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The decolonisation and decline of the British Empire took place primarily in the post-World War II period.

Postwar context edit

Though Britain and the empire emerged victorious from the Second World War, the effects of the conflict were profound, both at home and abroad. Much of Europe, a continent that had dominated the world for several centuries, was in ruins, and host to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, who now held the balance of global power.[1] Britain was left essentially bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a $US 4.33 billion loan from the United States,[2] the last installment of which was repaid in 2006.[3]

At the same time, anti-colonial movements were on the rise in the colonies of European nations. The situation was complicated further by the increasing Cold War rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union. In principle, both nations were opposed to European colonialism. In practice, American anti-communism prevailed over anti-imperialism, and therefore the United States supported the continued existence of the British Empire to keep Communist expansion in check.[4] At first British politicians believed it would be possible to maintain Britain's role as a world power at the head of a re-imagined Commonwealth,[5] but by 1960 they were forced to recognise that there was an irresistible "wind of change" blowing. Their priorities changed to maintaining an extensive zone of British influence[6] and ensuring that stable, non-Communist governments were established in former colonies. In this context, while other European powers such as France and Portugal[7] waged costly and unsuccessful wars to keep their empires intact, Britain generally adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies. In reality, this was rarely peaceable or altruistic. Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people under British rule outside the UK itself fell from 700 million to 5 million, 3 million of whom were in Hong Kong.

Political developments edit

The emergence of Indigenous political parties was especially characteristic of the British Empire, which seemed less ruthless in controlling political dissent. Driven by pragmatic demands of budgets and manpower the British made deals with the local politicians. Across the empire, the general protocol was to convene a constitutional conference in London to discuss the transition to greater self-government and then independence, submit a report of the constitutional conference to parliament, if approved submit a bill to Parliament at Westminster to terminate the responsibility of the United Kingdom (with a copy of the new constitution annexed), and finally, if approved, issuance of an Order of Council fixing the exact date of independence.[8]

After World War I, several former German and Ottoman territories in the Middle East, Africa, and the Pacific were governed by the UK as League of Nations mandates. Some were administered directly by the UK, and others by British dominions – Nauru and the Territory of New Guinea by Australia, South West Africa by the Union of South Africa, and Western Samoa by New Zealand.

Egypt became independent in 1922, although the UK retained security prerogatives, control of the Suez Canal, and effective control of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The Balfour Declaration of 1926 declared the British Empire dominions as equals, and the 1931 Statute of Westminster established full legislative independence for them. The equal dominions were six– Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, the Irish Free State, New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa; Ireland had been brought into a union with Great Britain in 1801 creating The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922. However, some of the Dominions were already independent de facto, and even de jure and recognized as such by the international community. Thus, Canada was a founding member of the League of Nations in 1919 and served on the council from 1927 to 1930.[9] That country also negotiated on its own and signed bilateral and multilateral treaties and conventions from the early 1900s onward. Newfoundland ceded self-rule back to London in 1934. Iraq, a League of Nations mandate, became independent in 1932.

In response to a growing Indian independence movement, the UK made successive reforms to the British Raj, culminating in the Government of India Act (1935). These reforms included creating elected legislative councils in some of the Provinces of British India. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, India's independence movement leader, led a peaceful resistance to British rule. By becoming a symbol of both peace and opposition to British imperialism, many Indians began to view the British as the cause of India's problems leading to a newfound sense of nationalism among its population. With this new wave of Indian nationalism, Gandhi was eventually able to garner the support needed to push back the British and create an independent India in 1947.[10]

 
British Empire in 1952

Africa was only fully drawn into the colonial system at the end of the 19th century. In the north-east the continued independence of the Empire of Ethiopia remained a beacon of hope to pro-independence activists. However, with the anti-colonial wars of the 1900s (decade) barely over, new modernizing forms of African Nationalism began to gain strength in the early 20th-century with the emergence of Pan-Africanism, as advocated by the Jamaican journalist Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) whose widely distributed newspapers demanded swift abolition of European imperialism, as well as republicanism in Egypt. Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) who was inspired by the works of Garvey led Ghana to independence from colonial rule.

Independence for the colonies in Africa began with the independence of Sudan in 1956, and Ghana in 1957. All of the British colonies on mainland Africa became independent by 1966, although Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence in 1965 was not recognized by the UK or internationally.

Some of the British colonies in Asia were directly administered by British officials, while others were ruled by local monarchs as protectorates or in subsidiary alliance with the UK.

