Decolonization

Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Eastern Europe 05/03/2011

1. Decolonization is the end of the empires and we see this occur in different places for centuries, but when we
talk about decolonization in world history, we’re really refer to the post- World War II era
a. In the 1945-1970s, it happened in Asia, South Africa, and the Middle East.

b. Late 1980s-early 1990s: Eastern Europe when Soviet Union loses its stronghold
Many historians also like to include in the process of decolonization the end of the Soviet Union’s
sphere of influence in Eastern Europe—so the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Soviet heja
elite or control over places like Czechoslovakia, etc.
i. These places that became independent after the end of WWII are often lumped together under
the phrase: “Third World” – countries that are less industrialized and are beginning to experience
economic development that countries in Europe and America and Canada and Australia
experienced decades or even centuries earlier (and in some places, there are countries that aren’t
experiencing that—underdeveloped)
2. Why did decolonization occur?
a. Rising nationalism began well before even World War I in these places. World War I only exacerbated
these trends and World War II was the final dénouement.
i. There was a real resentment of western domination, in the sense that it was partly hypocritical,
largely because many of the leaders of the independence movements in these countries have
received western-style education, whether in their own countries, through missionary schools, or
school set up to train civil servants to work in the government administration, or sometimes by
actually traveling to the European countries themselves. Or they had traveled to the Soviet Union
to gain training, and while they were in the Soviet Union, there were exposed to the anti-
imperialist rhetoric that was very common as part of the Soviet’s ideology.
1. When they were taught in Soviet Union teaching, they were immersed to liberalism and
Marxism, which were both incredibly influential in their thinking – a lot of countries
when they became independent adopted a lot of aspects of socialism to political and
economic systems
ii. As a result of WWI and WWII, they also knew that western powers were not
invincible. Japan’s early successes in WWII, as well as even going back to the Russo-Japanese
War of 1904-5, showed them that European powers could be defeated. The bloodshed from wars
showed the dark side of western civilization and this obsession with technology
b. So people were looking for alternative way of being and creating new societies and did not simply accept
superiority of western model anymore—there was a loss of European moral authority
i. This idea of the White Man’s Burden (Benjamin Cooper used this phrase in his poem) was
seen as a joke now.
1. The idea here is the idea that white, western culture’s superiority, the civil idealization,
the idea going back to John Stewart and Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian idea, and there is
some question as to how serious they took this, but he (Cooper) was a very big proponent
of empire in general, so that idea seems to be more bankrupt.
ii. Western cultures and civilizing idea were questioned now
iii. Europe itself was also not as committed after World War II as it had been after World War I to
shoring up their empire.
 c. Europe’s economic and military weakness: earlier, Europe had a lot of problems – Britain and
France desperately needed to concentrate on their own rebuilding
i. Keeping empires was very expensive; luckily, governments that were elected saw the idea of
empire repugnant. For example, the Marshall Plan: the United States. Marshall was the US
Secretary of State and claimed they would give western Europe, especially western Germany, aid
to rebuild their economy and infrastructure
1. This would also help political support to the United States as opposed to the Soviet Union
during the Cold War because there were so many ideas in government and political
parties in a lot of European countries, and the United States was worried that they would
fall into Soviet Union orbit, so we devoted a lot of money helping these countries with the
Marshall Plan.
ii. The United States was ambivalent about colonies and helped to sponsor a series of resolutions in
the United Nations and saw colonies as potential threats to Cold War.
3. General Themes/Problems

a. As countries made the transition from colony to independent nation, they often faced similar challenges.
One of these challenges was that there weren’t enough resources for everyone in society
i. And exacerbating this challenge was the fact that many places in the developing world
experienced an explosive and steady population growth in the post-WWII era.
So there were much higher birth rates and increased life expectancy, which meant that the
resources that the country had were often strained
1. This was in contrast to many places in the developed world (in Northern Europe, the
U.S., Canada, Australia, etc.) where you often had either stable population rates, or even
in some places like Russia, you had a negative birth rate because people aren’t having
children at a rate that will replace the population; but in most places it was a boom
2. in the 1960s/early 70s, a lot of commentators, scientists, and social scientists began to
get a worried because they saw the rapid population growth and considered the
possibility of a “population bomb,” where the world would be unable to feed itself and
simply run out of food
a. This went back to Thomas Malthus’s idea (from the late 18th/early 19th century),
which said that while population was rising faster than the amount of food that
there was, there would be wars, famine, etc. There were a lot of predictions that
this was going to happen in the post WWII era, as well. However, that ended up
not happening because, although there were times of famine and there was
definitely lots of environmental destruction going on (i.e. forest land cleared to
be planted with crops, people were burning, fuel, etc.), there were new advances
in agriculture in the 1960s and 70s which dramatically improved crop yields and
allowed for many more people to be fed than had ever been possible in the world
before, and we call this the Green Revolution (def on the AP)
3. The Green Revolution is the idea here is that you have genetically modified crops,
different types of fertilizers and pesticides, etc. that are being employed. You also have
new types of industrial technologies applied to farming that allows you to create more
food)
a. The Green Revolution is particularly important because at the same time, there is
a massive movement in the developing world from rural areas to urban ones, and
you have the development of megacities in many places in the non-Western
world. Places like Legos, Nigeria and Cairo.
 b. These places have enormous populations, and you need to be able to feed them—
the Green Revolution helped mitigate against that problem in large measure
ii. Still because of population growth, the gap in wealth between urban and rural dwellers
became a big problem (there was no Green Revolution to fix it). This is why a lot of the
development work that’s been done, trying to fix and improve poverty, has been focused on rural
areas in the recent years (i.e. trying to improve education, improve access to health and
sanitation, etc.)
So a lot of countries were grappling with population growth, urbanization, depletion of natural resources, and
they weren’t really sure how to build a sustainable economy and society that was pleasant to live in because when
all these people were moving to cities, they looked like dumps/slums. People were moving into areas without
infrastructure, there are no sewers, and they’re building huts with cardboard or plastic wrap scavenged from the
dump. It is almost like an outlaw society in these slums: violent, very dirty, and very disease prone.
-The challenge of urban planning when you have rapid migration to cities is a very important issue in the
developing world
--For example, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the slums are called favellas, and the thing that’s worst
about the favellas is that the rich people lived in the valleys (usually rich people lived up in the
hills to get away from the squalor of peasants and have a nice view). In Rio, the poor people lived
up on the hillsides, so favellas were built on the hillside. But every time it rained, the favellas slid
down the hillside.
b. Old ethnic and class rivalries resurfaced after independence

