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Term Paper on Colonialism & De-Colonialism
Term Paper Contents:
- Term Paper on the Introduction to Colonization & De-Colonization
- Term Paper on the Historical Evolution of Modern Colonialism
- Term Paper on the Attitudes toward Colonialism —Political and Economic Aspects
- Term Paper on the Decline of Colonial Rivalry
- Term Paper on the Decline of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires
- Term Paper on the Advance of the U.S. Frontier
- Term Paper on the Partition of Africa
- Term Paper on the Race for Colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa
- Term Paper on the Inter-War Period
- Term Paper on the World War II (1939-1945) and Path to De-Colonization
- Term Paper on British De-Colonization 1945-1956
- Term Paper on the Wars in Overseas France
- Term Paper on Algeria and French Decolonization
- Term Paper on Dutch, Belgian, and Portuguese De-Colonization
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Term Paper # 1. Introduction to Colonization & De-Colonization :
Colonialism is a political-economic phenomenon whereby various nations explored, conquered, settled, and exploited large areas of the world. The age of modern colonialism began about 1500, following the European discoveries of a sea route around Africa’s southern coast (1488) and of America (1492).
With these events sea power shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and to the emerging nation-states of Portugal, Spain, the Dutch Republic, France, and England. By discovery, conquest, and settlement, these nations expanded and colonized throughout the world, spreading European institutions and culture.
In the first post-war years there were some prospects that (except in the case of the Indian subcontinent) de-colonization might come gradually and on terms favourable to the continued world power positions of the western European colonial nations.
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After the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu (Vietnam) in 1954 and the abortive Anglo-French Suez expedition of 1956, however, de-colonization took on an irresistible momentum, so that by the mid-1970s only scattered vestiges of Europe’s colonial territories remained.
The reasons for this accelerated de-colonization were threefold:
I. First, the two postwar superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, preferred to exert their might by indirect means of penetration— ideological, economic, and military often supplanting previous colonial rulers; both the United States and the Soviet Union took up positions opposed to colonialism.
II. Second, the mass revolutionary movements of the colonial world fought colonial wars that were expensive and bloody.
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III. Third, the war-weary public of Western Europe eventually refused any further sacrifices to maintain overseas colonies.
In general, those colonies that offered neither concentrated resources nor strategic advantages and that harboured no European settlers won easy separation from their overlords. Armed struggle against colonialism centred in a few areas, which mark the real milestones in the history of postwar decolonization.
Term Paper # 2. Historical Evolution of Modern Colonialism:
Modern colonialism started with the 15th century voyages of the Portuguese along the west coast of Africa, which in 1498 brought Vasco da Gama to India. The Portuguese and Spaniards were the first to establish their dominions overseas and clung to them long after their imperialist drive had lost its forward thrust.
The Americas were wholly taken over as European domains, the Dutch and British began to stake out their claims in India and the Indies, and France had won and lost more than one empire by 1815. The first blows for anticolonialism were struck by the American Revolution and the subsequent liberation of most of Latin America.
Although Europe’s imperial expansion and growth in power continued during the first three- quarters of the 19th century, the circumstances of the times tended to discourage the extension of colonial holdings. Britain’s command of the seas and its industrial head start gave it a virtual monopoly of access to the world overseas, making unnecessary the kind of exclusive control that colonialism offered.
The abandonment of mercantilism and the swing to laissez-faire and free trade made colonies less attractive than they had been before. Bentham had pleaded that Britain and France should rid themselves of their dependencies; Turgot saw colonies falling from the tree like ripe fruit; and Disraeli, assuming the colonies would soon be independent, regarded them in 1852 as ‘millstones around our neck.’
China was opened to the penetration of the west but was not subjected to colonial rule. Only in India did the British more or less consistently expand their colonial sway, and France took over Algeria and made its first encroachments in Indochina. In Britain it was even seriously proposed, not long before the start of the scramble for Africa, that there should be a withdrawal from African holdings.
Colonialism is the establishment and maintenance, for an extended time, of rule over an alien people that is separate from and subordinate to the ruling power. It is no longer closely associated with the term ‘colonization,’ which involves the settlement abroad of people from a mother country, as in the case of the ancient Greek colonies or the Americas.
Colonialism has now come to be identified with rule over peoples of different race inhabiting lands separated by salt water from the imperial center; more particularly, it signifies direct political control by European states or states settled by Europeans, as the United States or Australia, over peoples of other races, notably over Asians and Africans.
To this category should be added Japan’s rule over her dependent territories, lost after World War II. Some further features of the ‘colonial situation’ are: domination of an alien minority, asserting racial and cultural superiority, over a materially inferior native majority; contact between a machine-oriented civilization with Christian origins, a powerful economy, and a rapid rhythm of life and a non- Christian civilization that lacks machines and is marked by a backward economy and a slow rhythm of life; and the imposition of the first civilization upon the second.
A very different climate of opinion and range of action prevailed in the last quarter of the century. The restraints on colonialism were swept away in the new imperialist flood that speedily completed the partition of the world between the imperial powers. Africa was almost totally divided into European dependencies.
In other areas as well, new colonies were carved out or old ones consolidated and extended, as in Southeast Asia, where the Dutch, French, and British greatly expanded the scope and intensity of their rule in the Indies, Indochina, Malaya, and Burma. Changing power relationships brought a re-division of territories in the Spanish-American War, in the Boer War, and after World War I with the transfer of German and Turkish holdings.
To assess the causes of the change in the last decades of the 19th century would involve the whole range of theories of imperialism, but certain elements particularly related to colonialism may be singled out. Such men as Jules Ferry, Joseph Chamberlain, and Cecil Rhodes justified the revival of colonialism in terms of the needs of the new industrial system and by the demands of a Darwinian struggle between nations and races.
The entry of France, Germany, and Italy, followed by Japan and the United States, into the imperial rivalry, not to mention Russia’s expansive mood, seemed to substantiate Lenin’s dictum that only colonial possession gave a complete guarantee against the risks of competitive struggle. The new wave of protectionism and governmental intervention at home restored validity to the assertion of direct political control overseas.
Such control seemed particularly justified in tropical Africa, where it was arguable that only the assumption of full responsibility by a Western government could establish the conditions under which modern enterprise could function. This position found powerful support in the prevalent theories holding that certain races, notably the Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon, had a peculiar genius for government.
