MOST OF HISTORY: THE FIRST HUMANS

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ERA 8 Western Europe and Decolonization
Day 3, Session 5A Craig Benjamin
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PART ONE INTRODUCTION
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Colonial Powers

• In 1945 Western Europe still the home
• base of the worlds colonial empires
• Apart from the USA and USSR (both
  non-traditional imperialists)
• all of the worlds imperial powers were in
  Western Europe
• Germany stripped of her overseas colonies in
  1919 Italy in 1946
• But British, Dutch, French, Belgian and
  Portuguese empires were still largely intact
• Dissolution of these empires in the early
  post-war decades a fundamental element in the
  changing European scene
• Decolonization a necessary precondition for the
  emergence of a new European Community of equal
  democratic partners

www.fresno.k12.ca.us
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Decolonization

• During and immediately after the Second World War
  many European imperialists had hoped they would
  be able to keep or reform their empires
• As Churchill put it I have not become His
  Majestys First Minister in order to preside over
  the liquidation of the British Empire
• But in the end, that is exactly what he did

www.loc.gov/exhibits/ churchill
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PART TWO PROCESS OF DECOLONIZATION
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Practical Reasons for Decolonization
For many reasons, by 1945 maintenance of Europes
empires had become impossible. Elites of colonial
peoples (many of them educated in Europe) had
learned the nationalism and democracy of their
masters and were demanding independence. Links
between the home countries and the colonies
weakened during the war. And as a result of the
war, there were no longer the resources available
to restore them by force.
sun3.lib.uci.edu
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Moral Reasons
www.irak.pl

• No longer the will to perpetuate the rule of one
  race over another
• USA (upon whom Western Europe now depended) was
  absolutely opposed to old-style imperialism, and
  so was the United Nations
• Imperialism no longer viable or respected, and
  the only question was whether the imperialists
  would bend to the winds of change, or try to
  stand against it

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Soviet Imperialism
www.planum.net/news

• Nothing better demonstrates gulf between Eastern
  and Western Europe at this time than their
  attitudes to imperialism
• At the very time the Soviet Union was extending
  and consolidating its empire over the peoples of
  Eastern Europe, the governments of Western Europe
  were trying to dismantle theirs
• These twin aspects of European imperialism rarely
  discussed under the same heading

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Complexities of Decolonization

• Process of decolonization immensely complex, and
  many of the complications derived from conditions
  beyond Europe
• Each empire possessed its own ethos and specific
  circumstances
• Each possessed a variety of territories ranging
  from self-governing dominions to colonies and
  trusteeships
• Each power also wielded very different degrees of
  military force
• Except for Britain and Portugal, all the imperial
  powers had been defeated and occupied during the
  war, and started from a position of weakness

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The British Empire

• British Empire was the largest colonial empire
  ever created The Empire on which the Sun Never
  Set
• Occupied an area 125 times larger than Great
  Britain itself
• Process of decolonization remarkable because of
  the centrality of empire to Britain
• Despite this centrality,
• Britain made no serious
• attempts to retain its
• possessions once the local
• demand for independence
• became well established
• An empire that was assembled
• over several centuries through
• tough military conquest was
• dispersed in roughly
• quarter of a century

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xenohistorian.faithweb.com/ worldhis
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British Empire in 1945

• By 1945 British Empire was already in a great
  state of transformation
• All of the white dominions (Australia, Canada,
  New Zealand and South Africa) had been
  independent since 1931
• Many other crown possessions were being prepared
  for self-rule or native administration
• Of 250,000 employees
• in the British Colonial
• Office in 1945 only
• 66,000 were from Britain

www.abc.net.au/sport
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Indian Independence

• Test-case was India, nation of 400 million
  people, where Mahatma Gandhis campaign of
  non-violent resistance had attracted world-wide
  attention before the war
• Various attempts made by Britain in the inter-war
  years to come up with an effective compromise
  solution, but to no avail
• Eventually it was the post-war Labour Government
  that made the decision to grant India
  unconditional independence
• On 15 August 1947 the last British Vicerory
  (wartime hero Viscount Mountbatten) saw the
  British flag lowered for the final time

www.kaliman.com.mx
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The Subcontinent Violently Fractures

