4.4 Decolonization
Introduction
The Second World War dealt a serious blow to the colonial powers, depriving them of their former prestige. The Netherlands, Belgium and France had been defeated and occupied, while the United Kingdom was seriously depleted. The peoples under colonial rule, often employed to fill the ranks of Allied armies in wartime, were determined to break the ties that still bound them to Europe, now ruined and stripped of its resources.
Furthermore, the emergence of two anti-colonialist superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, and the new international climate after 1945 encouraged the colonies to make a bid for independence. The Charter of the United Nations affirmed its ‘respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples’. The US President, Franklin Roosevelt, and the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, had already subscribed to this principle in the Atlantic CharAugusta, off Newfoundland. You can see the two world leaders aboard the Augusta in the photo to the left. In item 3 of this declaration the two Heads of State set out the following principle: ‘They respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them.’
Aware of the new favourable international context in which they found themselves, colonised peoples began their fight for independence. For some, this colonial liberation would take place through negotiation; for others, it would occur by force.
Decolonisation unfolded in two phases. The first lasted from 1945 to 1955, mainly affecting countries in the Near and Middle East, and South-East Asia. The second phase started in 1955 and mainly concerned North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. In 1955, the Bandung Conference, which assembled 29 delegates from African and Asian countries for the first time, heralded the process of decolonisation in Africa and the emergence of Third-World countries on the international stagIt was in this context that the fledgling European Community was forced to reflect on its future relations with the European colonies.