Chronology of Independence: Liberia, 1847; Egypt, 1922; Ethiopa, 1941; Morocco, 1956; Libya, 1951; Sudan, 1956; Congo, 1960; Nigeria, 1960; Ivory Coast, 1960; Gabon, 1960; Cameroon, 1960; Senegal, 1960; Chad, 1960, Central Africa republic, 1960; Togo, 1960, Dahomey, 1960, Camerooon, 1960; Nigeria, 1960; Sierra Leona, 1961; Tanzania, 1961; Burundi, 1962; Kenya, 1963; Zambai, 1964; Botswana, 1965; Lesotho, 1966; Swaziland, 1968; Mozambique, 1975.

India, 1947; Pakistan, 1948; Burma, 1948; Sri Lanka, 194; N. vietanm 1954; S. Vietnam, 1954; Sumamtra, 1963; Brunei, 1984; Singapore, 1963; Java, 1949; East Timor, 1975; Papua New Guinea, 1975; Hong Kong, 1977; Macoa, 1999.

In 1939 one-third of the world’s population lived under imperial or colonial rule; today less than 0.1%.

Causes: nationalist or colonial; international or global; metropolitan or domestic.

National liberation v. decolonisation.

If the [erstwhile colonial] nations continued to dominate, it was no longer through various forms of political incorporation into their colonial empires but (in the absence of the coercive powers of the colonial state) by exercising commercial and financial hegemony over their former possessions, a relationship sometimes know as neocolonialism. [4]

Jomo Kenyatta support form Kikuyu squatters; Ahmed Sukarno support from Javanese peasants fearing compulsory exportation of crops.

FLN killed 8 Algerians for every French; Mau Mau killed 1,817 civilians and 500 security forces casualties.

Increasing productive power of colonies.

Nationalist political disturbances clearly had the capacity to promote colonial self-governemt to the top of the political agenda in various European capitals. Yet are they sufficient to explain the whole complex phenomonon of the breakup of European colonial authority or “decolonisation” without taking into account international and metropolitan pressures to transfer power?

Defeat of European colonial powers in South East Asia by Japanese in 1941-42.

1941 Charter Agreement: Roosevelt (d.1945) demands scrapping of the British Empire(spec. in India).

Creation of UN in San Franscisco in Oct. 1945 with stiffer terms of trusteeship than the League of Nations reflected a stronger bias in favouor of advancing former colonies to independence. [11]

Paradoxically, imperialism of decolonisation was allowed to recover with American support as part of domino theory (ie., to block Sino-Soviet expansion) while the British could rely o on ‘the American shield’.

After 1956 [Suez] Britain fell in with the American design for Western alliance with the ex-colonial powers with freer trade and free institutions. Such was the imperialism of decolonisation. (Louis and Robinson, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 22, No. 3, 1994).

Various areas of troublesome conflict in the 1970s and 1980s - the Middle East, Cyprus, southern Africa, Kashmir, Sri Lanka - were legacies of British decolonisation. “Britain was spared but the world still lives with the consequences, which are not borne by British society.” (Kahler, Decolonisation in Britain and France, 1984).

Unravelling; erosion of the ‘will to rule’.

Britain saved from bankruptcy by American Land-Lease borrowings and later the Marshall Plan.

Structural economic weakness also exposed Britain to pressure from America whose leaders, while not actively hostile to the survival of the British Empire, required conformity with American policy, notably in Palestine. [14]

De Gaulle returned to power in 1958 [5th Republic] in wake of suppression of OAS and confronted Britain from strength of EEC members, established by Treaty of Rome in 1957.

Colonies hustled into independence to release resources for domestic spending in Welfare State.

Expenditure on security in Malaysia and Kenya increasingly resented; also National Service.

Bismarck convened Conference in Berlin in Dec. 1884 to control ‘scramble for Africa’. Phillipines sold to America for $20,000,000; Cuba, Puerto Rico and Guam also acquired.

Empires were transnational organisation created to monopolise the resources of the world’ (G. A. Hopkins, ‘Back to the Future: From National History to Imperial History’, in Past and Present, 164, 1999.)

Kipling, ‘A Song of the English’: ‘Keep ye the Law - be swift in all obedience - / Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford … / By peace among our peoples / Let men know we serve the Lord!’

1,200 British colonial administrators ruled over 43 millian black Africans from Swaziland to Gambia - an area greater than India and Burma. 400 District Officers administered 20 million Nigerians. Sudan - the land of Blacks ruled by Blues [Oxford athletes]. Chad ruled by 20 European non-commissioned officers. Nigerian ration of 1: 54,000. Northern emirates cut British administration to the bone.

Ireland’s precarious journey from some kind of colonial relationship, to reluctant dominion status, to fully independent republic, provided a template on which other British subject peoples could model their own decolonisation. [25]

French ideal of ‘assimilation’ and eventual absorption of colonial subject to French culture and an enlarged Republic remained only an imperial ideal. Federation of 1846 was federal only in name. [25]

Abd el Krim from North Africa’s Rif inflicted defeats on Spanish in Morocco; 1926. Francisco Franco; Primo de Rivera.

Harry Thuku, a telephone operator in Nairobi (Kenya) fnd. East Africa Association, later Kikuyu Central Association, and deported to residence near coast.

British suppressed peasant rebellion in Burma led by Saya San, executed in 1937; French in Indochina executed 700 and imprisoned thousands of VNQDD; Dutch repression in Java and Sumatra in 1926-27; Sukarno exile to Flores till advent of Japanese, 1942; British suppressed Arab demonstrations against Jewish immigration, 1936-39; British suppressed Quit India riots in 1942 in Bihar.

Dominion status of Commonwealth countries inshrined in 1931 Statute of Westminster.

Fall of Singapore, Feb. 1942; ‘the time the white man ran’.

Sukarno: ‘is liberty and freedom only for certain favoured peoples of the world? Indonesians will never understand why it is, for instance, wrong for the Germans to rule Holland if it is right for the Dutch to rule Indonesia. In either caae the right to rule rests on pure force and not on the sanction of the populations.’

Nigeria: Decolonisation without rebellion. Ibos - Nnamdi Aziziwe (east) and Yoruba - Chief Obafemi Awolowo - (west) and Hausa-Fulani-Muslim (North). Liberal Governor Sir John Macpherson and Chief Sec. Hugh Foot opened higher education to Nigerians (UC, Ibadan, 1947.) General Conference utilised chiefs to restrain rise of populist nationalism, 1947. British sought Federal solution and gave independence in 1957 on condition that a proper federal system would be agreed. 200 large and small ‘primary’ nations. Bill of Rights to protect minorities in conjunction with parliamentary government. Transfer of power under Macmillan, 1 October 1960. Coalition of Northern Muslim NPC and Eastern NCNC (Azikiwe as president). 75% of Nigerian capital remained British. Yoruba resistance to new government; first Nigerian military coup, 1966; Ibo east seceded in May 1967; civil war, crushed in Jan. 1970.