i. Many of those rivalries had been dampened down as groups joined together to kick out the
Europeans, but when people were deciding who was going to be in charge in their new country,
people began to fight over the spoils. And often, the tactics that the Europeans themselves had
used of divide and rule, privileging one group of people at the expense of another (i.e. better jobs,
better access to resources), created a lot of resentment.
1. Remember earlier, with the Hutus and Tutsis of Rwanda: when the Tutsis got all the
goodies in Rwanda under the colonial regime, the Hutus became very resentful and
wanted to get even/get revenge, so often these rivalries resurfaced and you begin to have
a lot of ethnic wars. The boundaries of these countries didn’t necessarily conform to
tribal or ethnic divisions, so people were trying to get back and reunify, or take back what
they thought was rightfully theirs, and in fact, we’ll see that the African community of
states decided that they were just going to keep the old colonial orders because if they
tried to renegotiate all the boundaries with the new countries, the whole continent would
plunge into chaos.
c. Political/economic mismanagement
i. Many of the leaders who came to power in these new countries immediately after independence
were not really equipped to deal with the challenges that they and their countries faced. Many of
them had had some education, some had potentially been these elite who had been educated in
the western system, or maybe they had some access to some form of Marxist education, but some
of them had just been rebel leaders.
1. They weren’t necessarily very well schooled in how to actually run a country.
2. If they had worked in the colonial government, it’d only have been in a very low level job,
because the Europeans wouldn’t allow people from that colony to rise very high (that was
one of the things that a lot of the liberal/western-educated people didn’t like about the
Europeans). They didn’t have the management tools to govern a large new society.
 ii. Moreover, many of them saw their new positions as an avenue to get rich and saw this as their
opportunity to amass their own personal power as well as the power and wealth of their families
(these are societies that are based very much on extended family groupings or ethnic groups), and
potentially to punish your enemies. This phenomenon became known as a kleptocracy, which is
a government that is based around the leaders robbing their country blind (a kleptocrat is a
leader who uses political power to steal his or her country’s resources).
1. This is what leaders in places like Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt have been accused of,
that they were enriching themselves and their relatives and putting a bunch of money
away in Swiss bank accounts while the majority of people in the country were
experiencing economic difficulty. So, the wealth was not being shared—it was
concentrated in the hands of the elite.
iii. And the politics of the Cold War exacerbated/worsened this problem in many cases because both
the U.S. and Soviet Union wanted allies in the Cold War. Each wanted the countries of the
developing world to be their respective allies, and one of the ways to get allies was by giving
economic or military assistance.
1. If you gave a leader a lot of money, he could distribute it to his people or he could keep it.
Usually, the money was put into his own bank account and the weapons he got from aid
were used against his political opponents, either slaughtering them or putting them in
jail.
2. So the Cold War actually helped prop up dictators

3. The U.S. and Soviet Union were often willing to overlook these abuses and the corruption
of many of the these leaders because we were both desperate to make sure that we had
them as allies
a. Present day: This is one of the criticism that is coming up about the U.S. and
Mubarak, who was a very repressive guy in Egypt. We supported him because we
wanted Egypt on our side, first because of the Cold War and then because of the
fight in the war on terror. We also wanted to make sure that Egypt followed our
lead and remained friendly to Israel. (Similar thing playing out with leaders all
around the world—there’s a reason why we want them in power. There is a
certain degree of stability in the country.) If Mubarak wasn’t there, we were
worried about the Muslim Brotherhood and that there would be guys that were
Muslim extremists in power—we can control Mubarak, but don’t know about the
other guys.
d. Many leaders, in determining the direction to take their countries after independence, followed a model
that seemed to make sense given their education training and what they had thought worked well for
other countries in the developed and westernized world
i. They followed rapid westernization, heavy industrialization, and often a continuation of some of
the export raw-material drivel policies of the colonial era because, in order to create an
industrialized economy, you need money (^legacy of imperialism)
1. One way to earn money was to sell the things they already had (i.e. continue exporting
minerals you’re mining or bananas you’re growing), so many of the economic policies
continued in that way, but the money was then used to fund industrialization
ii. A lot of countries, like India, were also influenced by Marxism and the idea that one should
industrialize and that one should create a state-owned industrial sector where the government
controls a lot of industry. In part, this was also a rejection of the old colonial
model.
 1. On the one hand, you continue this export-driven economy that seems colonial, but on
the other hand they wanted to reject colonialism, so one of the ways that they did that
was that when they industrialized, they made those industries state-owned. It was kind
of socialist in orientation.
a. If you had an oil industry, it was government controlled. If you had steel mills,

they were government operated and controlled.

