Paths to Independence

Why after 1945

The timing is not accidental. Four conditions converged:

• European powers were economically exhausted by two wars and could no longer afford large colonial garrisons.
• Colonial subjects had been mobilised for those wars and had a strong claim on the powers they had fought for.
• The United Nations charter and human rights language gave independence movements a legitimate international vocabulary.
• The two superpowers were both, for their own reasons, hostile to European colonial empires.

Three paths

• Negotiated — India under the Indian National Congress and Gandhi's mass nonviolent organisation; Ghana under Nkrumah. Independence came through pressure, negotiation and the colonial power's calculation that holding on was not worth the cost.
• Armed struggle — Algeria against France, Vietnam against France then the United States. These occurred where there was a large settler population or a major strategic interest, so the colonial power would not simply calculate and leave.
• Rapid withdrawal — much of Africa around 1960, where exhausted powers left quickly, often with little preparation for succession.

Partition and its costs

Independence frequently came with partition: India and Pakistan in 1947, with mass violence and the displacement of millions; Palestine; Korea; Vietnam. Where the colonial state had governed diverse populations through a single administration, dividing it created new minorities on both sides of every new border.