Two overarching themes characterised post-war twentieth century: the Cold War and decolonisation. These two events deeply intersected, so it is almost impossible to separate them. Today we’re looking at the process of decolonisation, and the emergence of post-colonial states with all the difficulties which comes with it. Across Africa, Asia, and the Americas new movements led to new states and new ideas, but the legacies of colonialism are still very much in evidence. This is a massive topic so please take this as a very quick overview, as I can talk about decolonisation for days on end.
The Long-Term Quest for Independence
The roots of decolonisation were in fact planted by colonialism itself. Through negligence, cultural ignorance, and economic exploitation led to protests and rebellions across colonial history. From the various slave revolts in the Caribbean to the 1857 Indian Rebellion to the Boxer Rebellion in China of 1899 to 1901 all point to this. As we saw when we looked at colonialism, the economies of colonies were geared to raw material production – around 20% of the Dutch economy, for example, came from its colonies in Indonesia. Part of the colonial project was a view that the colonial powers had to ‘civilise’ their subjects, which saw the creation of new educational facilities. European-style schools and the ability to study in Europe created an educated elite which would produce the early nationalist movement. Mohandas Gandhi, Julius Nyerere, Leopold Senghor, and Jawaharlal Nehru were some later major nationalist figures who engaged in Western education. Cuban poet Roberto Fernandez Retamar discussed this with his writing on Shakespeare’s Caliban. Caliban was a slave of the wizard Prospero who was taught to speak, and Caliban used this to curse his master. Retamar argued that colonialism had degraded the colonised, so Western education allowed the colonised to critique their oppressors. Priyamvada Gopal recently expanded upon this arguing that the colonised managed to determine new ideas of freedom, influencing those in the hegemonic core – ranging from Marx to British Labour politicians.
Originally, nationalist movements were largely the product of elites in colonised society. In 1885 the Indian National Congress was formed by elite Hindus, largely with the intention to reform colonial rule instead of directly challenging it. It would take until after the First World War for nationalist movements to become more and more of a mass movement. Part of this was Congress becoming the party of a new, more radical generation. The most famous of these was Mohandas Gandhi. Trained as a lawyer from a moderately wealthy family Gandhi began engaging in political activism after facing racial discrimination in South Africa. Upon returning to India he became associated, and later leading, Congress. Gandhi advocated for Swaraj (self-rule), which he imagined as being a democratic, self-sufficient, India where women had greater rights and caste was abolished. To achieve this, Gandhi advocated for non-violent boycotts, hunger strikes, and protests called satyagraha – a boycott/protest focusing on a specific issue. He stressed simple living wearing plain clothing, (such as loincloths), vegetarianism, and self-purification. Gandhi helped turn Indian nationalism into a mass movement, most famously the 1930 Salt March (to resist a new tax on salt) managed to attract over 50,000 people on just one day. However, Gandhi was not the only major figure of Congress. Jawaharlal Nehru, who became India’s first prime minister, helped make Congress an efficient political force, and worked as a pressure group to challenge British rule.
There were a wide range of tactics which the pre-war nationalist movements engaged in. International solidarity was particularly important – modern Pan-Africanism emerged during this period when Africans and the diaspora reached out to one another. Trinidadian C.L.R. James and George Padmore were two prominent examples, and they became mentors for several future African leaders, including Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta. Socialists were deeply involved in the fight against colonialism. Lenin’s theories emphasised that capitalism was built upon colonial exploitation, which led to many colonised peoples to adapt his views and for the Comintern to initially aid anti-colonial movements. Consequently, many nationalists were also socialists, even fairly conservative figures at one time dabbled in socialism – such as Kenyatta. In 1927 the League against Imperialism was founded as a way to coordinate anti-imperial movements and allies in the Comintern which saw delegates from across the world including Senegal’s Lamine Senghor, Nehru, Indonesia’s Sukarno, and China’s Soong Ching-ling (also the widow of Sun Yat-sen the famous nationalist). Just like other movements, socialist anti-colonialism had its splits. With the Comintern being under the guise of the USSR, when Stalin took over it had to bend to his whims. Stalin in the early-1930s abandoned anti-colonial struggles leading to clashes with Trinidad’s George Padmore, Vietnam’s Nguyen Ai Quoc (later known as Ho Chi Minh), and even executed India’s Virendranath Chattopadhyaya.