• As soon as independence was granted, vast
  subcontinental territory began to fracture along
  religious lines
• Only solution seemed to be partition, so India,
  Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon all emerged as
  independent states
• India primarily Hindu, flanked by Muslim Pakistan
  to the northwest, and later Muslim
• Bangladesh to the northeast
• The partition unleashed an orgy of
• intercommunal massacres between
• Muslims and Hindus, in which a
• million people may have died
• But none of this violence was
• directed towards the British

www.hindu.com
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India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka Map
www.cnn.com
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Palestine

• Smaller dependencies caused much greater trouble,
  particularly in the Middle East
• Following First World War Palestine had been
  assigned to Britain as their mandate, on the
  understanding that Britain would facilitate the
  establishment of a Jewish homeland
• After the Second World War, an exhausted Britain
  was forced to deal with increasing tensions
  between Palestinians and returning Jews
• Also considerable pressure to allow Jewish
  survivors of Nazi holocaust to settle in
  Palestine
• Following several years of violence, Britain
  referred the issue to the United Nations

European Jews arrive in Palestine, 1946
www.thingsmagazine.net
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Palestinian Partition

• UN Special Committee on Palestine recommended
  partition - accepted by Britain
• But idea of the creation of a Jewish state in the
  region provoked violent reactions from Arab
  states
• British Government reacted by rapidly withdrawing
  from the region, terminating its mandate in May
  1948
• Prelude to the establishment of the State of
  Israel in part of the former mandate, and the
  Kingdom of Jordan in the other part
• Also led to an Arab-Israeli war that continued
  until 1949, and to a certain extent has continued
  up to the present day

www.gc.peachnet.edu
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Violent Independence Struggles in Smaller States

• In Malaya communists staged an insurgency
• that lasted from 1948 to 1957
• In Cyprus Britain found itself at war with the
  Eoka rebels from 1950 to 1960
• In Kenya the violent Mau-Mau (above right)
  launched a bloody campaign against Britain that
  lasted from 1952 to 1957 - led to significant
  British military intervention
• Kenya was Britains most valuable remaining
  colony with valuable plantation assets
• Eventually Kenya was granted independence in 1963
• In Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) African rebels
  waged an often violent campaign for independence
  from 1959, that culminated in full independence
  by 1980

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Ghana and Nigeria

• Elsewhere in Africa the process of decolonization
  was more peaceful
• Gold Coast Colony (Ghana) was the first
  experiment in the granting of independence in
  1958
• Nigeria also peacefully achieved independence in
  1960
• Virtually every British colony in Africa had been
  granted independence by 1965, bringing to an end
  more than a century of British imperialism on the
  continent

imfundo.digitalbrain.com
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Indonesian Demands for Independence from
the Dutch

• Dutch faced with an independence movement in the
  Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) before the Japanese
  occupied the region from 1941-45
• By the end of the war the Dutch no longer had the
  means to reclaim control of the colony, so
  Britain occupied the region
• Independence movement drew strength at the end of
  the war, led by Sukarno, who declared the
  independent Republic of Indonesia in August 1945
• At first British and Indonesians cooperated to a
  certain extent to take care of the immediate
  post-war problems

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Dutch Attempts to Reclaim Indonesia

• When Dutch replaced British in Nov 1946 they
  moved against the independence movement by
  blockading ports over which the independence
  group had gained control
• But Dutch no longer had the resources to regain
  control, and in the end the UN negotiated a
  settlement creating the United States of
  Indonesia
• New nation theoretically functioned in
  partnership with the Dutch, but in 1956 Sukarno
  unilaterally ended the arrangement
• Dutch-owned plantations all seized and
  nationalized, and most of the remaining Dutch
  settlers left
• So Dutch Empire, that had been 55 times larger
  than the Netherlands, was closed down at one blow

Sukarno 1946
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French Decolonization

• Unlike Britain and Holland, France reluctant to
  see the loss of its overseas empire, and this led
  it into a series of debilitating wars
• Because she had been humiliated in the war,
  France seemed determined to assert her authority
  in the colonies
• Ultimately the French Empire, 19 times larger
  than France, expired in agony
• Despite attempts to restructure the
  administration of its overseas territories,
  France found itself confronted by
• the same demands for
• independence faced by
• the other colonial powers
• From the end of the war
• until 1962 France was
• continuously engaged in a
• series of exhausting, violent
• wars that threatened the
• very stability of France itself

sio.midco.net/ mapstamps
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Colonial Empire in Indo-China Vietnam

