Download Decolonization in Asia

Chapter 28
Cold War and a New Western World, 1945-1970
The New European Alliance Systems in the 1950s and 1960s
1. In March 1948 Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, and Britain signed the Treaty of Brussels which provided for cooperation in
economic and military matters. In April 1949 these states were joined by Italy, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, and Iceland in signing an agreement
with the United States and Canada forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). A few years later, West Germany, Greece, and
Turkey joined the alliance. The United States agreed both to supply equipment for European rearmament and to guarantee Western Europe
against invasion. The alliance was somewhat weakened when France, protesting the influence of the United States in Europe, withdrew in 1969.
However, France still remained an ally.
2. In 1949 the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) was formed by the Eastern European states for the purpose of integrating
their economies.
3. A workers revolt broke out in the German Democratic Republic in 1953 over the nationalization of industry. The Soviets responded with
tanks. Such a steady flight of people to West Germany followed, especially skilled workers, that East Germany built the Berlin Wall in 1961.
4. The Warsaw Pact was created in May 1955 as a formal military alliance. It included Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany,
Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. Earlier in the year, Soviet occupation forces were withdrawn from Austria after it pledged to
be a neutral state.
5. In October 1956 the Polish Communist Party refused to fill the vacant office of prime minister with a Soviet selected successor. Instead, they
chose Wladyslaw Gomulka who declared Poland had a right to follow its own socialist path. Nevertheless, rather than provoke the Russians,
Poland promised to remain loyal to the Warsaw Pact. With this, the Soviets allowed Poland to pursue its own socialism.
6. Drawing energy from Poland, Hungary attempted to also take an independent road when the new head of government, Imry Nagy, declared it
a free state on November 1, 1956. Since the promise of free elections could potentially doom communist rule, Russia sent tanks into Budapest on
November 4. Soviet authority was reestablished under János Kádár, a reform-minded cabinet minister who cooperated with the Soviets and thus
saved many of Nagy’s reforms.
7. In January 1968 Alexander Dubcek was elected first secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party and soon introduced reforms which
included freedom of speech and the press. However, Dubcek went too far when he suggested neutrality and withdrawal from the Soviet bloc. In
August the Soviet army invaded and crushed the reform movement. Ascending to power was Gustav Husák who crushed reforms and maintained
the old order until 1989.
Questions:
1. Why would France withdraw from NATO?
2. Why did reform work in Poland but not Hungary and Czechoslovakia?
The New European Alliance Systems in the 1950s and 1960s
 The Development of the Cold War

The Confrontation of the Superpowers
 Differing historical perspectives
 Power politics
 Soviets concerned about its western borders
 United States unwilling to give up its new power and
prestige
 Soviet forces occupied all of Eastern Europe and much
of the Balkans
 Between 1945 and 1947 Communist governments
were entrenched in East Germany, Bulgaria,
Romania, Poland, and Hungary
 Truman Doctrine, March 12, 1947
 Winston Churchill, Westminister College
 Civil war in Greece and Turkey
 Money to countries threatened by communist
expansion
 Marshall Doctrine, June 1947, European Recovery
Program
 $13 billion for the economic recovery of war-torn
Europe
 Soviet view, “capitalist imperialism”
 Russia dismantled and moved to the Soviet Union
380 German factories before transferring control to the
Western powers
 Blockade of Berlin, 1948-1949
 Germany separated, 1949
 West German Federal Republic, September
 German Democratic Republic, October
 Communist win Chinese civil war, 1949
 Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb, 1949
 Military alliances
 North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 1949
 Council for Economic Assistance, 1949
 Warsaw Pact, 1955
Decolonization in Asia
1. The United States granted independence to the Philippines on July 4, 1946, after having held the territory since the Spanish-American War in
1898.
2. In 1947 Britain began to divest itself of the empire it could no longer support. The problem in India was solving the conflict between the Hindu
and Muslim populations. The solution was formation of two states in 1947: mostly Hindu India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan (divided into
East and West with India in between). This was followed in 1948 by granting independence to Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and Myanmar (Burma) after
communist guerrillas were brought under control. In 1971, after a violent civil war, East Pakistan separated from Pakistan and formed the state of
Bangladesh.
3. The Dutch were much less willing to give up their Asian possession of the East Indies. It took four years of bloody fighting before Indonesia
became independent in 1949.
4. France stubbornly attempted to hold on to Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos). The French ruled the area from 1883 until 1940 when
they served as Japanese puppets. After the war, France returned and forcibly occupied the country. A civil war soon erupted between the
followers of nationalist Ho Chi Minh and the French with their Vietnamese allies. The fighting continued until 1954 when the French lost a major
battle at Dien Bien Phu. France departed in defeat. A conference at Geneva divided Vietnam between the communist north and the noncommunist south. The United States, increasingly paranoid about communism following the fall of China to communism and the Korean War, had
begun to perceive the French actions in Vietnam as a bulwark against communist expansion. When France withdrew, the United States took up
the French cause, allying with the Republic of Vietnam. In the civil war which followed, the north was aided by the Soviet Union and China. In
1972 the United States withdrew from South Vietnam and in 1975 Vietnam was united.
5. When Japan collapsed in August 1945, the communists directed by Mao Zedong and the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-Shek sought to seize
the vacated territory. The ensuing war ended in 1949 when Chiang Kai-Shek and a million of his followers fled China for the island of Taiwan
(Formosa). In October 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China.
6. Korea was liberated from the Japanese in 1945 and soon was divided between the United States and the Soviet Union. North Koreans
invaded South Korea in 1950. Perceiving the aggression as another instance of communist expansion, the United States was able to gain
support from the United Nations. After the involvement of the Chinese in the war, there was a stalemate. An uneasy peace was reached in 1953
and the division was affirmed.
Questions:
1. In what manner was communism a factor in post-war Asia?
2. Why did the United States become involved in Vietnam?
Decolonization in Asia
 Korean War
 U.S. and Soviet Union divide Korea at the 38th parallel,
August 1945
 North Koreans invaded the south, June 25, 1950
 Chinese “volunteers” intervene when UN troops
approach the Yalu River
 Cease-fire, July 1953
 Presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, 1952-1960
 Policy of massive retaliation
 Central Treaty Organization
 Southeast Asia Treaty Organization

