HIS 135
Decolonization? 

 
Source is http://uaflibrary.us/moviebrowser/covers/custom/The%20battle%20of%20Algiers.jpg

La Bataille d'Alger aka The Battle of Algiers aka La Battaglia di Algeri (1966, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, who died a few years ago) is one of my favorite films--and also an important film in the history of the cinema.  The movie dates from the neo-realist period of Italian film and deals with the Algerian revolt against the French in the 1950s.  Algeria eventually won its independence in 1962, after a long and difficult struggle.

 
 

I cover some parts of the colonization-decolonization process throughout my HIS 102 and HIS 112 courses.  In sum, the entire idea of creating and maintaining a colonial empire (by European countries) had waxed and waned since about 1500, peaking in the early eighteenth century, then rebounding in the late nineteenth century before World War I delivered a first blow to the ability of Western powers to maintain an empire abroad.

The Second World War then marked a final watershed as it set in motion  the process of "decolonization," i.e., the undoing of the world's empires and the setting free of the colonies and the creation of independent countries.  After 1945, as a result of this process, there appeared the so-called Third World, aka the "south" or those countries south of the Equator that were considered under-developed, or less-developed.  The process of decolonization was far from being a stable and rational undertaking, and it resulted in much tension, conflict and disunity. By the time the dismantling of the colonies was over in the 1970s, Britain wound up "losing" it all (India, Burma, Ceylon, Malaysia, etc.), as did also the Dutch, French and Portuguese (and US).

Even as the colonial empires disappeared, the after-effects (the legacies of colonialism) remained.  Here are some general points to consider:

  • Many democratic constitutions did not last long
  • most of the new countries also faced difficult modernization issues (both economic and cultural), i.e., how to catch up with the more advanced economies of the world
  • a wide range of complex array of socio-economic situations prevailed in the new countries with each situation being unique
  • nationalists who fought to achieve independence against the colonial regimes were now firmly militant, and once in power, it was usually difficult to rein in those militaristic tendencies
  • the widespread appeal of radical political alternatives to the peoples who were struggling after the colonial period
  • internal divisions in the new countries were often artificial yet they ended up causing significant problems.  One major source of problems was borders.

With regard to the world political stage, when considering the decolonization process also keep in mind:

  • the impact of the Cold War on the process, as both sides in the Cold War tried to lure the new countries onto their side of the conflict, i.e., either pro-communist or pro-democracy
  • by the 1950s, there was an attempt made at creating various regional organizations in the world, organizations that were independent of the Eastern or Western blocs.  Much of this came under what became known as the Non-Aligned Movement
    • 1955, Bandung (actually the 2nd such conference)
    • 1945, Arab League
    • 1963, Organization of African Unity (OAU)
    • 1973, Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
  • Globalization

I have some general remarks about some different regions of the world.  There are links for each area to more specific comments.

 
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East Asia.  The importance of the Far East in the world has been increasing ever since the end of the Second World War.  That importance has also changed from an emphasis on an area that saw conflict (the Korean and Vietnamese Wars) played out within the context of the Cold War to a region that has come to play an exceptional role in the world economy, starting with the Japanese economic miracle, then that of Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong--those are sometimes referred to as "The Four Asian Tigers"--and now China. In some respects, China remains the continuing enigma.  After Mao Tse Tung led the creation of the Chinese communist country in October 1949, China was firmly communist until the mid-1980s--but remember that China was never really pro-Russia.  In the last decade or so, China has tried to steer an uneven, and careful, path of economic modernization and expansion while at the same time maintaining an authoritarian political system.

America was not the only country to send troops to Vietnam in the 1960s. Check out the narrated prezi that John Hodges, a former student in HIS 112, created on The Australian Influence in the Vietnam War.

 
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South Asia.  As I note in my other remarks on South Asia, after World War II, the partition of the sub-continent that was carried out by non-South Asians, i.e., the British, remains one of the continuing lasting reminders/legacies of the British Empire.  I am not sure if any other alternatives to that division might have worked, but there is no question that there have been many problems since 1945.

There have also been problems in Afghanistan, problems that were also a legacy of both the colonial past and the Cold War, although Afghanistan was never truly a closely-held part of the British Empire.  The country was the subject of loose rivalry between the British and Russians in the nineteenth century, but after 1945 it became an object of control in the Cold War between Russia and the United States.  Eventually, after getting a pro-Soviet, communist regime established there, the Soviet Union had to invade Afghanistan in December 1979 to save that regime from being overthrown.  For ten years, the Russians were bogged down in Afghanistan--it was often called "Russia's Vietnam"--until they finally left, leaving behind complete chaos, which allowed the Taliban regime to come to power.

 
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The Near East (often called Middle East) has also proven to be the site of many high-profile conflicts/tensions since 1945, and many of these are a result of the "colonial" past.

In 1948 Britain withdrew from Palestine after a long conflict with Jewish guerrillas, and a Jewish state of Israel was proclaimed.  After Arab attacks were repelled by the Israelis, a 1949 truce was established.  Though Arabs and Palestinians fled Israel, other Arab countries would not resettle them, leading to a continuing, long-lasting refugee problem that continued to destabilize the region.  The Russians became involved in the Near East when they offered aid and expertise to Egypt to build the Aswan High Dam, and they then supported the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, (1918-70).  In 1967, in the Six-Day War, Israel overran all of the Sinai Peninsula and occupied all of Palestine and the Golan Heights in a huge humiliation for the Arab armies.  In October 1973, the Yom Kippur War broke out after a surprise Syrian attack.  Despite the Camp David Accords and the negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt (September 1978), hostilities continue between Jew and Arab in the region.

