Decolonization: Crash Course European History #43 — Transcript

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1. 0:00Hi I’m John Green and this is Crash Course European History.
2. 0:02So today we’re talking about the rejection of European rule in colonies, which resulted
3. 0:07in a process called decolonization.
4. 0:09By the 1970s the majority of Europe’s colonies had gained independence and formed new nations.
5. 0:15And areas like China that were less formally controlled but did feel the heavy hand of
6. 0:19European domination similarly had loosened ties to Europe and the United States.
7. 0:24During the second World War, Europeans continued to confiscate goods, seize colonized peoples
8. 0:29for forced labor, and in many cases, decimate their homes and farmland.
9. 0:34“The Lord is my shepherd and I am in want,” one African wrote about postwar life.
10. 0:41And then after World War II, literally millions of colonized subjects rose up, in differing
11. 0:47ways, to achieve independence.
12. 0:49And in doing so, they brought the colonization of the world’s peoples, which had filled
13. 0:54Europeans with pride and profits, to an end.
14. 0:58Sort of.
15. 1:00[Intro] So there was no one decolonization process.
16. 1:11It was sometimes prolonged and often extremely violent; at other times it was accomplished
17. 1:15quite quickly.
18. 1:16The first big pieces of the postwar empire to achieve independence were India and Pakistan,
19. 1:22which became independent nations in August 1947, after decades of civil disobedience
20. 1:27and independence activism.
21. 1:29So, although the British had claimed South Asia as a single colony, they had also stirred
22. 1:34up Muslim-Hindu rivalries on the subcontinent with the aim of preventing people from a unified
23. 1:40movement for independence.
24. 1:42That divide to continue conquering strategy persisted even as many in South Asia raged
25. 1:48at being dragged into World War II, a war fought on behalf of their colonizers, and
26. 1:53also at the imposition of high wartime taxes, and at the constant British excuses for not
27. 1:59granting home rule, and most horrifyingly at the British-created Bengal famine of 1943.
28. 2:05The Partition, the name of the South Asian settlemen of 1947, arranged for the creation
29. 2:10of two new nations--India a majority Hindu state, and Pakistan, a majority Muslim one--but
30. 2:16it led to a violent nightmare.
31. 2:18Religious and other South Asian interest groups organized their own ad hoc
32. 2:23armies to lay claims to land and resources.
33. 2:26Sexual violence and murder were so common during the contested Partition that, as one
34. 2:30woman explained, “My three sisters swallowed poison—our hospital compounder distributed
35. 2:36poison to anyone who wanted it.”
36. 2:39Other women escaped rape and torture through other methods of suicide.
37. 2:42That same person also recalled, “My bua [that is aunt] gave the signal to the other
38. 2:47women to jump by jumping off the bridge first.
39. 2:49Then other aunts, my bhabis [that is aunts, cousins], six in all, killed themselves.
40. 2:55No one tried to stop them, not even my father.”
41. 2:58More than a million people would die in the wars that followed partition, and eventually
42. 3:02the two countries became three--with Bangladesh becoming independent in 1971.
43. 3:08India would become--and remains--the largest democracy in the world.
44. 3:13China threw off the informal grip of the European and U.S. powers when Mao Zedong and his Communist
45. 3:18forces first helped in the World War II defeat of Japan and then took control from the opposing
46. 3:23Nationalists in October 1949.
47. 3:25This victory heightened Cold War tensions as the new People’s Republic of China initially
48. 3:29allied itself with the USSR.
49. 3:32Communist forces aimed to defeat U.S. and Western European influence in Vietnam and
50. 3:36Korea in the postwar period.
51. 3:38The Korean and Vietnamese wars are often seen as proxy wars between the superpowers, but
52. 3:44if you shift perspectives, they can also seen as wars of liberation.
53. 3:49Less violent scenarios also materialized, with activists launching strikes, civil disobedience,
54. 3:54or negotiations to achieve independence.
55. 3:57Ghana, Morocco, and Tunisia are examples of comparatively peaceful liberation.
56. 4:03In contrast, where there were numerous white settlers like Algeria or Kenya, Europeans
57. 4:08fought tenaciously to keep their colonies.
58. 4:11They employed torture, confiscated farms and houses, and incarcered surviving local people
59. 4:17in concentration camps with very high mortality rates.
60. 4:20Kenyans, for example, swore solemn oaths to fight for freedom and in doing so became part
61. 4:25of the Land and Freedom Army or Mau Mau movement.
