Newly Independent States

8.6 Newly Independent States

  • Essential Question: What political changes led to territorial, demographic, and nationalist developments, and the resulting economic shifts?

Overview

  • Imperialistic powers handing over governmental control to former colonies often resulted in the creation of new states.
  • Between 1945 and 2000, the number of independent states more than doubled, from approximately 75 to around 190.
  • The boundaries of these new states often led to conflicts, population displacement, and resettlement.
  • In India, partition led to Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, with Pakistan later dividing again to create Bangladesh.
  • In the Middle East, the creation of Israel displaced Palestinian residents.
  • Newly independent countries often instituted strong policies to promote economic development.
  • Migrants from newly independent countries maintained cultural and economic ties by migrating to colonizing countries, usually to large cities.

Israel's Founding and Relationships with Neighbors

  • The Zionist movement originated in the 1890s as a reaction to the Dreyfus Affair.

  • Theodore Herzl, a Hungarian Jewish intellectual and journalist, used the Dreyfus Affair to argue that assimilation of Jews into European society was failing.

  • At the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Herzl urged the creation of a separate Jewish state.

  • Zionists aimed to establish the new state in Palestine, the historical home of their ancestors.

  • Palestine was then part of the Ottoman Empire, with a majority Arab population practicing Islam.

  • Zionists argued that a Jewish state would provide freedom from persecution.

  • In 1917, during World War I, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, favoring the establishment of a "national home" for the Jewish people in Palestine.

  • The Balfour Declaration stipulated that nothing should prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.

  • British officer T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) promised certain Arabs an independent state to encourage them to rise against the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

  • After World War I, Britain was given a mandate over former Ottoman lands in the Middle East.

  • Zionists began immigrating to Palestine from Europe and other Middle Eastern areas, leading to protests from Arabs concerned about the loss of land and their traditional Islamic way of life.

  • World War II and the Holocaust increased Jewish immigration due to worldwide sympathy for the survivors.

  • Britain handed the matter over to the United Nations in the face of Arab opposition to Jewish immigration.

  • In 1948, the UN divided Palestine into Jewish and Arab sections, and the Jewish section declared itself to be the new state of Israel.

  • War broke out immediately between Israel and the Palestinians, supported by neighboring Arab countries.

  • Arab forces from Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq invaded Israel.

  • After several cease-fires, the Israeli army won the war, resulting in about 400,000 Palestinians becoming refugees living in camps near the Israeli border.

  • Several other Israeli-Palestinian wars followed:

    • In 1956, Israel, with support from France and Great Britain, invaded Egypt's Sinai Peninsula to liberate the Suez Canal, which Egypt had nationalized under Gamal Abdel Nasser's economic programs. International protests led to the withdrawal of Israeli and allied forces from Egypt.
    • In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel fought on three fronts and gained the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.
    • In the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Israel repelled a surprise invasion by Egypt and Syria.

  • After 30 years of conflict, U.S. President Jimmy Carter mediated the Camp David Accords, a peace agreement between Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt.

  • The Palestinians and several Arab states rejected the 1979 peace treaty.

  • The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and its leader Yasser Arafat sought the return of occupied lands and the creation of an independent nation of Palestine.

  • In the 21st century, the peace process became more complicated due to the division of Palestinians into two factions: Fatah (West Bank) and Hamas (Gaza).

  • Israeli government implemented tighter border controls on the West Bank and Gaza for security concerns, amounting to economic sanctions.

  • These controls restricted normal activity for Palestinians and fomented anger.

  • Israel further angered Palestinians by approving new settlements on lands occupied during previous wars.

  • Violence continued without a peace process, resulting in over 7,000 Palestinian and over 1,000 Israeli deaths between 2000 and 2014.

  • Many countries in the Middle East remained hostile to the United States over its support of Israel.

Cambodia Gains Independence and Survives Wars

  • After World War II, Cambodia pressured France to grant it independence, which it gained in 1953.
  • Cambodia's royal family tried to maintain its status as a non-aligned nation during the Cold War.
  • Cambodia was eventually drawn into the Vietnam War.
  • Following the Vietnam War, the communist Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, overthrew the right-wing government of Cambodia.
  • The Khmer Rouge imposed a ruthless form of communism, following the Chinese model of “cultural revolution,” targeting intellectuals and dissenters.
  • The slaughter and famine that followed took more than two million lives, about one-quarter of the country's population.
  • Mass graves of victims from the