is a state that is under protection by another state for defence against aggression and other violations of law. It is a dependent territory that enjoys autonomy over most of its int ...
s or in
subsidiary alliance A subsidiary alliance, in South Asian history, was a tributary alliance between a South Asian state and a European East India Company. Under this system, an Indian ruler who formed a treaty with the company in question would be provided wi ...
with the UK. In 1947,
British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance on the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one ...
was partitioned into the independent dominions of
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
and
Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...
. Hundreds of princely states, states ruled by monarchs in treaty of subsidiary alliance with Britain, were integrated into India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan fought several wars over the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. French India was integrated into India between 1950 and 1954, and India annexed Portuguese India in 1961, and the Kingdom of
Sikkim Sikkim (; ) is a state in Northeastern India. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China in the north and northeast, Bhutan in the east, Province No. 1 of Nepal in the west and West Bengal in the south. Sikkim is also close to the Silig ...
merged with India by popular vote in 1975.


Violence, civil warfare, and partition

Significant violence was involved in several prominent cases of decolonization of the British Empire; partition was a frequent solution. In 1783, the North American colonies were divided between the independent United States, and
British North America British North America comprised the colonial territories of the British Empire in North America from 1783 onwards. English colonisation of North America began in the 16th century in Newfoundland, then further south at Roanoke and Jamestow ...
, which later became Canada. The
Indian Rebellion of 1857 The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the fo ...
was a revolt of a portion of the Indian Army. It was characterized by massacres of civilians on both sides. It was not a movement for independence, however, and only a small part of India was involved. In the aftermath, the British pulled back from modernizing reforms of Indian society, and the level of organised violence under the
British Raj The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was him ...
was relatively small. Most of that was initiated by repressive British administrators, as in the Amritsar massacre of 1919, or the police assaults on the
Salt March The Salt March, also known as the Salt Satyagraha, Dandi March and the Dandi Satyagraha, was an act of nonviolent civil disobedience in colonial India led by Mahatma Gandhi. The twenty-four day march lasted from 12 March to 6 April 1930 as a di ...
of 1930. Large-scale communal violence broke out between Muslims and Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs after the British left in 1947 in the newly independent
dominion The term ''Dominion'' is used to refer to one of several self-governing nations of the British Empire. "Dominion status" was first accorded to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, South Africa, and the Irish Free State at the 192 ...
s of India and Pakistan. Much later, in 1970, further communal violence broke out within Pakistan in the detached eastern part of East Bengal, which became independent as
Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...
in 1971.
Cyprus Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is ge ...
, which came under full British control in 1914 from the Ottoman Empire, was culturally divided between the majority Greek element (which demanded " enosis" or union with Greece) and the minority Turks. London for decades assumed it needed the island to defend the Suez Canal; but after the Suez crisis of 1956, that became a minor factor, and Greek violence became a more serious issue. Cyprus became an independent country in 1960, but ethnic violence escalated until 1974 when Turkey invaded and partitioned the island. Each side rewrote its own history, blaming the other. Palestine became a British mandate from the
League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...
, and during the war the British gained support from both sides by making promises both to the Arabs and the Jews. (See Balfour Declaration). Decades of ethno—religious violence resulted. The British pulled out, after dividing the Mandate into Palestine and
Jordan Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...
.


French Empire

After World War I, the colonized people were frustrated at France's failure to recognize the effort provided by the French colonies (resources, but more importantly colonial troops – the famous ''
tirailleurs A tirailleur (), in the Napoleonic era, was a type of light infantry trained to skirmish ahead of the main columns. Later, the term "''tirailleur''" was used by the French Army as a designation for indigenous infantry recruited in the French ...
''). Although in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
the
Great Mosque of Paris The Grand Mosque of Paris (french: Grande Mosquée de Paris), also known as the Great Mosque of Paris or simply the Paris Mosque, is located in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, 5th arrondissement and is one of the largest mosques in France. There ...
was constructed as recognition of these efforts, the French state had no intention to allow
self-rule __NOTOC__ Self-governance, self-government, or self-rule is the ability of a person or group to exercise all necessary functions of regulation without intervention from an external authority. It may refer to personal conduct or to any form of ...
, let alone grant
independence Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...
to the colonized people. Thus,
nationalism Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: The ...
in the colonies became stronger in between the two wars, leading to
Abd el-Krim Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi (; Tarifit: Muḥend n Ɛabd Krim Lxeṭṭabi, ⵎⵓⵃⵏⴷ ⵏ ⵄⴰⴱⴷⵍⴽⵔⵉⵎ ⴰⵅⵟⵟⴰⴱ), better known as Abd el-Krim (1882/1883, Ajdir, Morocco – 6 February 1963, Cairo, Egypt) ...
's
Rif War The Rif War () was an armed conflict fought from 1921 to 1926 between Spain (joined by France in 1924) and the Berber tribes of the mountainous Rif region of northern Morocco. Led by Abd el-Krim, the Riffians at first inflicted several de ...
(1921–1925) in
Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria t ...
and to the creation of
Messali Hadj Ahmed Ben Messali Hadj (May 16, 1898 - June 3, 1974), commonly known as Messali Hadj, ar, مصالي الحاج, was an Algerian nationalist politician dedicated to the independence of his homeland from French colonial rule. He is often called ...
's Star of North Africa in
Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , relig ...
in 1925. However, these movements would gain full potential only after World War II. After World War I, France administered the former Ottoman territories of Syria and
Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to Lebanon–Syria border, the north and east and Israel to Blue ...
, and the former German colonies of
Togoland Togoland was a German Empire protectorate in West Africa from 1884 to 1914, encompassing what is now the nation of Togo and most of what is now the Volta Region of Ghana, approximately 90,400 km2 (29,867 sq mi) in size. During the period kn ...
and
Cameroon Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...
, as League of Nations mandates. Lebanon declared its independence in 1943, and Syria in 1945. Although France was ultimately a victor of World War II, Nazi Germany's occupation of France and its North African colonies during the war had disrupted colonial rule. On October 27, 1946, France adopted a new constitution creating the Fourth Republic, and substituted the
French Union The French Union () was a political entity created by the French Fourth Republic to replace the old French colonial empire system, colloquially known as the " French Empire" (). It was the formal end of the "indigenous" () status of French subj ...
for the colonial empire. However power over the colonies remained concentrated in France, and the power of local assemblies outside France was extremely limited. On the night of March 29, 1947, a
Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
nationalist uprising led the French government headed by
Paul Ramadier Paul Ramadier (17 March 1888 in La Rochelle – 14 October 1961 in Rodez) was a French statesman. Biography The son of a psychiatrist, Ramadier graduated in law from the University of Toulouse and started his profession as a lawyer in Par ...
(
Socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
) to violent repression: one year of bitter fighting, 11,000–40,000 Malagasy died. In 1946, the states of
French Indochina French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China),; vi, Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, , lit. 'East Ocean under French Control; km, ឥណ្ឌូចិនបារាំង, ; th, อินโดจีนฝรั่งเศส, ...
withdrew from the French Union, leading to the
Indochina War The First Indochina War (generally known as the Indochina War in France, and as the Anti-French Resistance War in Vietnam) began in French Indochina from 19 December 1946 to 20 July 1954 between France and Việt Minh (Democratic Republic of Vi ...
(1946–54).
Cambodia Cambodia (; also Kampuchea ; km, កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: ), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailan ...
and Laos became independent in 1953, and the 1954 Geneva Accords ended France's occupation of Indochina, leaving
North Vietnam North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; vi, Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa), was a socialist state supported by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Southeast Asia that existed f ...
and South Vietnam independent. In 1956,
Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria t ...
and
Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...
gained their independence from France. In 1960, eight independent countries emerged from French West Africa, and five from
French Equatorial Africa French Equatorial Africa (french: link=no, Afrique-Équatoriale française), or the AEF, was the federation of French colonial possessions in Equatorial Africa, extending northwards from the Congo River into the Sahel, and comprising what are ...
. The
Algerian War of Independence The Algerian War, also known as the Algerian Revolution or the Algerian War of Independence,( ar, الثورة الجزائرية '; '' ber, Tagrawla Tadzayrit''; french: Guerre d'Algérie or ') and sometimes in Algeria as the War of 1 November ...
raged from 1954 to 1962. To this day, the Algerian war – officially called a "public order operation" until the 1990s – remains a trauma for both France and Algeria. Philosopher Paul Ricœur has spoken of the necessity of a "decolonisation of memory", starting with the recognition of the
1961 Paris massacre The Paris massacre of 1961 occurred on 17 October 1961, during the Algerian War (1954–62). Under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, the French National Police attacked a demonstration by 30,000 pro- National Liberatio ...
during the Algerian war, and the decisive role of African and especially North African immigrant manpower in the ''
Trente Glorieuses ''Les Trente Glorieuses'' (; 'The Glorious Thirty') was a thirty-year period of economic growth in France between 1945 and 1975, following the end of the Second World War. The name was first used by the French demographer Jean Fourastié, who ...
'' post–World War II economic growth period. In the 1960s, due to economic needs for post-war reconstruction and rapid economic growth, French employers actively sought to recruit manpower from the colonies, explaining today's multiethnic population.


