Nationalism and Decolonization

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As we discussed earlier in the year, there were two competing forces in the world as we entered the Industrial revolution. You had Imperialism in places like Britain and France, of course, their empire was born from their Nationalistic fervor. Many of the colonies that they established sought to become nations of their own. This was Nationalism. Most of the wars of the 19th and 20th century were fought in the battle between existing or aspiring empires and the nations that sought to have their own identity.

Even before World War 2, many of the colonies of the big empires were seeking freedom. These movements were both peaceful and militaristic. The most obvious example is America itself who became an empire after winning independence from Britain.

However, after World War 2, there was a rapid and widespread movement towards decolonization. Many of the empires had been weakened by the war and even taking care of their homeland was a struggle. In this atmosphere, many of the colonies all over the world that had previously begun to rise up against their colonizers now gained their freedom.

One of Britain’s colonial holdings was the area of Palestine. This is still to this day one of the most contested areas of the planet. After the Holocaust, the Jewish Zionists and the world community were seeking to give the Israeli people their own home. Millions flooded into their ancestral homeland in Palestine and after Britain loosed their control of the area, they declared their independence. Obviously, you can see that this would be an issue for the Arab Palestinians that had lived there since before the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

While America always sought to help countries that were interested in following in the path of capitalistic democracy, not all countries go that way. In China, they had been struggling for independence since 1911 when they overthrew the Qing Dynasty and established the Republic of China.

However, they had a lot of difficulties along the way and after World War 2, they followed the path of their Communist neighbors in Russia. In 1949, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the creation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Reeling from the recent victory of Communist forces in the Chinese Civil War and the successful detonation of an atomic weapon by the Soviet Union. The U.S. National Security Council believed that the decline of the Western European powers and Japan following World War II had left the United States and the Soviet Union as the two dominant powers. They argued in the “NSC-68” that the Soviet Union was “animated by a new fanatic faith” antithetical to that of the United States, and was driven “to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world.” Furthermore, they concluded that “violent and non-violent” conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union had become “endemic.”

Its authors argued that one of the most pressing threats confronting the United States was the “hostile design” of the Soviet Union. The authors concluded that, with the additional support of China, the Soviet threat would soon be greatly augmented by the addition of more weapons, including nuclear weapons, to the Soviet arsenal. They argued that the best course of action was to respond in kind with a massive build-up of the U.S. military and its weaponry.

Under these recommendations, the Truman Administration almost tripled defense spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product between 1950 and 1953 (from 5 to 14.2 percent). The Cold War was well underway and as these nationalistic uprisings continued into the 1950s, they became opportunities for proxy wars between Communist and Capitalist forces.

We’ve looked today at the decolonization and nationalism in India, Africa, the Middle-East and China. Is there anything surprising that you learned today or that you found interesting that you would like to learn more about?