African Decolonization

In 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill met to discuss the postwar world. The result was the Atlantic Charter. One of the provisions in this document that was introduced by Roosevelt was the autonomy of imperial colonies. Therefore after World War II, there was pressure on Britain to abide by the terms of the Atlantic Charter. When Winston Churchill introduced the Charter to Parliament, he purposely mistranslated the colonies to be recently captured countries by Germany in order to get it passed. After the war, African colonies were still considered "children" and "immature" therefore democratic government was only introduced at the local levels.

By the 1930s, the colonial powers had carefully cultivated a small elite of leaders educated in Western universities and familiar with ideas such as self-determination. These leaders, including Some major nationalist leaders were Kenyatta (Kenya), Nkrumah (Gold Coast, Ghana), Senghor (Senegal), and HouphouÐ"«t-Boigny (CÐ"Ò'te d'Ivoire) came to lead the struggle for independence.

The byproducts of decolonization including political instability, border disputes, economic ruin, and massive debt continue to plague Africa to this present day

British troops were withdrawn from Palestine in 1947 and the state of Israel was formally established in 1948, shortly followed by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which further established both Israel's independence and Arab-Israeli enmity. See history of Israel, history of Egypt.

In 1952, officers in the Egyptian army overthrew the monarchy of King Farouk who had been a close ally of the British. The new government abandoned policies friendly to the European powers, while at the same time asserting an independent and Arab nationalist identity.

In 1955, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was importing arms from the Soviet bloc to build his arsenal for the confrontation with Israel. He announced it on August 31, 1955:

The operation to take the canal was highly successful from a military point of view, but was a political disaster due to external forces. Along with Suez, the United States was also dealing with the near-simultaneous Soviet-Hungary crisis, and faced the public relations embarrassment of criticizing the Soviet Union's military intervention there while at the same time avoiding criticism of its two principal European allies' actions. Perhaps more significantly, the United States also feared a wider war after the Soviet Union threatened to intervene on the Egyptian side and launch attacks by "all types of weapons of destruction" on London and Paris.

Thus, the Eisenhower administration forced a cease-fire on Britain and France, which it had previously told the Allies it would not do. The U.S. demanded that the invasion stop and sponsored resolutions in the UN Security Council for a cease-fire to stop the invasion. Britain and France, as permanent members of the Security Council, vetoed the resolutions in the UN Security Council. The U.S. then appealed to the General Assembly of the UN and proposed a resolution calling for a cease-fire and a withdrawal of forces. The appeal to the General Assembly was made under a procedure called "Uniting for Peace" (UfP). This procedure was adopted by the Security Council so that the UN can act even if the Security Council is stalemated by vetoes. Resolution 377 provides that, if there is a "threat to peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression" and the permanent members of the Security Council do not agree on action, the General Assembly can meet immediately and recommend collective measures to U.N. members to "maintain or restore international peace and security." The General Assembly held an emergency session and passed the UfP resolution. Britain and France withdrew from Egypt within a week. (Z Magazine, April 2, 2003, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=1&ItemID=3376 last visited 2/28/07.)

Part of the pressure that the United States used against Britain was financial, as President Eisenhower threatened to sell the United States reserves of the British pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of the British currency. After Saudi Arabia started an oil embargo against Britain and France, the U.S. refused to fill the gap, until Britain and France agreed to a rapid withdrawal. [4] There was also a measure of discouragement for Britain in the rebuke by the Commonwealth Prime Ministers St. Laurent of Canada and Menzies of Australia at a time when Britain was still continuing to regard the Commonwealth as an entity of importance as the residue of the British Empire and as an automatic supporter in its effort to remain a world power.

The British government and the pound thus both came under pressure. Eden was forced to resign and the French and British forces had finished withdrawing by December 1956; the Israelis did in March 1957.

After World War I, the colonized people were frustrated at France's failure to recognize the effort provided by the French colonies (resources, but more importantly colonial troops - the famous tirailleurs). Although in Paris the Great Mosque of Paris was constructed as recognition of these efforts, the French state had no intention to allow self-rule, let alone independence to the colonized people. Thus, nationalism in the colonies became stronger in between the two wars, leading to Abd el-Krim's Rif War (1921-1925) in Morocco and to the creation of Messali Hadj's Star of North Africa in Algeria in 1925. However, these movements would gain full potential only after World War II. The October 27, 1946 Constitution creating the Fourth Republic substituted the French Union to the colonial empire. On the night of March 29, 1947, a nationalist uprising in Madagascar led the French government led by Paul Ramadier (Socialist) to violent repression: one year of bitter fighting, in which 90,000 to 100,000 Malagasy died. On May 8, 1945, the SÐ"©tif massacre took place in Algeria.

In 1946, the states of French Indochina withdrew from the Union, leading to the Indochina War (1946-54) against Ho Chi Minh, who had been a co-founder of the French Communist Party in 1920 and had founded the Vietminh in 1941. In 1956, Morocco and Tunisia gained their independence, while the Algerian War was raging (1954-1962). With Charles de Gaulle's return to power in 1958 amidst turmoil and threats of a right-wing coup d'Etat to protect "French Algeria", the decolonisation was completed with the independence of Sub-Saharan