In the decades after 1945, the great colonial empires dissolved and dozens of new nations were born across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Stop 01 · 1900–1920
Empires at Their Zenith
In 1900 a handful of European powers ruled much of the globe. The British Empire was the largest in history: by 1913 it held sway over 412 million people, about 23 per cent of the world's population, and by 1920 it covered nearly a quarter of the Earth's land. In the Scramble for Africa, regulated by the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Britain had carved up almost the entire continent. In Asia, France ruled Indochina and the Netherlands the East Indies. Colonised societies had long resisted, but two world wars would fatally weaken the imperial powers and embolden movements for independence.
David Livingstone, early explorer of the interior of Africa and fighter against the slave tradeSee filename/description · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
In 1900 a handful of European powers ruled much of the globe. The British Empire was the largest in history: by 1913 it held sway over 412 million people, about 23 per cent of the world's population, and by 1920 it covered nearly a quarter of the Earth's land. In the Scramble for Africa, regulated by the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Britain had carved up almost the entire continent. In Asia, France ruled Indochina and the Netherlands the East Indies. Colonised societies had long resisted, but two world wars would fatally weaken the imperial powers and embolden movements for independence.
In 1947, after decades of struggle led by figures such as Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, Britain withdrew from its most populous colony. Gandhi's campaigns of non-violent civil disobedience culminated in the Quit India movement, launched in August 1942. At midnight on 14–15 August, British India was partitioned into two dominions, India and Pakistan, with Pakistan in two parts, West and East, separated by India. Punjab and Bengal were split according to Muslim and non-Muslim majorities in each district. Independence was joyous, but partition triggered mass migration and violence: between 12 and 20 million people were uprooted, and estimates of the dead range from 200,000 to two million.
In the Dutch East Indies, occupied by Japan during the war, nationalists moved fast. Two days after Japan's surrender, under pressure from radical youth groups, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta proclaimed Indonesian independence on 17 August 1945. British troops arrived first, and at Surabaya in November 1945 between 6,300 and 15,000 Indonesian fighters died in a battle that became a national symbol. The returning Dutch held the main towns of Java and Sumatra but never the countryside. On 19 December 1948 they seized Yogyakarta, the Republic's temporary capital, and exiled its leaders, yet guerrilla war went on. Under international pressure, including a US threat to cut off reconstruction aid, the Netherlands transferred sovereignty at the end of 1949.
From 18 to 24 April 1955 the Indonesian city of Bandung hosted the first large Asian–African Conference. Its 29 participating countries, most of them newly independent, represented about 1.5 billion people, 54 per cent of the world's population. Indonesia, Burma, India, Ceylon and Pakistan organised it, and Sukarno and Jawaharlal Nehru hoped to build a movement of new nations outside the Cold War blocs. China sent its premier, Zhou Enlai, and Egypt its leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. Delegates debated whether Soviet rule in Eastern Europe and Central Asia should be condemned alongside Western empires, and settled on condemning 'colonialism in all of its manifestations'. The meeting was a step towards the Non-Aligned Movement.
The Suez Crisis showed how far the old powers had fallen. On 26 July 1956, in a speech at Alexandria, Egypt's president Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company. Israel invaded Sinai on 29 October; after issuing a joint ultimatum, Britain and France attacked on 31 October, aiming to regain the canal and depose Nasser. Their troops overran Port Said, but Washington, Moscow and the UN all pushed hard, forcing a ceasefire on 6 November and then a withdrawal, policed by the first UN peacekeeping force. The canal stayed closed until March 1957. Nasser's standing soared, and Britain's prime minister Anthony Eden resigned on 9 January 1957.
The late 1950s and 1960s saw a wave of African independence. The Gold Coast, where Kwame Nkrumah's Convention People's Party had campaigned since 1949, became independent as Ghana on 6 March 1957, and dozens more followed. On 3 February 1960, in Cape Town, Britain's prime minister Harold Macmillan told South Africa's apartheid-era parliament that 'the wind of change is blowing through this continent'. In 1960 alone seventeen African nations became independent: fourteen from France, two from Britain, including Nigeria, the most populous, and the Congo from Belgium, whose prime minister Patrice Lumumba was deposed within months and later executed. Borders drawn by European mapmakers, however, would leave a difficult legacy for the new states.
Not all empires let go peacefully. France fought bitter wars in Indochina and Algeria. Ho Chi Minh had proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on 2 September 1945, and from December 1946 French forces fought his Viet Minh. At Dien Bien Phu, General Vo Nguyen Giap's troops hauled artillery onto the hills and overran the French garrison on 7 May 1954; the Geneva Accords then divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel. Vietnam's long struggle against colonial and then Cold War powers lasted until 1975. In Algeria, the FLN rising of 1 November 1954 began a war that brought down France's Fourth Republic and killed between 400,000 and 1.5 million Algerians before independence in 1962. Freedom came at enormous cost.
Portugal held on longest. Unlike other European states, the dictatorship founded by António de Oliveira Salazar would not withdraw from Africa, and from 1961 it fought independence movements in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. The 13-year war killed more than 8,800 Portuguese soldiers, tens of thousands of guerrillas and an estimated 70,000 to 110,000 civilians. On 25 April 1974 officers of the Armed Forces Movement overthrew the regime in Lisbon in a coup in which almost no shots were fired: the Carnation Revolution. Portuguese troops left Guinea-Bissau by the end of 1974, and Cape Verde, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and Angola became independent in 1975. More than a million Portuguese left Africa, and civil wars followed in Angola and Mozambique.
By the 1970s the age of overseas empires was effectively over. On 14 December 1960 the UN General Assembly had declared foreign rule a violation of human rights and affirmed every people's right to self-determination. In 1975 alone, Portugal's African colonies became independent, East Timor declared its independence, and the wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia ended. The United Nations, which began with 51 members in 1945, would grow past 190; it has 193 today, and its decolonisation committee still lists seventeen non-self-governing territories. The map of the world had been redrawn into a planet of nation-states, still grappling with the legacies of the imperial age.