AP® World History: Modern · Unit 8 · Topic 8.9
Cold War and Decolonization as One Story
Decolonization and the Cold War were the same process seen from two angles: as empires broke apart, the US and USSR rushed to recruit the new states, turning local struggles into superpower contests.
After 1945 two things happened at once. Old empires collapsed under the weight of nationalist movements and wartime debt, and two superpowers with opposite ideologies squared off for global influence. Every new country born from empire needed money, weapons, and a model for how to organize its economy and government. The US offered capitalism and alliance against communism; the USSR offered a path to development outside Western capital and old colonial ties. A new state rarely chose freely. Leaders weighed which side would arm them, fund them, or back their side in a civil war, and superpowers courted them for bases, resources, and votes in the UN.
This is why the same underlying dynamic produces such different events. India split into India and Pakistan in 1947 partly over religious nationalism, but Cold War alignment soon layered on top, with Pakistan leaning toward the US and India toward nonalignment with Soviet ties. In Angola, Portugal's collapse left a vacuum that the US, USSR, and Cuba filled by backing rival factions in a civil war lasting decades. In Chile, a democratically elected socialist, Salvador Allende, was overthrown in 1973 with US backing because Washington feared another Cuba. Same dynamic, three different local contexts, three different outcomes.
Vietnam shows the full arc: French colony, then a nationalist movement under Ho Chi Minh that turned communist, then a Cold War battlefield as the US intervened to stop a domino effect, then a unified communist state by 1975. Multiply Vietnam by dozens of countries and you get the map of 1991: a world decolonized but still scarred by the rivalry that decolonization invited in.
Key terms
- Nonalignment
- A policy, chosen by countries like India, of refusing to formally ally with either the US or the USSR during the Cold War.
- Proxy war
- A conflict where rival powers support opposing local factions instead of fighting each other directly, as in Angola.
- Domino theory
- The US belief that if one country fell to communism, neighboring countries would follow in succession.
- Partition
- The division of a territory into separate states, as when British India split into India and Pakistan in 1947.
- Decolonization
- The process by which colonies gained independence from imperial powers, mostly accelerating after 1945.
Watch it explained
- How it worksShow me a decolonizing country choosing a side and what it gets and loses either way.
- How it worksHow do the same forces produce a partition in India, a proxy war in Angola and a coup in Chile?
- Worked exampleTrace one country, Vietnam, from French colony to Cold War battlefield to unified state.
- Ties togetherHow does the world map of 1945 become the world map of 1991 in a single animation?
Check yourself
End of topic.