 Sputnik I, 1957
 Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971), leader of Soviet Union
 Berlin
 Berlin Wall, 1961
The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Move toward Détente
 Failed Bay of Pigs invasion, 1961
 Discovery by US of missile bases being built
 President John F. Kennedy orders a blockade of Cuba
 Khrushchev agrees to turn back ships carrying missiles in
return for Kennedy’s promise not to invade Cuba
Decolonization in the Middle East and South Asia
1. The French League of Nations mandates over Syria and Lebanon were surrendered in 1945. Both became independent the following year.
2. Jordan gained independence in 1946 after Britain gave up its mandate. Britain had more difficult problems with Palestine. The Jews
demanded that the British permit all survivors of Hitler's death camps be settled in Palestine. This was opposed by the Palestinian Arabs and the
newly formed Arab League (Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen). In 1947 Britain announced its intent to withdraw
the following year. The United Nations passed a non-binding resolution in November calling for the partition of Palestine into an Arab and Jewish
state. The Jews accepted this, the Arabs did not. When the British mandate ended on May 14, 1948, the Jews proclaimed the state of Israel.
Arab countries immediately launched an attack. The Jews fought off the Arabs and conquered more territory. About 900,000 Arab refugees fled or
were expelled from old Palestine.
3. Egypt had been given its independence in 1922 but the British still retained control over military affairs. In 1952 corrupt, pro-Western King
Farouk was driven from Egypt by Colonel Gamel Abdel Nasser. He led Egypt to a middle course in foreign policy. Reacting to the withdrawal of
aid from the United States to build the Aswan Dam, Nasser nationalized the Suez Land Company in 1956. Britain, France, and Israel invaded to
protect the canal. Pressure from the United States and the Soviet Union forced the invaders to withdraw. Hostilities with Israel continued in 1967
and 1973 with two futile wars but in 1977 President Anwar Sadat soften relations by meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Menachim Begin. This led
to negotiations mediated by President Jimmy Carter resulting in a limited peace settlement. Egypt got back the Sinai Peninsula lost in the 1967
war and Israel obtained peace and normal relations with Egypt. In 1981 Sadat was assassinated by Islamic fundamentalists.
4. After World War II Iran openly courted the West. Nevertheless, in 1951 nationalist successfully nationalized a British owned oil company. The
resulting boycott of Iranian oil plunged the economy into chaos and forced Muhammed Reza Shah Pahlavi (1941-1979) to flee in 1953. When he
was restored (with the help of the CIA), the shah sought to use Iran's oil reserves to build a modern state to ensure his rule. In the process, the
government became a corrupt, harsh dictatorship. A rebellion in 1979 drove the shah from power and an Islamic Republic was proclaimed. The
new republic caused concern for Iraq which feared Iran might try to incite Iraq's Shi'ite majority to rebel against the Sunnite leadership. In 1980
Iraq initiated a war against Iran, lasting until 1988. Two years later, Iraq attacked Kuwait and announced its annexation. An international
response headed by the United States drove the Iraqis out in early 1991.
Question:
1. How has religion been a factor in Middle East politics?
Decolonization in the Middle East and South Asia
 The Vietnam War
 Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam refuses to hold
elections
 Ho Chi Minh (1890-1960) returns to a policy of war in
the south, 1959
 Diem regime overthrown with the approval of the
Kennedy administration, 1963
 President Lyndon Johnson sends larger numbers of
troops to Vietnam, 1965
 Tet offensive by the communists, 1968
 President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) vows to bring an
honorable end and begins withdrawing troops
Peace treaty signed January 1973 calls for removal of
all US troops
 Communists resume the offensive in 1975 and unified
Vietnam in 1976
 Recovery and Renewal in Europe
 The End of European Colonies
 Britain no longer has the energy and wealth to maintain its
colonial empire
 United States grants the Philippines independence, 1946
 Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan created, 1947
 Indonesia independence, 1949
 Defeat of French in Indochina, 1954