In 1947, British India was partitioned into the independent dominions of India and Pakistan. Hundreds of princely states, states ruled by monarchs in treaty of subsidiary alliance with Britain, were integrated into India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan fought several wars over the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. French India was integrated into India between 1950 and 1954, and India annexed Portuguese India in 1961, and the Kingdom of Sikkim merged with India by popular vote in 1975.

Initial disengagement edit

 
About 14.5 million people lost their homes as a result of the partition of India in 1947.

The pro-decolonisation Labour government, elected at the 1945 general election and led by Clement Attlee, moved quickly to tackle the most pressing issue facing the empire: Indian independence.[11] India's two major political parties—the Indian National Congress (led by Mahatma Gandhi) and the Muslim League (led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah)—had been campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed as to how it should be implemented. Congress favoured a unified secular Indian state, whereas the League, fearing domination by the Hindu majority, desired a separate Islamic state for Muslim-majority regions. Increasing civil unrest and the mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy during 1946 led Attlee to promise independence no later than 30 June 1948. When the urgency of the situation and risk of civil war became apparent, the newly appointed (and last) Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, hastily brought forward the date to 15 August 1947.[12] The borders drawn by the British to broadly partition India into Hindu and Muslim areas left tens of millions as minorities in the newly independent states of India and Pakistan.[13] Millions of Muslims crossed from India to Pakistan and Hindus vice versa, and violence between the two communities cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burma, which had been administered as part of the British Raj, and Sri Lanka gained their independence the following year in 1948. India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka became members of the Commonwealth, while Burma chose not to join.[14]

The British Mandate in Palestine, where an Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority, presented the British with a similar problem to that of India.[15] The matter was complicated by large numbers of Jewish refugees seeking to be admitted to Palestine following the Holocaust, while Arabs were opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. Frustrated by the intractability of the problem, attacks by Jewish paramilitary organisations and the increasing cost of maintaining its military presence, Britain announced in 1947 that it would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter to the United Nations to solve.[16] The UN General Assembly subsequently voted for a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. It was immediately followed by the outbreak of a civil war between the Arabs and Jews of Palestine, and British forces withdrew amid the fighting. The British Mandate for Palestine officially terminated at midnight on 15 May 1948 as the State of Israel declared independence and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War broke out, during which the territory of the former Mandate was partitioned between Israel and the surrounding Arab states. Amid the fighting, British forces continued to withdraw from Israel, with the last British troops departing from Haifa on 30 June 1948.[17]

Following the surrender of Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese resistance movements in Malaya turned their attention towards the British, who had moved to quickly retake control of the colony, valuing it as a source of rubber and tin.[18] The fact that the guerrillas were primarily Malayan-Chinese Communists meant that the British attempt to quell the uprising was supported by the Muslim Malay majority, on the understanding that once the insurgency had been quelled, independence would be granted.[18] The Malayan Emergency, as it was called, began in 1948 and lasted until 1960, but by 1957, Britain felt confident enough to grant independence to the Federation of Malaya within the Commonwealth. In 1963, the 11 states of the federation together with Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo joined to form Malaysia, but in 1965 Chinese-majority Singapore was expelled from the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations and became an independent city-state.[19] Brunei, which had been a British protectorate since 1888, declined to join the union.

Suez and its aftermath edit

Main article: Suez Crisis
 
Eden's decision to invade Egypt in 1956 revealed Britain's post-war weaknesses.

In 1951, the Conservative Party returned to power in Britain, under the leadership of Winston Churchill. Churchill and the Conservatives believed that Britain's position as a world power relied on the continued existence of the empire, with the base at the Suez Canal allowing Britain to maintain its pre-eminent position in the Middle East in spite of the loss of India. Churchill could not ignore Gamal Abdul Nasser's new revolutionary government of Egypt that had taken power in 1952, and the following year it was agreed that British troops would withdraw from the Suez Canal zone and that Sudan would be granted self-determination by 1955, with independence to follow.[20] Sudan was granted independence on 1 January 1956.[21]

In July 1956, Nasser unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal. The response of Anthony Eden, who had succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister, was to collude with France to engineer an Israeli attack on Egypt that would give Britain and France an excuse to intervene militarily and retake the canal.[22] Eden infuriated US President Dwight D. Eisenhower by his lack of consultation, and Eisenhower refused to back the invasion.[23] Another of Eisenhower's concerns was the possibility of a wider war with the Soviet Union after it threatened to intervene on the Egyptian side. Eisenhower applied financial leverage by threatening to sell US reserves of the British pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of the British currency.[24] Though the invasion force was militarily successful in its objectives,[25] UN intervention and US pressure forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal of its forces, and Eden resigned.[26][27]

