Untitled Flashcards Set

8.5 Decolonization in South Asia and Africa
WWII made the world safe for democracy, so de-colonization naturally followed. The first two countries granted independence in the
postwar era were India and the Philippines.
Britain finally granted the subcontinent independence after WWII. Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, Hindus, hoped for a
unified India, but Muhammad Ali Jinnah demanded greater Muslim representation in their own country. Hence, the 1947 partition and the
creation of predominantly Hindu modern India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan.
Mohandas, later known as Mahatma (‘revered/holy one’), Gandhi had been western in dress and profession before he became the
leader of the home rule movement in India. From 1893 to 1915, he worked as a lawyer in South Africa advocating for the rights of the Indian
minority. When he returned to India at age 45, he wore a dhoti and lived in an ashram, engaged in hunger strikes and led famous the 1930
Salt March, a boycott in the spirit of satyagraha (non-violent disobedience). In addition to independence, he advocated for an end to
discrimination against women and ‘untouchables’. Gandhi was assassinated January 30, 1948, by a far-right fanatic named Nathuram Godse,
Nehru became Prime Minster; and then his daughter, Indira Gandhi led. She promoted a “green revolution” to feed the large population but

then promoted repressive birth control/sterilization and repression of Sikh separatists. Both she and her son who took over after were
assassinated.
Religious (including Sikhs and Buddhists) were scattered, relocated, and fought fiercely. Kashmir in the Punjab region is still
disputed territory. Relatively recently, there was civil war in Sri Lanka. From 1983 until 2009, independent Ceylon/Sri Lanka was embroiled in
civil war between the Singhalese and Tamil people. The latter had been favored by the British and were afterward persecuted.
1960 was the so-called ‘year of Africa’. Decolonization was in full swing, along with the Negritude Movement and Pan-African Unity.
Black Brazilian World Cup soccer champion (in 1958, ‘62, and ‘70) Pelé was an inspiration to rich and poor, especially in the favelas
(slums). In the most watched television broadcast in history, in 1974, African American boxers (and civil rights activists) Muhammad Ali and
George Foreman faced off in the so-called ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ in Kinshasa, Zaire (later DRC). In the Caribbean, the former British colony
of Jamaica was extremely divided politically, and Bob Marley, inspired by Ethiopian Rastafarianism, played the One Love Peace Concert in
1978 (even after an attack on his family) in an effort at diplomacy. Jamaicans made up the majority of Afro-Caribbean people that migrated to
Britain post-WWII for better opportunities during the 1948-71 Windrush Movement (named for the ship that carried them).
Apartheid (the Afrikaans word for separateness) was the segregation, racial discrimination, and oppression of the black and biracial
majority of South African people by the white minority. It shockingly began in 1948, after WWII, after British colonialism. Civil rights leader
Nelson Mandela was jailed from 1964 until 1982 but became the first black President of South Africa in 1994. F.W. de Klerk and other
progressive white South Africans helped ended the racist system, although it was a generation after most countries had ended theirs.
Among the former British colonies in Africa, Ghana was the first and strongest nation-state. Kwame Nkrumah had been jailed as a
revolutionary but emerged as a reformer, famously danced with Queen Elizabeth II, and raised the gross domestic product to comparable to
Portugal and South Korea. In Kenya, however, the Kikuyu people had been dispossessed and were vengeful. This Mau Mau Movement for
independence started in the 1930s and became particularly violent in the 1950s. Jomo Kenyatta was jailed but emerged to lead the country
as the first indigenous/native born Prime Minister. In the 1960s, Nigeria had a civil war between Igbo and non-Ibgo people, and the former
created a temporary government called Biafra. He is known for corruption and dictatorship, but he is also called ‘The Father of His People’. Idi
Amin was worse, with regard to corruption and human rights abuses in Uganda in the 1970s. He was also responsible for harboring terrorist
holding Israelis hostage from an Air France flight in 1972. Through Operation Entebbe, the Mossad (Israeli special forces) brought them home
safely.
The French did not want to let go of Algeria because it was a settler colony, and they did not want to let go of Indochina (Vietnam,
Cambodia, and Laos) because it was rich in resources. So, the French fought and lost wars in both colonies. The Algerian National Liberation
Front (FLN), many Algerian Muslims, and Caribbean psychiatrist turned nationalist Frantz Fanon ousted the French in 1962.
The Portuguese were among the earlies to conquer and latest to release their colonies. Angola devolved into civil war in the 1970s,
with the Cubans and Soviets intervening on the communist side.
The Belgians were particularly brutal in their colonization of The Congo, and when they left around 1960, the colony divided into four
new nation states: The Congo, Zaire/Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda. Left-leaning leader Patrice Lumumba was
overthrown and executed by right-leaning Joseph Mobutu, and corruption and human rights violations continued. In Rwanda, since the Tutsi
had more power and privilege under Belgian rule, the Hutu took over to assert their dominance. When a Hutu President’s plane was shot
down by Tutsis, the two groups fell into civil war, involving ethnic cleansing in the 1990s.
In a civil war in Somalia in 1993, Army Rangers and Navy Seals aboard Black Hawk helicopters were shot down while trying to
provide aid. Sudan is currently the warring country in Africa.
8.6 Newly Independent States
During the Cold War, the Non-Aligned Movement (not directly aligned with the U.S. or U.S.S.R) included India, Indonesia, Egypt,
Ghana, and Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia had been a communist nation ruled by Josip Bros Tito from the end of WWII until his death in 1980.
Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic filled the power vacuum, and waged ethnic and religious war on Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Muslims
in Bosnia and Croatia and Albanians living in the Serbian province of Kosovo were subject to ethnic cleansing, so Milosevic was ultimately
tried for war crimes at The Hague (he died before sentencing). U.S. President Bill Clinton helped negotiate the 1995 Dayton Accords and
peaceful division of The Balkans.
On the other side of Europe, in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1972, British troops killed 13 protestors and wounded 17 (“Bloody
Sunday”). The protestors wanted Northern Ireland to be part of the Republic of Ireland not the United Kingdom. The Irish Republican Army
(IRA) was a violent group that fought for the Catholic minority against the Protestant majority until the Good Friday Agreement ended “The
Troubles” in 1998. In addition to the Geneva Conventions, the UN Declaration on Human Rights has been a code of conduct for all the world’s
citizens since 1947.
8.7 Global Resistance to Communism