Term Paper # 3. Attitudes toward Colonialism —Political and Economic Aspects:
Attitudes toward colonialism have varied greatly from time to time and from place to place. Most frequently, colonialism has been accepted as merely one manifestation of the ever-present truth that the strong dominate the weak. Although the missionary element has rarely been wholly absent, the usual presumption has been that every colony does or ought to exist for the benefit of the mother country.
The justifications of colonial rule cover a wide range, often resting upon the right of the conqueror, perhaps bolstered by a claim of racial superiority. Where the interests of the dependent peoples are taken into account, it is held that an extended period of guardianship is necessary to enable them to ‘stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.’ Here the mission civilisatrice and the ‘white man’s burden’ come into play.
Some French spokesmen for colonialism acclaim it as the universal instrument for the spread of civilization, pointing to themselves and many of their neighbors as products of Roman colonization.
The UN Charter looked to independence or self-government for all dependent peoples, tightened control over the trust territories surviving from the mandates system, and brought all non-self-governing territories into the international public domain.
The more radical approach denounces the imposition of alien rule as always evil under all circumstances. This starting point eliminates all controversy as to whether one colonial system or policy is better than another by blanket condemnation of all, leaving immediate independence as the only way out.
Building on the anticolonial resolution of the 1955 Bandung Conference, the UN General Assembly in its 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence gave this position international recognition.
The defense of colonialism is likely to adopt some variant of the criterion laid down by John Stuart Mill, who, in the case of peoples not yet ready for representative government, defended alien rule on the ground that the colonial mode of government was as legitimate as any other if it was the one which in the existing state of civilization of the subject people most facilitated their transition to a higher stage of improvement.
Lord Lugard (1922) introduced another element in proposing that the colonial powers were under a dual mandate obligating them to secure the advancement of their dependent territories and to develop them in the interest of the world at large. The assumptions on which such defences of colonialism rest have been increasingly subject to challenge in recent decades.
The more moderate present-day approach tentatively accepts colonial rule if the authorities devote themselves to preparing their wards for independence, but growing skepticism as to the trustworthiness of the colonial powers has led to the insistence that they accept international supervision in so doing.
This declaration denounced the alien subjugation of peoples as a denial of human rights and an impediment to peace, proclaimed the right of all peoples to self-determination without conditions or reservations, and repudiated the doctrine of tutelage by asserting that inadequacy of political, economic, social, or educational preparedness shall never serve as a pretext for delaying independence.
Asian and African opinion has constantly been moving toward this radical position, pillorying colonialism as the source of most of the world’s troubles and proclaiming that the higher law of anti-colonialism renders all remnants of the era of European colonialism illegitimate and open to attack.
The anti-colonialists project such doctrines into the future through the use of the concept of neocolonialism, which accuses the imperialists, among whom the Americans figure prominently, of regarding the independence that the colonial peoples have wrung from them as only the occasion to adopt more subtle tactics of domination and exploitation. Overt colonial rule is thus replaced by economic and other forms of control, including the provision of aid, and the nominally free countries are Balkanized and manipulated in the imperial interest.
The colonial and former colonial powers see what has been happening in recent decades in a very different light. They reject the charge of being oppressors and exploiters and point to their accomplishments in advancing their dependent peoples in every sphere, including the granting of independence to hundreds of millions since 1945. However, they differ greatly in the way in which they have envisaged their colonial mission.
Term Paper # 4. Decline of Colonial Rivalry:
An outstanding development in colonial and empire affairs during the period between the Napoleonic wars and the 1870s was an evident lessening in conflict between European powers. Not that conflict disappeared entirely, but the period as a whole was one of relative calm compared with either the almost continuous wars for colonial possessions in the 18th century or the revival of intense rivalries during the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Instead of wars among colonial powers during this period, there were wars against colonized peoples and their societies, incident either to initial conquest or to the extension of territorial possessions farther into the interior. Examples are Great Britain in India, Burma, South Africa (Kaffir wars), New Zealand (Maori wars); France in Algeria and Indochina; the low countries in Indonesia; Russia in Central Asia; and the United States against the North American Indians.
Contributing to the abatement of inter-colonial rivalries was the undisputable supremacy of the British navy during these years. The increased use of steamships in the 19th century helped reinforce this supremacy: Great Britain’s ample domestic coal supply and its numerous bases around the globe (already owned or newly obtained for this purpose) combined to make available needed coaling stations.
Over several decades of the 19th century and until new developments toward the end of the century opened up a new age of naval rivalry, no country was in a position to challenge Britain’s dominance of the seas. This may have temporarily weakened Britain’s acquisitive drive- the motive of preclusive occupation of foreign territory still occurred, but it was not as pressing as at other times.
On the whole, despite the relative tranquility and the rise of anticolonial sentiment in Britain, the era was marked by a notable wave of European expansionism. Thus, in 1800 Europe and its possessions, including former colonies, claimed title to about 55 per cent of the Earth’s land surface: Europe, North and South America, most of India, the Russian part of Asia, parts of the East Indies, and small sections along the coast of Africa. But much of this was merely claimed; effective control existed over a little less than 35 per cent, most of which consisted of Europe itself.
By 1878 that is, before the next major wave of European acquisitions began an additional 6,500,000 square miles (16,800,000 square kilometres) were claimed; during this period, control was consolidated over the new claims and over all the territory claimed in 1800. Hence, from 1800 to 1878, actual European rule (including former colonies in North and South America) increased from 35 to 67 per cent of the Earth’s land surface.
Term Paper # 5. Decline of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires:
During the early 19th century, however, there was a conspicuous exception to the trend of colonial growth, and that was the decline of the Portuguese and Spanish empires in the Western Hemisphere. The occasion for the de-colonization was provided by the Napoleonic wars.
The French occupation of the Iberian Peninsula in 1807, combined with the ensuing years of intense warfare until 1814 on that peninsula between the British and French and their respective allies, effectively isolated the colonies from their mother countries. During this isolation the long-smouldering discontents in the colonies erupted in influential nationalist movements, revolutions of independence, and civil wars.
The stricken mother countries could hardly interfere with events on the South American continent, nor did they have the resources, even after the peninsular war was over, to bring enough soldiers and armaments across the Atlantic to suppress the independence forces.
Great Britain could have intervened on behalf of Spain and Portugal, but it declined. British commerce with South America had blossomed during the Napoleonic wars. New vistas of potentially profitable opportunities opened up in those years, in contrast with proceeding decades when British penetration of Spanish colonial markets consisted largely of smuggling to get past Spain’s mercantile restrictions.