The Second World War – breaking empires
The Second World War broke colonial empires. The economies and peoples from across colonial empires were drafted into supporting the war effort by Britain, France, the US, Netherlands, Italy, and Japan. War propaganda emphasised fighting against the empires of Germany, Italy, and Japan, and the war itself showed the inequalities in empire. In 1943 a famine hit Bengal, and Winston Churchill purposefully diverted food relief away from India to Europe (where it wasn’t actually needed) due to his disdain for Indians and the nationalist movement. Due to this, around 3 million people starved to death. In August 1941 US president Franklin Roosevelt met with Churchill in Nova Scotia leading to the creation of the Atlantic Charter. Promising to defeat the Axis powers and ending tariffs, it also called for the self-determination of people. Churchill imagined this as only applying to the nations of Europe under Axis occupation, but Roosevelt and many colonised peoples saw it as a call to end empire. The war itself weakened empires – the Italian and Japanese empires were literally ended by the war. The Japanese placed puppet, local leaders in power in Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines (albeit under their rule), and helped create the Indian National Army made out of captured Indian troops. This gave colonised peoples a chance to rule themselves, and when given it is hard to take away. Furthermore, the swiftness of Japan’s expansion shattered the myth of European invulnerability. Japan quickly seizing Hong Kong, Burma, and Singapore from Britain made shockwaves – a non-white power had defeated the British Empire.
When the war ended it left the world devastated and its people wanting a brighter future. This was already evident during the war. In 1942 Congress leaders organised the Quit India Campaign, which was joined by several trade unions and communist parties, to make India ungovernable to force British exit. In Gandhi’s words, ‘Leave India to God, and if that be too much, leave her to anarchy‘. The British state responded by arresting Congress leaders, to which Gandhi almost died by going on hunger strike. Other colonial states had gained some form of independence during the war, and was, obviously, unwilling to relinquish this. In 1945 the Marxist/nationalist Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh had declared Vietnamese independence while the French wished to impose a client regime under the former Vietnamese king; and Sukarno, who was president of a Japanese-allied Indonesia, waged a four year war against the Dutch, who were supported by Britain. A ‘second-wave of empire’ began in Africa where colonial empires tried to make their colonies self-sufficient. During the 1950s Britain undertook a disastrous attempt to grow groundnuts in northern Tanganyika (the mainland of Tanzania) being one notable example.
The Partition of India
The British Raj in 1947 was split into two – Pakistan and India. Decades of divide-and-rule, political hubris, and negligence led to an end of empire in India which was bloody. British policy of setting communities against each other led to separate nationalist movements emerging – most notably Congress and the Muslim League. One of the key figures in the Muslim League was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and like many other nationalists he was well-educated becoming a lawyer. Founded by Hindus, Congress leaders tried to make it representative of the country, however, it was still seen as a Hindu party. Gandhi did not help with this. Presenting himself as a Hindu religious figure it helped generate the idea was a party of Hindus, and Congress not recognising the fears of Hindu domination alienated many Muslims. This led Jinnah to leave Congress and become a key figure in the Muslim League. Ever the pragmatist, Jinnah began campaigning for separate Muslim seats, and then a separate Muslim state – Ayesha Jalal has argued that this was a bluff to get Congress to accept demands for separate Muslim constituencies. Unlike Congress, the Muslim League was largely a conservative, elitist party, although it did begin generating support among grassroots Muslims during the 1940s.
