630Chapter 31Three major patterns of decolonization emerged in
the 1940s: (1) the pattern set by the British in India
(granted independence in 1947) showed that Euro-
peans could end imperialism when convinced that they
must do so or pay a terrible price; (2) the pattern set by
the French in the Brazzaville Conference of 1944
showed that some governments would struggle to re-
tain empires; and (3) the pattern set by the people of
the Dutch East Indies (1945–49) showed that colonial
peoples could win their independence by force.
The British acceptance of decolonization began
with the election of the Attlee government in 1945.
Labour Party doctrine had included colonial indepen-
dence since a 1926 program denounced the empire as
“based on the absolute subjection of the native popula-
tion.” British economic weakness and war weariness
also made resistance unlikely. Gandhi’s continued cam-
paign of nonviolent resistance (Satyagraha), massive
demonstrations, and the astute political leadership of
Jawaharlal Nehru won Indian independence in 1947.
The most difficult issue facing the British was not
granting independence (they realized that they had lit-
tle choice), but the conditions of it: Conflicts between
the Moslem and Hindu populations of India led to its
partition into a largely Hindu India (with Nehru as its
first prime minister) and a largely Moslem Pakistan, a
bitter parting that led to violence in 1946–48 and to
India-Pakistan Wars in 1965, 1971, and 1984.
The French began the postwar era struggling to re-
tain their colonial empire, instead of withdrawing as the
British were obliged to do in India and Palestine. A
French effort to block decolonization started with the
doctrine of assimilation. Advocates of assimilation
believed that colonial peoples could be integrated
(assimilated) into a French-speaking, French-cultured
civilization in which both the metropolitan and the
overseas territories were principal parts. That philoso-
phy shaped both the Brazzaville Conference, where the
French promised “the material and moral development
of the natives” but not independence, and the colonial
provisions in the constitution of the Fourth Republic
(1946): France and her colonies formed an indissoluble
French Union. So the French fought independence.
While the British were granting independence to Burma
(1947), the French were resisting a proclamation of in-
dependence in neighboring Vietnam. During the next
generation, independent Burma produced a secretary-
general of the United Nations, U Thant, while Vietnam
fought nineteen years of war against France (1946–54)
and the United States (1965–75).
The Indonesian pattern of guerrilla warfare became
one of the predominant features of decolonization. Two
days after the surrender of Japan in 1945 Indonesian
leaders proclaimed a republic of Indonesia under the
presidency of Achmed Sukarno, who had led resistance
since 1927. When the Dutch refused independence,
they had to fight an Indonesian People’s Army until ac-
cepting independence four years later (see map 31.3).
Variations of this pattern were repeated in all European
empires. The French fought Ho Chi Minh’s Vietminh
forces in Vietnam until withdrawing after a shocking
defeat at Dienbienphu in 1954. The British fought the
Mau Mau movement of Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya from
1948 to 1957. The last country to accept decoloniza-
tion, Portugal, battled guerrilla warfare in Mozambique
until 1975.
Decolonization became intertwined with the cold
war. The Soviet Union realized that the peoples of
Africa and Asia were fighting their mutual enemies, so
Moscow supported movements of national liberation.
Some independence leaders were Communists, such as
Ho Chi Minh, one of the founders of the French Com-
munist Party. Some liberation movements hid an un-
comfortable alliance between Communist elements and
nationalists; this happened in the Dutch East Indies,
where the leadership was anti-Communist and later
conducted a bloody purge of Communists. The United
States and the European imperial powers often reacted
to decolonization as if it were only a theater of the cold
war where the policy of containment applied. This led
to further Western hostility to many independence
movements and was a major factor for American in-
volvement in Vietnam.
The turning point in decolonization came between
1957 and 1962. During those years both Britain and
France acknowledged the end of their empires, and
more than two dozen countries gained their indepen-
dence. France had lost the disastrous war in Vietnam in- Britain and France had suffered further embar-
rassment in the Suez War of 1956. In 1957 the British
West African colony of Gold Coast had become the in-
dependent state of Ghana under the leadership of
Kwame Nkrumah (see map 31.4). In 1958 he led the
first conference of independent African states in con-
demning Western colonialism and racism. Two years
later, the United Nations adopted a Declaration against
Colonialism stating that the ideals of the World War II
Allies, embodied in the UN Charter and the UN Dec-
laration of Human Rights, must apply to the peoples of
Africa and Asia, too (see document 31.4). The remain-