2. This idea of continuing to focus on raw-material exports, and often selling to your
mother-former-country, was sometimes termed “neo-colonialism”
iii. The second way they could get money was to take out loans from new international organizations
founded after WWII whose mission was to help the economies of the newly independent world.
Two of the most important institutions was the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which
deals with currency, and the World Bank, which funds development projects.
1. World Bank would give money to build loans, etc.; often these loans were large amounts
of money—not all went to the project; some went into leader pockets, but even the money
was used for what it was meant for, those projects weren’t as profitable or helpful as the
leaders has initially thought they would be. And you had to repay the loan back and, while
the interest rate was relatively low, they couldn’t repay even cover the principle on the
loan because they realizing the same economic return on these investment as they
thought they would go.
2. So many countries went into massive debt, and some people like Bono advocated for
third-world debt relief. The idea was that all of these countries had gotten themselves into
debt to various organizations, like the IMF and World Bank, and you should just forgive
their loans because they’ll never be able to pay their loans back. Moreover, if they have to
pay their loans back, then money they could be using on healthcare of education for their
people is unavailable.
3. this often created uncertainty in newly independent countries. They chose poorer
policies and didn’t realize the success from these investments that they thought they
would.
e. Another development that occurs in the post-war period is the growth of the Non-Aligned movement

i. As previously mentioned, most the countries of the developing world had to choose between an
ally of the Soviet Union and the U.S., but some countries found this to be another form of
colonialism, just under another name. Everybody saw that the Soviet Union dictated what its
satellite countries would do, and the U.S. was also seen as being kind of dictatorial.
ii. So a group of countries, in the mid-1950s, got together in Bandung, Indonesia (aka the
Bandung Conference of 1955) and decided that they would create a ‘third way’, what became
known as the ‘Non-Aligned movement, that countries could band together from the developing
world and could negotiate an independent pact without being beholden to either the Soviet Union
or the U.S.
iii. the leaders of this Non-Aligned movement were General Nassar of Egypt, Prime Minster Nehru
of India, and President Sukharno of Indonesia (these are all big countries with tense colonial
pasts); all you need to know are Indonesia, Egypt, India
1. These countries argued that the powers in the Cold War were always interfering in their
politics, economics, and military, and they didn’t want that
iv. However, the countries that were part of the Non-Aligned movement were not above
manipulating Cold War politics if it was to their advantage
 1. For example, they recognized that the U.S. and Soviet Union wanted allies. So often, they
would go to both sides and try to play off both sides against each other to see which one
would give them more goodies. (This is how the Aswan Dam was build in Egypt)
a. Nasser, in Egypt, wanted a big dam built on the Nile, but he couldn’t afford it
himself, so he went to the Soviet Union. He said that Egypt wanted to be a Soviet
Union ally and asked for help in building the dam. The Soviet Union sent
technical advisors, money, and more to help build the dam. Nasser then turned to
the U.S. and said that Egypt might be allies with the Soviet Union because of
their help in building the dam. The U.S. responded by also sending lots of
advisors and money to help build the dam.
2. So Egypt played both sides off each other to get what they wanted. India also did this in a
number of developing projects, as well as in getting military aid.
4. British Decolonization I: India

a. As you know, there was growing Indian nationalism (India National Congress, led by
Gandhi and Nehru), at first led by these middle-class elites, western educated, and then increasingly
there came a mass national movement led by Gandhi after WWI to get the British out of India
b. There was religious tension in India, which the British had helped to foment between the Muslims and
the Hindus
i. The Muslims, (Muslim League) led by Jinnah, became convinced that the Muslims of India, who
were about 25% of the Indian population, would never get a fair deal, and this eventually led, as
India becomes independent after WWII, into the partition of India into India and Pakistan.
Pakistan is Muslim, and India is primarily Hindu, but also has a whole bunch of other religions.
c. One of the ways Gandhi was able to convince the British to leave after WWI and also to galvanize mass
public opinion was to sponsor a series of boycotts of British goods (i.e. the March to the Sea with the
salt boycotts and Homespun Movement with clothes and hunger strikes he went on, etc.).
d. After WWII, the British elected a labor government and booted Churchillivocis. The labor government
was ideologically not very predisposed to the idea of empire and thought it was morally wrong. Moreover,
they were more concerned with rebuilding Britain’s domestic economy, so they allowed India to be
independent in 1947.
e. Initially, both Pakistan and India had democratic parliamentary elections, and in both countries there
were democracies. India, today, remains the world’s largest democracy, but Pakistan took a slightly
different route because eventually, the military in Pakistan staged a series of coups and took over power.
i. In Pakistan, all the way up to the present day, we keep alternating between having military rule
and having civilian rule. Both Pakistan and India have elected female prime ministers (the first in
India: Indira Gandhi, the daughter of Nehru; Pakistan: Benazir Bhutto; both Bhutto and Gandhi
were assassinated. Both went to university in England, Gandhi at Cambridge and Bhutto at
Oxford).
ii. When India was partitioned, this was accompanied by an enormous amount of religious violence.
Gandhi himself was assassinated and Nehru became Prime Minister. Nehru was influenced not
only by western-style liberalism, but also by Marxist economic policy, and so he wanted to push
an industrialization agenda for the Indian economy. (Remember: Nehru was a leader of the Non-
Aligned Movement, and he thought that by industrializing in India, he could help India gain some
independence from this neo-colonial relationship of raw-material exports to England.)
 iii. When India was partitioned into India and Pakistan, there was some debate over the borders.
One of the regions that was most hotly contested and remains contested today is called
Kashmir. Conflict over this region is one of the reasons why India and Pakistan have gone to
war with each other periodically since the 1940s and both developed and detonated nuclear in the
1990s.
1. Kashmir is valuable because it holds the headwaters for a lot of rivers that flow into both
India and Pakistan, so if you have control of the water supply in an agricultural society,
that can be problematic.
2. In the 1971, Eastern Pakistan (aka Bangladesh) broke off and became independent
f. India became a leader of the non-aligned movement
5. British Decolonization II (Middle East): Egypt

a. As you know, Egypt was nominally an independent country before WWI. However, the British did
exercise a great deal of control over the region, particularly because of their interest in the making of the
Suez Canal.
i. Before, Egyptian government had taken out a bunch of loans to finance construction of the Suez
Canal and it looked like they were going to default on their loans, so the British said that they are
always going to retain interest in the Suez Canal and it will always stay open, militarily if
necessary
ii. But they continued to leave in place the Egyptian rulers, called khedives, who were quite corrupt
iii. In WWI, the British directly occupied Egypt, composed marshal law. There was a growing
nationalist movement, even before WWI, but more after WWI against the rule of the khedives and
the British. (Before: incident where British officer shot the Egyptian military and the Egyptian
military got upset and British overreacted and this created enormous outcry in the popular press
in Egypt)
1. So Egypt already had a growing nationalist movement before WWI. WWI and the
deprivations of that war only heightened it. The British pulled out after WWI, left in
power a king (who was basically did whatever the British told him to do) and so there was
a growing nationalist fervor.

