As we saw in Chapter 26, movements for independence had begun in earnest in Africa and Asia in the years between the wars. After World War II, these movements grew even louder. The ongoing subjugation of peoples by colonial powers seemed at odds with the goals the Allies had pursued in overthrowing the repressive regimes of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Then, too, indigenous peoples everywhere took up the call for national self-determination and expressed their determination to fight for independence.
The ending of the European colonial empires did not come easy, however. In 1941, Winston Churchill had said, “I have not become His Majesty’s Chief Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.” Britain and France in particular seemed reluctant to let go of their colonies, but for a variety of reasons both eventually gave in to the obvious: the days of empire were over.
During the war, the Japanese had already humiliated the Western states by overrunning their colonial empires. In addition, colonial soldiers who had fought on behalf of the Allies were well aware that Allied war aims included the principle of self-determination for the peoples of the world. Equally important to the process of decolonization after World War II, the exhaustive struggles of the war had destroyed the power of the European states. The greatest colonial empire builder, Great Britain, no longer had the energy or the wealth to maintain its colonial empire. Given the combination of circumstances, a rush of decolonization swept the world. Between 1947 and 1962, virtually every colony achieved independence and attained statehood. Although some colonial powers willingly relinquished their control, others had to be driven out by national wars of liberation. Decolonization was a difficult and even bitter process, but it created a new world as the non-Western states ended the long era of Western domination.
After World War II, Europeans reluctantly realized that colonial rule in Africa would have to come to an end, but little had been done to prepare Africans for self-rule. Political organizations that had been formed by Africans before the war to gain their rights became formal political parties with independence as their goal. In the Gold Coast, Kwame Nkrumah (KWAH-may en-KROO-muh) (1909-1972) formed the Convention People's Party, the first African political party in black Africa. In the late 1940s, Jomo Kenyatta (JOH-moh ken-YAHT-uh) (1894-1978) founded the Kenya African National Union, which focused on economic issues but also sought self-rule for Kenya.
For the most part, these political activities were nonviolent and were led by Western-educated African intellectuals. Their constituents were primarily merchants, urban professionals, and members of labor unions. But the demand for independence was not restricted to the cities. In Kenya, for example, the widely publicized Mau Mau movement among the Kikuyu (ki-KOOyuh) peoples used terrorism to demand uhuru (oo-HOO-roo) (Swahili for “freedom”) from the British. Mau Mau terrorism alarmed the European population and convinced the British in 1959 to promise eventual independence.
A similar process was occurring in Egypt, which had been a British protectorate since the 1880s. In 1918, a formal political party called the Wafd (WAHFT) was organized to promote Egyptian independence. Although Egypt gained its formal independence in 1922, it still remained under British control. Egyptian intellectuals, however, were opposed as much to the Egyptian monarchy as to the British, and in 1952, an army coup overthrew King Farouk (fuh-ROOK) and set up an independent republic.
In North Africa, the French, who were simply not strong enough to maintain control of their far-flung colonial empire, granted full independence to Morocco and Tunisia in 1956 (see Map 28.2). Since Algeria was home to 2 million French setrlers, however, France attempted to retain its dominion there. But a group of Algerian nationalists organized the National Liberation Front (FLN) and in 1954 initiated a guerrilla war to liberate their homeland (see the box on p. 878). By mid-1956, France had sent 400,000 troops to Algeria to protect French settlers and capture FLN terrorist cells. As the war dragged on, the French people became so divided that their leader, Charles de Gaulle, accepted the inevitable and granted Algerian independence in 1962. The liberation of Algeria led to a massive movement of peoples as 2 million French settlers repatriated to France, and thousands of harkis (har-KEES), Muslim Algerians who had fought alongside the French, also fled in fear of retaliation. Their fears were not unwarranted; the new Algerian authorities executed almost 60,000 harkis who remained behind.
In areas such as South Africa, where European settlers dominated the political system, the transition to independence was more complicated. In South Africa, political activity by local blacks began with the formation of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1912. At first, it was a group of intellectuals whose goal was to gain economic and political reforms, including full equality for educated Africans, within the framework of the existing system. The ANC's efforts, however, met with little success. At the same time, by the 1950s, South African whites were strengthening the laws separating whites and blacks, creating a system of racial segregation in South Africa known as apartheid (uh-PAH RT-hyt). When blacks demonstrated against the apartheid laws, the white government brutally repressed the demonstrators. After the arrest of Nelson Mandela (b. 1918), the ANC leader, in 1962, members of the ANC called for armed resistance to the white government.
When both the British and the French decided to let go of their colonial empires, most black African nations achieved their independence in the late 1950s and 1960s. The Gold Coast, now renamed Ghana and under the guidance of Kwame Nkrumah, was first in 1957. Nigeria, the Belgian Congo (renamed Zaire), Kenya, Tanganyika (later, when joined with Zanzibar, renamed Tanzania), and others soon followed. Seventeen new African nations emerged in 1960. Another eleven followed between 1961 and 1965. By the late 1960s, only parts of southern Africa and the Portuguese possessions of Mozambique and Angola remained under European rule. After a series of brutal guerrilla wars, the Portuguese finally gave up their colonies in the 1970s.
