Decolonisation

John D. Hargreaves discusses cultural reconstruction and its political implications.

The legacy of empire brought nearly half a million blacks and Asians to Britain in the fifties in search of a better life.

The ability of Jinnah to unite a series of political expediencies with the popular appeal of Islam to demand a separate state for the Muslim people, has brought him the accolade 'the founder of Pakistan'. 

What role did Simon Bolivar play in the history of Venezuela's declaration of independence from Spain? Here John Lynch argues that the history of Spanish American independence is incomprehensible without him.

Robert Stephens continues our series on the Makers of the 20th Century, with a look at how Nasser left his mark on nearly twenty years of Egyptian, Arab and world history. An anti-colonialist who extended his concern to the newly liberated countries of the Third World, he has been acclaimed as a nationalist liberator - and condemned as a warmonger.

In 1844 the people of the former Spanish colony of Santo Domingo rose in rebellion against the Haitians who had occupied their island since 1822. But instead of trying to establish genuine independence for their Dominican Republic, its political leaders did their best to trade it off to France and then to Spain which briefly re-annexed it in 1861.

'Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh' was the chant of radicals in the 1966s and 1970s, idolising the Communist leader who led Vietnam's Revolutionary struggle first against French colonialism and then against the United States' involvement in Vietnam. An article by Milton Osborne.

Gandhi's lasting significance, argues Judith M. Brown in this article, lies, perhaps, not so much in what he actually did, but what he stood for.... Men like him may be done to death, but their message is not silenced in the making of this century

The term ‘Chimurenga’ has various historical associations. It was originally used to describe the first rising against British rule of the 1890s; the Rhodesian Bush War of the 1970s is known as the Second Chimurenga. J.V. Woolford, writing as the Bush War was ongoing, puts the term in context.

Patrick Turnbull writes that the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which opened on March 3rd, 1954, and continued until early May, marked the end not only of French, but of European hegemony in Asia.

George Woodcock describes how the Imperial Conference of 1930, and accompanying events overseas, began the change of substantial empire into a shadowy Commonwealth.

J.D. Hargreaves introduces a prophet of nationalism in the coastal countries of West Africa.

‘If this Empire seems an evil thing to me, it is not because I hate the British, I hate only the Empire.’ B.G. Gokhale offered an assessment of Gandhi upon the centenary of his birth.

Captain Boycott, whose name has added a word to the English language, was accepted as a symbol of the landlord class in troubled Ireland. By T.H. Corfe.