WARTIME EXPECTATIONS

In the Seven Years’ War England relied on bna assistance to drive France from North America. Because bna settlers stood to gain if France was expelled they made sub­stantial military and financial contributions to the war effort when asked to do so.

In Saint Domingue expectations were high that slavery would be permanently outlawed following its formal abolition by the Jacobins in the 1790s. Toussaint be­lieved in France and was unwilling to break with it even when Napoleon, who was more conservative than the Jacobins, came to power.

Spanish America faced a legitimacy crisis after King Ferdinand VII’s forced abdication. While many creole leaders used the occasion to organize for indepen­dence, others remained loyal to Ferdinand. They looked forward to his return to the throne, expecting that he would listen to their pleas. The hope was that in reward for their loyalty the king would affirm the autonomy that creoles exercised during his years of confinement. Colonial political advance would thus be legitimized.

Twentieth-century wars involved explicit offers of a better postwar future by metropoles desperate for assistance from strategically essential possessions. The most important promissory note was the Montague Declaration of 1917 favoring an accelerated pace toward Indian self-government. World War I also saw assurances to Vietnamese, Algerians, and Dutch East Indians of an improved postwar political situation. A variation on this theme was British backing of Arab self-determination if Arabs took up arms against Ottoman overlords.

Transcending specific World War I commitments were the broad principles embodied in the Fourteen Points. Percival Spear notes that Wilson’s speech in 1917

contained the declaration on self-determination and this, Indian opinion noted, had been accepted by the British willy-nilly. The Americans talked about rights, it was further observed, while the British talked about concessions and safe­guards. The whole Indian mental outlook became more radical and a sense of expectancy, of a new dawn breaking, filled the air. What before 1914 would have been regarded as a gracious concession was now looked upon as little short of an insult. The [Gopal] Gokhale gasp of “so much” gave place to the [Bal] Tilak snort of “so little!”⁴

In World War II the Atlantic Charter was seen by many colonial subjects as a promissory note applicable everywhere. “Join the struggle against the Axis powers,” the charter proclaimed in effect, “and you can decide your own future after we have jointly achieved victory.”

World War II was a great leveler. Soldiers of all races died under horrendous circumstances; bodies of all colors lay exposed to the elements. Belkacem Krim, who became a leader in the Algerian revolution, fought with the Free French. “My brother returned from Europe with medals and frost-bitten feet!” he once noted. “There everyone was equal. Why not here?”⁵

The dramatic, zigzag course of World War Il’s campaigns in North Africa and the Pacific gave rise to a view that the near future would bring further surprises. Sylvia Leith-Ross noted that before the war educated Nigerians “wanted indepen­dence, they looked forward to it in some foreseeable but still indeterminate future. Then all of a sudden, from one day to another, it almost seemed from one hour to another, they wanted it at once, the next day, that very evening.”⁶