The British therefore now favoured independence for these colonies and had little interest in helping to re-impose colonial rule, with its accompanying limitations on British trade and investment.
Support for colonial independence by the British came in several ways- merchants and financiers provided loans and supplies needed by insurrectionary governments; the Royal Navy protected the shipment of those supplies and the returning specie; and the British government made it clear to other nations that it considered South American countries independent.
The British forthright position on independence, as well as the availability of the Royal Navy to support this policy, gave substance to the U.S. Monroe Doctrine (1823), which the United States had insufficient strength at that time to really enforce.
After some 15 years of uprisings and wars, Spain by 1825 no longer had any colonies in South America itself, retaining only the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico. During the same period Brazil achieved its independence from Portugal. The advantages to the British economy made possible by the consequent opening up of the Latin-American ports were eagerly pursued, facilitated by commercial treaties signed with these young nations.
The reluctance of France to recognize their new status delayed French penetration of their markets gave an advantage to the British. In one liberated area after another, brokers and commercial agents arrived from England to ferret out business opportunities.
Soon the continent was flooded with British goods, often competing with much weaker native industries. Actually, Latin America provided the largest single export market for British cotton textiles in the first half of the 19th century.
Despite the absence of formal empire, the British were able to attain economic preeminence in South America. Spanish and Portuguese colonialism had left a heritage of disunity and conflict within regions of new nations and between nations, along with conditions that led to unstable alliances of ruling elite groups.
While this combination of weaknesses militated against successful self-development, it was fertile ground for energetic foreign entrepreneurs, especially those who had technically advanced manufacturing capacities, capital resources, international money markets, insurance and shipping facilities, plus supportive foreign policies.
The early orgy of speculative loans and investments soon ended. But before long, British economic penetration entered into more lasting and self-perpetuating activities, such as promoting Latin-American exports, providing rail-road equipment, constructing public works, and supplying banking networks.
Thus, while the collapse of the Spanish and Portuguese empires led to the decline of colonialism in the Western Hemisphere, it also paved the way for a significant expansion of Britain’s informal empire of trade, investment, and finance during the 19th century.
Emigration of European Peoples:
European influence around the globe increased with each new wave of emigration from Europe. Tides of settlers brought with them the Old World culture and, often, useful agricultural and industrial skills.
An estimated 55,000,000 Europeans left their native lands in the 100 years after 1820, the product chiefly of two forces:
(1) The push to emigrate as a result of difficulties arising from economic dislocations at home and
(2) The pull of land, jobs, and recruitment activities of passenger shipping lines and agents of labour-hungry entrepreneurs in the new world.
Other factors were also clearly at work, such as the search for religious freedom, escape from tyrannical governments, avoidance of military conscription, and the desire for greater upward social and economic mobility. Such motives had existed throughout the centuries, however, and they are insufficient to explain the massive population movements that characterized the 19th century. Unemployment induced by rapid technological changes in agriculture and industry was an important incentive for English emigration in the mid-1800s.
The surge of German emigration at roughly the same time is largely attributable to an agricultural revolution in Germany, which nearly ruined many farmers on small holdings in southwestern Germany. Under English rule, the Irish were prevented from industrial development and were directed to an economy based on export of cereals grown on small holdings.
A potato blight, followed by famine and eviction of farm tenants by landlords, gave large numbers of Irish no alternative other than emigration or starvation. These three nationalities—English, German, and Irish—composed the largest group of migrants in the 1850s. In later years Italians and Slavs contributed substantially to the population spillover.
The emigrants spread throughout the world, but the bulk of the population transfer went to the Americas, Siberia, and Australasia. The population outflow, greatly facilitated by European supremacy outside Europe, helped ease the social pressures and probably abated the dangers of social upheaval in Europe itself.
Term Paper # 6. Advance of the U.S. Frontier:
The outward movement of European peoples in any substantial numbers naturally was tied in with conquest and, to a greater or lesser degree, with the displacement of indigenous populations. In the United States, where by far the largest number of European emigrants went, acquisition of space for development by white immigrants entailed activity on two fronts- competition with rival European nations and disposition of the Indians.
I. During a large part of the 19th century, the United States remained alert to the danger of encirclement by Europeans, but in addition the search for- more fertile land, pursuit of the fur trade, and desire for ports to serve commerce in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans nourished the drive to penetrate the American continent.
II. The most pressing points of tension with European nations were eliminated during the first half of the century: purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 gave the United States control over the heartland of the continent; settlement of the war of 1812 ended British claims south of the 49th parallel up to the Rocky Mountains; Spain’s cession of the Florida’s in 1819 rounded out the Atlantic coastal frontier; and Russia’s (1824) and Great Britain’s (1846) relinquishment of claims to the Oregon Territory gave the United States its window on the Pacific.
III. The expansion of the United States, however, was not confined to liquidating rival claims of overseas empires; it also involved taking territory from neighbouring Mexico. Settlers from the United States wrested Texas from Mexico (1836), and war against Mexico (1846-48) led to the U.S. annexation of the southwestern region between New Mexico and Utah to the Pacific Ocean.
IV. Diplomatic and military victories over the European nations and Mexico were but one precondition for the transcontinental expansion of the United States. In addition, the Indian tribes sooner or later had to be rooted out to clear the new territory. At times, treaties were arranged with Indian tribes, by which vast areas were opened up for white settlement.
V. But even where peaceful agreements had been reached, the persistent pressure of the search for land and commerce created recurrent wars with Indian tribes that were seeking to retain their homes and their land. Room for the new settlers was obtained by forced removal of natives to as yet non-white- settled land—a process that was repeated as white settlers occupied ever more territory.
Massacres during wars, susceptibility to infectious European diseases, and hardships endured during forced migrations all contributed to the decline in the Indian population and the weakening of its resistance. Nevertheless, Indian wars occupied the U.S. Army’s attention during most of the 19th century, ending with the eventual isolation of the surviving Indians on reservations set aside by the U.S. government.
Term Paper # 7. Partition of Africa:
By the turn of the 20th century, the map of Africa looked like a huge jigsaw puzzle, with most of the boundary lines having been drawn in a sort of game of give and take played in the foreign offices of the leading European powers.
The second feature of the new imperialism was also strongly evident. It was in Africa that Germany made its first major bid for membership in the club of colonial powers- between May 1884 and February 1885, Germany announced its claims to territory in South West Africa (now South West Africa/Namibia), Togoland, Cameroon, and part of the East African coast opposite Zanzibar. Two smaller nations, Belgium and Italy, also entered the ranks, and even Portugal and Spain once again became active in bidding for African territory.