After 1918


United States

A union of former colonies itself, the United States approached imperialism differently from the other Powers. Much of its energy and rapidly expanding population was directed westward across the North American continent against English and French claims, the
Spanish Empire The Spanish Empire ( es, link=no, Imperio español), also known as the Hispanic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Hispánica) or the Catholic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Católica) was a colonial empire governed by Spain and its prede ...
and Mexico. The Native Americans were sent to reservations, often unwillingly. With support from Britain, its
Monroe Doctrine The Monroe Doctrine was a United States foreign policy position that opposed European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. It held that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act ...
reserved the Americas as its sphere of interest, prohibiting other states (particularly Spain) from recolonizing the newly independent polities of
Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...
. However, France, taking advantage of the American government's distraction during the Civil War, intervened militarily in Mexico and set up a French-protected monarchy. Spain took the step to occupy the Dominican Republic and restore colonial rule. The Union victory in the Civil War in 1865 forced both France and Spain to accede to American demands to evacuate those two countries. America's only African colony, Liberia, was formed privately and achieved independence early; Washington unofficially protected it. By 1900 the US advocated an
Open Door Policy The Open Door Policy () is the United States diplomatic policy established in the late 19th and early 20th century that called for a system of equal trade and investment and to guarantee the territorial integrity of Qing China. The policy wa ...
and opposed the direct division of China. After 1898 direct intervention expanded in Latin America. The United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867 and annexed Hawaii in 1898. Following the
Spanish-American war Spanish Americans ( es, españoles estadounidenses, ''hispanoestadounidenses'', or ''hispanonorteamericanos'') are Americans whose ancestry originates wholly or partly from Spain. They are the longest-established European American group in th ...
in 1898, the US added most of Spain's remaining colonies:
Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...
,
Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...
, and
Guam Guam (; ch, Guåhan ) is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean. It is the westernmost point and territory of the United States (reckoned from the geographic cent ...
. Deciding not to annex Cuba outright, the U.S. established it as a
client state A client state, in international relations, is a state that is economically, politically, and/or militarily subordinate to another more powerful state (called the "controlling state"). A client state may variously be described as satellite state, ...
with obligations including the perpetual lease of Guantánamo Bay to the U.S. Navy. The attempt of the first governor to void the island's constitution and remain in power past the end of his term provoked a rebellion that provoked a reoccupation between 1906 and 1909, but this was again followed by devolution. Similarly, the McKinley administration, despite prosecuting the Philippine–American War against a native republic, set out that the Territory of the Philippine Islands was eventually granted independence. In 1917, the US purchased the
Danish West Indies The Danish West Indies ( da, Dansk Vestindien) or Danish Antilles or Danish Virgin Islands were a Danish colony in the Caribbean, consisting of the islands of Saint Thomas with ; Saint John ( da, St. Jan) with ; and Saint Croix with . The ...
(later renamed the
US Virgin Islands The United States Virgin Islands,. Also called the ''American Virgin Islands'' and the ''U.S. Virgin Islands''. officially the Virgin Islands of the United States, are a group of Caribbean islands and an unincorporated and organized territory ...
) from
Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , establish ...
and Puerto Ricans became full U.S. citizens that same year. The US government declared Puerto Rico the territory was no longer a colony and stopped transmitting information about it to the United Nations Decolonization Committee. As a result, the
UN General Assembly The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA or GA; french: link=no, Assemblée générale, AG) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN), serving as the main deliberative, policymaking, and representative organ of the UN. Cur ...
removed Puerto Rico from the U.N. list of non-self-governing territories. Four referendums showed little support for independence, but much interest in statehood such as Hawaii and Alaska received in 1959. The Monroe Doctrine was expanded by the
Roosevelt Corollary In the history of United States foreign policy, the Roosevelt Corollary was an addition to the Monroe Doctrine articulated by President Theodore Roosevelt in his State of the Union address in 1904 after the Venezuelan crisis of 1902–1903. ...
in 1904, providing that the United States had a right and obligation to intervene "in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence" that a nation in the Western Hemisphere became vulnerable to European control. In practice, this meant that the United States was led to act as a collections agent for European creditors by administering customs duties in the
Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares with ...
(1905–1941), Haiti (1915–1934), and elsewhere. The intrusiveness and bad relations this engendered were somewhat checked by the Clark Memorandum and renounced by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
's "
Good Neighbor Policy The Good Neighbor policy ( ) was the foreign policy of the administration of United States President Franklin Roosevelt towards Latin America. Although the policy was implemented by the Roosevelt administration, President Woodrow Wilson had prev ...
." The
Fourteen Points U.S. President Woodrow Wilson The Fourteen Points was a statement of principles for peace that was to be used for peace negotiations in order to end World War I. The principles were outlined in a January 8, 1918 speech on war aims and peace terms ...
were preconditions addressed by President
Woodrow Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
to the European powers at the Paris Peace Conference following
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. In allowing allies France and Britain the former colonial possessions of the German and Ottoman Empires, the US demanded of them submission to the League of Nations mandate, in calling for ''V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable government whose title is to be determined.'' See also point XII. After 1947, the U.S. poured tens of billions of dollars into the
Marshall Plan The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred over $13 billion (equivalent of about $ in ) in economic re ...
, and other grants and loans to Europe and Asia to rebuild the world economy. Washington pushed hard to accelerate decolonization and bring an end to the colonial empires of its Western allies, most importantly during the 1956 Suez Crisis, but American military bases were established around the world and direct and indirect interventions continued in
Korea Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
,
Indochina Mainland Southeast Asia, also known as the Indochinese Peninsula or Indochina, is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west an ...
, Latin America (''inter alia'', the 1965 occupation of the Dominican Republic), Africa, and the Middle East to oppose Communist invasions and insurgencies. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States has been far less active in the Americas, but invaded
Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
and
Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
following the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
in 2001, establishing army and air bases in
Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...
.


