Independence Movements and Decolonization in the 20th Century

The End of Empire and Indian Independence

World War II also marked the end of the idea of empire — an idea that had directed the actions of many European powers for some time and that was also evident in the actions of some countries of Asia. These various countries sought to expand their power by taking over other nations and controlling them under one banner. For Europe, the result was the colonial era, in which newly discovered areas were first incorporated as part of the empire and then many of the regions later called the Third World were invaded and occupied.

India was one such region. British rule continued until Gandhi, following his nonviolent approach, helped build a consensus against British authority and allowed the people to express their dissatisfaction in a way that appealed to the conscience of the world. The violence in the 1922 campaign was a disservice to the cause and gave the British grounds to retaliate, though the violence of that reaction did no credit to the British either. While Jinnah may have been uncertain of Gandhi's motives, he also benefited from Gandhi's methods and from the changes brought about by the series of satyagrahas against British rule.

Gandhi lived to see Indian independence and the partition of India into India and Pakistan. He was assassinated in 1948, and his death highlighted the value of his life and his achievements, contributing to similar moves for independence in remaining colonial outposts. Gandhi remained a model and an example for others, contributing to the final dissolution of European empire, while the war simultaneously ended the idea of Asian empire.

Vietnam's Independence and Postwar Reconstruction

Vietnam achieved independence through protracted war against different outside forces, notably the French in the 1950s. U.S. involvement was directed against Chinese interference in the North, and the outcome of this war saw the expulsion of U.S. forces from Vietnam and the imposition of Communist rule from the North — less as a Chinese act than as the result of the development of a distinctly Vietnamese version of Communist rule.

The history of Vietnam since 1975 has been a history of inner turmoil. Hanoi emerged victorious as Saigon fell, and the newly reunited Vietnam was shaped by the Communist sensibilities of the North. From the first, the Hanoi government believed it had to confront what Communists have long called the struggle between the two paths of socialism and capitalism. Hanoi had to translate its wartime success and socialist revolutionary experience into postwar rehabilitation and reconstruction. It first had to restore order and stability to the war-torn South, and the critical question was whether the North could inspire the people of the South to embrace communism.

Early changes occurred more through coercion than volition. Hanoi sought a new socialist order in the South and relied on techniques beyond socialist economic transformation and education, including thought reform, population resettlement, internal exile, surveillance, and mass mobilization. For the former elite of the Saigon regime, a more rigorous form of indoctrination was used: hundreds of thousands of former military officers, bureaucrats, politicians, religious and labor leaders, scholars, intellectuals, and lawyers, as well as critics of the new regime, were placed in "reeducation camps" for varying periods of time. Currently, Vietnam is in the process of trying to move beyond much of its recent past and to downplay the war years. Vietnam today shows considerably more promise than in earlier decades.