The division of Africa, the last continent to be so carved up, was essentially a product of the new imperialism, vividly highlighting its essential features. In this respect, the timing and the pace of the scramble for Africa are especially noteworthy. Before 1880, colonial possessions in Africa were relatively few and limited to coastal areas, with large sections of the coastline and almost all the interior still independent.
By 1900, Africa was almost entirely divided into separate territories that were under the administration of European nations. The only exceptions were Liberia, generally regarded as being under the special protection of the United States; Morocco, conquered by France a few years later; Libya, later taken over by Italy; and Ethiopia.
The increasing number of participants in itself sped up the race for conquest. And with the heightened rivalry came more intense concern for preclusive occupation, increased attention to military arguments for additional buffer zones, and, in a period when free trade was giving way to protective tariffs and discriminatory practices in colonies as well as at home, a growing urgency for protected overseas markets.
Not only the wish but also the means were at hand for this carving up of the African pie. Repeating rifles, machine guns, and other advances in weaponry gave the small armies of the conquering nations the effective power to defeat the much larger armies of the peoples of Africa. Rapid railroad construction provided the means for military, political, and economic consolidation of continental interiors.
With the new steamships, settlers and materials could be moved to Africa with greater dispatch, and bulk shipments of raw materials and food from Africa, prohibitively costly for some products in the days of the sailing ship, became economically feasible and profitable.
Penetration of Islamic North Africa was complicated, on the one hand, by the struggle among European powers for control of the Mediterranean Sea and, on the other hand, by the suzerainty that the Ottoman Empire exercised to a greater or lesser extent over large sections of the region.
Developments in both respects contributed to the wave of partition toward the end of the 19th century. First, Ottoman power was perceptibly waning: the military balance had tipped decisively in favour of the European nations, and Turkey was becoming increasingly dependent on loans from European centres of capital (in the late 1870s Turkey needed half of its government income just to service its foreign debt). Second, the importance of domination of the Mediterranean increased significantly after the Suez Canal was opened in 1869.
France was the one European nation that had established a major beach-head in Islamic North Africa before the 1880s. At a time when Great Britain was too preoccupied to interfere, the French captured the fortress of Algiers in 1830. Frequent revolts kept the French Army busy in the Algerian interior for another 50 years before all Algeria was under full French rule.
While Tunisia and Egypt had been areas of great interest to European powers during the long period of France’s Algerian takeover, the penetration of these countries had been informal, confined to diplomatic and financial maneuvers. Italy, as well as France and England, had loaned large sums to the ruling beys of Tunisia to help loosen that country’s ties with Turkey.
The inability of the beys to service the foreign debt in the 1870s led to the installation of debt commissioners by the lenders. Tunisia’s revenues were pledged to pay the interest due on outstanding bonds; in fact, the debt charges had first call on the government’s income.
With this came increased pressure on the people for larger tax payments and a growing popular dissatisfaction with a government that had ‘sold out’ to foreigners. The weakness of the ruling group, intensified by the danger of popular revolt or a military coup, opened the door further for formal occupation by one of the interested foreign powers.
When Italy’s actions showed that it might be preparing for outright possession, France jumped the gun by invading Tunisia in 1881 and then completed its conquest by defeating the rebellions precipitated by this occupation.
The Europeans in North Africa:
The course of Egypt’s loss of sovereignty resembled somewhat the same process in Tunisia- easy credit extended by Europeans, bankruptcy, increasing control by foreign-debt commissioners, mulcting of the peasants to raise revenue for servicing .the debt, growing independence movements, and finally military conquest by a foreign power.
In Egypt, inter-imperialist rivalry, mainly between Great Britain and France, reached back to the early 19th century but was intensified under the circumstances of the new imperialism and the construction of the Suez Canal. By building the Suez Canal and financing Egypt’s ruling group, France had gained a prominent position in Egypt.
But Britain’s interests were perhaps even more pressing because the Suez Canal was a strategic link to its empire and its other Eastern trade and colonial interests. The successful nationalist revolt headed by the Egyptian army imminently threatened in the 1880s the interests of both powers. France, occupied with war in Tunisia and with internal political problems, did not participate in the military intervention to suppress the revolt.
Great Britain bombarded Alexandria in 1882, landed troops, and thus obtained control of Egypt. Unable to find a stable collaborationist government that would also pay Egypt’s debts and concerned with suppressing not only the rebellion but also a powerful anti-Egyptian Mahdist revolt in the Sudan, Britain completely took over the reins of government in Egypt.
The rest of North Africa was carved up in the early 20th century. France, maneuvering for possession of Morocco, which bordered on her Algerian colony, tried to obtain the acquiescence of the other powers by both secret and open treaties granting Italy a free hand in Libya, allotting to Spain a sphere of influence, and acknowledging Britain’s paramountcy in Egypt.
France had, however, overlooked Germany’s ambitions, now backed by an increasingly effective Army and Navy. The tension created by Germany led to an international conference at Algeciras (1906), which produced a short-lived compromise, including recognition of France’s paramount interest, Spanish participation in policing Morocco, and an open door for the country’s economic penetration by other nations.
But France’s vigorous pursuit of her claims, reinforced by the occupation of Casablanca and surrounding territory, precipitated critical confrontations, which reached their peak in 1911 when French troops were suppressing a Moroccan revolt and a German cruiser appeared before Agadir in a show of force.
Partition of N-Africa:
The resulting settlements completed the European partition of North Africa:
France obtained the lion’s share of Morocco; in return, Germany received a large part of the French Congo; Italy was given the green light for its war with Turkey over control of Tripoli, the first step in its eventual acquisition of Libya; and
Spain was enabled to extend its Rio de Oro protectorate to the southern frontier of Morocco. The more or less peaceful trade-offs by the occupying powers differed sharply from the long, bitter, and expensive wars they waged against the indigenous peoples and rulers of Islamic North Africa to solidify European rule.
Term Paper # 8. Race for Colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa:
The partition of Africa below the Sahara took place at two levels:
(1) On paper-in deals made among colonial powers who were seeking colonies partly for the sake of the colonies themselves and partly as pawns in the power play of European nations struggling for world dominance-and
(2) In the field-in battles of conquest against African states and tribes and in military confrontations among the rival powers themselves.