Japan

Before World War I, Japan had gained several substantial colonial possessions in East Asia such as Taiwan (1895) and Korea (1910). Japan joined the allies in World War I, and after the war acquired the South Seas Mandate, the former German colony in Micronesia, as a League of Nations Mandate. Pursuing a colonial policy comparable to those of European powers, Japan settled significant populations of ethnic Japanese in its colonies while simultaneously suppressing Indigenous ethnic populations by enforcing the learning and use of the
Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ...
in schools. Other methods such as public interaction, and attempts to eradicate the use of
Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...
,
Hokkien The Hokkien () variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages ...
, and
Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...
among the Indigenous peoples, were seen to be used. Japan also set up the Imperial Universities in Korea (
Keijō Imperial University , colloquially referred to as , was an Imperial University of Japan that existed between 1924 and 1946. This university was established in 1924 in Gyeongseong, known as Keijō during the period of Japanese occupation of Korea, now modern-day S ...
) and Taiwan ( Taihoku Imperial University) to compel education. In 1931, Japan seized
Manchuria Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer M ...
from the Republic of China, setting up a puppet state under
Puyi Aisin-Gioro Puyi (; 7 February 1906 – 17 October 1967), courtesy name Yaozhi (曜之), was the last emperor of China as the eleventh and final Qing dynasty monarch. He became emperor at the age of two in 1908, but was forced to abdicate on 1 ...
, the last Manchu emperor of China. In 1933 Japan seized the Chinese province of Jehol, and incorporated it into its Manchurian possessions. The
Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...
started in 1937, and Japan occupied much of eastern China, including the Republic's capital at
Nanjing Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...
. An estimated 20 million Chinese died during the 1931–1945 war with Japan. In December 1941, the Japanese Empire joined
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
by invading the European and US colonies in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, including
French Indochina French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China),; vi, Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, , lit. 'East Ocean under French Control; km, ឥណ្ឌូចិនបារាំង, ; th, อินโดจีนฝรั่งเศส, ...
,
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...
, the Philippines, Burma, Malaya,
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
,
Portuguese Timor Portuguese Timor ( pt, Timor Português) was a colonial possession of Portugal that existed between 1702 and 1975. During most of this period, Portugal shared the island of Timor with the Dutch East Indies. The first Europeans to arrive in the ...
, and others. Following its surrender to the Allies in 1945, Japan was deprived of all its colonies with a number of them being returned to the original colonizing Western powers. The
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
declared war on Japan in August 1945, and shortly after occupied and annexed the southern
Kuril Islands The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands (; rus, Кури́льские острова́, r=Kuril'skiye ostrova, p=kʊˈrʲilʲskʲɪjə ɐstrɐˈva; Japanese: or ) are a volcanic archipelago currently administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in the ...
, which Japan still claims.


After 1945


Planning for decolonization


=U.S. and Philippines

= In the United States, the two major parties were divided on the acquisition of the Philippines, which became a major campaign issue in 1900. The Republicans, who favored permanent acquisition, won the election, but after a decade or so, Republicans turned their attention to the Caribbean, focusing on building the
Panama Canal The Panama Canal ( es, Canal de Panamá, link=no) is an artificial waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a condui ...
. President
Woodrow Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
, a Democrat in office from 1913 to 1921, ignored the Philippines, and focused his attention on Mexico and Caribbean nations. By the 1920s, the peaceful efforts by the Filipino leadership to pursue independence proved convincing. When the Democrats returned to power in 1933, they worked with the Filipinos to plan a smooth transition to independence. It was scheduled for 1946 by
Tydings–McDuffie Act The Tydings–McDuffie Act, officially the Philippine Independence Act (), is an Act of Congress that established the process for the Philippines, then an American territory, to become an independent country after a ten-year transition period. ...
of 1934. In 1935, the Philippines transitioned out of territorial status, controlled by an appointed governor, to the semi-independent status of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. Its constitutional convention wrote a new constitution, which was approved by Washington and went into effect, with an elected governor Manuel L. Quezon and legislature. Foreign Affairs remained under American control. The Philippines built up a new army, under general Douglas MacArthur, who took leave from his U.S. Army position to take command of the new army reporting to Quezon. The Japanese occupation 1942 to 1945 disrupted but did not delay the transition. It took place on schedule in 1946 as
Manuel Roxas Manuel Acuña Roxas (born Manuel Roxas y Acuña; ; January 1, 1892 – April 15, 1948) was a Filipino lawyer and politician who served as the fifth president of the Philippines, who served from 1946 until his death due to heart attacks in 19 ...
took office as president.


