FACTORS ACCOUNTINGFOR DECOLONIZATION

Any historical survey of European empires must address their decline and fall as well as their rise. Decolonization was concentrated in two periods—phases 2 and 5—each lasting for roughly half a century.

Prospects for independence were slim until leaders in the colonies wanted to become politically autonomous and had the capacity to take over central administra­tive posts in the colonial public sector. Chapter 14 argues that for the most part settlers in phase 1 New World colonies scored low on the first score and high on the second, while non-Europeans in phase 3 and 4 Old World colonies scored high on the first and low on the second. With the passage of time New World settler elites came to identify more with the colony and continent they inhabited than with the European country from which they or their ancestors had migrated. The identity shift made it increasingly possible for settlers to imagine a future politically separate from the metropole. With the spread of Western education growing numbers of indigenous people in Old World colonies acquired skills, attitudes, and diplomas qualifying them for posts in the middle and upper ranks of public sector institu­tions.

That a stage is set does not guarantee that something will happen on it. The timing of a wave of independence movements depended on major crises that led co­lonial elites to reassess long-standing dependency ties. Institutions based in Europe created empires; worldwide events dismantled them. Wars among major powers for global hegemony triggered imperial dissolution in both decolonization phases (see chapter 15). Hegemonic wars fostered widely diverging expectations in colonies and metropoles over the nature of their relationship once the conflicts were over. Colo­nial elites, anticipating greater leeway to chart their territory’s future, were shocked when metropoles used the return to peace to return as well to the status quo ante bellum. Political crises in the aftermath of war revealed and in turn accentuated diverging expectations about who held power and legitimate authority. Postwar crises not only intensified the will but also increased the organizational capacity of colonial elites to press for autonomy. This point becomes clear when one compares the remarkably similar dynamics of otherwise vastly different scenarios:

• Britain and the thirteen North American colonies following the Seven Years’ War;

• France and Saint Domingue (Haiti) during a lull in the Napoleonic Wars;

• Spain and its New World mainland possessions following the Napoleonic Wars;

• Britain and India after World War I; and

• France and Vietnam and Algeria after World War II.

Being on the winning side of hegemonic wars contributed, paradoxically, to imperial decline by giving metropoles confidence they could dictate terms to their possessions.²³ Policies based on this attitude set off rounds of conflict with key colonies that resulted in successful breakaway movements.

Once early independence precedents were set, the momentum of imperial decline was accelerated by interactions among a growing number of new states. Observation and demonstration effects from one territory’s independence made it likely that others would soon follow the same path. The dynamic at work after phases 2 and 5 began was similar in kind, albeit opposite in direction, to the expansionist scrambles marking phases 1 and 3.

The theory of decolonization advanced here contrasts in interesting ways with the theory of imperialism. Whereas the starting point for understanding expansion of European power was developments in Europe, the starting point for understand­ing imperial contraction was developments in the colonies. To explain expansion one must examine several sectors embedded in several metropoles; to explain con­traction one can concentrate on struggles to control one sector: colonial govern­ment. For overseas expansion to succeed, actors needed both a high capacity and a strong will to assert themselves. A striking trait of successful independence move­ments is not so much their increased capacity to challenge the metropole as the change in will to do so. True, changes in will led in time to changes in capacity to act. But this sequence distinguishes political change in the colonies from the dynamics of European expansion, in which the two components of power were present in more balanced, mutually reinforcing ways.

In one respect expansionist and contractionist phases were similar. The will of Europeans to create empire stemmed in large measure from features peculiar to their home region. The will of colonial nationalists to organize for independence also stemmed in large measure from developments in Europe. The rise of representative democracy and the growing appeal of nationalism in Europe led politically aware groups overseas to perceive colonialism as morally flawed and self-contradictory. This perception gave colonial nationalists ethical and empirical grounds for organiz­ing to challenge an untenably unequal status quo. Characteristics of the region that dominated the world for centuries contributed, eventually, to the end of dominance.