The Suez Crisis very publicly exposed Britain's limitations to the world and confirmed Britain's decline on the world stage and its end as a first-rate power,[28][29] demonstrating that henceforth it could no longer act without at least the acquiescence, if not the full support, of the United States.[30][31][32] The events at Suez wounded British national pride, leading one Member of Parliament (MP) to describe it as "Britain's Waterloo"[33] and another to suggest that the country had become an "American satellite".[34] Margaret Thatcher later described the mindset she believed had befallen Britain's political leaders after Suez where they "went from believing that Britain could do anything to an almost neurotic belief that Britain could do nothing", from which Britain did not recover until the successful recapture of the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982.[35]

While the Suez Crisis caused British power in the Middle East to weaken, it did not collapse.[36] Britain again deployed its armed forces to the region, intervening in Oman (1957), Jordan (1958) and Kuwait (1961), though on these occasions with American approval,[37] as the new Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's foreign policy was to remain firmly aligned with the United States.[33] Although Britain granted Kuwait independence in 1961, it continued to maintain a military presence in the Middle East for another decade. On 16 January 1968, a few weeks after the devaluation of the pound, Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Defence Secretary Denis Healey announced that British troops would be withdrawn from major military bases East of Suez, which included the ones in the Middle East, and primarily from Malaysia and Singapore by the end of 1971, instead of 1975 as earlier planned.[38] By that time over 50,000 British military personnel were still stationed in the Far East, including 30,000 in Singapore.[39] The British granted independence to the Maldives in 1965 but continued to station a garrison there until 1976, withdrew from Aden in 1967, and granted independence to Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates in 1971.

Wind of change edit

Main article: Decolonisation of Africa
Further information: Wind of Change (speech)
 
British decolonisation in Africa. By the end of the 1960s, all but Rhodesia (the future Zimbabwe) and the South African mandate of South West Africa (Namibia) had achieved recognised independence.

Macmillan gave a speech in Cape Town, South Africa in February 1960 where he spoke of "the wind of change blowing through this continent".[40] Macmillan wished to avoid the same kind of colonial war that France was fighting in Algeria, and under his premiership decolonisation proceeded rapidly.[41] To the three colonies that had been granted independence in the 1950s—Sudan, the Gold Coast and Malaya—were added nearly ten times that number during the 1960s.[42]

Britain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for self-governing Southern Rhodesia, were all granted independence by 1968. British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was not a peaceful process. Kenyan independence was preceded by the eight-year Mau Mau uprising, in which tens of thousands of suspected rebels were interned by the colonial government in detention camps.[43] In Rhodesia, the 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the white minority resulted in a civil war that lasted until the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, which set the terms for recognised independence in 1980, as the new nation of Zimbabwe.[44]

In Cyprus, a guerrilla war waged by the Greek Cypriot organisation EOKA against British rule, was ended in 1959 by the London and Zürich Agreements, which resulted in Cyprus being granted independence in 1960. The UK retained the military bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia as sovereign base areas. The Mediterranean colony of Malta was amicably granted independence from the UK in 1964 and became the country of Malta, though the idea had been raised in 1955 of integration with Britain.[45]

Most of the UK's Caribbean territories achieved independence after the departure in 1961 and 1962 of Jamaica and Trinidad from the West Indies Federation, established in 1958 in an attempt to unite the British Caribbean colonies under one government, but which collapsed following the loss of its two largest members.[46] Jamaica attained independence in 1962, as did Trinidad and Tobago. Barbados achieved independence in 1966 and the remainder of the eastern Caribbean islands, including the Bahamas, in the 1970s and 1980s,[46] but Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to independence.[47] The British Virgin Islands,[48] The Cayman Islands and Montserrat opted to retain ties with Britain,[49] while Guyana achieved independence in 1966. Britain's last colony on the American mainland, British Honduras, became a self-governing colony in 1964 and was renamed Belize in 1973, achieving full independence in 1981. A dispute with Guatemala over claims to Belize was left unresolved.[50]

British territories in the Pacific acquired independence in the 1970s beginning with Fiji in 1970 and ending with Vanuatu in 1980. Vanuatu's independence was delayed because of political conflict between English and French-speaking communities, as the islands had been jointly administered as a condominium with France.[51] Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu became Commonwealth realms.