This process produced, over and above the ravages of colonialism, a wasp’s nest of problems that was to plague African nations long after they achieved independence. Boundary lines between colonies were often drawn arbitrarily, with little or no attention to ethnic unity, regional economic ties, tribal migratory patterns, or even natural boundaries.
Before the race for partition, only three European powers—France, Portugal, and Britain, had territory in tropical Africa, located mainly in West Africa. Only France had moved into the interior along the Senegal River.
The other French colonies or spheres of influence were located along the Ivory Coast and in Dahomey (now Benin) and Gabon. Portugal held on to some coastal points in Angola, Mozambique (Mocambique), and Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau).
While Great Britain had a virtual protectorate over Zanzibar in East Africa, its actual possessions were on the west coast in the Gambia, the Gold Coast, the Sierra Leone, all of them surrounded by African states that had enough organization and military strength to make the British hesitate about further expansion.
Meanwhile, the ground for eventual occupation of the interior of tropical Africa was being prepared by explorers, missionaries, and traders. But such penetration remained tenuous until the construction of rail-roads and the arrival of steamships on navigable waterways made it feasible for European merchants to dominate the trade of the interior and for European governments to consolidate conquests.
Once conditions were ripe for the introduction of rail-roads and steamships in West Africa, tensions between the English and French increased as each country tried to extend its sphere of influence. As customs duties, the prime source of colonial revenue could be evaded in uncontrolled ports, both powers began to stretch their coastal frontiers and overlapping claims and disputes soon arose.
The commercial penetration of the interior created additional rivalry and set off a chain reaction. The drive for exclusive control over interior areas intensified in response to both economic competition and the need for protection from African states resisting foreign intrusion. This drive for African possessions was intensified by the new entrants to the colonial race who felt menaced by the possibility of being completely locked out.
Perhaps the most important stimulants to the scramble for colonies south of the Sahara were the opening up of the Congo River basin by Belgium’s king Leopold II and Germany’s energetic annexationist activities on both the east and west coasts.
As the dash for territory began to accelerate, 15 nations convened in Berlin in 1884 for the West African Conference, which, however, merely set ground rules for the ensuing intensified scramble for colonies.
It also recognized the Congo Free State ruled by King Leopold, while insisting that the rivers in the Congo basin be open to free trade. From his base in the Congo, the king subsequently took over mineral- rich Katanga region, transferring both territories to Belgium in 1908.
In West Africa, Germany concentrated on consolidating its possessions of Togoland and Cameroon (Kamerun), while England and France pushed northward and eastward from their bases: England concentrated on the Niger region, the centre of its commercial activity, while France aimed at joining its possessions at Lake Chad within a grand design for an empire of contiguous territories from Algeria to the Congo.
Final boundaries were arrived at after the British had defeated, among others, the Ashanti, the Fanti Confederation, the Opobo kingdom, and the Fulani; and the French won wars against the Fon kingdom, the Tuareg, the Mandingo, and other resisting tribes.
The boundaries determined by conquest and agreement between the conquerors gave France the lion’s share: in addition to the extension of its former coastal possessions, France acquired French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa, while Britain carved out its Nigerian colony.
In southern Africa, the inter-colonial rivalries chiefly involved the British, the Portuguese and the South African Republic of the Transvaal, the British-backed Cape Colony, and the Germans. The acquisitive drive was enormously stimulated by dreams of wealth generated by the discovery of diamonds in Griqualand West and gold in Matabeleland.
Encouraged by these discoveries, Cecil Rhodes (heading the British South Africa Company) and other entrepreneurs, expected to find gold, copper and diamonds in the regions surrounding the Transvaal, among them Bechuanaland, Matabeleland, Mashonaland and Trans-Zambezia.
In the ensuing struggle, which involved the conquest of the Nbele and Shona peoples, Britain obtained control over Bechuanaland and, through the British South Africa Company, over the areas later designated as the Rhodesias and Nyasaland.
At the same time, Portugal moved inland to seize control over the colony of Mozambique. It was clearly the rivalries of stronger powers, especially the concern of Germany and France over the extension of British rule in southern Africa that enabled a weak Portugal to have its way in Angola and Mozambique.
The boundary lines in East Africa were arrived at largely in settlements between Britain and Germany, the two chief rivals in that region. Zanzibar and the future Tanganyika were divided in the Anglo-German treaty of 1890-Britain obtained the future Uganda and recognition of its paramount interest in Zanzibar and Pemba in exchange for ceding the strategic North Sea island of Heligoland (Helgoland) and noninterference in Germany’s acquisitions in Tanganyika, Rwanda, and Urundi. Britain began to build an East African rail-road to the coast, establishing the East African Protectorate (later Kenya) over the area where the rail-road was to be built.
The United States and the Soviet Union:
During World War I the United States purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark (1917), but it acquired no new colonies thereafter. In the 1920s the United States agreed to leave unfortified its possessions beyond Hawaii, in exchange for Japan’s accepting naval limitations.
The Philippines, by the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934, were to become independent on July 4, 1946. Until U.S. Japanese relations began to worsen, in 1939, U.S. possessions in the Pacific counted for little in world affairs.
I. On the other hand, the United States established or continued virtual protectorates in Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Panama during the Harding and Coolidge administrations (1921-1929), a trend reversed under Hoover and Roosevelt, particularly under the latter’s Good Neighbor Policy toward Latin America.
II. The new Soviet Russian regime succeeded, after years of civil and foreign war, in regaining the Asian possessions of its tsarist predecessor. The Caucasus was repossessed step by step between 1919 and 1921; after the mountain areas and Azerbaijan were brought back under Soviet control, Armenia was partitioned between Russia and Turkey. Then Georgia, an independent parliamentary republic, was overrun by the red Army.
III. Russian Turkistan was subdued by 1922, and the khanates of Khiva and Bukhara were suppressed. By 1922, Outer Mongolia was also solidly linked to the Soviet state. Nevertheless, the Russian revolutionary government was ideologically opposed to colonialism, especially where it had no colonial interests that it cared to defend.
IV. In general, the Soviet authorities hesitated during the interwar period between the alternatives of backing liberation movements of ‘national bourgeoisies’ and supporting peasant revolutionary parties.
V. In Central Asia the Soviet authorities followed a moderate line up to 1928, but with the advent of Stalin a new policy, consisting in purges of national leaders, increasing industrialization, and forced settlement of nomad populations, led to a great increase in the proportion of European settlers, mostly Russians and Ukrainians, to native Muslims.
