Decolonization

A condensed, point-by-point summary of the module, for reviewing right before a test or exam.

1. Causes and Global Framework of Decolonization. World War II weakened the European empires and unleashed independence movements across Asia and Africa between the 1940s and the 1970s.
2. India and Pakistan: Independence and the Trauma of Partition. Britain granted India independence in August 1947, but partition into India and Pakistan unleashed catastrophic communal violence.
3. Southeast and East Asia: Independence Through Negotiation and War. Indonesia, Indochina, the Philippines, Burma, and Korea each followed a sharply different path out of colonial rule.
4. Bandung, Non-Alignment, and Asia's Later Decolonizations. The 1955 Bandung Conference forged Afro-Asian solidarity and inspired the Non-Aligned Movement, even as pockets of colonial rule in Asia persisted for decades.
5. Pan-Africanism, Ghana, and the "Year of Africa". Pan-Africanist thought fed a wave of African independence that began with Ghana in 1957 and crowned itself with seventeen new nations in 1960.
6. Africa's Wars of Independence: Algeria, Kenya, and the Congo. Where settler populations or mineral wealth were at stake, African independence came only after years of guerrilla war and political crisis.
7. The End of Portugal's Empire and Southern Africa's Settler Colonies. The 1974 Carnation Revolution ended Portugal's African empire, while white-minority Rhodesia and South Africa resisted majority rule far longer.
8. Colonial Borders, Neocolonialism, and the Legacy of Decolonization. Borders drawn by the colonial powers outlived their empires, fueling ethnic conflict, while economic dependency gave rise to the concept of neocolonialism.