=Portugal

= As a result of its pioneering Portuguese discoveries, discoveries, Portugal had a large and particularly long-lasting colonial empire which had begun in 1415 with the conquest of Ceuta and ended only in 1999 with the handover of Portuguese Macau to China. In 1822, Portugal Independence of Brazil, lost control of Brazil, its largest colony. From 1933 to 1974, Estado Novo (Portugal), Portugal was an authoritarian state (ruled by António de Oliveira Salazar). The regime was fiercely determined to maintain the country's colonial possessions at all costs and to aggressively suppress any insurgencies. In 1961, Annexation of Goa, India annexed Goa and by the same year nationalist forces had begun organizing in Portugal. Revolts (preceding the Portuguese Colonial War) spread to Portuguese Angola, Angola, Portuguese Guinea, Guinea Bissau and Portuguese Mozambique, Mozambique. Lisbon escalated its effort in the war: for instance, it increased the number of natives in the colonial army and built strategic hamlets. Portugal sent another 300,000 European settlers into Angola and Mozambique before 1974. That year, Carnation Revolution, a left-wing revolution inside Portugal overthrew the existing regime and encouraged pro-Soviet elements to attempt to seize control in the colonies. The result was a very long and extremely difficult multi-party Angolan Civil War, Civil War in Angola, and lesser insurrections in Mozambique.


= Belgium

= Belgium's empire began with the annexation of the Congo in 1908 in response to international pressure to bring an end to the Atrocities in the Congo Free State, terrible atrocities that had taken place under King Leopold II of Belgium, King Leopold's privately run Congo Free State. It added Ruanda-Urundi, Rwanda and Burundi as League of Nations mandates from the former German Empire in 1919. The colonies remained independent during the war, while Belgium itself was occupied by the Germans. There was no serious planning for independence, and exceedingly little training or education provided. The Belgian Congo was especially rich, and many Belgian businessmen lobbied hard to maintain control. Local revolts grew in power and finally, the Belgian king suddenly announced in 1959 that independence was on the agenda – and it was hurriedly arranged in 1960, for country bitterly and deeply divided on social and economic grounds.


= The Netherlands

= The Netherlands, a small rich country in Western Europe, had spent centuries building up its empire. By 1940 it consisted mostly of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Its massive oil reserves provided about 14 percent of the Dutch national product and supported a large population of ethnic Dutch government officials and businessmen in Jakarta and other major cities. The Netherlands was overrun and almost starved to death by the Nazis during the war, and Japan sank the Dutch fleet in seizing the East Indies. In 1945 the Netherlands could not regain these islands on its own; it did so by depending on British military help and American financial grants. By the time Dutch soldiers returned, an independent government under Sukarno, originally set up by the Japanese, was in power. The Dutch in the East Indies, and at home, were practically unanimous (except for the Communists) that Dutch power and prestige and wealth depended on an extremely expensive war to regain the islands. Compromises were negotiated, were trusted by neither side. When the Indonesian Republic successfully suppressed a large-scale communist revolt, the United States realized that it needed the nationalist government as an ally in the Cold War. Dutch possession was an obstacle to American Cold War goals, so Washington forced the Dutch to grant full independence. A few years later, Sukarno seized all Dutch properties and expelled all Indo people, ethnic Dutch—over 300,000—as well as several hundred thousand ethnic Indonesians who supported the Dutch cause. In the aftermath, the Netherlands prospered greatly in the 1950s and 1960s but nevertheless public opinion was bitterly hostile to the United States for betrayal. Washington remained baffled why the Dutch were so inexplicably enamored of an obviously hopeless cause. The Netherlands also had one other major colony, Dutch Guiana in South America, which became independent as Suriname in 1975.


United Nations Trust Territories

When the United Nations was formed in 1945, it established trust territories. These territories included the League of Nations mandate territories which had not achieved independence by 1945, along with the former Italian Somaliland. The Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands was transferred from Japanese to US administration. By 1990 all but one of the trust territories had achieved independence, either as independent states or by merger with another independent state; the Northern Mariana Islands elected to become a commonwealth of the United States.


The emergence of the Third World (1945–present)

Newly independent states organised themselves in order to oppose continued economic colonialism by former imperial powers. The Non-Aligned Movement constituted itself around the main figures of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, Sukarno, the Indonesian president, Josip Broz Tito the Communist leader of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia, and Gamal Abdel Nasser, head of Egypt. In 1955 these leaders gathered at the Bandung Conference along with Sukarno, the leader of Indonesia, and Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People's Republic of China. In 1960, the UN General Assembly voted the
Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, also known as the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1514, was a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly during its fifteenth session, that affi ...
. The next year, the Non-Aligned Movement was officially created in Belgrade (1961), and was followed in 1964 by the creation of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) which tried to promote a New International Economic Order (NIEO). The NIEO was opposed to the 1944 Bretton Woods system, which had benefited the leading states which had created it, and remained in force until 1971 after the United States' suspension of convertibility from dollars to gold. The main tenets of the NIEO were: # Developing countries must be entitled to regulate and control the activities of multinational corporations operating within their territory. # They must be free to nationalise or expropriate foreign property on conditions favourable to them. # They must be free to set up associations of primary commodities producers similar to the OPEC, Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, created on September 14, 1960, to protest pressure by major oil companies (mostly owned by U.S., British, and Dutch nationals) to reduce oil prices and payments to producers); all other states must recognise this right and refrain from taking economic, military, or political measures calculated to restrict it. # International trade should be based on the need to ensure stable, equitable, and remunerative prices for raw materials, generalised non-reciprocal and non-discriminatory tariff preferences, as well as transfer of technology to developing countries; and should provide economic and technical assistance without any conditionality, strings attached. The UNCTAD however wasn't very effective in implementing the NIEO, and social and economic inequalities between industrialized countries and the Third World grew throughout the 1960s until the 21st century. The 1973 oil crisis which followed the Yom Kippur War (October 1973) was triggered by the OPEC which decided an embargo against the US and Western countries, causing a fourfold increase in the price of oil, which lasted five months, starting on October 17, 1973, and ending on March 18, 1974. OPEC nations then agreed, on January 7, 1975, to raise crude oil prices by 10%. At that time, OPEC nations – including many who had recently nationalized their oil industries – joined the call for a New International Economic Order to be initiated by coalitions of primary producers. Concluding the First OPEC Summit in Algiers they called for stable and just commodity prices, an international food and agriculture program, technology transfer from North to South, and the democratization of the economic system. But industrialized countries quickly began to look for substitutes to OPEC petroleum, with the oil companies investing the majority of their research capital in the US and European countries or others, politically sure countries. The OPEC lost more and more influence on the world prices of oil. The 1979 energy crisis, second oil crisis occurred in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Then, the 1982 Latin American debt crisis exploded in Mexico first, then Argentina and Brazil, which proved unable to pay back their debts, jeopardizing the existence of the international economic system. The 1990s were characterized by the prevalence of the Washington consensus on neoliberalism, neoliberal policies, "structural adjustment" and "shock therapy (economics), shock therapies" for the former Communist states.


