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Decolonization After colonial empires collapsed during World War II, colonized peoples were determined to forge their own nations. Decolonization followed three patterns: civil war, negotiated independence, and incomplete decolonization.
China’s case represents the first pattern. Chinese Communists, working in the countryside since 1927, sought to build a new society strong enough to resist enemies like the Japanese. The Japanese invasion of 1937 gave Mao Zedong’s rural Communist movement a chance to grow behind enemy lines and win popular support among the peasants by organizing them as guerrilla fighters. Embracing all Chinese groups, including women, the Communist movement swelled, growing from about 40,000 in 1937 to over 100 million by 1945. After the Japanese surrender, fighting resumed between Mao’s Communists and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Government. Losing first popular support and then the civil war in 1949, Chiang retreated to Taiwan while Mao moved to build communism in China and to provide inspiration to other Communist movements around the globe.
Negotiated Independence in India and Africa Independence came with little bloodshed in the British territories of India and Africa. Seeing the writing on the wall, the British simply withdrew. India: British talk of departure left Indian nationalists in disagreement as to the direction India should take: Gandhi’s nonmodern, self-governing village communities or Nehru’s modern nation-state. Congress leaders convinced the British to hand power to them, a notion the British preferred over looming radical uprisings. At the same time, however, Hindu-Muslim unity fragmented. The new nation was largely defined in terms of Hindu culture, with which the Muslims shared little in common. Anxious to please, the British divided the colony into two states: Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. Gaining independence in August 1947, celebration turned to horror as a million Hindus and Muslims killed one another. Gandhi stopped the violence long enough for 12 million people to migrate north or south, depending on their religious preference, but was himself shot dead six month later. Afterward, Nehru took inspiration from both the United States and the Soviet Union to modernize India. Africa for Africans: In Africa, rapid decolonization occurred through the 1950s and early 1960s. Anti-colonialist nationalists learned how to build powerful movements based on the poor, ex-servicemen, and educated elites. Pressured by the United States and the Soviet Union, Britain gave up its African colonies one by one. Charismatic leaders heading populist movements became the new administrators. French territories followed a similar course although France strongly resisted losing its colonies at first. Once it was clear that the French electorate had no desire to grant full privileges to overseas peoples, the French government moved to turn most of its colonies loose, with the exception of Algeria. Hoping to build on traditional African community values, many African leaders sought a new modernity—a type of African socialism that rejected cold individualism in favor of social justice and equality. Léopold Sédar Senghor’s "Negritude," for example, envisioned a society that celebrated African values and community while accepting the better elements of French culture.
Violent and Incomplete Decolonizations In some colonies, the presence of white colonists greatly complicated the transfer of power to new African colonial leaders. In others, like Vietnam, efforts to find a "third way" were thwarted by superpower requirements that colonies remain true to capitalist or Communist lines. Palestine, Israel, and Egypt: During World War I, the British Balfour Declaration promised Jews a homeland in Palestine while also offering the Palestinians a state of their own. Anti-Semitism in Europe fueled Jewish immigration even as the British tried to limit it out of fear of provoking the Palestinians. In 1947, Britain handed the problem over to the United Nations, which separated Palestine into Jewish and Palestinian halves. Jews organized quickly as neighboring Arab nations moved to drive the Jews "into the sea," and successfully defeated the threat. Israel extended its territory, producing more than one million refugees living in camps. In Egypt, the Free Officers Movement under Nasser toppled the regime of King Faruq, redistributed elite lands, dissolved parliament, and turned on the Communists. Israeli forces, with British and French support, tried to take the Suez Canal from Nasser but were forced to withdraw, brightening Nasser’s reputation as a symbol of pan-Arab nationalism. The Algerian War of Independence: French reluctance to grant Algerian independence stemmed largely from the powerful lobby of the colons : white French settlers who dominated Algeria’s political and economic spheres. As anti-colonial nationalism spread after World War II, France responded with military suppression. The nationalist Front de Libération Nationale responded with its own violence in 1954 and a vicious, bloody war of eight years ensued. Most French believed the colon argument that Algeria was part of France and supported the war until a colon insurrection brought Charles de Gaulle to power. Sick of the conflict, de Gaulle ended the war. Eastern and Southern Africa: In Kenya, the Mau Mau Uprising against white rule forced Britain to fly in troops before ultimately granting independence in 1963. In Portuguese colonies and Southern Rhodesia, war lasted much longer. South African settlers maintained a firm grip through extreme racial segregation called apartheid. Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress first urged nonviolent resistance and later violent attacks against the white regime, but struggled as long as the United States supported South Africa as a bulwark against communism. Vietnam: Finding their road to political influence blocked by French colonialists, young educated Vietnamese nationalists like Ho Chi Minh began agitating for independence in the 1920s. Learning of communism and agrarian revolution while abroad, Ho established the Viet Minh among Vietnam’s peasantry. When France returned to reclaim Vietnam from the Japanese after World War II, Ho sought U.S. support but found none and had to defeat the French on his own. At the Geneva Peace Accords, following the French defeat in 1954, Vietnam was divided into a Communist north and a U.S.-controlled puppet south. The north determined to conquer the south while the United States moved to brace against the spread of communism. Despite U.S. efforts, the south eventually fell to Ho’s forces. >> Continue to the next part of the Summary: Three Worlds
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