Although Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq had become independent states between the two world wars, the end of World War II led to the emergence of other independent states in the Middle East. Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, all European mandates before the war, became independent (see Map 28.3). Sympathy for the idea of Arab unity led to the formation of the Arab League in 1945, but different points of view among its members prevented it from achieving anything of substance.
THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE The one issue on which all Muslim states in the area could agree was the question of Palestine. As tensions between Jews and Arabs intensified in that mandate during the 1930s, the British reduced Jewish immigration into the area and firmly rejected Jewish proposals for an independent state in Palestine. The Zionists, who wanted Palestine as a home for Jews, were not to be denied, however. Many people had been shocked at the end of World War II when they learned about the Holocaust, and sympathy for the Jewish cause grew dramatically. As a result, the Zionists turned for support to the United States, and in March 1948, the Truman administration approved the concept of an independent Jewish state in Palestine, even though Jews comprised only about one-third of the local population. When a United Nations resolution divided Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, the Jews in Palestine acted. On May 14, 1948, they proclaimed the state of Israel.Its Arab neighbors saw the new state as a betrayal of the Palestinian people, 90 percent of whom were Muslim. Outraged at the lack of Western support for Muslim interests in the area, several Arab countries invaded the new Jewish state. The invasion failed, but both sides remained bitter. The Arab states refused to recognize the existence of Israel.
NASSER AND PAN-ARABISM In Egypt, a new leader arose who would play an important role in the Arab world and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser (guh-MAHL ahb-DOOL NAH-sur) (1918-1970) seized control of the Egyptian government in 1954 and two years later nationalized the Suez Canal Company, which had been under British and French administration. Seeing a threat to their route to the Indian Ocean, the British and French launched a joint attack on Egypt to protect their investment. They were joined by Israel, whose leaders had grown exasperated at sporadic Arab commando raids on Israeli territory and now decided to strike back. But the Eisenhower administration in the United States, concerned that the attack smacked of a revival of colonialism, joined with the Soviet Union, its Cold War enemy, and supported Nasser. Together, they brought about the withdrawal of foreign forces from Egypt and of Israeli troops from the Sinai peninsula.Nasser emerged from the conflict as a powerful leader and now began to promote Pan-Arabism, or Arab unity. In March 1958, Egypt formally united with Syria in the United Arab Republic (UAR), with Nasser as president of the new state. Egypt and Syria hoped that the union would eventually include all Arab states, but many other Arab leaders were suspicious of Pan-Arabism. Oil-rich Arab states such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia feared that they would be asked to share their vast oil revenues with the poorer states of the Middle East. In 1961 , Nasser's plans and the UAR came to an end when military leaders seized control of Syria and withdrew it from its union with Egypt .
THE ARAB-ISRAELI DISPUTE The breakup of the UAR did not end the dream of Pan-Arabism. At a meeting of Arab leaders held in Jerusalem in 1964, Egypt took the lead in forming the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to represent the interests of the Palestinians. The PLO believed that only the Palestinian peoples (and not Jewish immigrants from abroad) had the right to form a state in Palestine. A guerrilla movement called al-Fatah (al-FAH-tuh), led by the PLO political leader Yasir Arafat (yah-SEER ah-ruh-FAHT) (1929-2004), began to launch terrorist attacks on Israeli territory.During the 1960s, the dispute between Israel and other states in the Middle East intensified. Essentially alone except for the sympathy of the United States and a few Western European countries, Israel adopted a policy of immediate retaliation against any hostile act by the PLO and its Arab neighbors. By the spring of 1967, Nasser in Egypt had stepped up his military activities and imposed a blockade against Israeli shipping through the Gulf of Aqaba (AH-kuh-buh). Learning that an attack was imminent, on June 5, 1967, Israel launched preemptive air strikes against Egypt and several of its Arab neighbors. Israeli warplanes bombed seventeen Egyptian airfields and wiped out most of the Egyptian air force. Israeli armies then broke the blockade at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba and occupied the Sinai peninsula. Other Israeli forces seized Jordanian territory on the West Bank of the Jordan River, occupied all of Jerusalem (formerly divided between Israel and Jordan), and attacked Syrian military positions in the Golan Heights area along the Israeli-Syrian border. In this brief Six-Day War, as it is called, Israel devastated Nasser's forces and tripled the size of its territory. The new Israel aroused even more bitter hatred among the Arabs. Furthermore, another million Palestinians now lived inside Israel's new borders, most of them on the West Bank.
In Asia, the United States initiated the process of decolonization in 1946 when it granted independence to the Philippines (see Map 28.4). Britain soon followed suit with India. But ethnic and religious differences made the process both difficult and violent.