Decolonization of Africa

The decolonization of North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa took place in the mid-to-late 1950s, very suddenly, with little preparation. There was widespread unrest and organized revolts, especially in French Algeria, Portuguese Angola, the Belgian Congo and British Kenya. In 1945, Africa had four independent countries – Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia, and South Africa. After Italy's defeat in World War II, France and the UK occupied the former Italian colonies. Libya became an independent kingdom in 1951. Eritrea was merged with Ethiopia in 1952. Italian Somaliland was governed by the UK, and by Italy after 1954, until its independence in 1960. By 1977 European colonial rule in mainland Africa had ended. Most of Africa's island countries had also become independent, although Réunion and Mayotte remain part of France. However the black majorities in Rhodesia and South Africa were disenfranchised until 1979 in Rhodesia, which became Zimbabwe-Rhodesia that year and Zimbabwe the next, and until 1994 in South Africa. Namibia, Africa's last UN Trust Territory, became independent of South Africa in 1990. Most independent African countries exist within prior colonial borders. However Morocco merged French Morocco with Spanish Morocco, and Somalia formed from the merger of British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland. Eritrea merged with Ethiopia in 1952, but became an independent country in 1993. Most African countries became independent as republics. Morocco, Lesotho, and Eswatini remain monarchies under dynasties that predate colonial rule. Burundi, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia gained independence as monarchies, but all four countries' monarchs were later deposed, and they became republics. African countries cooperate in various multi-state associations. The African Union includes all 55 African states. There are several regional associations of states, including the East African Community, Southern African Development Community, and Economic Community of West African States, some of which have overlapping membership. * : Sudan (1956);
Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
(1957); Nigeria (1960); Sierra Leone and Tanganyika (1961–1964), Tanganyika (1961); Uganda (1962); Kenya and Sultanate of Zanzibar (1963); Malawi and Zambia (1964); The Gambia, Gambia and Rhodesia (1965); Botswana and Lesotho (1966); Mauritius and Swaziland (1968); Seychelles (1976) * : Morocco and Tunisia (1956); Guinea (1958); Cameroon, Togo, Mali, Senegal,
Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
, Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Chad, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Gabon and Mauritania (1960); Algeria (1962); Comoros (1975); Djibouti (1977) * : Equatorial Guinea (1968) * : Guinea-Bissau (1974); Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe and Angola (1975) * : Democratic Republic of the Congo (1960); Burundi and Rwanda (1962)


Decolonization in the Americas after 1945

* : Dominion of Newfoundland, Newfoundland (formerly an independent dominion but under direct British rule since 1934) (1949, union with Canada); Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago (1962); Barbados and Guyana (1966); Bahamas (1973); Grenada (1974); Trinidad and Tobago (1976, removal of Queen Elizabeth II as head of state, transition to republic); Dominica (1978); Saint Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines (1979); Antigua and Barbuda and Belize (1981); Saint Kitts and Nevis (1983); Barbados (2021, removal of Queen Elizabeth II as head of state, transition to republic). * : Netherlands Antilles, Suriname (1954, both becoming constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands), 1975 (independence of Suriname) * : Greenland (1979, became an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark).


Decolonization of Asia

Japan expanded its occupation of Chinese territory during the 1930s, and occupied Southeast Asia during World War II. After the war, the Japanese colonial empire was dissolved, and national independence movements resisted the re-imposition of colonial control by European countries and the United States. The Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China regained control of Japanese-occupied territories in Manchuria and eastern China, as well as Taiwan. Only Hong Kong and Macau remained in outside control. The Allied powers divided Korea into two occupation zones, which became the states of North Korea and South Korea. The
Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...
became independent of the US in 1946. The Netherlands recognized
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
's independence in 1949, after a four-year Indonesian National Revolution, independence struggle. Indonesia annexed Netherlands New Guinea in 1963, and
Portuguese Timor Portuguese Timor ( pt, Timor Português) was a colonial possession of Portugal that existed between 1702 and 1975. During most of this period, Portugal shared the island of Timor with the Dutch East Indies. The first Europeans to arrive in the ...
in 1975. In 2002, former Portuguese Timor became independent as East Timor. The following list shows the colonial powers following the end of hostilities in 1945, and their colonial or administrative possessions. The year of decolonization is given chronologically in parentheses. * : Emirate of Transjordan, Transjordan (1946), Presidencies and provinces of British India, British India and
Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...
(1947); Mandatory Palestine, British Mandate of Palestine, Myanmar, Burma and Sri Lanka, Ceylon (1948); British Malaya (1957); Kuwait (1961); Kingdom of Sarawak, North Borneo and Singapore (1963); Maldives (1965); Southern Movement, Aden (1967); Bahrain, Qatar and United Arab Emirates (1971); Brunei (1984);
Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...
(1997) * : French India (1954) and Indochina comprising Vietnam (1954),
Cambodia Cambodia (; also Kampuchea ; km, កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: ), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailan ...
(1953) and Laos (1953) * : Portuguese India (1961); East Timor (1975); Macau (1999) * :
Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...
(1946) * :
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
(1949)


Decolonization in Europe

Italy had occupied the Dodecanese islands in 1912, but Italian occupation ended after World War II, and the islands were integrated into Greece. British rule ended in British Cyprus (1878–1960), Cyprus in 1960, and History of Malta#Malta in the British Empire (1800–1964), Malta in 1964, and both islands became independent republics. Soviet control of its non-Russian member republics weakened as movements for democratization and self-government gained strength during the late 1980s, and four republics declared independence in 1990 and 1991. The 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, Soviet coup d'état attempt in August 1991 accelerated the breakup of the USSR, which formally ended on December 26, 1991. The Republics of the Soviet Union become sovereign states—Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus (formerly called Byelorussia,) Estonia, Georgia (country), Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Historian Robert Daniels says, "A special dimension that the anti-Communist revolutions shared with some of their predecessors was decolonization." Moscow's policy had long been to settle ethnic Russians in the non-Russian republics. After independence, minority rights has been an issue for Russian-speakers in some republics and for Languages of Russia, non-Russian-speakers in Russia; see Russians in the Baltic states. Meanwhile, the Russian Federation continues to apply political, economic, and military pressure on former Soviet colonies. In 2014, it Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, the first such action in Europe since the end of the Second World War.