b. During this period, a group called the Muslim Brotherhood

i. The Muslim Brotherhood was initially a nationalist self-help group founded in the 1920s and
30s under a modernizing version of Islam. It was not militant or fundamentalist, committed to
the overthrow of anything, it was a charity and educational organization, but it was nationalist.
The idea was that because the western model was clearly so corrupt and was creating a situation
of subjugation for the Egyptian people, you needed to look for a different way of making Egypt
self-sustaining, so you should look to Egypt’s own traditions, including Islam. They wanted to
create a different model for Egypt that is based in religion, but that isn’t like they’re going to go
back to the 6th century idea. But certain elements of it became more radicalized as they were
marginalized.
1. This was a bunch of guys who got together and founded charities, schools, hospitals, and
the like.
2. It wasn’t a particularly radical organization, but it was very nationalist and it used
religion around which it could rally because it provided an alternative model to the west,
kind of like we saw with the Ottomans before WWI
ii. So the Muslim Brotherhood is an increasing political force in calling for an end to the corrupt
king in Egypt and to the British who seem to still be behind the scenes, pulling the strings.
iii. After WWII, and remember Egypt is occupied first by the Nazis and then the Allies in WWII, once
again Egypt comes out of the war thinking they’ve suffered a great deal and that they need to
address these incredibly deep social and economic problems we’ve got, but the government
seems ill-equipped to do so.
c. This prompts a group of young military commanders, led by a General Nasser, who are nationalist in
orientation, to stage a coup and depose the king in 1952. Nasser then essentially takes charge as a
dictator.
i. He comes to power with the support of the Muslim Brother, so politically it’s this coalition of
these modernizing army officers, who feel like Egypt is still subject to indirect colonialism and
they want to be free of that, and this Muslim Brotherhood who wanted to create an independent
Egypt governed by Islamic principles.
d. When he comes to power, Nasser then turns around and rejects/outlaws the Muslim brotherhood. He
then turns and supports a different vision of Egypt’s place in the world, called pan-Arab nationalism.
i. This means that he saw the Arabs, as an ethnic group, as being united by their common culture
and that they should together unite and stand up against western imperialism.
1. One of the pieces in western imperialism, in Nasser’s mind, which had been opposed in
the Middle East, was the creation of the state of Israel. Nasser saw Israel as a rallying
point for other Arab leaders, something they could all unite against and, in doing so,
Nasser would be seen as the leader of all these guys. As a result, Nasser sponsored a
series of attacks on Israel. Unfortunately for Nasser, and the Arabs who went along with
him, each time they attacked Israel, Israel won.
e. Nevertheless, while Nasser’s world prestige was bruised a little (a lot of Arab leaders began to question
what he was up to), he stuck around for a while. One of the reasons he stuck around for as long as he did
was because he was one of the leaders of the non-aligned movement at the Bandung Conference.
f. And he further burnished his credentials as a non-aligned movement leader when he nationalized the
Suez Canal in 1956, aka the Suez Canal Crisis (earlier, the British had said that they reserved the right to
go back into Egypt and occupy it if their interest in the Suez Canal was every threatened and that the
Canal was going to be closed).
i. But Nasser didn’t care. He said that it was on Egyptian soil, and we (Egypt) can get a lot of money
from this. Moreover, if we don’t want ships to go through that are carrying stuff for Britain or
Israel because we don’t like them, we have that right.
ii. But the British, French, and Israelis didn’t agree and invaded to keep the Canal open and occupy
it. They were actually militarily successful. (However, you have to remember that this is also
going on during the height of the Cold War, when both the U.S. and Soviet Union were vying for
allies in the Cold War, and Egypt was a big prize.) Both the U.S. and Soviet Union wanted Egypt
as an ally, so the U.S. and Soviet Union jointly pressured the British, French, and Israelis to pull
out of the Suez Canal.
--There were only two things that the U.S. agreed on in the 1940s and 50s: (1) creating the state Israel and
(2) pushing the British, French, and Israelis out of the Suez Canal.
iii. So although Nasser had been militarily defeated by the British, French, and Israelis, he had
successfully come in and taken the canal and his prestige grew. The fact that the U.S. and USSR
pushed out the invaders meant that in the eyes of the world community, Nasser, the little guy, had
won. He had defeated the big, bad, evil colonial powers (+ Israel, which many people saw as a
creation of the Europeans because it was a European ally)
1. This was something that allowed Nasser to hang on to power for a little while longer
g. Nasser was very suspicious of a heightened role of Islam in society because he saw himself as wanting to
create a pan-Arab community within the Middle East, one that was Muslim, but did not define itself as
Muslim—he repressed Islamists
i. But that was what the Muslim Brotherhood was all about: The Muslim Brotherhood wanted to
interject more Islamic law, thought, etc. into society, and Nasser did not want that. Moreover,
Nasser was a socialist when it came to economics. He wanted to nationalize industry and do all
that kind of stuff, and that was not stuff the Muslim Brotherhood agreed with.
ii. The problem with repressing/outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood by arresting a lot of their
leaders, throwing them in jail, and torturing them, was that a lot of these guys actually became
radicalized in prison and they became convinced of the fundamental corruption of the Egyptian
regime and became determined to fight against the Egyptian regime. It is no coincidence that the
second in command of Al Qaeda (the Egyptian guy they think is going to take over) was a former
member the Muslim Brotherhood, arrested, imprisoned, and tortured by the Egyptians. In his
case, not under Nasser but under one of Nasser’s successors.
h. Sadat and Nasser
i. Nasser
 1. Nasser was a general who seized power in a coup with the help of some of the Muslim
Brotherhood, who were quite hostile to the king’s regime, which was quite corrupt, and
also with the help of the military. (Since the 1950s, the military has been the most
prestigious and powerful institution in Egyptian politics)
a. Present day: In light of what’s been going on recently, everyone was wondering
what the military was going to do and how they would play out in that. There is a
great deal of respect and prestige for the military. The military owns a lot of stuff
in Egypt and actually owns businesses and are very integrated into both the
economy and political system, and it really dates back to this period when Nasser
was in control.
2. However, though they helped him, Nasser was did not like the Muslim Brotherhood. He
outlawed them and began to arrest members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a trend (from
support to repression of Muslim Brotherhood) is a theme that continues in the post-war
era. When Sadat takes over from Nasser, he, too, initially has support for the Muslim
Brotherhood and them represses them. The problem in repressing these guys, though,
was that in prison and often under torture, they became quite radical and committed to
overthrowing the secular, socialist in orientation pan-Arab nationalist government that
was led by the military of Egypt, and also of course became increasingly hostile to anyone
who was seen as an ally of that Egyptian government. And Egypt became a very strong
ally of the U.S. and the West, particularly after it made peace with Israel as part of the
Camp David Accords. So Egypt, after Israel, is the second largest recipient of U.S. foreign
aid. So this is one of the reasons why there is a lot of hostility to the U.S. on the part of
many of the more extreme Islamic fundamentalists in Egypt.
ii. Nasser was eventually succeeded by another military man named Anwar Sadat.
1. Sadat was initially more friendly to the Muslim Brotherhood, but eventually turned on
them again and he was assassinated by one of these more radicalized groups that were an
offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, who were not a militant group, after the Camp
David Accords.
a. Camp David Accords (1980): In the picture is Anwar Sadat, President Jimmy
Carter, and Menachem Begin (the leader of Israel). This was the historic peace
agreement between Egypt and Israel.
 b. After having signed this, Sadat was assassinated by Islamist extremists for his
efforts because a lot of people did not want Egypt to make piece with Israel, and
that was when Hosni Mubarak took power in Egypt, who, just like Sadat and
Nasser, was one of these military guys
i. Present day: Mubarak was overthrown and his sons are now in jail

