In this video we'll be talking about the end to European empires that were established
in Africa and Asia in the late 19th century.
This is a period known as decolonization – and decolonization can be defined as the struggle
– by colonized men and women in Africa and Asia – for an end to European empires.
In many ways, the era of decolonization began with the independence of India and Pakistan
in 1947.
Between 1959 and 1963, more than 30 European colonies across Africa and Asia gained independence,
and even more followed in the next decade.
1997 is often marked – is often accepted – as marking the end of the era of decolonization,
when Britain transferred Hong Kong back to China.
So let's look at the era of decolonization, which is an incredibly complex era, to identify
some of the points of commonality and conflict that existed within this movement.
So as we've seen – European states¸ European nations had been expanding their influence
across the globe since 1492.
They had built and lost American empires in the 16th; 17th; and 18th centuries, and then
in the 19th century engaged in what would become known as new imperialism – a period
when European colonizers took control of much of Africa and Asia using political and economic
exploitation as the primary model.
So colonization – overall – would be all of the attempts and methods through which
the European powers sought to exercise and maintain their power over conquered territories
in other parts of the world, and decolonization is the attempt – or the collection of attempts
– all of the attempts to undo those colonies.
There were a number of causes of the decolonization movement – some internal, the result of
things happening within the colonies themselves, and some external, the result of things happening
outside of the colonies.
One of the internal causes would be the abuse of native populations that took place at the
hands of the colonizers.
‘ Conquest in the age of new imperialism was
made easier for the Europeans largely because of industrialization.
They had industrialized weaponry – like the machine gun – that made conquest of
Africa and Asia easier, but also resulted in the slaughter of thousands and in many
cases hundreds of thousands of Africans and Asians.
The colonizers depended on local collaborators to maintain control – because in new imperialism
you didn't tend to see a situation where a bunch of Europeans picked up and moved to
the colonies, but rather they were creating new sources for natural resources and new
markets for manufactured goods – so new imperialism was based largely on exploitation
of native populations.
European colonizers exploited existing ethnic and racial rivalries in order to maintain
that control, granting some groups privilege and putting other groups at the bottom of
the hierarchy.
So the lofty ideals of European imperialism – the so-called ‘mission to civilize’
– that we discussed earlier, didn't really match the reality of their administration.
Perhaps the best example of this was in the Belgian Congo, where atrocities diminished
any veneer of European philanthropy.
As a result of European colonization, Belgian colonization in the Congo, approximately ten-million
Congolese people died of starvation; disease; overwork; infections caused by mutilations;
and executions of the slow, the rebellious; the families of fugitives and runaways – and
this genocidal campaign was perhaps the worst example – but by no means the only example
of European atrocities committed in Africa and Asia in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The poor treatment of these colonized peoples would ultimately unravel colonial empires.
A second internal cause was colonial nationalism.
Nationalism is a belief in national self-determination, that a common people should be able to govern
themselves free of outside interference – and was therefore a rejection of imperialism.
As nationalism grew within the colonies, they would challenge European imperialism – and
in many ways that was supported by the first of our external causes, which was the Atlantic
Charter 1941, and concepts of national self-determination.
In the Atlantic Charter, the United States and Britain had agreed on a number of factors
in preparation for American involvement in World War II, and one of those factors was
the autonomy of the imperial colonies.
The Atlantic Charter said that Europe would give up its colonies and grant autonomy, grant
independence, to their colonies in other parts of the world.
After World War II, the U.S. and the African colonies put pressure on Britain to uphold
the terms of the Atlantic Charter, but Britain said that the Charter was only applicable
to German occupation states and not to the British Empire.
This hypocrisy did not go unnoticed in the African and Asian colonies.
Another external cause, another external factor involved in decolonization, was the experience
of World War II itself.
World War II had been a devastating and incredibly expensive war and many Europeans wanted to
focus on their own recovery rather than on maintenance of colonies and on wars to maintain
control over the colony – and the successes that Japan had seen in the early years of
World War II, the defeats that they had inflicted on British; French; and Dutch forces set an
example of an Asian people standing up to European colonizers, suggesting that it could
be done.
So all of these factors came together after World War II and contributed to the decolonization
movement.
As we said earlier, the decolonization movement is typically associated – the beginning
of the decolonization movement – is typically associated with the independence of India.
British India was granted independence by the Indian Independence Act of 1947, but the
territory was also partitioned into two primary groups based largely on religious divisions
that were identified in the 1909 census – as seen in this map from the period.
