III.

British Decolonization

As World War II approached, Britain had already granted independence to the white dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. This experience made it acceptable for the Colonial Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald, to state in December 1938 that Britain’s ultimate aim was to bring its colonies to self-government.

By then, India, the largest and most-prized British possession, had already moved significantly towards this with the Government of India Act of 1935. The act transferred power at the provincial, as opposed to the national, level to elected Indian bodies. World War II, and the need for Indian support against the Japanese in the face of groups like the Indian National Army which were actually prepared to fight with Japan against British rule, led the wartime coalition government to promise India dominion status as soon as possible once the war ended. That this was granted as early as August 1947 was due essentially to the situation in India and to the determined efforts of the British prime minister Clement Attlee to proceed rapidly with the transfer of power. In India, not only was opposition to British rule significant, but the prospect of receiving political power heightened the divisions between the Hindu and Muslim communities in the subcontinent. In 1946 serious communal violence erupted, which added to Britain’s problems. The economic and political costs of continuing to govern India were too high for most Labour Party politicians to contemplate. The natural tendency of many Conservatives to cling to the imperial status of earlier years was also muted in the immediate post-1945 period, and British decolonization, although sometimes arousing opposition at home, never created the same kind of bitter divisions as occurred in France.

With India independent (and partitioned) in 1947, Burma (now Myanmar) and Sri Lanka quickly followed suit in 1948, despite the different nature of the political groupings in those two countries that could claim to have popular support. The more radical Burmese groupings who gained power from the British were not, however, seen to be as threatening as the Communist Chinese in Malaya who instigated the Malayan Emergency in 1948. In Malaya the fear of Communism was accompanied by the hope that more moderate political leaders could be encouraged to collaborate with Britain during and after the transfer of power, which was completed in 1957. As under colonial rule, collaborators were an essential part of decolonization, and closely involved throughout the empire in the establishment of elected legislative bodies that were intended to be precursors of Westminster-style parliaments.

The transfer of power in British Africa occurred somewhat later than in Asia, with Sudan leading the way in 1956, and Ghana, the first black African colony to attain independence, following in 1957. Initially, in the aftermath of World War II, the British expected that it would be several generations before their African colonies gained independence. They were forced to move much quicker than anticipated in order to try to keep control of the process. In this they were not entirely successful, but the transfer of power was much smoother in West Africa than in East and Central Africa. In the Central African Federation (formed in 1953 from Nyasaland and Northern and Southern Rhodesia, and broken up in 1963) and Kenya, the presence of white settlers led the British to try in vain initially to establish a representative system of government based on the concept of multiracialism, rather than straightforward African majority rule. Fighting rebels in Kenya from 1952, the British nevertheless abandoned multiracialism and moved rapidly to transfer power in Africa in the early 1960s. Fear of multiracial conflict, growing opposition to colonialism, the radicalization of African politics, and the economic and political importance of Europe (Britain applied to join the European Economic Community in 1961) contributed to an extremely rapid decolonization. Nigeria led the way in 1960, followed by Sierra Leone (1961), Tanganyika (now Tanzania, 1961), Uganda (1962), Zanzibar (1963), Kenya (1963), Nyasaland (now Malawi, 1964), Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia, 1963), and The Gambia (1965). The newly independent African states were not prepared as originally envisaged, and decolonization left them with many problems.