Decolonization of Oceania

The decolonization of Oceania occurred after World War II when nations in Oceania achieved independence by transitioning from European colonial rule to full independence. * : Tonga and Fiji (1970); Solomon Islands and Tuvalu (1978); Kiribati (1979) * and : Vanuatu (1980) * : Nauru (1968); Papua New Guinea (1975) * : Samoa (1962) * : Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia (1986); Palau (1994)


Challenges

Typical challenges of decolonization include state-building, nation-building, and economic development.


State-building

After independence, the new states needed to establish or strengthen the institutions of a sovereign state – governments, laws, a military, schools, administrative systems, and so on. The amount of self-rule granted prior to independence, and assistance from the colonial power and/or international organizations after independence, varied greatly between colonial powers, and between individual colonies.Glassner, Martin Ira (1980). ''Systematic Political Geography'' 2nd Edition. John Wiley & Sons, New York. Except for a few absolute monarchies, most post-colonial states are either republics or constitutional monarchy, constitutional monarchies. These new states had to devise constitutions, electoral systems, and other institutions of representative democracy.


Nation-building

Nation-building is the process of creating a sense of identification with, and loyalty to, the state. Nation-building projects seek to replace loyalty to the old colonial power, and/or tribal or regional loyalties, with loyalty to the new state. Elements of nation-building include creating and promoting symbols of the state like a flag, a coat of arms and an anthem, monuments, official histories, national sports teams, codifying one or more Indigenous official languages, and replacing colonial place-names with local ones. Nation-building after independence often continues the work began by independence movements during the colonial period.


Language policy

From the perspective of language policy (or language politics), "linguistic decolonization" entails the replacement of a colonizing (imperial) power's language with a given colony's indigenous language in the function of official language. With the exception of colonies in Eurasia, linguistic decolonization did not take place in the former colonies-turned-independent states on the other continents ("Rest of the World"). The persistent absence of linguistic decolonization is known as linguistic imperialism.


Settled populations

Decolonization is not an easy matter in colonies with large settler populations, particularly if they have been there for several generations. When settlers remain in former colonies after independence, colonialism is ongoing and takes the form of
settler colonialism Settler colonialism is a structure that perpetuates the elimination of Indigenous people and cultures to replace them with a settler society. Some, but not all, scholars argue that settler colonialism is inherently genocidal. It may be enacted ...
, which is highly resistant to decolonisation. In a few cases, settler populations have been Repatriation, repatriated. For instance, the decolonization of Algeria by France was particularly uneasy due to the large European population (see also ''pied noir''), which largely evacuated to France when Algeria became independent."Pieds-noirs": ceux qui ont choisi de rester
La Dépêche du Midi, March 2012
In Zimbabwe, former Rhodesia, Robert Mugabe seized property from white African farmers, killing several of them, and forcing the survivors to emigrate.Cybriwsky, Roman Adrian. ''Capital Cities around the World: An Encyclopedia of Geography, History, and Culture''. ABC-CLIO, LLC 2013. pp. 54–275. A large Indian community lived in Uganda as a result of Britain colonizing both India and East Africa, and Idi Amin Expulsion of Asians from Uganda, expelled them for domestic political gain.


Cinematography

Kenyan writer
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (; born James Ngugi; 5 January 1938) is a Kenyan author and academic who writes primarily in Gikuyu and who formerly wrote in English. He has been described as having been "considered East Africa’s leading novelist". His wo ...
has written about colonization and decolonization in the film universe. Born in Ethiopia, filmmaker Haile Gerima describes the "colonization of the unconscious" he describes experiencing as a child:
...as kids, we tried to act out the things we had seen in the movies. We used to play cowboys and Indians in the mountains around Gondar...We acted out the roles of these heroes, identifying with the cowboys conquering the Indians. We didn't identify with the Indians at all and we never wanted the Indians to win. Even in Tarzan movies, we would become totally galvanized by the activities of the hero and follow the story from his point of view, completely caught up in the structure of the story. Whenever Africans sneaked up behind Tarzan, we would scream our heads off, trying to warn him that 'they' were coming".
In Asia, kung fu film, kung fu cinema emerged at a time Japan wanted to reach Asian populations in other countries by way of its cultural influence. The surge in popularity of kung fu movies began in the late 1960s through the 1970s. Local populations were depicted as protagonists opposing "imperialists" (foreigners) and their "Chinese collaborators".


Economic development

Newly independent states also had to develop independent economic institutions – a national currency, banks, companies, regulation, tax systems, etc. Many colonies were serving as resource colonies which produced raw materials and agricultural products, and as a captive market for goods manufactured in the colonizing country. Many decolonized countries created programs to promote industrialization. Some nationalized industries and infrastructure, and some engaged in land reform to redistribute land to individual farmers or create collective farms. Some decolonized countries maintain strong economic ties with the former colonial power. The CFA franc is a currency shared by 14 countries in West and Central Africa, mostly former French colonies. The CFA franc is guaranteed by the French treasury. After independence, many countries created regional economic associations to promote trade and economic development among neighboring countries, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the Gulf Cooperation Council.


Effects on the colonizers

John Kenneth Galbraith argues that the post–World War II decolonization was brought about for economic reasons. In ''A Journey Through Economic Time'', he writes:
"The engine of economic well-being was now within and between the advanced industrial countries. Domestic economic growth – as now measured and much discussed – came to be seen as far more important than the erstwhile colonial trade.... The economic effect in the United States from the granting of independence to the Philippines was unnoticeable, partly due to the Bell Trade Act, which allowed American monopoly in the economy of the Philippines. The departure of India and Pakistan made small economic difference in the United Kingdom. Netherlands, Dutch economists calculated that the economic effect from the loss of the great Dutch empire in Indonesia was compensated for by a couple of years or so of domestic post-war economic growth. The end of the colonial era is celebrated in the history books as a triumph of national aspiration in the former colonies and of benign good sense on the part of the colonial powers. Lurking beneath, as so often happens, was a strong current of economic interest – or in this case, disinterest."
In general, the release of the colonized caused little economic loss to the colonizers. Part of the reason for this was that major costs were eliminated while major benefits were obtained by alternate means. Decolonization allowed the colonizer to disclaim responsibility for the colonized. The colonizer no longer had the burden of obligation, financial or otherwise, to their colony. However, the colonizer continued to be able to obtain cheap goods and labor as well as economic benefits (see Suez Canal Crisis) from the former colonies. Financial, political and military pressure could still be used to achieve goals desired by the colonizer. Thus decolonization allowed the goals of colonization to be largely achieved, but without its burdens.