During the 1930s the Kazaks declined sharply in absolute numbers as well as in ratio to the Europeans in their areas. Other Muslim nationalities, especially the Uzbeks, stemmed the Slavic tide of settlement only by virtue of their birth rates, which greatly exceeded those of the Russians and Ukrainians.
Rivalry in northeastern Africa between the French and British was based on domination of the upper end of the Nile. Italy had established itself at two ends of Ethiopia, in an area on the Red Sea that the Italians called Eritrea and in Italian Somaliland along the Indian Ocean. Italy’s inland thrust led to war with Ethiopia and defeat at the hands of the Ethiopians at Adwa in 1896. Ethiopia, surrounded by Italian and British armies, had turned to French advisers.
The unique victory by an African state over a European Army strengthened French influence in Ethiopia and enabled France to stage military expeditions from Ethiopia as well as from the Congo in order to establish footholds on the Upper Nile. The resulting race between British and French armies ended in a confrontation at Fashoda in 1898, with the British Army in the stronger position.
War was narrowly avoided in a settlement that completed the partition of the region: eastern Sudan was to be ruled jointly by Britain and Egypt, while France was to have the remaining Sudan from the Congo and Lake Chad to Darfur.
Germany’s entrance into southern Africa through occupation and conquest of South West Africa touched off an upsurge of British colonial activity in that area, notably the separation of Basutoland (Lesotho) as a crown colony from the Cape Colony and the annexation of Zululand. As a consequence of the South African (Boer) War (1899-1902) Britain obtained sovereignty over the Transvaal and the Afrikaner Orange Free State.
Term Paper # 9. Inter-War Period (1914-1939):
i. Redistribution of Colonies:
After World War I the Allied powers partitioned among themselves both the German overseas colonial holdings and the vast Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. They carried out this operation through the League of Nations, which awarded mandates under varying conditions.
Great Britain received as mandates Iraq and Palestine (which it promptly split into Transjordan and Palestine proper); the Palestine mandate obligated Britain to respect its contradictory wartime commitments to both Jews and Arabs. France assumed a mandate over both Syria and Lebanon.
In Africa the two powers divided Togo and Cameroon between them, Britain acquired Tanganyika (with a few thousand German settlers), Belgium took Rwanda-Urundi, and South Africa received German South West Africa. Italy, as compensation for not sharing in the award of mandates, obtained from Britain the Juba (Giuba) Valley on the Kenya-Somali frontier, and France eventually ceded to Italy a desert area that rounded out Libya’s southern frontiers.
The interwar years marked the apex of colonial empires throughout the world, and indirect forms of colonial penetration grew with the development of the petroleum industry. Nevertheless, most colonial systems began to show clear signs of strain and even revolt.
The Russian Revolution, the Nationalist and Communist successes in China during the 1920s and ’30s, the radical nationalism of Kemal Ataturk all contributed to the rise of political movements opposed to colonialism.
The very process of economic modernization, however—with the rise of factories, coordination with the world market, and mass urbanization did more than any political or cultural factor, taken in itself, to undermine the paternal-militaristic forms of direct colonial domination.
ii. The British Empire:
Britain tended toward a decentralized and empirical type of colonial administration, in which some degree of partial de-colonization could prepare the way for eventual self-rule. Realizing that direct rule over ancient civilized lands could not last indefinitely, Britain worked for a continued British presence in areas where the empire conferred self- government.
iii. Middle East:
At the outset of World War I, Britain had proclaimed a protectorate over Egypt, annulling Ottoman sovereignty; afterward, Egyptian nationalist leaders finally brought the British to recognize Egypt as an independent kingdom in 1922. In 1936-1937 Egypt received control over its own economic development, and British military forces were confined to the Suez Canal area.
Britain granted Iraq independence in 1932 but retained a military power base in the new kingdom. Both the world strategic balance and the British petroleum industry ruled out any possibility of a real British withdrawal from either of these Middle Eastern states.
In Palestine the political claims of Arabs and Jews proved to be irreconcilable, and insurrection, terrorism, and occasional guerrilla warfare marked the whole period of British rule.
Finally, in 1939, with war looming, the British decided to limit and eventually terminate the flow of Jewish refugees into Palestine, though not proposing to force the more than 500,000 Jewish inhabitants to live under an Arab national regime. Transjordan, detached from Palestine, became a British protectorate.
iv. Africa:
In British Africa de-colonization progressed more slowly, but London began to accept it as an ultimate outcome. In Kenya, for example, the British government refused to grant the 20,000 European settlers in the ‘white highlands’ any kind of direct political power over the mass of tribal blacks who constituted the colony’s overwhelming majority.
In British West Africa the passage from direct colonial government to self-rule by a black elite had started by 1939, there being no white settlers or Indian merchants (as there were in East Africa) to complicate matters. Only in the mining areas of Northern Rhodesia (the Copper belt) and in Southern Rhodesia, where white farmer settlers enjoyed self-government and caste privileges over a disenfranchised black majority, did de-colonization make no headway at all.
v. Overseas France:
France, in contrast to Britain, preferred centralized and assimilative methods in an effort to integrate its colonies into a greater Overseas France. It made no progress in colonial devolution and refused even to grant independence to Syria and Lebanon. In North Africa the French energetically implanted large agrarian capitalist enterprises as well as some industries connected with the area’s mineral wealth.
These modern production centres and infrastructures were directed and financed by metropolitan French business and were staffed and operated by a large, politically aggressive European settler population. The Muslim majority was subordinate both politically and economically; North African peasants struggled to subsist on the margins.
vi. India:
In India Britain faced a powerful adversary, the Congress, uniting businessmen and working classes, Hindus of high and low caste, in a common drive toward independence. The Congress never, however, succeeded in bridging the gap that separated the country’s Hindu and Sikh majority from its 90,000,000 Muslims.
The British met the Indian anticolonial movement half way. In 1919-23 a series of measures gave the Indians a certain degree of self-rule in a ‘diarchy’ in which elected Indian ministers governed together with British administrators.
These constitutional reforms, however, failed to bring the princely states into line with the new trend toward self-rule. Though Mahatma Gandhi denounced the new system as a ‘whited sepulcher,’ Congress in fact began to participate in the governmental process.
Under the constitution granted in 1935-1937, the British maintained separate voting rolls for the Muslim minority, in order to ensure its proportional representation; in 1939 relations between Britain and the Congress Party were tense, but India was clearly headed for independence in some form. In 1937 the British gave a separate constitution to Burma. Ceylon (renamed Sri Lanka in 1972) had been separate and self-governing from 1931.