In 1945 the Conservative party was voted out of office and the Labour party was voted in. The Conservatives under Churchill was extremely hostile to Indian independence, and Labour had several contradictory views. Costs of maintaining British rule in India was digging into the funds which Labour hoped to devote to social programmes, and the lieutenant-governor, the highest office in the Raj, Lord Mountbatten was incompetent. Wanting to avoid the violence which France was experiencing in Vietnam and the Netherlands in Indonesia the British pulled out, and got Cyril Radcliffe to draw a border for Pakistan and India. However, Radcliffe had never visited India before, knew nothing about India, and had to quickly draw borders based on outdated censuses and maps. While Britain managed to avoid violence, the people of India was not so lucky. Fearing domination if they were trapped in the ‘wrong’ state Hindus and Muslims massacred one another, and other minorities. Dalits and Sikhs were caught in the crossfire, and in just a few days 500,000 people had been murdered with countless more being made refugees, raped, or kidnapped. By the end of Partition over 15 million had been displaced, and over a million killed. Neither state got what they wanted and the people had to deal with the lasting scars of Partition. The refugee crisis would last well into the 1960s, and a divided Kashmir has remained a virtual open-air prison for Kashmiris.
Peace and Violence in the Quest for Independence
There is not one way in which independence was achieved, and there is not a clear division between violent and peaceful fights for independence. Uprisings did happen in India, and Gandhi himself became a victim of violence – in 1948 he was assassinated by a member of the Hindu far-right Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) who viewed him as being too sympathetic to Muslims. South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) combined both tactics by taking part in widespread peaceful protests, and forming an armed wing called uMkhonto we Sizwe. States regularly resorted to violence to put down various movements for independence. A brutal eight year war began in 1954 when France tried to crush the Algerian Front de Liberacion National (FLN), just after waging a near decade long war against the Viet Minh, and Britain used brutal measures, including napalming villages and deporting communities, to crush the Malayan Insurgency. In Kenya, white British settlers had left many of the native Kikuyu in the centre of the country landless and destitute. An anti-settler revivalist movement which the colonial state named the ‘Mau Mau’ rose up in the early-1950s. This began a brutal ‘bush war’ which saw the British state and their allies waging a war against the Mau Mau. Caroline Elkins has described Britain’s policies as being ‘Britain’s Gulag’ for the sheer amount of Kikuyu men and women forced into work camps. Nairobi’s airport was built by slavery – imprisoned ‘Mau Mau’, (many innocents were arrested through very arbitrary means), were forced to build the airport.
Elsewhere, inspired by the success of Gandhi and Congress ‘big-tent’ parties were formed to campaign for independence. Many of these took a socialist stance, seeing it as a way to avoid economic domination by former colonial powers, although there were many non-socialist parties. One of the noted was the Convention People’s Party (CPP) under Kwame Nkrumah in the Gold Coast (now Ghana). Creating links with anti-colonial activists and socialists during the 1930s while living in London, Nkrumah became enemy number one for the Gold Coast colony. The CPP was formed as a unifying party relying on support from student groups, trade unions, and former soldiers. Writing years later in his autobiography he wrote:
Ex-servicemen who had taken part in the 1939 world war returned to the Gold Coast dissatisfied with their position after having been given the chance of comparing their lot with that of other peoples, and they were prepared to take any line which would better their conditions.
The CPP managed to win enough political support as to win the independence of Ghana in 1957, the first of Britain’s African empire to win freedom. Movements fairly often centred around one party, such as the Tanganyikan African National Union in Tanzania, but it was not limited to just parties. In Kenya, trade unions helped mobilise communities since the 1920s, and Susan Geiger has written a very interesting article about how women in Tanzania used dance classes as a way to engage in anti-colonial culture and spread pro-independence ideas without attracting the attention of the colonial state. However, the policies of colonial rule meant that parties in several colonies fell along religious, geographic, or ethnic lines. In Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta began having the major nationalist party, the Kenyan African National Union (KANU), become associated with Kikuyu identity, and what would become Nigeria was actually an amalgamation of several smaller colonies. As a result, Nigeria’s nationalist parties were divided along regional lines.
