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Notes -
How much did America contribute to decolonization?
Over the years @2rafa and i have had a debate a few times about whether or not America drove decolonization - in theory due to its liberal, anticolonial ideological founding and sympathies. Good points have been made on both sides but I realized we can actually just go and check. This is an attempt to give a quick, surface level look at decolonization globally and see what, if any, role the US might have played. I’ve started and stopped this several times because there’s always more detail but eventually it will just be too long to read. Assuredly I’m going to miss important things because I’m not an expert on most of these places, so let me know if I do and I’ll edit it in.
(P.S. Transnational Thursdays will now be in their own thread instead of the Culture War thread.)
The British Empire
See @Tollund_Man4's comment for more details on America influence on Irish independence.
Asia
America certainly pushed Britain on India and President Roosevelt in particular was very dedicated to the idea of decolonization, going so far as to breach it to Stalin at the Yalta Conference. However, Roosevelt died without putting meaningful pressure on the issue and his successor Truman abandoned the issue. Indian and Pakistani independence ultimately happened without American intervention.
During the Malayan Emergency Britain engaged in 12 years of brutal counterinsurgency against the Malayan Communist Party’s battle for national independence. America did nothing to oppose Britain in this openly colonial endeavor and in fact provided them funding - ostensibly for development in Malaysia but much of the funds went to the conflict, and with open requests for items like “tear gas” it’s hard to believe the American decision makers were unclear on this. Britain abandoned Singapore after a period of defense budget cuts necessitated by the devaluation of the pound. America was not involved.
Sub Saharan Africa
Tanzania, Sudan, Uganda, the Gambia, Sierra Leone, British Somaliland, Zambia, Malawi, Botswana, Nigeria, and Ghana directly negotiated their independence with Britain. As far as I can tell America was not a concern for either party in any of these independence movements.
Zimbabwe became independent from Britain in 1965 and white minority rule was ended from elections in 1980 at the end of a fifteen year guerilla insurgency. There were Americans fighting for the white Rhodesian security forces but without the approval of the US government (though “There is evidence that the Departments of Justice and State tacitly encouraged Americans to volunteer for Rhodesia as part of efforts to prevent the country's collapse prior to a negotiated solution to the war”).
South Africa became independent from Britain peacefully in 1960 but white minority government continued to 1994. America supported South Africa throughout almost all of this period, long after it had become an international pariah state, because South Africa’s participation in the wars in Mozambique and Angola against Soviet proxy forces established them as a bulwark against communism in the region. Bilateral trade was actually at an all time high between our countries in the 80s under Reagan’s “constructive engagement,” and America was quite literally the last relevant country in the world to join sanctions in ’86. These sanctions didn’t do much to the South African economy anyway (most econ indicators actually modestly improved in the late 80s) in large part because the Reagan Admin only weakly enforced them. From our Government Accounting Office review of the sanctions:
According to De Klerk at least, the Safrican leader who ended apartheid, he did it because the Soviet Union had fallen and there was no longer the risk of South Africa becoming a communist Soviet satellite.
The Middle East and North Africa
Britain pulled out of Libya voluntarily following the war, and left Egypt in stages following the 1919 and 1952 coups. Egypt is a little odd, the CIA was likely in communication with the Free Officers movement who led the coup and it’s definitely alleged that they supported the coup but as far as I can tell there’s nothing concrete, no record of weapons or money transfers even by the CIA whistleblower who claims to have led the communications. You won’t find a mention of allegations of American on the actual wiki page for the coup, for whatever that’s worth. Later, during the 1956 Suez Crisis British attempted to reassert itself over the Suez only to be slapped down by America. From Hitchcock’s “The Age of Eisenhower,” President Eisenhower’s motivations in intervention were threefold:
1: He was worried about Egypt and third party countries watching the incredibly unpopular conflict becoming Soviet allies.