• French empire in Indo-
• China consisted of Vietnam,
• Laos and Cambodia
• Area occupied by the Japanese
• in the Second World War, although
• a puppet Vichy-style French colonial
  administration was left in charge
• Late in the war Japan replaced the regime with
  the pro-Japanese, Vietnamese emperor Bao Dai, who
  proclaimed independence from France

www.itisnet.com
Central Post Office in Saigon, built by
French during the Colonial Era
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The Vietminh

• Vietnamese communists had formed an effective
  anti-Japanese resistance movement (the Vietminh)
  which was strong in the north, close to its bases
  in China
• When Japan surrendered the Vietminh moved to fill
  the power vacuum and proclaimed an independent
  Democratic Republic of Vietnam
• France wanted to reassert control and reoccupied
  the major cities with the indirect assistance of
  British forces sent to assist with the surrender
  of the Japanese

Leader of the Vietminh, Ho Chih Minh
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Direct Confrontation with the Vietminh

• First direct confrontation with the Vietminh
  occurred at Haiphong harbor in November 1946 -
  Vietminh fired on a French warship
• In French retaliation 6,000 Vietnamese were
  killed, leading to the outbreak of a guerilla war
  against the French
• Initial phase of the war from 1947-49, resulted
  in stalemate
• With the success of the Communist revolution in
  China in 1949, Vietminh gained a powerful ally
  and were able to drive French out of North
  Vietnam in 1950

vi.uh.edu/pages
Vietminh supply column crossing the Mekong
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French Defeat at Dien Bien Phu
Defeated French soldiers at Dien Bien Phu
www.griffith-h.schools.nsw.edu.au

• Exhausted by the war effort, the cost of
  maintaining a colonial war was too much for the
  French
• From 1952 on USA agreed to cover cost of the war
• French made a dramatic attempt to defeat the
  Vietminh by enticing them into a major
  confrontation, where they hoped to crush the
  rebels
• 15,000 French soldiers sent to Dien Bien Phu
  where they were surrounded by the Vietminh
• Following a six-month siege (Nov 1953 May 1954)
  the French garrison was forced to surrender

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Battle of Dien Bien Phu
cla.calpoly.edu
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Vietnam Divided

• Defeat marked end of French colonial ambitions in
  Indo-China
• 1954 Geneva Accords partitioned Vietnam into two
  zones hope was this would be only a temporary
  measure before national elections could reunite
  the two countries
• North ruled by the Vietminh as the Democratic
  Republic of Vietnam
• South governed by the State of Vietnam
• French handed over their responsibilities to the
  USA, which saw Vietnam as a test case for the
  containment of Communism, leading to the Vietnam
  War of 1964-73

Stamps issued by the Democratic Republic of
Vietnam
www.jimstonebraker.com/ vietnam
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North African Colonies

• During their colonial era, French had
• acquired many colonies in North Africa,
• including Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria
• Many of the inhabitants of these colonies
• possessed full French citizenship, and many of
  them eventually moved to France where they make
  up substantial sections of the French population
• Algeria long regarded as an integral part of
  Metropolitan France - its citizens granted full
  citizenship in 1947
• Local government assembly was elected by two
  separate electoral colleges, one for the 1.2
  million European inhabitants, one for the 8.5
  million Arabs

www.africanculturalcenter.org
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• In 1959 violent demonstrations broke out in
  Algeria, demanding independence
• Led to a long and brutal war between French and
  native Arab population
• Despite sending an army of 400,000 troops, the
  French were unable to suppress the uprising, and
  the French settlers refused to agree to any
  compromise
• Crisis so severe that General de Gaulle,
  re-emerged into political life
• French hoped he would lead them to victory, but
  de Gaulle saw the war as unwinnable and prepared
  to give the Algerians independence

Crisis in Algeria
mairie.wanadoo.fr/mairie
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Algerian Mutiny and Independence

• Group of French officers in Algeria refused to
  accept De Gaulles decision, and stage a mutiny
• Briefly seized control of Algiers before the
  mutiny was crushed
• De Gaulle forced through the acceptance of
  Algerian independence, agreed to in the Evian
  Accords of 1962
• France retained oil-rights and a naval base for
  15 years, and almost one million European
  inhabitants of Algeria moved to France, causing
  short-term housing and employment pressures
• De Gaulle continued to support the new (and
  unstable) Algerian government with substantial aid

Algerian independence fighters
Algiers, 1959
reference.allrefer.com/. ../algeria170
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Fifth French Republic