Issues of Forming the Nation
After the jubilation of winning independence there was a more pressing question – how to make a nation? Many of the new states had to bear the legacies of colonial underdevelopment, divide-and-rule policies, and oppressive systems. Upon independence, the former Belgian Congo had less than twenty university graduates to form a bureaucracy to govern a population of 14 million; Pakistan’s foreign ministry had just one typewriter; and in Guinea the spiteful French government even ordered chairs to be smashed so the new state couldn’t use it. Questions of culture, language, power, gender, and ethnicity abounded. In India, for example, several states opposed the use of Hindi and instead continued to use English for administration due to a fear that Hindi would replace their own languages. Leader of the TANU Youth League Lawi Sijaona clashed with Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere over radios in Dar es Salaam having channels in English, Gujarati, and Arabic instead of Swahili. Sijaona claimed that ‘Kiswahili is our national language, and everyone who regards himself, or herself, to be a Tanganyikan ought to be proud to use that language of that country to which he or she belongs‘. Nyerere argued that plenty of countries, such as Switzerland, used multiple languages but still had a national identity.
After the honeymoon period of independence the big-tent alliances began collapsing rapidly over conflicts about what new nations should look like. Economic issues also impacted these fragile alliances. Martin Meredith has written how corruption and misrule wasted the economic potential of Africa, and this is true, but it also ignores the legacies of colonialism. Colonial economies were geared towards the exportation of raw materials for the European economies, so post-independence leaders inherited these economies. Naturally, this opened the door for easy corruption, made a lot worse by the collapse of the large alliances. Nkrumah, for example, was noted for handing out large projects to individuals as a way to keep the government from falling apart, which earned the ire of the public so much that his overthrowal in a 1966 coup was met with cheers. In Kenya, KANU was a mishmash of conservatives, liberals, and socialists, so a new party, the Kenyan People’s Union (KPU), was formed for more radical socialists under Oginga Odinga. Kenyatta was Kikuyu and Odinga was Luo, so support for KANU and the KPU began falling along ethnic lines – despite the Luo Tom Mboya being in KANU and Kikuyu Bildad Kaggua belonging to the KPU. This began a trend where Kenyan parties fell along ethnic lines, and Kenyatta used this in 1969 to ban the KPU. Inheriting authoritarian structures bred authoritarianism in the post-colonial state. One just have to see the overt power projection through the spending and overt corruption of figures like Mobutu Sese Seko in the Congo or Jean-Bedel Bokassa in the Central African Republic.
Cold War, Neo-Colonialism, and the Third World
As mentioned earlier, the Cold War was deeply entwined with the global Cold War. The USA and USSR were keen to draw newly independent states into their sphere of influence; although during the fight for independence the US regularly backed colonial regimes due to so many nationalists having socialist tendencies. Certain states instantly gravitated to one of the Cold War powers – North Vietnam to the USSR/China and South Vietnam to the US. In 1955 several states met at Bandung, Indonesia at the request of Indonesia’s Sukarno, India’s Nehru, and Yugoslavia’s Tito with the intention of creating a Non-Aligned Block. This later became known as the ‘Third World’. United by a desire to build solidarity among former colonised states it saw some odd bedfellows, such as Castroist Cuba and monarchist Iran. Some states aimed to utilise both sides in the Cold War. Polish economist Michael Kalecki described this as ‘The clever calves that suck two cows‘. Nehru used Soviet advisors while also receiving American funding; Sukarno used Soviet arms to annex West Papua and then used US aid to keep it; and Kenyatta bought Soviet weapons when Britain refused to sell them any, and then used the weapons shipment to accuse the KPU of receiving Soviet support in order to get American aid. However, some states did not fare well if they fell afoul of a particular state.