But the conflict over Palestine is not the only conflict in the region.  There are "issues" in Iraq, Iran and some of the Gulf States, not to mention Lebanon and Syria.  Much of this is a hold-over from boundary and religious issues that festered during French and British control of the area.

See the excellent timeline done by O'haila Khan on Palestine, 1900 to 1945.

 
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Africa.  The decolonization of Africa made for far reaching changes of the world economy and for a different make-up of the United Nations.  By the mid-1980s, it was often expressed that the reality of African independence was an "abysmal failure."  That so few countries had actually been able to establish and maintain the trappings of a democracy, plus there was still the apartheid-based regime at the southern end of the continent, was not encouraging.  There had been a lot of promise as country after country became independent in the late 1950s through the 1970s, but hadn't it all dissolved in a stream of military coups, border conflicts and ethnic violence?  But recall that the colonial legacy was a lot to overcome for the newly-independent African nations:

  • the colonial state was a product of violence in which the government rested on force and not the consent of the people
  • a legacy of poverty, high taxes and exploitation
  • misgovernment and corruption; under the colonial regimes Africans had had little practice in actual self-government
  • destruction of traditional law and replacement by foreign law codes
  • destruction of the natural economy; under the colonial state economic progress was always measured by the amount of export over import, not the growth of the domestic market
  • artificial borders

In reality, much of the African achievement is impressive!  Literacy has increased; life expectancy has increased; and there have been few conflicts between countries (most are within countries).

Let me also add here that the Rwanda genocide that occurred in 1994 is a good example of the impact of European colonization on African society.

Rachael Elstad has an excellent narrated prezi on Portugal's Global Influence. The dismantling of Portugal's empire in the 1970s led to enormous violence in Africa.

 
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With regard to the Western Hemisphere, there was no formal colonial establishment to disestablish after 1945, but Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean, have always been viewed by the United States as its back door "empire," and many of the countries of the hemisphere have long been at the mercy of US-controlled economic or political interests.  So, much of the region has had to deal with the same kind of issues that other countries around the world have gone through in the process of decolonization, namely problems of population, poverty, debt, political inequality, and the equally intractable problem of the role of the military in political power, though this has changed a bit for the positive in recent years.

 
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A quick note about some theorists of decolonization.  I'm just going to mention two:  Lenin (1870-1924) and Frantz Fanon, 1925-1961.

I cover quite a bit about Lenin in my HIS 242 course, and he also appears in both my HIS 102 and HIS 112 course as the creator of the communist (Bolshevik) regime in Russia after 1917.  One of his most important theoretical works was Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917).  In the book Lenin explained that the worldwide socialist revolution had not yet occurred because capitalist countries, by creating colonial empires, had been able to postpone that revolution by oppressing the workers and expropriating the resources of the colonies.  That had allowed capitalism to buy off workers in capitalist countries.  Lenin also claimed that this just sowed the seeds of a future worldwide revolution when the colonial regimes rebelled.

Frantz Fanon, a black psychiatrist from French West Indies, more directly examined the entire colonial process--particularly the Algerian Revolt--while decolonization was taking place.  In his seminal book, The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Fanon examined how colonialism dehumanized people, creating a world of rulers and of the ruled, and how the ruled are victimized by the colonial process.

 
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Conclusions?
Since 1945, there have been dramatic political, economic, technological and cultural changes that have occurred in the world.  In fact, the world has changed so dramatically over the course of just the last decade as a result of the development of the world wide web, which is profoundly altering the nature and availability of information and communication, that one is also surprised by just how much hasn't changed.  On a more pragmatic note, all the trouble that went into the creation of overseas empires by European and North American countries in the late nineteenth century came to naught after 1945.  Maintenance of the empires became too costly from an economic and human point-of-view, as African, Asian and Latin American societies challenged Western hegemony, often on the basis of the Western doctrine of nationalism and natural human rights.  Within the span of two decades, most countries in Africa and Asia had achieved their independence.  Those countries then discovered that the process of nation-building was a far more difficult process than simply achieving independence.

At the same time, while the de facto legal colonial relationships no longer existed, the remnants of those relationships continued to exist in the form of cultural, linguistic or economic fetters (couldn't think of the right word).  Thus, there still exist forms of colonialism/imperialism, such as the ubiquitous use of the English language.

ps.  In regards to the waxing and waning of the imperial mission over the past few centuries:

  • 1600s, Columbus and start of colonization.  The European advantage over the non-European societies was initially not that great
  • 1700s, first wave of decolonization as the United States becomes independent, but at the same time British control of India is consolidated.
  • 1800s, late in the century the "Race for Africa" is on, ushering in a second establishment of overseas colonial empires.  This was often justified by an appeal to the ideas of Social Darwinian.
  • 1918, another wave of decolonization began after World War 1 with the establishment of the mandates of the League of Nations and also independence movements in India (see Gandhi) and China
  • 1945.  The end of the Second World War was a watershed in that it set in motion "decolonization," i.e., the full undoing of the world's empires, and marked the beginning of the emergence of what became called "The Third World."
 
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HIS 135 web pages relevant to decolonization

 
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Some suggestions for further research
 
 

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