• So turbulent, violent and costly had been the
  manner in which decolonization had been carried
  out that the very fabric of the Fourth French
  Republic had been weakened
• De Gaulle rewrote the French constitution,
  leading to the creation of the Fifth Republic
  (declared right)
• All remaining French colonies given the right to
  self-government and to secede
• If they became independent, but remained as
  members of the new French Community they would
  retain a favored tariff relationship with France
• Only one former colony (Guinea in W Africa)
  refused to join the French Commonwealth
• France left the country, but only after stripping
  it of its assets and cutting off all economic aid

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The Belgian Congo

• Belgiums colonial empire had consisted of the
  gigantic Congo Basin in Africa, 78 times the size
  of Belgium itself
• Region was rich in minerals heavily exploited by
  the Belgians for a century
• But Belgium had invested little in developing the
  skills of the local population as late as 1960
  there were no university graduates or skilled
  professionals
• In 1959 an independence movement emerged in the
  Congo

www.zum.de/.../centrafrica
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Rapid Belgian Decolonization

• Belgian authorities caught unprepared, and in the
  wake of violent demonstrations decided to quit
  region within six months
• With no preparation of the local population for
  self-rule, civil war broke out almost immediately
• Secessionist movement quickly seized control of
  the mineral-rich southern province of Katanga

Belgian troops in the Congo artists impression
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Soviets Become Involved

• Soviet government, attempting to increase its
  involvement in the world at the same time the
  Europeans were decolonizing, stepped in and
  provided support for the central government
• Belgian government provided support for the
  Katanga secessionists, hoping to retain control
  of the valuable mineral resources
• UN then attempted to restore order, but the UN
  Secretary General, the Norwegian Dag
  Hammarskjold, was killed while on a mission to
  the Congo

www.time.com
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Stanleyville

• In the chaos that followed one rebel group seized
  western hostages at the key city of Stanleyville
• Belgians sent in their paratroopers (with
  American assistance) to rescue the hostages
• Other African states condemned use of troops as
  an exercise
• in neo-imperialism
• In the years since, in
• several African states,
• the former European
• colonial powers have
• continued to intervene
• occasionally in support
• of various factions

Belgian paratroopers at Stanleyville
www.freerepublic.com
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The Portuguese Empire

• Portuguese Empire survived longest, and was the
  last to be dismantled
• Both Portugal and Spain had been ruled since the
  1930s by conservative, authoritarian governments
  which refused to support decolonization
• So Portugal had to be forced to dismantle its
  empire by outside forces
• In 1961 India seized a large Portuguese colony of
  Goa

Portuguese-built cathedral in Goa, India
www.traveliteindia
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Uprising in Angola Revolution in Portugal

• Also in 1961 violent uprisings took place in
  Portugals large African empire, at the time that
  most of former colonial Africa had already
  achieved independence
• Revolts started in Angola (23 times larger than
  Portugal itself) and spread to Portuguese Guinea
  and Mozambique
• Portugal, refusing to grant independence, found
  itself involved in long and debilitating military
  struggles with various rebel groups
• In 1974 Portuguese General Antonio de Spinola
  (above) staged a revolution in Portugal itself
  (the Carnation Revolution) with the aim of ending
  the colonial wars
• Once Spinola gained power, Portugals African
  possessions were rapidly granted independence
  (1975-6)

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Independence Struggle in Angola
www.informatuttonet.com
www.informationwar.org
news.bbc.co.uk
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Hong Kong and Macao
go.hrw.com/atlas

• Portugals last colony Macao (also the last
  European colony in Asia) was ceded to
• China in 1999
• This, along with Britains hand-over of the
  protectorate of Hong Kong to China in 1997,
  brought to an end 400 years of European colonial
  rule in Asia

www.nimbustier.net
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PART THREE EFFECTS OF DECOLONIZATION
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Links Between Europe and Former Colonies

• Wave of post-war decolonization followed by
  efforts by many of the former imperial powers to
  retain links with their former colonies
• In some cases they attempted to retain indirect
  control, in others the links were mainly symbolic
• Britain encouraged all of its former colonies to
  join the British Commonwealth, and some still
  retain the British monarch as their head of state
  (including Australia and New Zealand)
• France, the Netherlands and Portugal all
  similarly attempted to create a common community
  amongst their former colonies

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The British Commonwealth
www.wwnorton.com/.../ ralph/resource/british.htm
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Financial Links