End of empire edit

See also: Falklands War and Transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong

By 1981, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts, the process of decolonisation that had begun after the Second World War was largely complete. In 1982, Britain's resolve in defending its remaining overseas territories was tested when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire.[52] Britain's successful military response to retake the islands during the ensuing Falklands War contributed to reversing the downward trend in Britain's status as a world power.[53]

The 1980s saw Canada, Australia, and New Zealand sever their final constitutional links with Britain. Although granted legislative independence by the Statute of Westminster 1931, vestigial constitutional links had remained in place. The British Parliament retained the power to amend key Canadian constitutional statutes, meaning that effectively an act of the British Parliament was required to make certain changes to the Canadian Constitution.[54] The British Parliament had the power to pass laws extending to Canada at Canadian request. Although no longer able to pass any laws that would apply as Australian Commonwealth law, the British Parliament retained the power to legislate for the individual Australian states. With regard to New Zealand, the British Parliament retained the power to pass legislation applying to New Zealand with the New Zealand Parliament's consent. In 1982, the last legal link between Canada and Britain was severed by the Canada Act 1982, which was passed by the British parliament, formally patriating the Canadian Constitution. The act ended the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian constitution.[55] Similarly, the Australia Act 1986 (effective 3 March 1986) severed the constitutional link between Britain and the Australian states, while New Zealand's Constitution Act 1986 (effective 1 January 1987) reformed the constitution of New Zealand to sever its constitutional link with Britain.[56]

On 1 January 1984, Brunei, Britain's last remaining Asian protectorate, was granted independence.[57] Independence had been delayed due to the opposition of the Sultan, who had preferred British protection.[58]

In September 1982 the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, travelled to Beijing to negotiate with the Chinese Communist government, on the future of Britain's last major and most populous overseas territory, Hong Kong.[59] Under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking and 1860 Convention of Peking, Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula had been respectively ceded to Britain in perpetuity, but the majority of the colony consisted of the New Territories, which had been acquired under a 99-year lease in 1898, due to expire in 1997.[60][61] Thatcher, seeing parallels with the Falkland Islands, initially wished to hold Hong Kong and proposed British administration with Chinese sovereignty, though this was rejected by China.[62] A deal was reached in 1984—under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, Hong Kong would become a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China, maintaining its way of life for at least 50 years.[63] The handover ceremony in 1997 marked for many,[64] including Charles, Prince of Wales, who was in attendance, "the end of Empire".

Violence, civil warfare and partition edit

 
Surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781

Significant violence was involved in several prominent cases of decolonization of the British Empire; partition was a frequent solution. In 1783, the North American colonies were divided between the independent United States, and British North America, which later became Canada.

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a revolt of a portion of the Indian Army. It was characterized by massacres of civilians on both sides. It was not a movement for independence, however, and only a small part of India was involved. In the aftermath, the British pulled back from modernizing reforms of Indian society, and the level of organised violence under the British Raj was relatively small. Most of that was initiated by repressive British administrators, as in the Amritsar massacre of 1919, or the police assaults on the Salt March of 1930.[65] Large-scale communal violence broke out between Muslims and Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs after the British left in 1947 in the newly independent dominions of India and Pakistan. Much later, in 1970, further communal violence broke out within Pakistan in the detached eastern part of East Bengal, which became independent as Bangladesh in 1971.

Cyprus, which came under full British control in 1914 from the Ottoman Empire, was culturally divided between the majority Greek element (which demanded "enosis" or union with Greece) and the minority Turks. London for decades assumed it needed the island to defend the Suez Canal; but after the Suez crisis of 1956, that became a minor factor, and Greek violence became a more serious issue. Cyprus became an independent country in 1960, but ethnic violence escalated until 1974 when Turkey invaded and partitioned the island. Each side rewrote its own history, blaming the other.[66]

Palestine became a British mandate from the League of Nations, and during the war the British gained support from both sides by making promises both to the Arabs and the Jews. (See Balfour Declaration). Decades of ethno—religious violence resulted. The British pulled out, after dividing the Mandate into Palestine and Jordan.