Neo-imperialism and neo-colonialism has meant that many post-independence states became economically and politically tied to former powers. When Sukarno began leaning more towards socialism the US helped back a coup bringing to power the very pro-capitalist general Suharto in 1968. Similarly upon Congolese independence a socialist, Patrice Lumumba, became prime minister earning the ire of Belgium. The Belgians began aiding anti-Lumumba forces including several breakaway states and military uprisings. With a lack of help from the UN Lumumba reached out to the USSR earning the hatred of the US who also intervened; Belgian and American aid allowed Joseph Mobutu to oust and kill Lumumba, ruling until his ousting in 1997. France and Britain were also keen to express continued influence, and over the years were joined by other states like the US, India, and China. In Zimbabwe, British influence meant that land redistribution had to be done on their terms and not the Zimbabwean government. As I am writing this now, France has troops in Mali and receives money from African colonies as a ‘tax’ for ‘civilising’ them. Weak economies, exploited by local rulers, allowed new states to be tied to their former overlords.
New Ideas, New Cultures
As we have discussed, dealing with forging a new identity was a key part of the anti-colonial struggle. Pre-colonial life was long and gone, so the question was really creating a new culture instead of recreating a long one. There were cases of harkening back to a pre-colonial life – Nyerere, for example, argued that pre-colonial African society lacked the conflicts created by capitalism, so was suited for socialism. In fact, Nyerere and Nkrumah expanded on socialism with the intention of adapting it to an African setting. Especially during the late-1960s and 1970s a wave of writers emerged critiquing the continued presence of colonial structures dominating identities. However, the most famous thinker who contributed to ‘postcolonial thought’ actually died in 1961, Frantz Fanon. Born in Martinique and trained as a psychiatrist Fanon went to Algeria as a volunteer for the FLN. Fanon’s most famous work The Wretched of the Earth (1961) was a direct attack on the ideological consequences of colonialism, but he wrote this after a decade of writing. Most famously was his Black Skin, White Masks (1952) which criticised the major nationalist leaders. Using psychoanalysis, he argued that European ways of thinking and attitudes towards native cultures have destroyed indigenous minds. Hence, they had ‘Black Skin’ hiding with a ‘White Mask’.
Movements have found interesting ways in building new identities. Some have been very obvious through renaming places. Even in settler states this has been seen, such as the official renaming of Ayers’ Rock in Australia to Uluru. Even leaders, seeking approval, have done this – Joseph Mobutu decided to ‘Africanise’ his name to Mobutu Sese Seko to earn support. During the Indian independence movement, and what has continued today, a grassroots movement created maps, often depicting the figure of Bharat Mata (discussed below), as a way to depict the future nation. This was done as a way to visualise the nation and determine what the future India would look like. The trauma of Partition with the still open wounds, the Pakistan-India border was drawn a day after independence had been declared, which the state adopted and became authoritarian with it. You now can get jail time for misrepresenting India’s borders if you’re in India. Meanwhile, authors and filmmakers criticised the state through novels and film. In 1966 The Battle of Algiers became one of the major cinematic postcolonial movies which depicted the brutal Algerian War of Independence by making it resemble a newsreel. Novels have also been used to critique aspects of identity which began with the grassroots but were utilised by the state to legitimise themselves. For example, Ngugi wa Thiong’o in A Grain of Wheat (1967) used the memory of the Mau Mau to critique the conflicted memory and usage of the Mau Mau; and Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines (1988) uses maps in India to discuss what home means.