• Britain and France retained financial roles with
  their former colonies by establishing currency
  systems that linked them to the mother land
• Britain also retained substantial economic
  interest in Iran, and when the Iranians
  threatened to nationalize the huge Anglo-Iranian
  Oil Corporation, Britain conspired with the USA
  to overthrow the Iranian government
• Britain also attempted to remain the predominant
  power in the Middle East, to help guarantee oil
  supplies to the West
• Major opponent of British
• influence in the region was
• the Egyptian leader, Colonel
• Nasser, and confrontation
• between Cairo and Whitehall
• precipitated the Suez Crisis
• of 1956

Refinery near Tehran built by the A-IOC
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Nasser and Israel

• After Britain and France had withdrawn from the
  Middle East, region became increasingly complex
  and unstable
• Nasser became President of Egypt after
  overthrowing the monarchy
• His government increasingly confrontational with
  Israel, blocking Israeli shipping through the
  Suez Canal
• Nasser also built up the Egyptian army using
  weapons purchased from the Soviets
• This caused concern in the West, and it looked as
  though the Middle East was being drawn into the
  Cold War
• Both France and Britain had poor relations with
  Egypt

i-cias.com/e.o/nasser.htm
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Suez Crisis

• June 1956 British withdrew last forces from
  Egypt
• Nasser immediately nationalized Suez Canal,
  owned jointly by Britain and France, to fund a
  huge dam project at Aswan
• Britain, France and Israel decided upon joint
  action against Egypt
• Plan was for Israel to attack Egypt and move to
  the canal this would give an Anglo-French force
  the excuse to intervene and take control of the
  canal
• Israel attacked and rapidly reached Suez Canal,
  and the Anglo-French force (belatedly on Nov 5)
  sent in paratroopers and launched an amphibious
  assault early in November
• Both USA and USSR agreed in the UN (a rare
  event) and a demand was made for a ceasefire on
  Nov 2
• British and French agreed to desist - ceasefire
  signed Nov 6
• Israeli force also withdrew from Egypt and the
  Gaza Strip

www.navis.g
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web.umr.edu
Suez Crisis Images
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A Bi-Polar World

• British and French prestige badly damaged by
  their humiliating withdrawal - British PM Anthony
  Eden resigned
• Suez marked the end of the role of Britain and
  France as great powers capable of acting as
  equals with any other nation on the planet
• After 1956 it was clear that the international
  system had become a bi-polar world with only two
  superpowers the United States and the Soviet
  Union
• Yet their responses to the new geopolitical
  realities were to be different
• Britain decided to accept US hegemony and play
  the new game but France disapproved of the USA
  and decided to try and go it alone (as in
  Indo-China and Algeria)

www.dhm.de/
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British Response

• Britain turned consciously from an
  overseas-focused to a Euro-focused state
• Conservative government elected in 1959
  instigated a policy of rapid disengagement from
  Africa, and by 1963 PM Harold Macmillan had
  overseen the liquidation of all of Britains once
  vast African empire
• Similar policy adopted by the Labour Government
  of Harold Wilson in the 1960s, but in order not
  to make former colonies feel cut adrift, the
  Commonwealth was strengthened
• But Britain continued to play an active role in
  areas such as Malaysia, where the involvement of
  50,000 commonwealth troops maintained the
  independence of Malaysia in the face of threats
  from Indonesia, effectively enhancing British
  prestige

www.time.com
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French Response?
www.prostatakrebs-bps.de/ vip.html
Chad troops with captured Libyan tank, 1985
Mitterand

• France maintained a more active stance with its
  former colonies, particularly in its former
  sub-Saharan empire
• Fiscally it supported the widely-used African
  franc, and also maintained a military presence in
  the region
• In the 1980s war between Chad and Libya, for
  example, President Mitterrand of France used
  French troops to help the Libyans defeat the
  advancing Chadians

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Mururoa Atoll

• France also been reluctant to abandon its former
  colonies in the Pacific
• Until 1996 France continued to use tiny island of
  Mururoa Atoll to test nuclear weapons, despite
  protests from New Zealand, Australia and other
  Pacific countries
• In 1985 French agents boarded and sank a
  Greenpeace vessel in Auckland New Zealand, which
  had been protesting against French nuclear
  testing
• France used its weight within the European
  Community to threaten economic retaliation
  against New Zealand!

www.mururoavet.8k.com
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Sinking of Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbor
www.matauribay.co.nz/ s
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Remnants of Colonialism
go.hrw.com/atlas/ norm_htm/falkland

