Newly Independent States
8.6 Newly Independent States
Essential Question
What political changes led to territorial, demographic, and nationalist developments, and the economic shifts that resulted?
Overview
Imperialistic powers handed over governmental control to former colonies, creating new states.
Between 1945 and 2000, the number of independent states more than doubled, from approximately 75 to around 190.
The boundaries of the new states often led to conflicts, population displacement, and resettlement.
In India, the country was partitioned into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan.
Pakistan divided again, creating Bangladesh.
In the Middle East, the newly created Israel displaced Palestinian residents.
Newly independent countries often instituted strong policies to promote economic development.
Migrants from newly independent countries kept alive cultural and economic ties as they migrated to the colonizing countries, usually to the large cities.
Israel's Founding and Its Relationships with Neighbors
Zionist Movement
Originated in the 1890s as a reaction to the Dreyfus Affair.
Theodore Herzl, a Hungarian Jewish intellectual and journalist, used the affair as evidence that assimilation of Jews into European society was failing.
At the First Zionist Congress in 1897, he urged the creation of a separate Jewish state.
Birth of Israel
Zionists hoped the new state could be established in Palestine, where their ancestors had lived.
Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire, and most inhabitants were Arabs who practiced Islam.
Zionists argued that Jews could be free of persecution in a new state.
In 1917, during World War I, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, which favored the establishment in Palestine of a "national home" for the Jewish people.
Arthur James Balfour wrote that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine."
T. E. Lawrence, known as "Lawrence of Arabia," promised certain Arabs an independent state.
The British Foreign Office hoped Arabs would rise up against the Ottoman Empire.
Post-World War I
In 1918, 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.
As immigration increased, Arabs protested their loss of land and traditional Islamic way of life.
World War II and the Holocaust
The deaths of six million Jews in the Holocaust provided another impetus for Jewish immigration.
The fate of European Jews brought worldwide sympathy for the survivors.
Britain turned the matter over to the United Nations.
In 1948, after the UN divided Palestine into Jewish and Arab sections, the Jewish section declared itself to be a new country: Israel.
Multiple Wars
War broke out immediately between Israel and the Palestinians.
Israel had support from the United States, and the Palestinians had support from neighboring Arab countries.
Arab forces from Syria, Jordan (then called Transjordan), Lebanon, and Iraq invaded Israel.
The Israeli army won, and an armed truce was declared.
About 400,000 Palestinians became refugees.
Three other Israeli-Palestinian wars followed:
1956: Israel, with support from France and Great Britain, invaded Egypt's Sinai Peninsula to liberate the Suez Canal.
Following international protests, Israel and its allied forces were ordered to withdraw from Egypt.
1967 (Six-Day War): Israel gained the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.
1973 (Yom Kippur War): Israel repelled a surprise invasion by Egypt and Syria.
Israeli-Egyptian Peace
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 longtime leader Yasser Arafat wanted the return of occupied lands and the creation of an independent nation of Palestine.
Ongoing Violence
In the 21st century, the peace process became more complicated when the Palestinians split into two factions: Fatah (West Bank) and Hamas (Gaza).
Security concerns led the Israeli government to implement tighter border controls on the West Bank and on Gaza.
These controls, amounting to economic sanctions, severely restricted normal activity for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and fomented anger.
Israel further angered Palestinians by approving new settlements on lands it had occupied during previous wars.
Between 2000 and 2014, over 7,000 Palestinians and over 1,000 Israelis were killed.
Many countries in the Middle East remained hostile to the United States over its support of Israel.
Cambodia Gains Independence and Survives Wars
Independence
After World War II, Vietnam's neighbor Cambodia pressured France to grant it independence in 1953.
Cambodia's royal family tried to maintain its status as a non-aligned nation during the first two decades of the Cold War.
Cambodia was eventually drawn into the Vietnam War.
Khmer Rouge
Following the Vietnam War, the Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of Pol Pot, overthrew the right-wing government of Cambodia.
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge imposed a ruthless form of communism, following the Chinese model of "cultural revolution" that targeted 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 "killing fields" of Cambodia continued to be discovered in the countryside and jungles for decades afterward.
Vietnamese Intervention
In 1977, Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia to support opponents of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
At the end of the ensuing war, the Vietnamese took control of the government in Cambodia and helped the country to regain some stability.
In 1989, Vietnamese forces completed their withdrawal from Cambodia.