So the Indian Independence Act of 1947 creates an India, which was primarily Hindu, and a
Pakistan and East Pakistan that was primarily Muslim.
This created a situation that was not without problems because it left some fourteen-million
Muslims in India and Hindus in Pakistan, who became the foundation of a refugee crisis
that contributed to overwhelming violence and religious strife that continues to this
day.
But independence in India provided a spark that would spread the decolonization movements
throughout Asia.
In Southeast Asia, the post-War period saw nationalist movements in the Malaya Federation
– Indonesia; the Philippines; Vietnam; Cambodia; and Laos – as European empires collapsed
in the region.
The same was true in Africa.
We could start our story with the French part of Africa, and very specifically the territory
or the colony of Algeria.
After World War II, the French government was absolutely determined to hold on to Algeria
– in part, because they had a substantial French-settler population, at least compared
to other parts of French Africa, and because Algeria had a number of natural resources
– vineyards; oil; and gas fields that the French relied on for their economy.
So when an Algerian revolt broke out in 1954, the French set out to put it down by any means
necessary.
The French-Algerian War was characterized by great brutality on both sides – guerrilla
fighting; torture; attacks on civilians; kidnapping; rape; the use of napalm.
It was an incredibly brutal war that ended with French withdrawal and Algerian independence
in 1962.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, none of the wars for independence quite matched the brutality of
the Algerian struggle, but nonetheless French colonies in the region achieved independence
between 1958 and 1960; British colonies between 1964 and 1980; Portuguese colonies in 1975;
and Belgian colonies between 1960 and 1962.
This decolonization movement in Sub-Saharan Africa and particularly in the southern part
of Africa, often resulted in racial and ethnic strife as people of European descent fought
against indigenous Africans in an attempt to retain their personal privileges; their
positions of power; and their control of resources.
This racial conflict – racial and ethnic conflict – was particularly severe in the
southern part of Africa, including the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique; the British
colony of Southern Rhodesia, which would become Zimbabwe; and Northern Rhodesia, which would
become Zambia.
The effects of these struggles can still be felt in the racial and ethnic tensions in
the region today.
Nevertheless, decolonization occurred on a vast scale, and led to the establishment of
dozens of independent nations between 1945 and 1965.
The story of the Middle East or the Western part of Africa – sorry, excuse me – the
Western part of Asia was a little bit different.
Arab states began to gain their independence in the post-War years, as they were released
from the mandate system.
So the Arab revolt in World War I, had led to – or had hastened – the collapse of
the Ottoman Empire.
The Treaty of Sevres, in 1920, created several mandates – and the mandate, or a mandate,
was the right to govern a former German or Turkish colony that was granted – by the
League of Nations – to certain European powers.
Most of the Ottoman territories – or most of the former Ottoman territories – in the
Middle East were called class-A mandates, which were considered to be the most advanced
and on the path to independence.
They slowly gained independence between and during – between the Wars and during World
War II – so that most of the Middle East was independent from Europe by 194.
But after World War II, a new struggle emerged as the state of Israel was created in 1948
from former Palestinian mandate territory and that struggle with Israel – the Jewish
homeland – came to overshadow other Arab politics.
So as each of these new nations gained its independence, they were left trying to create
a new nation state.
They had to establish some form of government and most of them had to do so while facing
severe economic challenges.
These colonies had been resource colonies, intended to provide natural resources to the
Metropole or colonial power, and they didn't have a lot of the existing economic infrastructure
separate from the Metropole.
So they needed to establish banking systems; currency; fiscal policies.
They needed to industrialize.
They needed to establish new governments.
Oftentimes, without a history of that of that type of government, many established Republics
or constitutional monarchies, without a strong history or tradition of that government.
The former colonies were left trying to create a sense of national unity in places where
it hadn't previously existed.
There were challenges of language, of dialects.
They had to replace terms and items that were associated with colonial power and they had
to deal with the fact that empires had been built without any regard for existing ethnic;
religious; or tribal differences in the colonized territories.
In fact, the European colonizers used these tensions to sow discord and to maintain control,
and the end of colonialism was not an end to those tensions.
In many cases these new nations were unable to surmount these hurdles, which resulted
in increased rates of authoritarianism; genocide; poverty; undernourished populations and epidemic
diseases; and lower life expectancy in the former colonies.
In other words, the world is still dealing with the consequences of colonialism to this
very day.
Thank you.