6. British Decolonization III (Middle East): Palestine

a. As a reminder, thanks in part to growing anti-Semitism in western Europe and the rise of Zionism, you
begin to have European Jewish migration to the area of Palestine
b. the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in the middle of WWI, creates a tense and complicated situation on
the ground in Palestine, although it’s already becoming more like that.
i. Arab-Palestinians, Muslims who were in the region, felt betrayed and were very angry by the
creation of the Palestinian mandate under British control, and as a result of increasing tensions
over land and resources as well as unfulfilled promises about self-determination, violence in
Palestine escalates and you essentially end up in a situation with more or less a three-way war
1. (Arabs are attacking the Jewish settlers; Jewish settlers are attacking Arabs; everyone is
attacking the British)
ii. Warfare and violence continues in immediate after-war period and British eventually threw up
hands and withdrew from Palestine in 1947
iii. US and USSR supported creation of Israel in 1948 in the aftermath of the Holocaust

iv. But the borders of Israel are confusing and there is no contiguity in the lands that are occupied by
the majority Arab-Muslim Palestinians. Moreover, you have a lot of hostility on the part of the
different Arab nations surrounding Israel to Israel’s founding and saw in this heavy handed
outside interference in the region from these big powers—almost like neocolonialism.
v. People like Nasser, when he came into power, saw a way to boost their prestige and support in the
Arab war by uniting the Arabs against Israel and he became the leader of the anti-Israeli
sentiment, boosting his own power.
c. When the state of Israel was created: there was expropriation of land, people who fled fearing violence,
etc. and this created a huge Palestinian refugee problem as many Palestinians were displaced
i. Often they went into countries surrounding Israel, particularly in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

ii. Initially, it looked like Palestinians were going to be a temporary part of society, but

eventually they settled in what are still called “camps” but were really apartment buildings
iii. You also have people moving into very high density settlements in the west bank and Ghaza. And
these areas became places where a great amount of unrest and hostility on occasion to Israel grew
1. One example of this unrest in the west bank of Gaza and in Lebanon was the
Intifada (there were several). This started with young men and boys who didn’t have a
lot of economic opportunities who were angered by their situation and they started just
throwing rocks and bottles—it was a disorganized uprising against Israeli control
iv. The biggest non-state player in the issue of Palestine was the Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO), who was led most famously by Yasser Arafat
1. Arafat was a controversial figure

2. He didn’t spend much time in Palestine because he was always in exile in various places
in North Africa, in Jordan, in southern Lebanon
3. And for a long time he thought the best thing to do for Palestinians was to attack, so for
many years the U.S. saw Yasser and the PLO as a terrorist organization. Nevertheless, it
did seem to represent the interest of the Palestinians more than any other organization.
4. PLO and Yasser Arafat were drawn into a peace negotiation process with Israel that
culminated in what were called the Aslow Accords in the early 1990s, but those peace
negotiations and movement towards the creation of two states (Palestinian and Israel)
stalled. Eventually Arafat died and leadership of the PLO transferred to a more moderate
model.
v. the PLO often had very tenuous/tense/difficult relationships with Arab leaders in the region
because the PLO claimed to represent this very large refugee population, and on occasion the PLO
went to war with leaders of Arab country
1. For example, there was a very bloody confrontation between the kingdom of Jordan and
Palestinians that resulted in the expulsion of the PLO and many Palestinians and they
ended up settling in southern Lebanon.
a. from southern Lebanon, they began to mount attacks into northern Israel