A peace agreement reached in 1991 allowed free elections, monitored by the United Nations.
Prince Norodom Sihanouk became a constitutional monarch, and the country developed a democratic government with multiple political parties and aspects of a market economy.
India and Pakistan Become Separate Countries
Partition of India
In 1947, the British divided colonial India into two independent countries: a mostly Hindu India and a mostly Muslim Pakistan.
India's population was about 10 times larger than Pakistan's.
In both countries, women had the right to vote.
Consequences of Partition
The partition of the colony was chaotic, and violence broke out along religious lines.
At least 10 million people moved.
Hindus and Sikhs fled their homes in Pakistan to resettle in India, and Muslims fled India for Pakistan.
In the political turmoil, between 500,000 and one million people died.
After partition, Pakistani-India distrust grew.
India became the world's largest democracy, while Pakistan had both elected leaders and authoritarian military rulers.
Moderates in both countries confronted powerful conservative religious movements that opposed compromise with the other country.
Kashmir Conflict
One persistent tension between India and Pakistan was over Kashmir, a border region in the mountainous north.
At the time of partition, most people in Kashmir were Muslims, but its leader was a Hindu.
Both Pakistan and India claimed Kashmir.
The tension between the two countries became more significant after each began developing nuclear weapons.
India controlled about 45 percent of the Kashmir region, Pakistan controlled about 35 percent, and China controlled about 20 percent.
Women Gain Power in South Asia
Overview
In some newly emerging countries, women became heads of state.
Often, they replaced their fathers or husbands.
In India and Pakistan, women won the right to vote in 1947.
Sri Lanka
The world's first female prime minister was Sirimavo Bandaranaike.
She won that position in 1960 in Ceylon (later Sri Lanka).
She continued her husband's socialist economic policies.
But in 1965, with a sagging economy, she was voted out of office.
Five years later, she returned to power and instituted much more radical policies, including land reforms, restrictions on free enterprise, and a new constitution that changed the country's name to Sri Lanka.
While some of her reforms succeeded, the economy stalled again, and in 1977, she was again voted out of office.
Bandaranaike remained active in Sri Lankan politics.
When her daughter Chandrika became the country's first female president in 1994, she appointed her mother again to the role of prime minister.
India
In 1966, Indira Gandhi became India's leader.
She made political and economic moves to strengthen India's economy.
War with Pakistan took a toll on the economy, though India won the conflict with the help of military support from the Soviet Union.
Indira Gandhi declared a national emergency in 1975 and jailed many opposition leaders.
Her 20-point economic program proved successful.
In 1977, Gandhi lost in the elections.
She returned to power as prime minister in 1980 but was assassinated in 1984.
Pakistan
Pakistan elected Benazir Bhutto prime minister in 1988.
She was the first elected female leader of a majority Muslim country.
Bhutto struggled to improve Pakistan's economy and reduce its poverty.
Corruption charges dogged her and her husband.
Bhutto won election to two nonconsecutive terms and then went into exile from 1999 until 2007.
Shortly after she returned to Pakistan, an assassin killed her.
Tanzania Modernizes
Julius Nyerere
Tanganyika gained its independence from Britain in 1961, later becoming the United Republic of Tanzania.
Its first president, Julius Nyerere, instituted African socialist political and economic ideas-summarized in the Arusha Declaration of 1967.
It was an egalitarian approach based on cooperative agriculture.
Literacy campaigns, free education, and collective farming were key components of what Nyerere called ujamaa (Swahili for "familyhood")..
He also advanced the country's economic independence away from foreign aid.
Economic hardships challenged Nyerere's leadership for years, as did conflicts with Uganda and its leader Idi Amin.
Though personally popular, Nyerere could not pull Tanzania out of poverty.
He resigned the presidency in 1985 but remained an important social leader until his death in 1999.
Emigration from Newer Countries to Older Ones
Migration Patterns
People from newly independent countries sometimes moved to the former colonial powers.
Large numbers of refugees and immigrants from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh moved to London after the chaos of World War II and other conflicts.
London was a metropole-a large city of a former colonial ruler.
Vietnamese, Algerians, and West Africans migrated to Paris and other cities in France, and Filipinos migrated to the United States.
Many migrants found jobs in the medical field, on railroads, in foundries, and in airports.
Economic and cultural ties between the colonial power and newly independent countries remained strong.