Women and Sexuality in Post-Colonialism
Patriarchal structures meant that women are often sidelined in the history of decolonisation, and when mentioned are often just referred to as ‘female nationalists’ – we do not say the same about men. Women fought against colonial rule, colonial misogyny, and indigenous misogyny. As mentioned earlier, in Tanzania women’s dance groups were instrumental is spreading concepts of nationalism and what a future Tanzania would look like. Bibi Titi Mohammad was one of TANU’s major figures, and was so popular that crowds in the thousands turned out to hear her speak. Similarly, Pauline Opangu, the wife of Patrice Lumumba, remained an activist even after her husband’s murder hosting many marches and protests against Mobutu. South Africa’s anti-Apartheid struggle was further led by women, thousands of women took part in strikes and protests. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Kenya, India, Cuba, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Egypt are just some more examples giving names ranging from Haydee Santamaria from Cuba to Huda Sharawi from Egypt. Unfortunately, the promises of independence left women with continued subordinated rights in many areas, even when women were used heavily in iconography. India still relies on the image of Bharat Mata, Mother India, to represent a largely high-caste Hindu version of India. Young, beautiful, and high-caste her body and sari takes the form of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh – her head forming Kashmir and her feet forming Kerala/Tamil Nadu. Partition was seen as dismembering Bharat Mata, and other secessionist movements are seen as further mutilating her – Kashmiri independence literally being described as ‘decapitating the nation’.
Often overlooked are non-heteronormative or cis-normative identities in the story of independence. Typically in Western media the so-called ‘Third World’ has been described as being ‘backwards’ and hostile to LGBTQ+ identities, and the former colonial world does have some of the harshest restrictions of LGBTQ+ identity. Uganda is most famous for this. However, the question is why? Across the world there were various attitudes towards identities which I’ll unhelpfully classify as LGBTQ+ – from outright persecution in northern Nigeria to religious importance in several Maasai communities. As part of the ‘civilising’ mission a restriction on LGBTQ+ identities came with it, so through independence hostility towards LGBTQ+ communities continued. The slow fight for rights – such as India’s hijras becoming recognised and Botswana legalising homosexuality in 2020 – can now be seen as a form of decolonisation.
Conclusion
This has been a quick overview of decolonisation. Today, the ideas and debates surrounding decolonisation are playing out – much to the suffering of many communities. Since Narendra Modi, a former member of the RSS, became Indian prime minister in 2014 there have been attempts to shape India into a Hindi, Hindu-nationalist state; two laws in 2019 aimed to deprive Muslims and tribal peoples of their very citizenship which was followed by intense pogroms in Delhi. Many countries still face economic domination by their former colonial powers. However, the fight for independence, and the legacies of movements have given people the desire to continue fighting for the dream of yesterday. During the Algerian protests of 2019 a popular cry was that they were finishing the revolution of 1962. In India we have just seen the largest strike in world history. Empire is criminally understudied in European schools – I was 16 when I first remotely touched it, and 19 when I first properly studied it. This as led to prevailing myths of imperial stability against post-colonial disaster. More has to be done for the public to understand this part of history. Decolonisation is not simply a project of the past – it is happening today.
Bibliography:
- Martin Meredith, The State of Africa: A History of the Continent since Independence, (London: 2005)
- Priyamvada Gopal, Insurgent Empire, (Cambridge: 2019)
- Ronald Aminzade, Race, Nation, and Citizenship in Post-Colonial Africa: The Case of Tanzania, (Cambridge: 2013)
- Susan Geiger, ‘Tanganyikan Nationalism as “Women Work”: Life Histories, Collective Biography and Changing Historiography’, Journal of African History, 37:3, (1996), 465-478
- Sumathi Ramaswamy, ‘Maps and Mother Goddesses in modern India’, Imago Mundi, 53:1, (2001), 97-114
- Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi, (New York: 2007)
- Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (Paris: 1961)
- Kwame Nkrumah, The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, (Edinburgh: 1957)
- Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League, and the Demand for Pakistan, (Cambridge: 1994)
- Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya, (New York: 2005)
- Kumari Jayawardena, Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World, (London: 1986)
- Vijay Prashad, A People’s History of the Third World, (New York: 2007)
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