Overt resistance was strongest in Morocco, where a rural Muslim rebellion endangered both the French and the Spanish protectorates. Abd el krim, a Berber Moroccan leader who combined tradition with modern nationalism, waged a brilliant five- year campaign till a combined French and Spanish force finally defeated him in 1926.
After 1934, resistance to France revived in Morocco, this time in the cities. In Tunisia resistance was centred in Habib Bourguiba’s constitutional party; in Algeria the urban Muslim middle classes merely asked for true civil rights and integration. The French Communist Party did not move to mobilize the peasant masses in an anticolonial struggle, and, in consequence, future rebellion in the Maghrib was to be Arab nationalist and not Marxist in its leadership and doctrines.
Matters were different in French Indochina, where the growth of a modern, French-directed agricultural economy had thrown masses of peasants into debt slavery. The circumstances favoured the formation of an independence movement much influenced by both the Chinese Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) and the Chinese Communist Party; the movement in the 1930s took the form of a Communist party under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh.
French sub-Saharan Africa attracted no European settler population. The French colonial authorities promoted a shift from subsistence to market economies, and their methods, including labour conscription for public works, led to protest and questions in the French parliament. The results, guaranteed by a protective tariff linking the colonies to France, were solid but unspectacular.
Term Paper # 10. World War II (1939-1945) and Path to De-Colonization:
Although the Axis powers failed in their global strategy, they crippled European colonial rule in Asia.
i. Middle East:
In the Middle East, Britain returned to forms of direct colonial control as Axis forces drew near, and in June-July 1941 it occupied Syria and Lebanon, under the guise of Free French administration. With Beirut and Damascus secured, the British supported Syrian and Lebanese independence from France; the two states were incorporated into the sterling area. Only U.S. and Soviet support guaranteed the independence of the two republics (1944) and their subsequent admission to the United Nations.
In Egypt, when Axis forces in 1941 and 1942 came within striking distance of Alexandria, both the king, Farouk, and groups of dissident army officers were ready to welcome them and turn against the British.
In February 1942 the British minister forced the king to appoint a government willing to cooperate with the Anglo-Americans; the defeat of the Germans in the Egyptian desert later that year put Egypt firmly in the Allied camp. Nevertheless much anti-British and anticolonial bitterness remained in Egypt, with postwar consequences.
ii. Asia:
Japan conquered its Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere and arrived at the gates of India, displacing British, Dutch, and French colonial rulers as well as the Americans in Guam and the Philippines.
The Japanese had to allow some margin of freedom to their satellite regimes in Burma and Indonesia in both of which preexisting local parties proved capable of creating sovereign states after the war. On August 17, 1945, Sukarno declared Indonesia independent. Indonesia had had a long history of Muslim, nationalist, and Communist agitation against the Dutch; with captured Japanese arms, Indonesia could resist re-imposition of Dutch authority.
In India the Congress Party, though totally unsympathetic to the Axis, tried to take advantage of Britain’s wartime extremity in order to secure immediate independence. The Muslim League supported the British administration during the war but demanded a sovereign Muslim homeland (Pakistan) as a postwar objective. By 1945 direct British rule in India was coming to an end, but the contest between Britain, the Congress Party, and the Muslim League clouded any final settlement.
At the outset of World War II Iran was pro- German, and in August 1941 the Soviet Union and Britain jointly occupied the country, which then became the main supply line connecting the Soviet Union with the Western Allies. In 1942, in a three- power treaty, both Britain and the Soviet Union promised to leave Iran six months after the end of the war.
Notwithstanding such commitments, the Soviet Union began to build spheres of influence in northern Iran; in 1944 the Soviet Union brought pressure to bear on Iran for an oil concession.
During the final years of World War II the United States became vitally interested in the Middle East because of United States petroleum ventures in Saudi Arabia and because of strategic considerations. By the end of the war it was clear to both the Soviet Union and Britain that the United States, as a world power, would support no imposition of direct colonial controls in the postwar Middle East.
iii. Africa:
During World War II Italy lost its entire colonial domain. Ethiopia was restored as an independent empire, and the other colonies eventually came under UN jurisdiction, in the first step toward de-colonization in the African continent.
Term Paper # 11. British De-Colonization 1945-1956:
General elections in India in 1946 strengthened the Muslim League. In subsequent negotiations, punctuated by mass violence, the Congress Party leaders finally accepted partition as preferable to civil war, and in 1947 the British evacuated the subcontinent, leaving India and a territorially divided Pakistan to contend with problems of communal strife.
Far more damaging to Britain’s world position as a great power was the end of the Palestine mandate. The British would have favoured an Arab state in Palestine, tied to the British system in the Middle East, with Jews as a permanent minority.
The Jewish national movement, however, succeeded in making this policy both costly and unpopular; in particular, the U.S. and Soviet governments began to see a Jewish state in Palestine as a necessary solution to the problem of Europe’s surviving Jewry. All Arab spokesmen expressed intransigent opposition to any two-nation solution.
Britain, isolated internationally, threw the problem into the lap of the United Nations; in November 1947 the General Assembly voted for partition. Britain exhausted both politically and financially, decided to leave by May 15, 1948.
The Jewish national movement’s military branch succeeded in defeating the Palestine Arab terrorist and guerrilla bands step by step, and after British evacuation, and the declaration of Israel’s independence, the Arab states in turn suffered a series of military defeats. The new Jewish state, recognized by the United States, the Soviet Union, and France, reached an uneasy armistice with the Arabs in 1949, and Britain’s position in the Middle East began to crumble.
The Arab chain reaction against Britain started in Egypt, where in July 1952 a group of army officers seized power. By the end of 1954, Gamal Abdel Nasser had induced Britain to accept total withdrawal by June 1956 and set to work to undermine Britain’s position in Iraq and Jordan. In June 1956 the British troops quit Suez on schedule.
At that point Britain’s Middle Eastern position, which depended on a chain of bases and friendly governments, was imperiled. Iran had moved close to the United States, warding off Soviet penetration and expropriating British oil holdings. Now Cyprus and the Persian Gulf oil ports remained the last outposts under British control in the Middle East.
Nasser’s next move was to cut the link between them. On July 26, 1956, he nationalized the Suez Canal Company, ending the last vestiges of European authority over that vital waterway and precipitating the most serious international crisis of the postwar era.
