British Empire

If the British Empire still clung to a fragile equilibrium in 1939, World War II (1939-1945) upset it. Some British possessions, including Hong Kong and Burma, were conquered by Japan. There was a revolt in India in August 1942, and some dissidence in the Indian Army. Although India nevertheless contributed extensively to the Allied war effort, by 1945 the British colonial government in India was a spent force. The Dominions entered the war alongside Britain in 1939, but afterwards showed their determination to judge the nature and limits of their participation. In the colonies still directly under British authority, especially those in Africa and the Caribbean, the British government sought to develop a more progressive image in keeping with a war supposedly being fought on behalf of freedom. Colonial Development and Welfare Acts were passed in 1940 and 1945, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill joined with United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in issuing the Atlantic Charter in 1941, which declared the right of self-determination for all countries. While Britain was quite successful overall at mobilizing its empire for the war, the promises it issued and the actions it took to elicit this mobilization ultimately hastened its end.

The results of these actions were seen quickly in Asia, where India and Pakistan gained independence in 1947, and Ceylon and Burma in 1948. Only Burma did not remain a member of the Commonwealth. Of Britain’s Asian possessions, only Hong Kong was still under British control after 1950, and it was returned to the People’s Republic of China in 1997. In 1948 Britain also gave up its control over Palestine. In Africa, Britain assumed that self-government would be much longer in coming. Riots in Accra in February 1948, however, forced a relatively rapid transition in the Gold Coast, which in 1957 became the independent nation of Ghana. In the 1950s the British government recognized the winds of change in Africa, and many African nations gained independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s: Sudan (1956), Nigeria (1960), Sierra Leone (1961), Tanganyika (1961, later Tanzania), Uganda (1962), Kenya (1963), Zambia (1964), Malawi (1964), The Gambia (1965), Botswana (1966), and Swaziland (1968). These and other transfers of power were for the most part very smooth, with the exception of Rhodesia, where a revolt by white settlers led to years of guerrilla warfare before Zimbabwe was legally established in 1980.

There were no such troubles in the West Indies, although the various islands gained their independence as separate, and not always viable, units. Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago became independent in 1962, and the other islands followed thereafter.

Throughout this process, British governments did not resist decolonization, provided that it was possible to transfer power to friendly regimes and the circumstances were not humiliating to national pride. Where British prestige was hurt, as in the war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) in 1982, the response was militant. With the end of the empire, a multiracial, coequal Commonwealth of Nations evolved, which had modest utility but generally cooperative feelings. Today there are 54 Commonwealth nations, and even most of those states that left the Commonwealth for one reason or another (such as South Africa and Pakistan) have found cause to return.