Tag
decolonization
6 entries tagged decolonization.
History & Society
Modern World History
- African Decolonization: Winning Sovereignty, Inheriting BordersWhy did independent African governments often retain borders created under colonial rule? The answer is neither that the lines were natural nor that independence was meaningless. New states inherited a difficult choice: defend a common territorial rule, or reopen claims that could put almost every state at risk.
- How the Modern Political Map Was MadeA country map looks like a finished jigsaw. History looks more like repeated rebuilding: political units expand, combine, split, change regimes, and retain parts of earlier administrations. The same place can acquire a new flag without a new population, while a language can cross many borders without producing a single state.
- South Asian Partition: Why 1947 Did Not Settle the MapIn 1947 British rule ended and India and Pakistan became independent. Pakistan contained two widely separated wings; its eastern wing became Bangladesh after the liberation war of 1971. The sequence is a powerful test of the idea that one shared identity can automatically define one stable state.
- The Cold War: Divided States, Non-Alignment, and SuccessorsThe Cold War was a global rivalry centered on the United States and Soviet Union. It was also a period of decolonization, civil wars, national revolutions and state-building. Those histories overlapped without becoming identical.
- The Second World War and the Unequal Peace of 1945The Second World War defeated Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, but victory did not restore the political world of 1939. It produced occupation regimes, population displacement, new international institutions and a distribution of power that weakened old colonial empires while strengthening the United States and Soviet Union.
History & Society
World Geography
- Sovereignty, Capitals, and Territories: Reading the Exceptions“How many countries are there?” looks like a counting problem, but it begins with a classification problem. “What is the capital?” can do the same. The difficulty is not usually ignorance of a city’s name; it is that institutions, legal claims and actual control do not always line up.