10 LIBERATION OR DECOLONIZATION (p. 299-300)

Decolonization, the "change of sovereignty", was not due solely to peoples’ struggles for liberation. As early as the sixteenth century, during the first wave of European expansion to the Americas, there were movements in the mother countries against slavery and the slave trade. Together with others, Voltaire asked: "What do the colonies profit us?" Such questioning and criticism had very limited effects.

Indirectly the rivalries among the powers also helped peoples and nations to loosen the hold upon them of the colonizing states. That was the case with Siam and China in the nineteenth century. But, they also had other secondary effects which took a long time to be felt. In the twentieth century, one finds the same factors at work, though in different forms. But, after 1945, the pressure of the two Great Powers did contribute to bring colonization to an end. In this context the Suez crisis (1956) played a big role. Lastly, the implosion of 1989–91 in the former USSR constitutes one of the features of the crisis that overtook the regime-though it is questionable if the consequences of this crisis have fulfilled the expectations of the non-Russian populations.

The role played by the movements of resistance to colonial domination has varied according to the different periods of history. Independence movements were vigorous at the time of the conquest, as much in black Africa, for example, as in Vietnam. Sometimes they quietened down later as a result the policies enacted by the conquerors, or as a result of the effects of evangelization. Then, subsequently, they reasserted themselves with renewed power, especially after the end of the Second World War, when a second colonial occupation became the order of the day, an occupation which was more concerned with profits and sought greater control of all the aspects of the agricultural production. This dramatic change was particularly evident in tropical countries: Kenya, Malaysia. In French North Africa great was the political disappointment of the Arabs who felt they had been shabbily rewarded for the loyalty they had shown during the two wars. Their nationalism was rekindled, though some might have believed it had been on its way out. Actually it had never been completely extinguished.

From 1945 on the colonists’ opposition to any type of reform revived it. At the same time, colonizers, especially the English, came to rely on social groups which had existed before their arrival, or on new ones which they had fostered, and on their good will. If these groups resisted, defaulted or rebelled, ultimately the colonial power found itself disarmed. This was a process which developed, by stages, in India, perhaps even, for France, in Morocco and Tunisia, and culminated in violence in Malaysia and Kenya. There is no need to mention the case of territories where—as in Algeria—the very idea of a native participation in the direction of the country was not entertained.

However, left to themselves, the liberation movements were rarely able to defeat the occupier militarily, though such was the case in Burma, Vietnam and Kenya. The military inferiority of the colonized was far too great, especially in black Africa, and the conclusion of a military confrontation could prove to be fatal. There is another feature of liberation movements that is worth mentioning: their internal divisions, especially betweem collaborators, those who opposed collaboration, and those who tried to steer a middle course. A further characteristic feature consists in the oppressed being oppressors in their turn—in the USSR the Georgians maintained their hold over the Abkhaz—to the extent that divisions among the colonized peoples could be stronger than their unity in the face of the colonizer: for example, the Muslims and non-Muslims of Nigeria and of Sudan, the Azeris and the Armenians in their confrontation with the Russians.

Finally, in some cases, the metropolitan policy was able to delay or channel the rise of nationalism: the British set up the West Indian Federation, the South Arabian Federation, and France organized the French Union. Conversely the outcome of colonization influenced the mother countries themselves, and not only with regard to colonial issues. Very early, during the conflict with the American colonists, Burke and Locke had become aware of the adverse effect of colonial domination on the democratic tradition of the English. Much later, during the Third Republic the colonial question became the pretext for political divisions in France: it led to the sacralization of the republican system, to the rallying together of the monarchists. Moreover, for their part, the colonial peoples or those who were fated to experience European domination did not fail to notice that their resistance had triggered a revolution in Russia in 1905 and, in France, a coup in 1958, the creation of the OAS and the putsch staged by the generals. Moreover Salazar confided to Pierre Messmer, a minister in De Gaulle’s government, that his regime would collapse if the Portuguese empire fell (personal communication to Marc Ferro).