Decolonization in Africa
1. The first independent black African state to emerge out of European colonialism was the British colony of the Gold Coast which became free in
1957. It renamed itself Ghana.
2. Perhaps the most serious problem in granting independence to the African states was how to deal with the permanent white settlers. Wherever
the whites were numerous, they sought to preserve their privileged position. Thus, granting independence to black dominated states was fairly
easy for Britain but less so when there was a substantial white population such as in Kenya and Rhodesia. Kenya received independence in
1963 only after a guerrilla war had been subdued and the whites were safe. In Southern Rhodesia, whites split from Rhodesia and illegally
declared independence from Britain in 1965. A long civil war lasted until 1980 before the whites surrendered power. The country was renamed
Zimbabwe.
3. France divided up its West Africa and Equatorial Africa possessions (see Acetate 76, Map 24.1) into thirteen separate governments, thereby
creating a French commonwealth. Plebiscites were to be called in each to approve the new arrangement. If this was ratified, the association with
France would continue. A negative vote would mean independence. In 1958 Guinea rejected the French offer for commonwealth status and
chose independence. Shocked, France withdrew every official and piece of equipment as punishment. France expected Guinea to collapse but it
did not. In 1960 Mali joined Guinea and asked for independence. Other French territories followed suit though many retained their close ties with
France.
4. Tunisia and Morocco were granted independence by France in 1956. With a sparse European population, the separation was easy. However,
this was not the case for Algeria. Not only did it have about one million French speaking Europeans in a total population of eight million but it was
France's source for oil. When Muslim nationalism stirred, the Europeans responded and a bloody and violent civil war broke out. Finally, Algeria
was granted independence in 1962.
5. Violence also characterized Belgium's withdrawal from the Congo. Having fostered neither development or education, there was no loyalty to
the colonial master. In 1959 riots broke out and with no warning Belgium proclaimed the Congo's independence in 1960. What followed was a
violent tribal conflict and civil war. The new state was christened Zaire.
6. Like Belgium, Portugal did nothing to prepare its African states for independence. Facing a guerrilla war, Portugal granted Angola and
Mozambique independence in 1975. Independence in Angola brought a civil war with the involvement of the United States, Cuba, and China.
Question:
1. How were the British and French approaches to independence different?
Decolonization in Africa
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
Communist victory in China, 1949
Independence of Israel proclaimed, 1947
Algerian independence, 1962
Decolonization of Africa
 Independence of Ghana, 1957
 Congo freed, 1960
 Portuguese driven out of Angola and
Mozambique, 1975
The Soviet Union: From Stalin to Khruschev
 Stalin distrustful of competitors
 Death of Stalin, March 5, 1953