At the end of World War II, the British negotiated with both the Indian National Congress, which was mostly Hindu, and the Muslim League. British India's Muslims and Hindus were bitterly divided and unwilling to accept a Single Indian state. Britain soon realized that British India would have to be divided into two countries, one Hindu (India) and one Muslim (Pakistan). Pakistan would actually consist of two regions separated by more than 1,000 miles.
Among Congress leaders, only Mahatma Gandhi objected to the division of India. A Muslim woman, critical of his opposition to partition, asked him, “If two brothers were living together in the same house and wanted to separate and live in two different houses, would you object?” “Ah,” Gandhi replied, “if only we could separate as two brothers. But we will not. It will be an orgy of blood. We shall tear ourselves asunder in the womb of the mother who bears US.”7
On August 15, 1947, India and Pakistan became independent. But Gandhi had been right. The flight of millions of Hindus and Muslims across the new borders led to violence, and more than a million people were killed-including Gandhi, who was assassinated on January 30, 1948, by a Hindu militant. India's new beginning had not been easy.
Other areas of Asia also achieved independence. In 1948, Britain granted independence to Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) and Burma (modern Myanmar). When the Dutch failed to reestablish control over the Dutch East Indies, Indonesia emerged as an independent nation in 1949. The French effort to remain in Indochina led to a bloody struggle with the Vietminh, led by Ho Chi Minh, the Communist and nationalist leader of the Vietnamese. After their defeat in 1954, the French granted independence to Laos and Cambodia, and Vietnam was temporarily divided in anticipation of elections in 1956 that would decide its fate. But the elections were never held, and the division of Vietnam under Communist and pro-Western regimes eventually led to the Second Vietnam War (see Chapter 29).
CHINA UNDER COMMUNISM At the end of World War II, two Chinese governments existed side by side. The Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, based in southern and central China, was supported by the Americans. The Communists, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, had built a strong base in North China. Their People's Liberation Army included nearly one million troops.When efforts to form a coalition government in 1946 failed, full-scale war between the Nationalists and the Communists broke out. In the countryside, millions of peasants were attracted to the Communists by promises of land, and many joined Mao's army. By 1948, the People's Liberation Army had surrounded Beijing. The following spring, the Communists crossed the Yangtze and occupied Shanghai. During the next few months, Chiang's government and 2 million of his followers fled to the island of Taiwan, off the coast of mainland China. On October 1, 1949, Mao mounted the rostrum of the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing and made a victory statement to the thousands gathered in the square before him. The Chinese people have stood up, he said, and no one will be able to humiliate us again.
The newly victorious Communist Party, under the leadership of its chairman, Mao, had a long-term goal of building a socialist society. In 1955, the Chinese government collectivized all private farmland and nationalized most industry and commerce. When the collective farms failed to increase food production, Mao began a more radical program, known as the Great Leap Forward, in 1958. Existing collective farms, normally the size of the traditional village, were combined into vast “people's communes,” each containing more than 30,000 people. Mao hoped this program would mobilize the people for a massive effort to speed up economic growth and reach the final stage of communism – the classless society – before the end of the twentieth century. But the Great Leap Forward was a disaster. Bad weather and peasant hatred of the new system combined to drive food production downward. Despite his failures, Mao was not yet ready to abandon his dream of a totally classless society, and in 1966 he launched China on a new forced march toward communism (see Chapter 29).
The process of decolonization also became embroiled in Cold War politics. As independent nations emerged in Asia and Africa, they of ten found themselves caught in the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. In Vietnam, for example, the division of the country in 1954 left the northern half under the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh supported by the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, South Vietnam was kept afloat by American financial and military aid. The Second Vietnam War resulted from the American perception that it needed to keep communism from expanding, while Ho Chi Minh saw the struggle between North and South as an attempt to overthrow Western colonial masters (the Americans had simply replaced the French) and achieve self-determination for the Vietnamese people.
Many new nations tried to stay neutral in the Cold War. Under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru (Juh-WAH-hur-lahl NAY-roo) (1889-1964), for example, India took a neutral stance in the Cold War and sought to provide leadership to all newly independent nations in Asia and Africa. India's neutrality put it at odds with the United States, which during the 1950s was trying to mobilize all nations against what it viewed as the menace of international communism.
Often, however, new nations found it difficult to remain nonaligned. In Indonesia, for example, which achieved its independence from the Dutch in 1949, President Sukarno (soo-KAHR-noh) (1901-1970), who was highly suspicious of the West, nationalized foreign-owned enterprises and sought economic aid from China and the Soviet Union while relying for domestic support on the Indonesian Communist Party. The army and conservative Muslims resented Sukarno's increasing reliance on the Communists, overthrew him in 1965, and established a military government under General Suharto (soo-HAHR-toh) (1921-2008), who quickly restored good relations with the West.