62. 4:29The British fought back, destroying villages and massacring the population while driving
63. 4:34others into those lethal concentration camps.
64. 4:37One Kenyan teenager, returning home from school in another town, was walking absentmindedly
65. 4:41along the road toward his house when “instinct suddenly tells me that I have gotten home.
66. 4:48. . or where home should be.
67. 4:50. . . Our homestead is a rubble of burnt dry mud, splinters of wood, and grass.
68. 4:55. . . I suddenly realize that the whole village of homesteads has disappeared.”
69. 5:00But despite Britain’s wars to retain colonies, they eventually had to grant Kenya independence
70. 5:05in 1963.
71. 5:07In the war to liberate Algeria, where some three million Europeans had settled on the
72. 5:11land of local people, French military resistance to the National Liberation Front of freedom
73. 5:16fighters was especially vicious.
74. 5:18The FLN, as it was known, was weak in armed power compared to the French, so it gained
75. 5:24its strength from simply depicting the French torture of local people in detail.
76. 5:29It ensured, for instance, that militant Algerian nationalist Djamila Boupacha’s account of
77. 5:33her torture, for example, reached a worldwide audience in February 1960.
78. 5:37Now, some of this account is too barbaric to repeat here but I will share an abridged
79. 5:43version, with the caveat that some listeners may want to skip ahead thirty seconds:
80. 5:48She wrote, “I received terrible blows that made me fall to the ground.
81. 5:52That was when the soldiers, led by a parachutist captain, crushed my ribs with their boots.”
82. 5:58Boupacha was then transferred to “receive the second decree.
83. 6:01I soon found out what that meant: electric torture to begin with.
84. 6:05. . then they burned me in the same way on my legs, groin, genitals, and face.
85. 6:11Electric torture alternated with cigarette burns, punches with fists, and water torture:
86. 6:17suspended over a full bathtub, I was made to drink until suffocating”
87. 6:22And those reports did shape French public opinion, especially after being amplified
88. 6:26by French intellectuals like Simone de Beauvoir.
89. 6:29The President of France Charles de Gaulle ended the war in 1962, and Algeria gained
90. 6:34its independence.
91. 6:35By 1980, most areas around the world had gained their freedom from European rule, but often
92. 6:41at great cost.
93. 6:42Already weak infrastructure was at times further damaged by struggles for independence, and
94. 6:47many of these new nations were left with systems designed only to facilitate the extraction
95. 6:53of resources, rather than the improvement of communities.
96. 6:57Building infrastructure that didn’t focus on resource extraction would prove an exceptionally
97. 7:01difficult and costly facet of decolonization--one that continues to be a problem for many impoverished
98. 7:08post-colonial states today.
99. 7:09But that’s only one facet of decolonization.
100. 7:12The end of empire affected Europe and the world enormously in many different ways.
101. 7:17The Caribbean-born physician Frantz Fanon wrote globally influential books on race and
102. 7:22the need for those ruled by Europeans to decolonize not just their countries but also their minds
103. 7:27of the many European influences forced upon them.
104. 7:31Let’s go to the Thought Bubble.
105. 7:32Along these lines, liberation leader Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti
106. 7:36and other African women returned to traditional clothing,
107. 7:40rejecting British dress codes and claims to cultural superiority.
108. 7:43For Ransome-Kuti this meant wearing Yoruba garments;
109. 7:46others chose various local forms of cotton garb and headpieces.
110. 7:50Frantz Fanon also argued that freedom fighters used violence because that was all they knew
111. 7:55about conducting their lives.
112. 7:57Europeans had ruled with violence,
113. 7:59so violence endured in many newly independent nations as they struggled to create governments
114. 8:04and societies
115. 8:05out of the economic and psychological wreckage of colonial rule.
116. 8:09Some decolonizing people migrated to Europe to escape this turmoil and the impoverishment
117. 8:14of their regions.
118. 8:15Britain legislated that they could do so.
119. 8:18And economically this migration was a big blessing for the receiving countries,
120. 8:22because in most places, including the United States, immigrants could be taken advantage of
121. 8:27which meant governments and businesses could cut costs.
122. 8:30In Europe, immigrants staffed the lowest levels of the welfare state, becoming janitors and
123. 8:35sanitation workers even when they were trained and certified doctors and nurses.