• Remnants of once vast colonial empires are still
  controlled by European states around the world
• Britain retains several island possessions,
  particularly in the Caribbean and the Atlantic
• One of these, the Falkland Islands in the South
  Atlantic, was the cause of a war between Britain
  and Argentina in 1982

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South Thule in the Falklands
www.astralsociety.com
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The Falklands

• Britain and Argentina had a long-running
  territorial dispute over the sovereignty of the
  Falklands (Las Malvinas)
• Military government in Argentina (to shore up its
  own flagging popularity) sought to pressure
  Britain to withdraw from the Falklands
• The Argentines assumed Britain would be unwilling
  to fight a long-distance war over 1,800 people
  and 400,000 sheep

When Argentine scrap-metal merchants landed on
South Georgia in March 1982, the Argentine
government followed with a full-scale invasion of
the Falklands, and war erupted
www.warshipsifr.com
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The Falklands War
The Belgrano Sinking

• Britain responded to the crisis by dispatching a
  large naval task force, which arrived in
  late-April after a voyage of 8000 miles
• Britain declared a 200-mile exclusion zone around
  the Falklands
• Controversial incident occurred when the British
  Navy sank the Argentine battlecruiser General
  Belgrano, with the loss of some 800 men
• British then landed waves of ground forces on the
  islands, which were quickly recaptured
• Argentine government soon fell, and the new
  government accepted the end of hostilities

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CONCLUSION DECOLONIZATION AND IMMIGRATION
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From Emigration to Immigration

• For centuries Europe a region of emigration
  Europeans left the continent to settle in lands
  all over the world, including the USA, Canada and
  Australia
• But in the post-war era Europe became a target
  for immigration with large numbers of people
  seeking to resettle there
• Chief amongst these were people from the former
  colonial possessions of individual European
  countries
• Initially Britain recruited immigrants from its
  former colonies in the immediate post-war era
  because of severe labor shortages
• All Commonwealth citizens had the free right of
  immigration
• But in 1972, with rising immigrant numbers, the
  government passed the Commonwealth Immigration
  Act which sought to regulate the flow

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Immigrant Numbers

• Since 1945 immigrants have sought to move to
• Europe for economic or political reasons
• In Britain the immigrant population from the
• New Commonwealth stood at 74,000 in 1951
• by 1981 it had risen to 2.2 million
• France had a population of 1.5 million African
  immigrants in 1990, and half a million from Asia
• Portugal, following the collapse of its empire,
  gained a population of 800,000 immigrants out of
  a total population of 10 million
• In 1972 Uganda expelled its entire Asian
  population, with the result that 29,000 British
  passport holders moved to Britain

www.one-world-books.demon.co.uk
60
Muslim Populations

• Immigration waves have changed the cultural map
  of Europe
• For the first time in history Western and central
  Europe have sizeable Muslim populations, for
  example, augmented by economic migrants from
  Muslim Turkey
• One obvious effect of this has been to embroil
  Europe in Muslim affairs, e.g. the Salman Rushdie
  affair
• In 1989 the Indian-born British author was the
  subject of a fatwa (death sentence) placed on him
  by the Iranian religious leader Ayatollah
  Khomeni, on charges on anti-Allah blasphemy in
  his book The Satanic Verses

Salman Rushdie and Muslim women in France
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Conclusion I

• Europes interaction with non-European world
  based on a long and complex history
• Linguistic legacy of a common language has
  remained an important link between former
  colonial countries and their former colonies
• Former colonial countries also remain important
  destinations for higher education for students
  from their former empires
• Trend towards globalization of information has
  connected the former colonial world to the old
  powers ever more closely
• Just as decolonization seemed to be a process
  that would separate Europe from the non-European
  world, so globalization has brought them even
  closer together in different ways

62
Conclusion II

• Effects of decolonization have clearly been
  equally profound on the ex-imperialists and the
  ex-colonials
• Imperial powers reduced to the same standing as
  other sovereign states in Europe, which made
  eventual European Union much more feasible
• Also lost many traditional economic benefits of
  colonialism notably access to captive markets
  and cheap raw produce
• Also shed the burden (financial and military) of
  defending and administering distant possessions
• In Eastern Europe decolonization watched with
  surprise and envy
• Citizens of Eastern Europe, now no more than
  colonial subjects of the Soviet Union, wondered
  when decolonization would also begin to apply to
  them as well
• As we will see, they had a very long wait before
  this eventuated under the rule of Mikhail
  Gorbachev in the late-1980s