AP® World History: Modern · Unit 8 · Topic 8.5
Two Roads Out of Empire
Colonies left empire by two routes: negotiated transfer of power, as in Ghana, or armed war, as in Algeria. Both paths reflect pressure on the colonizer, not generosity.
Decolonization after 1945 moved fast once it started. Map the world from 1945 to 1975 and you watch Africa and Asia change color year by year: India and Pakistan in 1947, Ghana in 1957, most of French and British Africa by the early 1960s, Portugal's colonies hanging on into the mid-1970s. The two roads out run through this whole span side by side. One road is negotiated transfer of power: nationalist leaders, often already running local institutions, bargain with a colonial government that decides the colony costs more than it is worth. The other road is armed revolution: a colonial power refuses to leave, so independence movements build guerrilla forces and fight for it.
Negotiated paths still relied on pressure. A mass nonviolent movement, built on strikes, boycotts, and refusal to cooperate with colonial administration, could make ordinary governance and tax collection too costly to sustain, without a single battle. Ghana's path under Kwame Nkrumah worked this way: organized protest and noncooperation convinced Britain that holding on cost more than letting go. Algeria shows the other road. The National Liberation Front fought France from 1954 to 1962 through guerrilla war and urban bombing; France answered with torture and mass internment, and only after the war split French society and international opinion turned against Paris did Charles de Gaulle agree to withdraw.
Both roads end at the same institution: the United Nations, whose membership nearly triples between 1945 and the 1980s as new states join. That count is the decolonization story compressed into one number, and it links this topic to the Cold War pattern next to it, where both superpowers competed to court these new nations.
Key terms
- negotiated transfer of power
- Independence reached through talks between nationalist leaders and a colonial government rather than through war.
- mass nonviolent movement
- An organized campaign of strikes, boycotts, and noncooperation that pressures a colonial power without armed combat.
- National Liberation Front (FLN)
- The Algerian movement that fought an eight-year guerrilla war against France from 1954 to 1962.
- decolonization
- The process by which colonies gained independence from imperial powers, concentrated mainly between 1945 and the 1970s.
Watch it explained
- How it worksShow me the world map losing its imperial colors from 1945 to 1975 year by year.
- How it worksWalk me through how a nonviolent mass movement makes a colony ungovernable without a battle.
- Worked exampleTrace the Algerian war from 1954 to 1962 and the French decision to leave.
- Common mistakeWhy doesn't a negotiated independence mean the colonial power left willingly?
- Ties togetherHow does the number of United Nations members from 1945 to 1980 tell the whole decolonization story?
Check yourself
End of topic.