After the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Leonid Brezhnev replaced Nikita Khrushchev, and the result was Détente, the relaxing of
tensions between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. In 1970, the two superpowers began negotiating Strategic Arms Limitation Talks/Treaties (SALT). In
1972, President Nixon actually recognized and visited communist China. However, China and the Eastern European satellites were still
censored, restricted, and suppressed.
The 1968 Prague Spring resulted in the Soviet suppression of Czechoslovakia, but the 1989 Velvet Revolution resulted in the 1993
division of the country and the democratic election of playwright-turned-President Vaclav Havel. Labor unrest resulted in the Soviet
suppression of Poland in 1980s; but the Solidarity movement resulted in the 1990 democratic election of labor leader-turned-President and
Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa. Similarly, Janos Kadar replaced the martyred revolutionary Imre Nagy to bring Hungary “communism
with a capitalist face”. Nicolae Ceausescu tried to maintain communist dictatorial control of Romania, but he and his wife, Elena, were tried,
convicted, and executed by their own people in 1990. The Eastern European countries sought independence when they saw Soviet
weakness.
8.8 End of the Cold War
In the 1980 U.S. Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, amateur Americans defeated professional Soviet hockey players in the
“Miracle on Ice”. From 1979 to 1989, the Soviets fought and lost a war in Afghanistan, where they supported communists against the
mujahedeen. (In 1982, Britain had a similarly embarrassing war against Argentina over The Falkland Islands.) In 1986, in Pripyat, Ukraine, the
Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster caused regional evacuation and radiation poisoning. In 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan called the
U.S.S.R. an “evil empire”, and he said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Germans clamored for change, and in 1989, they tore down the
Berlin Wall. Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev was dramatically different from Stalin, Khrushchev, and even Brezhnev, and he tried to resolve
the widespread problems with glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). Ultimately, this effort at restoration resulted in the
disintegration of the U.S.S.R. Communist hardliners tried to overthrow Gorbachev, but Russian President Boris Yeltsin supported him, the
end of the U.S.S.R., and the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States (15, Russia being the largest) in 1991