Assassinated anti-colonialist leaders

A ''non-exhaustive'' list of assassinated people, list of assassinated leaders would include: * Tiradentes was a leading member of the Brazilian seditious movement known as the Inconfidência Mineira, against the Portuguese Empire. He fought for an independent Brazilian republic. * Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, nonviolent leader of the
Indian independence movement The Indian independence movement was a series of historic events with the ultimate aim of ending British Raj, British rule in India. It lasted from 1857 to 1947. The first nationalistic revolutionary movement for Indian independence emerged ...
was assassinated in 1948 by Nathuram Godse. * Ruben Um Nyobé, leader of the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC), was killed by the French Army in the rain forest where he was hiding, near his native village, Boumnyebel, being shot several times, falling on the edge of a tree trunk which he was trying to step over; it was in the department of Nyong-et-Kéllé in an area occupied by the Bassa ethnic group of which he was also a native. His body was then mutilated and buried in an unmarked grave. * Barthélemy Boganda, leader of a nationalist Central African Republic movement, who died in a plane-crash on March 29, 1959, eight days before the last elections of the colonial era. The French SDECE or his wife are the main suspects. * Félix-Roland Moumié, successor to Ruben Um Nyobe at the head of the Cameroon's People Union, assassinated in Geneva in 1960 by the SDECE (French secret services). * Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was assassinated on January 17, 1961. * Burundi nationalist Louis Rwagasore was assassinated on October 13, 1961, while Pierre Ngendandumwe, Burundi's first Hutu prime minister, was also murdered on January 15, 1965. * Sylvanus Olympio, the first List of Presidents of Togo, president of Togo, was assassinated on January 13, 1963. * Mehdi Ben Barka, the leader of the History of Morocco, Moroccan National Union of Popular Forces (UNPF) and of the Tricontinental Conference, which was supposed to prepare in 1966 in Havana its first meeting gathering national liberation movements from all continents – related to the Non-Aligned Movement, but the Tricontinal Conference gathered liberation movements while the Non-Aligned were for the most part states – was "forced disappearance, disappeared" in Paris in 1965, allegedly by Moroccan agents and French police officers. * Nigerian leader Ahmadu Bello was assassinated in January 1966 during a coup which toppled Nigeria's post-independence government. * Eduardo Mondlane, the leader of FRELIMO and the father of Mozambique, Mozambican independence, was assassinated in 1969. Both the Portuguese intelligence or the Portuguese secret police PIDE/DGS and elements of FRELIMO, have been accused of killing Mondlane. * Mohamed Bassiri, Sahrawi people, Sahrawi leader of the Movement for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Wadi el Dhahab was "disappeared" in El Aaiún in 1970, allegedly by the Spanish Legion. * Amílcar Cabral was killed on January 20, 1973, by PAIGC rival Inocêncio Kani, with the help of Portuguese agents operating within the PAIGC.


Current colonies

The
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...
, under "Chapter XI: Declaration Regarding Non-Self Governing Territories" of the Charter of the United Nations, defines Non-Self Governing Nations (NSGSs) as "territories whose people have not yet attained a full measure of self-government"—the contemporary definition of
colonialism Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colony, colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose the ...
. After the conclusion of World War II with the surrender of the Axis Powers in 1945, and two decades into the latter half of the 20th century, over three dozen "states in Asia and Africa achieved autonomy or outright independence" from European administering powers. As of 2020, 17 territories remain under Chapter XI distinction:


United Nations NSGS list

"On 26 February 1976, Spain informed the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Secretary-General that as of that date it had terminated its presence in the Territory of the Sahara and deemed it necessary to place on record that Spain considered itself thenceforth exempt from any responsibility of any international nature in connection with the administration of the Territory, in view of the cessation of its participation in the temporary administration established for the Territory. In 1990, the General Assembly reaffirmed that the question of Western Sahara was a question of decolonization which remained to be completed by the people of Western Sahara." On 10 December 2010, the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...
published its official decree, announcing the ''International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism, Third International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism'' wherein the United Nations declared its "renewal of the call to States Members of the United Nations to speed up the process of decolonization towards the complete elimination of colonialism". According to an article by scholar John Quintero, "given the modern emphasis on the equality of states and inalienable nature of their sovereignty, many people do not realize that these non-self-governing structures still exist". Some activists have claimed that the attention of the United Nations was "further diverted from the social and economic agenda [for decolonization] towards "firefighting and extinguishing” armed conflicts". Advocates have stressed that the United Nations "[remains] the last refuge of hope for peoples under the yolk ''[sic]'' of colonialism". Furthermore, on 19 May 2015, Secretary-General of the United Nations, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addressed the attendants of the Caribbean Regional Seminar on Decolonization, urging international political leaders to "build on [the success of precedent decolonization efforts and] towards fully eradicating colonialism by 2020". The sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean is Chagos Archipelago sovereignty dispute, disputed between the United Kingdom and Mauritius. In February 2019, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that the United Kingdom must transfer the islands to Mauritius as they were not legally separated from the latter in 1965. On 22 May 2019, the United Nations General Assembly debated and adopted a resolution that affirmed that the Chagos Archipelago "forms an integral part of the territory of Mauritius." The UK does not recognize Mauritius' sovereignty claim over the Chagos Archipelago. In October 2020, Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth described the British and American governments as "hypocrites" and "champions of double talk" over their response to the dispute.


Indigenous decolonization theory

Indigenous decolonization theory views Western Eurocentric historical accounts and political discourse as an ongoing political construct that attempts to negate Indigenous peoples and their experiences around the world. Indigenous people of the world precede and negate all Eurocentric colonization projects and the resulting historical constructs, popular discourse, conceptualizations, and theory. In this view, the independence of European-styled former Western-European colonies, such as the United States, Australia, and Brazil, is conceptualized as ongoing neo-colonization projects of
settler colonialism Settler colonialism is a structure that perpetuates the elimination of Indigenous people and cultures to replace them with a settler society. Some, but not all, scholars argue that settler colonialism is inherently genocidal. It may be enacted ...
and not as decolonization. The creation of these states merely continued ongoing European colonialism. Any former European colony not free of Western European influence fits such a concept. Examples of such former colonies include South Africa, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, and the USA.


