Welcome back.
We’re going to talk about decolonization and the European Union today.
Of course, the EU has been in the news a lot with the Brexit here this summer.
Let’s put this in context – and there’s more than one.
Decolonization and the rise of the EU take place within the Cold War, takes place within
what political scientists call a bipolar world – a common expression today to describe
aberrant behavior, I suppose.
Political scientists use it to describe this bipolar system by which the United States
and its allies confront the Soviet Union and its allies, in a bipolar world, two great
powers and the rest of the world revolving around them.
Other contexts for decolonization, especially, is the great traditional imperial powers of
Western Europe are weakened severely by the Second World War.
And then finally, another context is a quest for independence by what political scientists
and historians call third-world countries.
First world is the United States and the capitalist nations, NATO, the West.
The second world generally refers to the Soviet Union and its allies.
And then the third world used to refer to everyone else – the non-aligned countries,
countries that had been colonized, countries that had been dominated.
Significances – Well indigenous peoples throughout Africa and Asia and other places
gained their independence from the imperial powers.
A second significance is there are shifts in the international balance of power during
this decolonizing era as new nations emerge on the stage and choose sides, with the West
or with the Soviets or remain non-aligned.
These new nations often defy their patrons and cause trouble between the great powers.
A key question here – why do so many nations achieve their independence after the Second
World War?
Well, like I said, the European powers are weakened by the Second World War.
The Soviet Union, as part of its anti-Western propaganda, tends to support colonized people
and those peoples who are rebelling against the imperial power, whether in Cuba or Algeria
or Vietnam or the Congo or wherever.
There is in the United States, of course, an anti-colonial tradition, which goes all
the way back to our founding.
This, of course, is complicated though, in the Cold War especially because if the United
States has an anti-colonial tradition it also has an intense fear of communism.
So in the Cold War and during this decolonization, you’ll find the United States supporting
anti-communist regimes that are probably are unworthy of support, but we support them because
of their anti-communism.
We see this throughout Central America, South America, and in Asia as well.
Examples of this decolonizing effort – Of course, India probably the most famous, in
1947 the British finally withdraw from the Indian subcontinent.
The Philippines, after the Second World War in 1946, become a sovereign, independent country.
The United States administration leaves.
Of course, the Dutch leave Indonesia in 1949.
Famously, the event that triggers the Truman Doctrine is the British withdrawal from Greece
and Turkey in 1946-47.
Of course, the English also abandon bases and in Egypt and the Suez in the mid-50s.
Italy will abandon its colonies in Libya, just across the water there – the Mediterranean.
Ghana, in West Africa, sort of leads the way for these West African countries to gain their
independence; this starts in the late ‘50s.
France is an interesting example here, and we’ll talk a little more about two particular
cases of decolonization.
One directly involves France.
France is reluctant to abandon her colonies in Algeria, again North Africa just across
the water from France, and of course, her colony in Southeast Asia and Indochina, Vietnam,
and these are examples that we’ll have to look at a little bit closer.
In fact, I’ll do that now while we’re talking about it.
The Vietnam example is pertinent to our discussion because it not only involves Western ideas
and Western imperialism, but it allows us to see how the West and its interests and
motivations have become part of world history, and this is where our categories become problematic
and sometimes just downright silly when we try to distinguish world history from western
civilization from United States history.
Historians do this, or teachers do it, to give us a way of organizing this material
and figuring out what to include and what to leave out.
So when I talk about decolonization here, some people are going to say, well you shouldn’t
talk about Vietnam because that involves the United States or that involves world history,
and in my mind this is just nonsense.
We need to be able to bring an analysis, a closer analysis to these things and see that
the category of western civilization is strictly an organizing tool.
The French, of course, had colonized Vietnam in the 19th century, and that era, that new
imperialism we talked about, and the French had stayed there until 1940 when they were
defeated.
You remember Hitler’s armies overran France in what, a month, six weeks.
In 1940, the French defeat at home was accompanied by the abandonment of French colonies overseas,
and of course, this was hastened – obviously – by the Japanese.
The Japanese struck all along the East Asian perimeter and overran Indochina.
The Vietnamese now have lost one colonizing power, the French, and have gained a new one,
the Japanese.
And of course, the Japanese will dominate Indochina until 1945.
In 1945, the United States finally ends the War with the atomic bombings of two Japanese
cities.
So now the Japanese go home and it looks – there’s a brief moment there where Ho Chi Minh, the
leader of the Vietnamese, appeals to the United States and says, we want to model some aspects
of our institutions on yours, we want to borrow from the Declaration of Independence, and
we want your help.
Ho Chi Minh appeals to the United States for financial assistance and political backing.
He says, look we both were allies because we both fought against the Japanese.
The United States refuses to do this because they associate Ho Chi Minh with his communist
ideology and during the Cold War this is simply, it is not possible for U.S. policy.
So the United States is now going to support the French in their return to Vietnam for
a couple of reasons.
The French themselves, of course, want to reassert the grandeur of France and to sort
of make the case that France remains a great power in spite of their recent in World War
II.
President Truman and the United States go along with this because we need France’s
help in Europe to contain the Soviets.
So if the French want to reassert their colonial claims in Indochina, that’s fine with us.
Let’s appease the French in Indochina so she’ll help us in Europe.
So you can see here how the categories of western civilization become quite blurry and
take on a greater sort of world history aspect because we’re involving not just Western
countries but we’re involving Asian countries, ideologies, Cold War conflict.
So the French example is a good one of decolonization.
Of course, the French will finally leave Vietnam for good.
In 1954 they are defeated by the North Vietnamese or the communist forces in Vietnam.
And then of course, the French will be replaced in Vietnam by the United States, and the United
States will have to learn that lesson.
It will take a long time to do so, into the early ‘70s, but the United States will have
to go through the same troubles that the French went through, and then we – the Americans
– will finally leave Vietnam as well, and Vietnam will emerge as a united country, a
sovereign state, without any domination of Western powers.
So this is a perfect example of decolonization in the Cold War.
When we get back I’m going to talk a little bit about the European Union.
Thank you.