b. This, in combo with the creation of other more radical groups who were
frustrated with the PLO leadership, and also organizations that were sponsored
by Arab countries and non-Arab countries (i.e. Iran is a big player in this),
created a very violent situation in the early 1990s and into the early 2000s in
Lebanon, leading Israel to invade Lebanon on a couple different occasion, most
recently in 2006 (Beirut Airport was bombed)
c. Two organizations (might be have heard of): Hamas and Hezbollah—Hamas is
Sunni and Hezbollah is Shiite, and Hezbollah has very strong ties to the big Shiite
power in the region (Iran).
i. Hamas has been able to take political control of parts of the territory that
the Palestinians control and that’s caused some problems, but Hezbollah
had a very strong presence in Lebanon in particular and was launching
attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel, which is one of the
reasons Israel went in 2006
 d. But even before that, when PLO relocated in the early 1980s into southern
Lebanon, Israel got sick of the attacks that were coming from the terrorists and
sent in the troops. This was a very controversial period in Israeli history because
one of the concerns that continues to be part of Israeli politics and effecting
Israel’s relations with the broader world community is that the people who are
attacking Israeli interests are small groups, unlike in the beginning when Israel
went to war with countries and each time it went to war with countries (1949-the
Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur; Israel had decisive victories at both)
e. When you have groups like the PLO and Hamas and Hezbollah attacking you,
there is no easily defined enemy or target you can go after, so in trying to capture
these guys and root out the problem, Israel sometimes responds with
conventional military force against an unconventional enemy, and when that
happens civilians are sometimes caught up in the cross-fire. So when civilians are
killed or their property is blown up, this then tends to create more hostility
towards Israel on the part of Palestinian civilian population
f. So it’s become a difficult situation for Isreal and the Palestinians, but luckily,
many Arab countries (mostly in the past five years), particularly Saudi Arabia
(still doesn’t recognize Israel’s existence)—the king of Saudi Arabia has taken the
lead in trying to broker peace negotiations between Israel and Palestinians and
trying to bring in other groups, like Hamas, who might to try to disrupt the peace
process
g. So Israel is in a very difficult situation in the Middle East and no one is quite sure
where this is going to end up and we hope for the best, but nothing is
certain.
one of the reasons why Israel was feeling nervous about what was going on in Egypt/were hesitant when
things were going on with the overthrow of Mubarak was that Mubarak continued Sadat’s trying to make
peace with Israel (listen)
vi. not that they loved Mubarak’s repressive regime, it’s that they were worried about what was going
to happen next
7. British Decolonization III (Middle East): Iraq

a. became a mandate after WWI

b. Muslims didn’t want that, so they chose some leaders with the Arab sheiks and created a Sunni monarchy
in Iraq, but the vast majority of Iraq are Sunni
c. British continued to have very close relations with Iraq after independence ended after 1930, largely
because Iraq was very strategic for British because of things like oil
d. but just as we saw with Egypt, there was increasing unhappiness after World War II with the monarchy in
Iraq
e. A group of military leaders from the Baath Party overthrew the monarchy and essentially created a
military dictatorship. The Baath party is important in Middle Eastern politics. It’s more or less secular,
but it’s a very nationalist/socialist/secular pan-Arab party
i. Baathists took over not only in Iraq but also in Syria (their leaders even today are Baath)

f. The military is in charge in Iraq and a young military commander named Saddam Hussein eventually
overthrows the prior military dictator and assumes power in the later 1970s
i. Hussein is part of the Baath Party and sees himself as Nasser’s successor. He wants to be the next
Nasser of the Middle East
ii. Saddam Hussein decides in 1980 to go to war with Iran, and when S. Hussein goes to war with
Iran (lasts till late 1988!)
1. the U.S. ends up providing a lot of military assistance to Iraq in their war with Iran

2. to find out why the U.S. supports Iran, need to find out what’s going on in Iran

a. Iran was never a mandate. The British were involved in Iran since the
19th century, and the reason the British were so interested in Iran was because it
occupied a very strategic location: it was close to Russia and close going towards
Afghanistan and into India
b. The British saw Iran as a gateway to India and wanted Iran to be nice to them

c. It was also Britain’s largest source of oil* (Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was
very important)
d. Iran was an ally of Britain and Britain was allied with the U.S., but the U.S. only
gets involved in a big way after WWI
e. After WWII, Iran also goes throw nationalist and vaguely secular coup, and the
guy that takes over is Mossadegh, who is a nationalist and vaguely socialist and
anti-imperialist leader in Iran and he overthrows the government in Iran that is
friendly to the British
i. One of the things Mossadegh wants to do is nationalize the Anglo-Iranian
Oil Company, but the British and U.S. decide that can’t happen because
they fear Mossadegh will become allied with the Soviet Union, so the CIA
engineers a coup to overthrow Mossadegh, and in its place installs a new
ruler: Shah Reza Pahlavi, so they reinstall a monarchy
1. Pahlavi is a strong ally of the U.S. and British in the Cold War
2. But, like the regime in Iraq before Hussein and like the regime in
Egypt before Nasser took over, his regime was very repressive.
iii. Pahlavi is strong ally of the U.S. in the Cold War

1. in all these places, the Shah’s regime was really repressive of a couple different groups:
people who wanted parliamentary democracy and more conservative religious elements
in society, and the Shah made use of the Savak, a very nasty secret police force
2. A lot of people either left Iran or spent a lot of time in prison

3. in 1979, a coalition of students and religious leaders overthrew the Shah’s government;
students, religious leaders
a. This is the Iranian Revolution!