Decolonization of knowledge


Consequences of decolonization

A 2019 study found that "democracy levels increased sharply as colonies gained internal autonomy in the period immediately before their independence. However, conflict, revenue growth, and economic growth did not systematically differ before and after independence." According to political theorist Kevin Duong, decolonization "may have been the century’s greatest act of disenfranchisement", as numerous anti-colonial activists primarily pursued universal suffrage within empires rather than independence: "As dependent territories became nation-states, they lost their voice in metropolitan assemblies whose affairs affected them long after independence." David Strange writes that the loss of their empires turned France and Britain into "second-rate powers."


Decolonising global health

Global health as a discipline is widely acknwoledged to be of imperial origin and the need for its decolonisation has been widely recognised. Dismantling the feudal structure of global health has been mentioned to be a key decolonisation agenda


See also

* Anti-imperialism * Blue water thesis * Coloniality of power * Colonial mentality * Creole nationalism * Decolonization of the Americas * Dependency theory * Exploitation colonialism * Neocolonialism * Organisation internationale de la Francophonie * Organisation of Ibero-American States * Partition (politics) * Periphery countries * Political history of the world * Postcolonialism * Repatriation (cultural heritage) * Repatriation and reburial of human remains * Secession * Separatism * Timeline of national independence * United Nations list of non-self-governing territories * War of independence


Notes


References


Further reading

* Bailey, Thomas A. ''A diplomatic history of the American people'' (1969
online free
* Betts, Raymond F. ''Decolonisation'' (2nd ed. 2004) * Betts, Raymond F. ''France and Decolonisation, 1900–1960'' (1991) * Butler, Larry, and Sarah Stockwell, eds. ''The Wind of Change: Harold Macmillan and British Decolonisation'' (2013
excerpt
* Chafer, Tony. ''The end of empire in French West Africa: France's successful decolonisation'' (Bloomsbury, 2002). * Chamberlain, Muriel E. ed. ''Longman Companion to European Decolonisation in the Twentieth Century'' (Routledge, 2014) * Clayton, Anthony. ''The wars of French decolonisation'' (Routledge, 2014). * Cooper, Frederick. "French Africa, 1947–48: Reform, Violence, and Uncertainty in a Colonial Situation." ''Critical Inquiry'' (2014) 40#4 pp: 466–478
in JSTOR
* Darwin, John. "Decolonisation and the End of Empire" in Robin W. Winks, ed., ''The Oxford History of the British Empire – Vol. 5: Historiography'' (1999) 5: 541–557. * Grimal, Henri. ''Decolonisation: The British, Dutch, and Belgian Empires, 1919–1963'' (1978). * Hyam, Ronald. ''Britain's Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation, 1918–1968'' (2007
excerpt
* Ikeda, Ryo. ''The Imperialism of French Decolonisation: French Policy and the Anglo-American Response in Tunisia and Morocco'' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) * Jansen, Jan C. & Jürgen Osterhammel. ''Decolonisation: A Short History'' (Princeton UP, 2017)

* Jones, Max, et al. "Decolonising imperial heroes: Britain and France." ''Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History'' 42#5 (2014): 787–825. * Klose, Fabian (2014)
''Decolonization and Revolution''EGO – European History Online
Mainz
Institute of European History
retrieved: March 17, 2021
pdf
. * Lawrence, Adria K. ''Imperial Rule and the Politics of Nationalism: Anti-Colonial Protest in the French Empire'' (Cambridge UP, 2013
online reviews
* McDougall, James. "The Impossible Republic: The Reconquest of Algeria and the Decolonisation of France, 1945–1962," ''The Journal of Modern History'' 89#4 (December 2017) pp 772–81
excerpt
* MacQueen, Norrie. ''The Decolonisation of Portuguese Africa: Metropolitan Revolution and the Dissolution of Empire'' (1997). * Elizabeth Monroe (historian), Monroe, Elizabeth. '' Britain's Moment in the Middle East, 1914–1956'' (1963) * Rothermund, Dietmar. ''The Routledge companion to decolonisation'' (Routledge, 2006), comprehensive global coverage; 365pp * Rothermund, Dietmar. ''Memories of Post-Imperial Nations: The Aftermath of Decolonisation, 1945–2013'' (2015
excerpt
Compares the impact on Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Portugal, Italy and Japan * Shepard, Todd. ''The Invention of Decolonisation: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France'' (2006) * Simpson, Alfred William Brian. ''Human Rights and the End of Empire: Britain and the Genesis of the European Convention'' (Oxford University Press, 2004). * Smith, Simon C. ''Ending empire in the Middle East: Britain, the United States and post-war decolonisation, 1945–1973'' (Routledge, 2013) * Smith, Tony. "A comparative study of French and British decolonisation." ''Comparative Studies in Society and History'' (1978) 20#1 pp: 70–102
online
* Smith, Tony. "The French Colonial Consensus and People's War, 1946–58." ''Journal of Contemporary History'' (1974): 217–247
in JSTOR
* Strayer, Robert. “Decolonisation, Democratisation, and Communist Reform: The Soviet Collapse in Comparative Perspective,” Journal of World History 12#2 (2001), 375–406
online
* Thomas, Martin, Bob Moore, and Lawrence J. Butler. ''Crises of Empire: Decolonisation and Europe's imperial states'' (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015) * White, Nicholas. ''Decolonisation: the British experience since 1945'' (2nd ed. Routledge, 2014
excerpt online


Primary sources

* ‘’Decolonisations’’, TV Series, Arte, 3 X 52’, the European culture TV Channel, director: Karim Miské, Marc Ball, Pierre Singaravélou, Grand URTI Prize for arthouse documentary (2020) * Le Sueur, James D. ed. ''The Decolonisation Reader'' (Routledge, 2003) * Madden, Frederick, ed. ''The End of Empire: Dependencies since 1948 : Select Documents on the Constitutional History of the British Empire and Commonwealth – Vol. 1'' (2000) , 596pp * Mansergh, Nicholas, ed. ''Documents and Speeches on Commonwealth Affairs, 1952–1962'' (1963) * Wiener, Joel H. ed. ''Great Britain: Foreign Policy and the Span of Empire, 1689–1971: A Documentary History – Vol. 4'' (1972) 712 pp; Covers 1872 to 1968.


External links

* * * * * * * James E. Kitchen
Colonial Empires after the First World War/Decolonisation
in

{{Authority control History of colonialism Sovereignty Decolonization, Aftermath of World War II