2: He was worried about nuclear war. The USSR was desperate to rehabilitate their anti-imperialist credentials after crushing the Hungarian uprising the same week, and Premier Nikolai Bulganin threatened: “we are fully determined to crush the aggressors and restore peace in the east through the use of force”.
3: He was furious with Britain and France for having their diplomats lie to ours and took it personally as a huge breach of trust.
Sympathy for the colonized was nowhere on his list of concerns, nor was Egypt’s sovereignty genuinely at stake in the crisis. I don’t really know how to categorize Egypt but I think we might as well count it as the US spurring decolonization, because we seem to have been meddling around and did oppose the colonial powers, but for self-interested reasons rather than anti-colonial fervor.
Britain pulled out of Yemen following the protracted Aden Emergency, and disengaged from its remaining gulf protectorates after deciding the expense wasn’t worth it - especially after the pound crashed domestically. Britain withdrew postwar troops from the remainder of the Middle East only after nurturing and leaving pliant leaders in Iraq, Jordan, Iran, Bahrain, and Oman. Their remaining influence in the region was ended by coups in Iraq and Iran, the latter of which featured America famously helping Britain reassert itself when Mossadegh’s government threatened Britain quasi-colonial domination of the oil industry.
Caribbean
The British Caribbean possessions, Jamaica, Barbados, etc, achieved independence directly with the British government without American involvement.
The French Empire
Sub Saharan Africa
Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Niger, Madagascar, and the Republic of Congo achieved independence directly via negotiations with France. America was not involved nor did we oppose France’s attempts to keep its former territories in a quasi-colonial arrangement, or regularly coup their leaders.
Middle East & North Africa
France was forced out of the rest of the Middle East during the Levant Crisis, where they launched an airstrike on Damascus in an attempt to re-colonize the area. America was indeed happy to see them gone but did not play the role in forcing them out - Britain did, sending in troops as the intervention became a massacre and demanding that France back down, which they did reluctantly. France negotiated independence directly with Tunisia and Morocco and of course left Algeria in the Algerian War of Independence, which America did not participate in on either side.
Asia
America very famously sent aid, materiel, and military advisors to help France hold onto its colonial possessions of Vietnam, and then just took on the project ourselves when they didn’t have the grit to see it through. Cambodia and Laos achieved independence via direct negotiation with France.
Caribbean
America made no effort to help Haiti during its revolution, blockaded it, didn’t recognize it as a country till nearly forty years after even France itself had done so, and in the early twentieth century conquered Haiti ourselves and ruled it as a colony for nineteen years.
(Continued in next comment - plz comment there for simplicity's sake)
I realize it's a complicated history, but how would you describe Grenada, which was invaded by the Reagan administration within a decade of formal independence?
Also worth noting would be American possessions: the Philippines were granted independence from the US in a decade-long process that started before WWII. Cuba was won from Spain in 1898 and granted independence (mostly) by the US in 1902.
There are also quite a few quasi-colonial possessions still floating around under various flags and governance: Puerto Rico, Tahiti, the Falklands, Aruba, Guyane, American Samoa, and so forth.
I guess it's an instance of America behaving in a colonial empire like way, the same way we do with a lot of Latin America. But I wouldn't say we really influenced their independence process or colonized them either - they had a Marxist military coup which we overthrew then withdrew pretty swiftly.
As for the countries we colonized and later gave independence too, it feels weird to me to give us credit for decolonizing places like the Phillipines that we kept under our yoke for half a century, repressing their independence movements all the while. It's like if a mugger grabs your wallet, you fight back for a while, and eventually he gives it back to you - you wouldn't normally give the mugger credit for your fiscal health.
I think a more accurate way of putting this is that America actually is a colonial empire.
Sure, no disagreement with the definition, I just meant that Grenada was only a few days so I wouldn't put it on the same tier as Nicaragua or Haiti.
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That analogy fits right at home in America.
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The falklands isn’t really the sine qua non of what I think of when I think of de colonization (ditto with South Africa).
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