b. When this revolution happened, in 1979, the U.S. was dealing with the Hostage
Crisis
i. The leaders of the revolution took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran and
held U.S. embassy employees hostage for a long time
 ii. the government for the new Revolutionary Republic of Iran (as it became
named) solidified and these former student leaders were kind of pushed
to the side.
iii. the people who took over were the religious authorities, the
Ayatollahs, and the most senior of the Ayatollahs was Ayatollah
Khomeini, who had been exiled in Paris for a lot of the shah’s regime
for being critical of his repression human rights and his explicitly secular
westerning, modernizing regime.
iv. Women in Iran in 60s and 70s wore mini-skirts b/c it was a very western
society, but he said that he was going to create a theocracy, and the
government would become conservative religiously and socially
v. BUT it’s important to note that although Khomeini and the religious
authorities are in charge, it’s still a parliamentary democracy
vi. Ahmehdinajad is the president of Iran, who is an elected government
official (he’s the one that claims the Holocaust didn’t occur)
1. but religious authorities were the ones who still had the real
power
c. they went after the U.S. because we were the Shah’s biggest supporter, so that’s
why they went after the U.S. embassy in 1979
i. They went after the U.S. because we were the Shah’s biggest supporter
d. Iraq (Saddam) thinks the U.S. hates Iran, and Arabs also hate Iran, and Iran was
lots of oil and property on the coast while Iraq only has tiny piece of coastline
that goes into the Persian Gulf, so Iraq and Iran go to war for about 8-1/2 years.
After that war is over (no one won it ended in a stalemate), Iraq was bankrupt
and Saddam Hussein decided that one of the ways that he could fix his economic
problems was to invade the tiny little country to the south that controlled most of
the coastline that Iran didn’t control, called Kuwait
e. so in 1990-Iran invades Kuwait to gain access to oil fields and coastlines. But
when Iran does this, he makes a strong miscalculation because the U.S. won’t
allow this happen. So the US creates a coalition of countries ___, but they leave
Saddam in power (that was the first Gulf War in 1991)
f. Saudi Arabia really wanted to see Saddam Hussein contained (like Kuwait)
because they share a long border with Iran and they didn’t want to be next on
Hussein’s list, so they ally with the U.S. in the Gulf War and they allow the U.S. to
station U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, including women troops, which created huge
backlash publically among the more conservative elements of Saudi society--
having not just U.S. troops, but female troops, defiled Islam’s holy places
i. Saudi is a pretty conservative and very repressive monarchy, but also is
closely allied with the conservative Wahhabi clerics, and these who have
a lot of sway with the public were denouncing having U.S. troops there
 g. One of guy very influenced by conservatives was Osama Bin Laden. He was an
ally of the U.S. when he went to Afghanistan in 1979 to fight against the Soviet
Union, so this is the moment when Osama bin Laden turns against the U.S. and
he’s more angry at the Saudi monarchy for allowing the U.S. troops to be there,
but he sees the U.S. as a neo-imperialist group within the Middle East. Al Qaeda
didn’t even exist until after first Gulf War, and then in the later 1990s, that’s
when the attacks begin, first in Kenya and Yemen and eventually culminating in
2001
8. British IV (Africa): Ghana

a. African decolonization is a process that occurs later than in the Middle East

i. in Africa, it all happened after WWII. The British held on to power and the French did until after
WWII and you don’t see countries begin to become indepdendent until around 1960.
b. (listen)

c. Many African nationalists that had been educated on the part of the British and been exposed to the ideas
of both Marxism and European liberalism became agitating for independence. You begin to even see
some calls in the 1920s and 30s with the negritude movement for independence. But really widespread
___ in ___
d. At first the British try to crack down on these rebellions, partly because they had already let go of Egypt
and there was the Suez Crisis, so Africa was really all British still had
e. (listen)

f. the leader of the African national movement was Kwame Nkrumah

i. Nkrumah was educated in both the Soviet Union and in England. He was influenced by both
Marxist ideas and liberalism and the principle of self-determination and was jailed for his beliefs,
but eventually he was set free and became the leader of the Organization of African Unity
1. One of the things they knew would be a problem was that they knew that the borders
didn’t go with any ethnolinguisitic boundaries and knew it would be better to keep the
boundaries, or else the continent would be open as a free-for-all chaos
2. Nkrumah was overthrown in 1966, and this then also began another trend you see in a
lot of African countries where a ruler who was kind of committed to creating a __
democratic system was overthrown and that eventually led to a one-party dictatorship,
sot here was the concentration of wealth in the hands of very few people
9. Kenya
a. The difference with Kenya is that Kenya had a much higher percentage of white settlers. There was a very
significant number of Europeans, British and other nationalities, and as a result of the significant white
presnce ther, there was some limited local self-government (like the assembilies in colonies) was
completely dominated by white settlers
b. __ Kikuyus farmers and the white settlers ruled in their best interest

i. There are a lot of books that dramatize this time in Kenya

c. Eventually, in the aftermath of WWII when many Kikuyus would support their desire for greater political
participation and ___, they began to attack ___ and the British government
i. Jomo Kenyatta was the leader, but later released and he helped the country transition into
independence in 1963
 ii. (listen)

iii. ___power-struggle between blacks and whites

iv. for many years, Kenya was the shining star example of how to transform peacefully from __ to
democracy
1. multi-party democratic system

2. it was not only the wealthiest country in Africa, but also had lots of tourism

v. eventually, a lot of the underlying problems and the persistence of tribalism and loyalty to your
extended clan erupted into deady violence just a couple of years ago
1. there was a contested election and there was no clear winner between the two, so there
was fighting and killing in the streets. The country came to a standstill and the economy
and industry, etc. was destroyed. They are only now trying to come back.
2. This was suprising to people that thought Kenya was peaceful and great

10. British: Zimbawe, formerly Rhodesia (because of Cecil Rhodes, who was part of colonizing this are—he __
and was an ardent supporter of British ___)
a. Zimbabwe, like Kenya, had a very large amount of white settlers who had seized the best land

b. had a very productive economy and made lots of food and exported food to all of souterh nAfrican. Britain
had similar plans to a transition to a multiparty multiethnic democracy, like Kenya, but white farmers in
Rhodesia saw what happened to white settlers in Kenya, so they were determined to hang on to power, so
the white settlers staged a coup and declared unilateral independence.
i. They basically created a mini south Africa apartheide state that lasted until 1980

ii. the wealth was so inbalanced that 1% of the population owned 70% of the arable land

c. Replaced by violent African nationalist Robert Mugabe

i. He fought for 10 years against the white government in Rhodesia until finally the whites fled and
the new independent country of Zimbabwe was created and Mugabe became the first president of
a post-apartheide country
ii. many people had high hopes for Mugabe, but he ended up becoming just as despotic, greedy, and
vindictive as other rulers in Africa; and patronage, where he put people down who challenged him
and his supporters
1. he also took much of the white farm land and gave it to h s political supporters