 Khruschev condemns Stalin at the Twentieth Congress for
the Communist Party, 1956
 Khruschev places more emphasis on light industry and
consumer goods
 Attempts to increase agricultural production
 Missiles in Cuba
 Removed in 1964
 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, A Day in the Life of Ivan
Denisovitch, 1962
Eastern Europe: Behind the Iron Curtain
 Albania and Yugoslavia
 Albania becomes Stalinist
 Tito (Josip Broz) establishes an independent
communist state in Yugoslavia
The Economic Division of Europe during the Cold War
1. France, Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Italy formed the European Coal and
Steel Company (ECSC) in 1951. This was the first post-war attempt to create a sense of European economic unity. The arrangement sought to
establish a common market for coal and steel among the members by eliminating tariffs and trade barriers.
2. The success of the ECSC led the Europeans in 1957 to create the European Economic Community (EEC). The Common Market, as it is called,
by 1968 had eliminated customs barriers for the six member nations and created a large free trade area protected from the outside nations by a
common external tariff. In 1973 it expanded to include Great Britain, Ireland, and Denmark. Spain, Portugal, and Greece were added in 1986.
3. In 1959, Britain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, and Portugal formed the European Free Trade Area. Nevertheless,
Britain sought membership in EEC but was turned down in 1963 and 1967 due to the veto of France's president Charles de Gaulle who said that
Britain was too closely tied to the United States. Finally, Britain was admitted in 1973.
4. The leaders of the EEC in 1991 signed the Treaty of Maastricht which would eventually lead to a universal currency and a strong central bank. It
failed to be adopted in Denmark and only narrowly was approved in France and Britain. In January 1999 the “euro” was introduced. Eleven of
the fifteen European Union nations adopted the euro: Austria, Belgium, Germany, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands,
Portugal, and Spain. Sweden, Denmark, and Britain opted to stay out for the time being. Greece did not meet the economic criteria for entry,
but intends to join in 2001. Euro bills and coins are scheduled to be introduce in 2002. In the meantime, the currency is used mainly by corporate
and government bookkeepers.
5. In 1949 the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance was established by the Eastern European states for economic cooperation and integration.
This was more to serve the Soviet Union than anything else.
Questions:
1. Why is it important for the European states to form a single economic community?
2. What kind of difficulties could undermine the EEC?
3. Why was France opposed to British membership in the EEC?
The Economic Divisions of Europe during the Cold War
 Eastern European satellite states follow Stalinization
 Trade exclusively with the Soviet Union
 Rebellion in Poland under Wladyslaw Gomulka , 1956
 Compromise
 Hungary, 1956
 Imry Nagy (1896-1958) declares Hungary free,
November 1, 1956
 Promise of free election
 Soviet Union attacks Budapest, November 4
 Czechoslovakia, 1968
 Alexander Dubcek (1921-1992), “socialism with a
human face”
 Reform crushed by the Warsaw Pact

Western Europe: The Revival of Democracy and the
Economy
 Communist parties
 Moderate political parties
 France: The domination of De Gaulle
 Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
 Algerian crisis
 Fifth Republic, 1958
 Nuclear weapons
 Student riots, May 1968
 Resignation of de Gaulle, April 1969
 West Germany: A New Nation
 Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967)
 Reconciliation with France
 Resurrection of the economy
 Denazification

 Great Britain: The Welfare State
 Clement Atlee (1883-1967), British Welfare State
 Suez Canal, 1956
 Italy: The Weakness of Coalition Government
 Instability of governments
 Economic growth
Western Europe: The Move toward Unity
 Cooperation
 European Coal and Steel Community
 European Economic Community (Common Market)
 The United States and Canada: A New Era


American Politics and Society in the 1950s
 Influence of the New Deal
 New prosperity
An Age of Upheaval: The United States from 1960 to 1970
 John F. Kennedy
 Lyndon Johnson
 Great Society
 War on Poverty
 Job Corps
 Department of Housing and Urban Development
 Civil Rights Act, 1964
 Voting Rights Act, 1965
 Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
 Southern Christian Leadership Conference
 Assassinated, 1968
 Malcom X
 Summer of 1965
 Antiwar protests
 Kent State University, 1970
 Development of Canada
 The Emergence of a New Society
 The Structure of European Society
 Further urbanization
 Rising income
 Mass tourism


Creation of the Welfare State
 Extension of social legislation from the 19th century
 Health care
 Family allowances
 Educational policies
 Gender issues
New and Old Patterns: Women in the Postwar Western World
 Participation in the workforce declines untl end of 1950s
 “Baby boom”
 Birth control
 Increased employment in the 1960s
 Feminist Movement: The Search for Liberation
 Right to vote
 Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
 The Second Sex, 1949
 Betty Friedan (b. 1921)
 The Feminine Mystique, 1963
 National Organization of Women
 Permissive Society
 Sexual revolution
 Breakdown of the traditional family
 Drug culture
 Education and Student Revolt
 Higher education
 Changes curriculum
 Student strikes in France, 1968
 Student activities in the United States to protest the
war in Vietnam