124. 8:39They also helped Europe rebuild its war-torn buildings, and roads, and railroads, and other
125. 8:44infrastructure.
126. 8:45For decolonizing countries, the loss of these workers was more complex,
127. 8:50because in many cases,
128. 8:52new nations lost their best-educated and most highly skilled workers.
129. 8:56Thanks Thought Bubble.
130. 8:57The exploitation of these immigrants continued that of empire itself.
131. 9:01As immigrants from the colonies arrived in Europe, European racism swelled and became
132. 9:06an integral part of decolonization and its politics.
133. 9:09In 1958 in Nottingham, whites rioted when a black man struck up a conversation with
134. 9:13a white woman.
135. 9:14In 1968 British politician Enoch Powell gave his “Rivers of Blood” speech, announcing
136. 9:19that because of immigrants’ (specifically people of color) presence in Britain, whites saw
137. 9:25their property values decline and their access to health care given to immigrants.
138. 9:29So, anti-immigration came to stand for curtailing the arrival of people of color.
139. 9:35but to be clear, again, receiving nations benefited from this immigration.
140. 9:40Meanwhile, new forms of imperialism, called neo-imperialism, developed, as newly independent
141. 9:46governments needed to borrow money and sought experienced advisors to build the elements
142. 9:50of statehood such as schools, and hospitals, and harbors, roads, and railroads.
143. 9:56European and U.S. financiers and technicians exercised enormous control over these efforts,
144. 10:01and often manipulated “development” to support ongoing dependence that if not exactly
145. 10:07colonial was, at least, neo-colonial--hence the term.
146. 10:11Now, I know there remains a widespread belief that communities were somehow “better off”
147. 10:16as colonies than as newly independent nations, but the data just doesn’t back this up.
148. 10:22Average life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa in 1953 was under 40; by 1980, it was over
149. 10:2950.
150. 10:30Rates of malnutrition declined, while far more children learned to read and attended
151. 10:35school for longer.
152. 10:36The same was true in South Asia and East Asia.
153. 10:39Some Europeans stayed in the former colonies to continue their businesses and some administrators
154. 10:44stayed to serve as advisors.
155. 10:46But many also used the uncertain times to retrieve funds from colonies to begin the
156. 10:52system of offshore banking—
157. 10:54In the meantime, the superpowers targeted these new nations to gain their allegiance
158. 10:58in the cold war.
159. 10:59Egypt was an early pawn when it sought funds for the Aswan Dam, first obtaining them from
160. 11:04the USSR.
161. 11:05And then the British, French, and Israelis invaded the nation in 1956 in a failed attempt
162. 11:10to prevent the leader Gamal Abdel Nasser from nationalizing the Suez Canal,
163. 11:14the United States stopped the invasion by cutting off funds to the British.
164. 11:19They did this out of fear of strengthening the Soviet hand: emerging nations might worry
165. 11:24about similar attacks by U.S. allies and seek out the Soviets for protection.
166. 11:29The superpowers continued taking sides by providing competing groups in Africa and Asia
167. 11:35with funds, perpetuating turmoil and ensuring that the newly independent countries would
168. 11:40remain weak and at the mercy of super-power aid.
169. 11:43And this gets at something really important, which is that during the cold war, aid wasn’t
170. 11:48really designed to, like, minimize human suffering, or to build infrastructure.
171. 11:53Really, it was designed to increase dependence on either one way of thinking, the communist
172. 12:00way, or another way, the capitalist way.
173. 12:02And in that process, the superpowers encouraged not just big proxy wars such as those in Korea
174. 12:07and Vietnam but also smaller local conflicts.
175. 12:11But despite all this turmoil, as diversity and multiculturalism accelerated, so did the
176. 12:16exchange of ideas.
177. 12:18To cite just one famous example, late in the 1950s, Trinidadian immigrant Lord Woodbine
178. 12:22(Harold Phillips) took in aspiring musicians to learn steel band instruments, calypso,
179. 12:28and the blues.
180. 12:29Two white boys he trained used the imported musical style to break off and become the Beatles.
181. 12:35Immigrant writers from around the world shared stories of colonial and post-colonial life
182. 12:40and in doing so began to give voice to those who’d been structurally silenced.
183. 12:44And so the Columbian Exchange continued, despite the ongoing racism and discrimination.
184. 12:50More exchange--this time in the realm of science and technology--was also taking place.
185. 12:55That’s for next time.
186. 12:57I’ll see you then.