THE DISSOLUTION OF EUROPE’S COLONIAL EMPIRES

BRITISH FRENCH

1931: Statute of Westminster for Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa

1944: Charles de Gaulle promises a “French Union” at Brazzaville in French Congo

1947: Independence for India

1946-54: Vietnamese War

1948: Independence for Israel

1954-61: Algerian War

1956: Israel, France, & Britain attack Nasser’s Egypt

1957-63: Independence for most African colonies

1958-63: Independence for all African colonies

1979: Majority rule in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe 1961-75: Portugal fights

bloody wars to hold Angola & Mozambique1994: Majority rule in

South Africa

Mohandas K. Gandhi

(1869-1948) as a young attorney in

Johannesburg, South Africa,

in 1913

Gandhi’s “salt march” of 1930

Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) at a Congress Party leadership conference in 1937

Gandhi discusses the final details of British withdrawal

from India with Lord Mountbatten in

1947

Mohammed Ali Jinnah of the Muslim League demands an independent Pakistan beside India, June 1947

An elderly Muslim, dying of exhaustion on

the road to Pakistan.

Bodies pile up in the street as a

result of communal riots in

August 1947.Gandhi resorted

to a hunger strike to stop the fighting in Calcutta.

Mourners at Gandhi’s funeral, New Delhi, 1948

The Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini in Berlin, 1941

David Ben-Gurion in London, May 1939

Young kazetniks arrive in Haifa in

July 1945, but the British

retained strict limits

on immigration

The “Exodus” outside Haifa harbor, July 1947

The bombing of the King David Hotel by Irgun agents

in Jerusalem, July 1946, when 91 people died

British commentators assumed that Zionism

would forfeit all sympathy in the world

The U.N. plan to divide Palestine in

1947 and the actual outcome of

the first Arab-Israeli War of

1948/49

Fawzi el-Kaoukji, commander of the Arab Liberation Army

Israeli forces capture Kastel, near Jerusalem, April 1948

David Ben-Gurion proclaims the

founding of the State of Israel

beneath a portrait of Theodor Herzl,

Tel Aviv,14 May 1948

Egypt, Jordan, Syria,

& Iraq invaded

Israel on May 15, 1948; a truce was

arranged on June 10, as

heavy weapons

poured into Israel

On the Jewish side, everyone fought in 1948,

including women and the ultra-

orthodox

There were 914,000 Palestinian refugees registered

with the UN in 1950 and 4.3 million in 2005

Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana (1909-

1972):Educated at

Lincoln University (PA) and the

London School of Economics;

returned to the Gold Coast in

1947, rose toPrime Minister

in 1953: A “nondenomination

al Christian and Marxist socialist.”

FRANCE CONQUERED ALGERIA FROM 1829 TO 1892

It was integrated into metropolitan France, but with suffrage limited to the 1 million European settlers.

The National Liberation Front rebelled in November 1954, but all French parties replied, Ici,

c’est la France!

The grant of independence to Morocco and Tunisia in 1956 fueled the rebellion.

With 500,000 troops the French conquered most rural strongholds of the FLN in 1956

The Battle of Algiers began in June 1956, when the FLN declared that 100 Frenchmen would be

killed for every comrade executed

French paratroopers took charge of urban policing by January 1957. Torture was authorized.

Frantz Fanon(1925-1961),

spokesman for the National Liberation

Front of Algeria;born on Martinique, the descendant of

African slaves;enlisted in Free

French army and served in Algeria as

an army doctor

Rumors that the politicians in Paris would surrender to the FLN caused a military coup in Algiers

in May 1958.French party leaders asked

Charles de Gaulle to found a Fifth Republic.

Here the paratrooper

commander in Algeria, General Massu, presides over Marianne’s

wedding

But de Gaulle soon negotiated a transfer of power to the FLN leaders Ahmed ben Bella (left) and Houari

Boumedienne