Conclusion

During the first half of the twentieth century the European empires underwent significant change. To a large degree this was owing to the effects of the two world wars. Between them these two conflicts forced the imperial Powers to derive as great an advantage as possible from the human and commodity resources at their command, but in so doing helped to lay the foundations for the erosion of the imperial order.

However, while some of the events that took place during these two wars posed new problems, it is possible to argue that in the end these conflicts were most important for accelerating already existing trends within the empires. After all, colonies existed to be exploited, and not just in wartime. But the mere act of exploitation was enough to generate indigenous resistance and to require the colonial Power to make concessions to whatever collaborating elite existed. Wars only served to heighten the intensity of this process. Moreover, the situation was not helped by the fact that so many colonies were of such recent origin and that in these areas colonial power was comparatively untested. Thus the European empires always rested on a fragile foundation and the conflicts of the early twentieth century only sealed their fate quicker than might otherwise have been the case.

Recommended reading

The best place to begin when looking at the roots of the decolonization process is Robert Holland, European Decolonization 1918—1981: An Introductory Survey (Basingstoke, 1985).

On the relationship between Britain and the Dominions in the inter-war period, see Philip G. Wigley, Canada and the Transition to Commonwealth: British Canadian Relations, 1917—26 (Cambridge, 1977) and Peter Cain and Anthony Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688—2000 (London, 2002). On Ireland, see Alvin Jackson, Ireland 1798—1998 (Oxford, 1999), Jonathan Bardon, A History ofUlster (Belfast, 1992), F. S. L. Lyons, Ireland since the Famine (London, 1973), Paul Bew, Ideology and the Irish Question: Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism, 1912—1916 (Oxford, 1994), D. George Boyce, Ireland 1828—1923: From Ascendancy to Democracy (Oxford, 1992), Michael Laffan, The Partition of Ireland, 1911—25 (Dundalk, 1983), Alan O'Day, Irish Home Rule, 1867—1921 (Manchester, 1998), Eunan O'Halpin, The Decline of the Union: British Government in Ireland, 1892—1920 (Dublin, 1987), Brendan Sexton, Ireland and the Crown, 1922—36: The Governor Generalship ofthe Irish Free State (Dublin, 1989), David Fitzpatrick, The Two Irelands, 1912—1939 (Oxford, 1998) and Dermot Keogh, Twentieth Century Ireland: Nation and State (Dublin, 1994).

For the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, see Justin McCarthy, The Ottoman Peoples and the End of Empire (London, 2000), Turfan M. Naim, Rise ofthe Young Turks: Politics, the Military and the Ottoman Collapse (London, 2000), Alec L.

On India, good overviews are provided by Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy (London, 1998), Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of India (Cambridge, 2002) and Peter Robb, A History of India (Basingstoke, 2002). For more specific texts, see Judith Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner ofHope (New Haven, CT, 1989), R. J. Moore, The Crisis of Indian Unity, 1917—40 (Oxford, 1974), Anil Seal, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1968) and Brian Tomlinson, The Political Economy of the Raj, 1914—1947: The Economics ofDecolonization in India (London, 1979). Some very useful essays are contained in John Gallagher, Gordon Johnson and Anil Seal (eds), Locality, Province and Nation: Essays on Indian Politics, 1870—1940 (Cambridge, 1973) and Christopher Baker, Gordon Johnson and Anil Seal (eds), Power, Profit and Politics: Essays on Imperialism, Nationalism and Change in Twentieth-Century India (Cambridge, 1981).

On South-East Asia, see Clive J. Christie, A Modern History of Southeast Asia: Decolonization, Nationalism and Separatism (London, 1996) and Nicholas Tarling (ed.), The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, vol. II (Cambridge, 1992). For more detailed accounts, see H. W. Brands, Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines 1890—1990 (New York, 1992), William Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (Boulder, CO, 1981), David Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920—1945 (Berkeley, CA, 1981), Anthony Milner, The Invention ofPolitics in Colonial Malaya (Cambridge, 1994), Michael Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia (London, 1999) and Takashi Shiraishi, An Age in Motion: Popular Radicalism in Java 1912—1926 (Ithaca, NY, 1990).

For Africa in the period up to 1945, useful overviews can be found in Bill Freund, The Making of Contemporary Africa (Basingstoke, 1998), J. D. Fage, A History of Africa (London, 1995), John Hargreaves, Decolonization in Africa (London, 1996) and John Iliffe, Africans: The History of a Continent (Cambridge, 1995). For more detailed information, see Bruce Berman and John Lonsdale, Unhappy Valley: Conflict in Kenya and Africa (London, 1992), Martin Chanock, Unconsummated Union: Britain, Rhodesia and South Africa, 1900—45 (London, 1977), John Iliffe, A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge, 1979), Anne Phillips, The Enigma of Colonialism: British Policy in West Africa (London, 1989) and Jean Suret-Canale, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900—1945 (London, 1971).