Chapter Overview

At the end of World War II, most of the colonial countries found themselves too exhausted to resist the demands for independence and national sovereignty emanating from the colonized regions of the world. Only France, Portugal, and the Netherlands resisted the independence movements of their colonies. The demise of the British empire in Asia gave birth to the new nations of India, Pakistan, Bengal, Burma, and Malaysia. Indonesia and Indochine's transitions were less peaceful. In Africa, the new states confronted the challenge of unifying people of diverse ethnic groups into nations. Many African countries experienced dictatorship, regional conflicts and civil wars, and more recently, the devastation of the AIDS epidemic. In the Middle East, a new sense of identity emerged from the ashes of colonialism. The creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine brought the entire region into conflict with the new state of Israel. And like other newly dependent regions of the world, democracy remained an elusive goal. Latin America, independent for nearly a century and a half at the end of WWII, continued to struggle against the legacy of colonialism. Economic crises, American imperialism, and the rise of authoritarian regimes troubled the region in the latter half of the twentieth century. Few countries in the so-called Third World had successfully undergone the transition to democracy and prosperity promised by development. Indeed, the entire notion of development came under fire at the end of the century as it became apparent that development initiatives had done little to reduce poverty worldwide.