Term Paper # 12. Wars in Overseas France, 1945-1956:
The constitution of the French Fourth Republic provided for token decentralization of colonial rule, and cycles of revolt and repression marked French history for 15 years after the end of World War II. The first colonial war was in Indochina, where a power vacuum, caused by Japan’s removal after wartime occupation, gave a unique opportunity to the Communist Viet Minh.
When in 1946 the French Army tried to regain the colony, the Communists, proclaiming a republic, resorted to the political and military strategies of Mao Tse-tung to wear down and eventually defeat France.
All chances for maintaining a semi-colonial administration in Indochina ended when the Communists won the civil war in China (1949). Eventually, in 1954, when the French engaged the Communist Armies in a pitched battle at Dien Bien Phu, the Communists won with the help of new heavy guns supplied by the Chinese. The Fourth Republic left Indochina under the terms of the Geneva Accords (1954), which set up two independent regimes.
By 1954 French North Africa was beginning to stir; guerrilla warfare occurred in both Morocco (where the French had deposed and exiled Sultan Muammad V) and Tunisia. On November 1, 1954, Algerian rebels began a revolt against France in which for the first time urban Muslims and Muslim peasants joined forces.
The Sinai-Suez Campaign (1956):
On October 29, 1956, Israel’s Army attacked Egypt in the Sinai Peninsula, and within 48 hours the British and French were fighting Egypt for control of the Suez area. But the Western allies found Egyptian resistance more determined than they had anticipated.
Before they could turn their invasion into a real occupation, U.S. and Soviet pressure forced them to desist (November 7). The Suez campaign was thus a political disaster for the two colonial powers. The events of November 1956 showed the decline of European colonialism to be irreversible.
In March 1956 France accorded complete independence to Morocco and Tunisia, while the army concentrated on a ‘revolutionary’ counterinsurgent war in order to hold Algeria, where French rule had solid local support from about a million European settlers. The Muslim rebels depended on help from the Arab world, especially Egypt.
Hence the French took the initiative, in October 1956, in forming an alliance with Nasser’s principal adversaries, Britain and Israel, to reclaim the Suez Canal for the West and overthrow the pan-Arab regime in Cairo.
Term Paper # 13. Algeria and French Decolonization (From 1956):
Between 1956 and 1958 French army commanders in Algeria, politically radicalized, tried to promote a new Franco-Muslim society in preparation for Algeria’s total integration into France.
Hundreds of thousands of rural Muslims were resettled under French military control, Algiers was successfully cleared of all guerrilla cells, French investments in Saharan petroleum grew, and, in a dramatic climax, a coalition of European settlers, colonial troops, and armed forces commanders in May 1958 refused further obedience to the Fourth Republic.
Gaulle, first president of the Fifth Republic, thought that the effort of fighting colonial wars had prevented France from developing nuclear weapons and also came to realize that Algerian Muslims could not be converted to a French identity. He began to negotiate with the rebels; the negotiations culminated in a plebiscite, French evacuation, and proclamation of the independence of Muslim Algeria (July 1962). De Gaulle then proceeded to develop a nuclear striking force as the new foundation of France’s status as a great power.
The Fifth Republic moved rapidly toward freeing the colonies of sub-Saharan Africa, and France’s colonial realm became vestigial and insular.
British De-Colonization after 1956:
During the 15 years after the Suez disaster, Britain divested itself of most colonial holdings and abandoned most power positions in Africa and Asia. In 1958 the pro-British monarchy in Iraq fell; during the 1960s Cyprus and Malta became independent; and in 1971 Britain left the Persian Gulf. Of the imperial lifelines, only Gibraltar remains. After 1956 Britain moved rapidly to grant independence to its black African colonies.
One British colony, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), broke away unilaterally in 1965. In Malaya the British fought a successful counterinsurgent war against a predominantly Chinese guerrilla movement and then turned over sovereignty to a federal Malaysian government (1957). In 1971 the Royal Navy left Singapore (an independent state since 1965), thus ending British presence in the Far East except (until 1997) at Hong Kong and (until 1983) at Brunei.
Britain’s world position shrank, in effect, to membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Economic Community, with the postcolonial Commonwealth decreasing in importance.
Term Paper # 14. Dutch, Belgian, and Portuguese De-Colonization:
After World War II the Dutch tried to regain some of their lost control in Indonesia. The Sukarno regime held fast through three years of intermittent war, however, and the Dutch found no allies and no international support. In 1950 Indonesia became a centralized, independent republic.
The Belgian administration in the Congo had never trained even a small number of Africans much beyond the grade-school level. When Britain and France began to divest themselves of their colonies, Belgium was in no position to impose on the Congo a schedule of its own for gradual withdrawal.
The abrupt granting of independence to the Belgian Congo in the summer of 1960 led to a series of civil wars, with intervention by the UN, European business interests employing white mercenaries, and other outside forces. In 1965 Joseph Mobutu gained control over the central government and created an independent African state; called Zaire from 1971, it was renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1997.
Portugal in the 20th century the poorest and least developed of the western European powers, was the first nation (with Spain) to establish itself as a colonial power and the last to give up its colonial possessions.
In Portuguese Africa during the authoritarian regime of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, the settler population had grown to about 400,000. After 1961 pan-African pressures grew, and Portugal found itself mired in a series of colonial wars, while the development of mining in Angola and Mozambique revealed hitherto unknown economic assets. In 1974 the armed forces overthrew the successors to Salazar, and in the unstable political situation it became clear that Portugal would cut its colonial ties to Africa.
Portuguese Guinea (Guinea-Bissau) became independent in 1974. In June 1975 Mozambique achieved independence as a people’s republic; in July 1975 Sao Tome and Principe became an independent republic; and in November of the same year Angola, involved in a civil war between three rival liberation movements, also received sovereignty.
Conclusion:
Historians will long debate the heritage of economic development, mass bitterness, and cultural cleavage that colonialism has left to the world, but the political problems of decolonization are grave and immediate. The international community is laden with minute states unable to secure either sovereignty or solvency and with large states erected without a common ethnic base.
The world’s postcolonial areas often have been scenes of protracted and violent conflicts – ethnic, as in Nigeria’s Biafran war (1967- 1970); national-religious, as in the Arab-Israeli conflicts, the civil wars in Cyprus, and the clashes between India and Pakistan; or purely political, as in the confrontation between Communist and Nationalist regimes in the divided Korean Peninsula. The end of colonialism did not bring with it the spread of new, neatly divided nation-states throughout the world, nor did it abate or ease rivalry between the great powers.