References edit

  1. ^ Abernethy, p. 146.
  2. ^ Brown, p. 331.
  3. ^ "What's a little debt between friends?". BBC News. 10 May 2006. Archived from the original on 10 June 2010. Retrieved 20 November 2008.
  4. ^ Levine, p. 193.
  5. ^ Darwin, p. 343.
  6. ^ Darwin, p. 366.
  7. ^ Abernethy, p. 148.
  8. ^ J.H.W. Verzijl. 1969. International Law in Historical Perspective, Volume II. Leyden: A.W. Sijthoff. Pp. 76–68.
  9. ^ The Canadian Encyclopedia – League of Nations
  10. ^ Hunt, Lynn, Thomas R. Martin, Barbara H. Rosenwein, R. Po-chia Hsia, and Bonnie G. Smith. The Making of the West Peoples and Cultures. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008.
  11. ^ Lloyd, p. 322.
  12. ^ Smith, p. 67.
  13. ^ Lloyd, p. 325.
  14. ^ McIntyre, pp. 355–356.
  15. ^ Lloyd, p. 327.
  16. ^ Lloyd, p. 328.
  17. ^ "The British Army in Palestine". National Army Museum. Archived from the original on 29 June 2019. Retrieved 25 June 2019.
  18. ^ a b Lloyd, p. 335.
  19. ^ Lloyd, p. 364.
  20. ^ Brown, pp. 339–40.
  21. ^ James, p. 572.
  22. ^ James, p. 581.
  23. ^ Ferguson 2004b, p. 355.
  24. ^ Ferguson 2004b, p. 356.
  25. ^ James, p. 583.
  26. ^ Combs, pp. 161–63.
  27. ^ "Suez Crisis: Key players". BBC News. 21 July 2006. Archived from the original on 4 February 2012. Retrieved 19 October 2010.
  28. ^ Brown, Derek (14 March 2001). "1956: Suez and the end of empire". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 19 December 2018. Retrieved 19 December 2018.
  29. ^ Reynolds, Paul (24 July 2006). "Suez: End of empire". BBC News. Archived from the original on 30 August 2017. Retrieved 19 December 2018.
  30. ^ Brown, p. 342.
  31. ^ Smith, p. 105.
  32. ^ Burk, p. 602.
  33. ^ a b Brown, p. 343.
  34. ^ James, p. 585.
  35. ^ "An affair to remember". The Economist. 27 July 2006. ISSN 0013-0613. Archived from the original on 8 May 2016. Retrieved 25 June 2016.
  36. ^ Smith, p. 106.
  37. ^ James, p. 586.
  38. ^ Pham 2010
  39. ^ Gurtov, p. 42.
  40. ^ James, p. 616.
  41. ^ Louis, p. 46.
  42. ^ Lloyd, pp. 427–33.
  43. ^ Zane, Damian (27 August 2019). "The Kenyan school where the UK held Mau Mau rebels". Archived from the original on 3 December 2019. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  44. ^ James, pp. 618–21.
  45. ^ Springhall, pp. 100–02.
  46. ^ a b Knight & Palmer, pp. 14–15.
  47. ^ Clegg, p. 128.
  48. ^ Lloyd, p. 428.
  49. ^ James, p. 622.
  50. ^ Lloyd, pp. 401, 427–29.
  51. ^ Macdonald, pp. 171–91.
  52. ^ James, pp. 624–25.
  53. ^ James, p. 629.
  54. ^ Gérin-Lajoie
  55. ^ Brown, p. 594.
  56. ^ Brown, p. 689.
  57. ^ Trumbull, Robert (1 January 1984). "Borneo Sultanate Now Independent". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 15 July 2020. Retrieved 15 July 2020.
  58. ^ Brown, p. 202.
  59. ^ Brendon, p. 654.
  60. ^ Joseph, p. 355.
  61. ^ Rothermund, p. 100.
  62. ^ Brendon, pp. 654–55.
  63. ^ Brendon, p. 656.
  64. ^ Brendon, p. 660.
  65. ^ On the nonviolent methodology see Masselos, Jim (1985). "Audiences, actors and congress dramas: Crowd events in Bombay city in 1930". South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. 8 (1–2): 71–86. doi:10.1080/00856408508723067.
  66. ^ Papadakis, Yiannis (2008). "Narrative, Memory and History Education in Divided Cyprus: A Comparison of Schoolbooks on the "History of Cyprus"". History and Memory. 20 (2): 128–148. doi:10.2979/his.2008.20.2.128. JSTOR 10.2979/his.2008.20.2.128. S2CID 159912409.

Works cited edit

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