2. he came into power with communist ideology where he would redistribute land, but he
gave it to his suppoersters, who didn’t know how to farm, so they drove the huge plots of
land into the ground and he didn’t address the concerns of most of Zimbabwe’s people
3. it went from a net food exporter to a net food importer
d. today: Zimbabwe is very poor and very repressive
i. many people are fleeing into south Africa, which is creating a refugee problem that south Africa
doesn’t want to have to deal with
11. French Decolonization (Africa): Algeria
a. The French, in most places in Africa, was relatively peaceful as a move to independence compared to the
British (But still not super peaceful)
b. The big exception to the moreorless peaceful transition was Algeria
i. They thought of Algeria as a little different.
ii. There was such a large settler society there and it was so close to France

iii. Algeria had been part of the Ottoman Empire on the northern coast of Africa and broke apart from
the Ottomans
1. It became a center of piracy in the 19th century (U.S. went to war briefly against the
barabary pirates here)
c. The French came in the 19th century and established a colony there, and when they did they took it upon
themselves to embark on the civilizing mission idea and turned cities into mini-Paris cities
i. the modernized cities, created huge boulevards, etc. , and infrastructure—but it was for their own

benefit (listen)

ii. but the vast majority of the Algerian population was left out of this and had their land seized by
white expatritate settlers for many generations
iii. And of course there was a cultural divide between the Muslim population in Algeria and
predominantly Christian population of French
iv. Citizenship only extended to those who were of French decent or became French in the eyes of the
French
d. Algeria ramined loyal to France throughout WWI and into WWII, and many of the Algerians fought
valiantly with them. They were part of the contingent of troops that helped liberate France. When the free
French came back in, Dugall didn’t like the idea that it had been liberated by its colonies and it went
against the idea of colonialism and the superiority of the French, so he denied the Algerians the ability to
participate in the celebration in liberating France (with the permission of the U.S.!)
i. but there was a movie that showed the role of the French Algerians and veterans belatedly got
rewards, etc.
ii. (listen)

iii. They tried hard to hang on to Indochina—Algeria was the same for them

iv. Algeria repressed the Setif Revolt very brutally and so created a nationalist liberation movement

v. The National Liberation Front was nationalist, socialist, anti-imperialist (not Muslim
fundamentalist at all and was modernizing)
1. Algeria was a pretty modern country with mini skirts and such, but over the course of this
rebellion, women wore more tradition clothing to show that they didn’t want to belike the
French
2. the FLN created a bloody war in 1952, and the French just sent more and more troops
and in 1958 there were over 500,000 troops in Algeria. They would go door-to-door to
see who supported the FLN and essentially acted like territories
 a. It was a brutal conflict that divided people in Algeria and France. Like we had in
Vietnam, public opinion in France began to divide because of the war. Some
wanted more peaceful route, some sympathetic to FLN; a lot of expatriates were
angry at what they felt was a desertion of them
e. When there was independence negotiate in 1962, they felt desterted

i. There was so much devatstation and chaos, around 1 million white Algerians/French fled (10% of
the population)
ii. The FLN military dictatorship

iii. they nationalized the French industrial holdings (oil!)

iv. ___, and that angered a lot of people who saw in the creation of a new independent Algeria the
possibility of injecting relgious values of Islam into the political system. THe FLN rejected the
participation of those religious groups and that created a gueralla insurgency in 1992
v. (listen)

vi. You ended up with a very bloody civil war in Algeria that ended only in 1999 and the country is
still tense
12. Belgian Decolonization (Africa): Democratic Republic of Congo

a. the Congo is another example of a great tragedy of decolonization in Africa

b. when we talk about Congo, we’re talking about the DRC, and when it became independent was called
Zaire
c. This was one of the first places to be exploited by the Europeans—personally by King Leopold

i. Eventually the abuses in the Congo filtered back to Belgium and they were so horrific that the
Belgium government forced Leopold out and they ruled it along the lines of the civilizing mission
with other countries.
1. The built modernized hospitals, invested in education, and raods

2. but they continued exploiting it for various precious minerals: rubber, etc.

d. In 1960, there was independence

i. (listen)

ii. The Belgians, in particular, were afraid that they would end Belgian companies with companies
____, and Belgian sponsored rebels to assassinate Lumumba
e. That government was in turn thrown over by a guy named Moobuto Sese Seko in 1965, and then he
turned arund and created a one man state with an extensive cult of personliaty
i. there was massive political repression

ii. the U.S. supported Mobuto, largely becaues he was an ardent Communism, and in the Cold War
it was either you were with us or against us, and if you were with us we would help you and turn a
blind eye to all else
 iii. Mobuto saw the state of Zaire as his own ATM, and it was a wealthy country—massive Swiss bank
accounts overseas
f. he remained in power until 1997
i. It had to do with the genocide in Rwanda—the Hutu, who had primary ___ the genocide against
the Tutsi, the Hutu leaders fled into neighboring Zaire and used that as their base to keep
attacking into Rwanda, but they also realized this area could be very lucrative for them
1. They created forced labor camps and they sold minerals (i.e. cultan, which is in

cellphones) and gems (i.e. blood diamonds)

2. Other African countries were getting sick of Mobuto and began interfering in political
affairs, leading to a civil war and Mobuto fled to France and lives in great luxury
3. The country was plunged into civil war with heavy medelling from other countries and
leaders within the country, one of them was then toppledby his son, and you still had the
Hutu rebels in the east
a. this place was very dangeroua and raping of women
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