CRITICAL EVENTS

Phase 5 began in 1940, when the major colonial powers faced a two-pronged mili­tary assault. One part was directed at the metropoles themselves, the other against their colonies in Southeast Asia and Oceania.

The double assault on the colonial status quo was dramatized when France fell to the Germans in June 1940 and Japanese troops entered Indochina three months later, under terms approved by the collaborationist Vichy regime. Indochina was nominally ruled by French administrators until the Japanese formally took control in March 1945. But it was dear to everyone from late 1940 onward who was in charge. Holland was likewise subjected to two-pronged attack. It fell to the Germans in mid-1940, and by early 1942 the Dutch East Indies were conquered by Japanese troops. The British, their homeland under German siege by air and sea, could do little to stop Japanese forces from landing in Malaya (December 1941), capturing the strategically vital naval base and port of Singapore (February 1942), and overrunning Burma the following month. Japan took the Philippines following its attack on Pearl Harbor as well as Allied island possessions dispersed throughout Melanesia and Micronesia.

Japan’s conquests did not, of course, liberate the territories it occupied. One set of externally imposed rulers was replaced by another. Many indigenous peoples suffered harsher treatment during the short period of Japanese rule than under the Europeans. Nonetheless, the fast-paced events of 1940-42 markedly reduced the scope of Europe’s colonial possessions and contributed directly to the end of empire in Asia. Any lingering myth of European or white invincibility was destroyed by Japan’s stunningly rapid, decisive triumphs. The Japanese slogan “Asia for Asians” had wide appeal even if the reality behind the slogan—“Asia for the Japanese”—did not. In Indonesia and Burma the new rulers attempted to work through nationalist movements suppressed by Dutch and British authorities. Sukarno and Hatta in Indonesia, Ba Maw and Ne Win in Burma, and other less prominent nationalists were released from detention and allowed to carry out modest organizing activities. Japanese officers trained tens of thousands of Javanese youth in an auxiliary guerrilla army called Peta. The young soldiers were able to put their training to practical use, first against those who had trained them and later against the Dutch. The ground­work was laid for movements capable of mobilizing effectively for freedom against all outsiders, whether Asian or European.

Japan’s conquests in Southeast Asia meant that if Europeans wished to return to the prewar state of affairs they would have to reoccupy territory temporarily lost to them. Recolonization was a formidable task, for it meant starting another round of imperial expansion almost from scratch.³ Prospects of success in this venture were further lowered in situations in which a chaotic period between the collapse of Japanese rule and the arrival of Allied forces permitted nationalists to announce formation of independent states: the Republic of Indonesia (August 17,1945) and the Democratic Republic ofVietnam (September 2,1945). As the Dutch in Indonesia and the French in Vietnam quickly discovered, reoccupation entailed a major pacifica­tion drive against well-entrenched, relatively well armed, widely popular nationalist movements.

The end of phase 5 was marked by the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980. This was not the last territory to make the transition from colonial rule to statehood. But those that followed it, and the few remaining colonies likely to do so, are microstates that cannot rival it in population, economic resources, or diplomatic influence. The story of Zimbabwe’s decolonization is complicated by the presence of a powerful European settler community. In 1923 Great Britain replaced the British South Africa Company as formal ruler of what was then called Southern Rhodesia. But officials in London permitted settlers to exercise de facto control over the terri­tory’s domestic affairs. The settler community enjoyed the privileges of the responsi­ble government system first devised in Canada and later applied to the other white dominions. The key to settler power lay in a racially discriminatory electoral system weighted so that whites, who never constituted more than 5 percent of the popula­tion, came close to monopolizing the electoral rolls and hence controlled the legisla­ture. By the early 1960s an arrangement so manifestly racist was unacceptable not only to Southern Rhodesia’s Africans but also to the British government. London insisted that it would not negotiate independence until the franchise was extended to the African majority. A universal adult franchise was the last thing politicians repre­senting a tiny racial minority were willing to accept. In 1965, faced with opposition to continued minority rule from the territory’s majority population and from the metropole, the settler-led Rhodesian Front government took matters into its own hands and issued a unilateral declaration of independence from Great Britain.

The new regime faced diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions imposed by many countries, including Great Britain. By the early 1970s armed attacks against the settlers and their government by two competing African nationalist move­ments began in earnest. By decade’s end these attacks, in combination with sanc­tions, had effectively undermined the secessionist regime’s military and economic position.

Under pressure from newly independent members of the Commonwealth to intervene on behalf of a majority rule solution, Britain in 1979 convened a conference of the contending parties at London’s Lancaster House. The conference produced formulae for a cease-fire, arrangements for a British-supervised election based on a universal adult franchise, and the outline of a postindependence constitution. Upon conclusion of the Lancaster House conference Britain formally reasserted authority as the colonial power. It did so not, as in Vietnam and Indonesia, to reclaim power in autocratic fashion but rather to turn over power to a democratically chosen suc­cessor. Winner of the election was Robert Mugabe, leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union (zanu), which had led the guerrilla struggle against the minority regime. Mugabe was prime minister when independence was celebrated at midnight on April 17,1980.⁴