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The worldwide struggle for independence: African freedom from Ghana and Kenya to Algeria and the fall of apartheid; Asian independence from India's Quit India to Vietnam; the Americas from the Haitian Revolution to Bolivar...
The worldwide struggle for independence: African freedom from Ghana and Kenya to Algeria and the fall of apartheid; Asian independence from India's Quit India to Vietnam; the Americas from the Haitian Revolution to Bolivar; and the people-power movements from the Philippines to the 1989 revolutions.
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Thirteen British colonies declared independence, asserting that governments draw their power from the consent of the governed. The Declaration's language of natural rights influenced later independence and rights movements across Latin America and beyond. Britain recognized US independence in 1783 after the Revolutionary War.
Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui, taking the name Tupac Amaru II after his Inca ancestor, led a mass uprising of Indigenous and mixed people against Spanish colonial abuses. It was the largest revolt in colonial Spanish America before the independence wars. He was captured and brutally executed in 1781, but the rising foreshadowed the struggles to come.
Enslaved people in the French colony of Saint-Domingue rose in a mass revolt against slavery and colonial rule. The uprising grew into a full revolution, eventually led by Toussaint Louverture. It became the only slave revolt in history to found an independent state.
also in The slave trade
After defeating French forces, the former colony declared independence as Haiti on 1 January 1804. It became the first nation created by a successful revolt of enslaved people.
also in The long road to civil rights
Parliament banned the buying and selling of enslaved people across the British Empire after a long abolitionist campaign. The trade in human beings was outlawed, though slavery itself continued for another generation.
The priest Miguel Hidalgo issued a call to revolt against Spanish colonial rule, an event known as the Grito de Dolores. It sparked a long and bloody struggle for Mexican independence. The date is now celebrated as Mexico's national day.
Venezuela declared independence from Spain, opening the long northern campaign led by Simon Bolivar. Early republics collapsed and the war swung back and forth for years. Bolivar became the central figure in liberating much of South America.
The United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata declared independence from Spain, a movement in which Jose de San Martin became the leading general. San Martin then led armies across the Andes to carry the fight into Chile and Peru. He and Bolivar together freed the southern and northern halves of Spanish South America.
Bolivar's victory at Boyaca broke Spanish power in New Granada and made possible the republic of Gran Colombia. It was a turning point in the northern independence campaign. The win opened the road to liberating the rest of the region.
After eleven years of war, Mexico won independence from Spain as royalist and rebel factions united behind the Plan of Iguala. The long conflict had begun with Hidalgo and continued through leaders like Morelos. Independence ended three centuries of Spanish colonial rule.
Pedro, heir to the Portuguese throne, declared Brazil independent and became its emperor. Unlike Spanish America, Brazil's break was relatively peaceful and kept a monarchy. It became the only large American nation to gain independence as an empire rather than a republic.
Forces under Antonio Jose de Sucre defeated the main Spanish army in the highlands of Peru. The victory effectively ended Spanish colonial rule on the South American mainland. It completed the independence wars begun more than a decade earlier.
The Slavery Abolition Act ended slavery across most of the British Empire, freeing around 800,000 people. The law compensated slave owners, not the formerly enslaved, a fact now widely criticized. Many freed people were still bound for years under an apprenticeship system.
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The first women's rights convention adopts the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence and demanding the vote. It launches the organized women's movement in the United States.
also in Colonialism: the conquest of the world, Colonization: the making of the modern world, The British Empire, The British Empire and its dark history
Sepoys of the East India Company army revolt and are joined by princes and peasants across northern India. Britain crushes the rising with great brutality and replaces Company rule with direct Crown rule.
also in The slave trade
President Lincoln declared enslaved people in the rebelling Confederate states to be free. It reframed the Civil War as a struggle over slavery, though it freed no one immediately in areas beyond Union control.
The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery throughout the United States, completing what the Emancipation Proclamation began. It freed around four million people. An exception for punishment of a crime later became the basis for debate over forced prison labor.
also in The long road to civil rights
The Fourteenth Amendment made formerly enslaved people citizens and promised equal protection under the law. Its guarantees would later anchor the fight against segregation, though they were long ignored in practice.
The Fifteenth Amendment barred denying the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. In practice, Southern states used poll taxes, literacy tests, and violence to keep Black men from voting for nearly a century. Its promise was only enforced with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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Indian lawyers, journalists, and reformers found the Indian National Congress to seek a greater voice in British rule. It grows into the mass movement that leads India to independence.
also in Capitalism, liberalism, and the isms, Feminism and the fight for women's rights, Forms of government: how societies rule themselves, State, law, and coercion
New Zealand becomes the first self-governing country to grant women the right to vote in national elections. The victory becomes a landmark for suffrage movements worldwide.
Cuban fighters renewed their long struggle against Spanish rule, inspired by the writer and organizer Jose Marti, who was killed early in the fighting. Spain's harsh response, including camps that killed many civilians, drew wide condemnation. The war set the stage for US intervention in 1898.
The United States entered the Cuban conflict and quickly defeated Spain, which gave up Cuba along with Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. Cuba came under US military occupation rather than immediate independence. The war marked the rise of the United States as an overseas power.
Trinidadian barrister Henry Sylvester Williams convened the first Pan-African Conference, drawing delegates of African descent from across the diaspora. W. E. B. Du Bois addressed the meeting and framed the coming century around what he called the color line. It began an organized tradition of Pan-African gatherings that later fed into independence movements.
Cuba became a formally independent republic after US occupation ended. Its independence was limited by the Platt Amendment, which let the United States intervene in Cuban affairs and keep a naval base at Guantanamo. Many Cubans saw it as compromised sovereignty rather than full freedom.
British troops under General Dyer fired on an unarmed crowd trapped in an enclosed garden, killing hundreds. The massacre shocked Indian opinion and destroyed much remaining faith in British rule. It pushed many moderates, including Gandhi, toward outright demands for independence.
Mohandas Gandhi led a mass campaign to withdraw cooperation from British rule through boycotts of goods, schools, and offices. It turned the independence struggle into a mass movement based on nonviolent resistance. Gandhi suspended it in 1922 after a violent clash, but the method reshaped the campaign.
The Nineteenth Amendment gave American women the right to vote, two years after Britain granted it to many women over 30. Both followed decades of campaigning, including militant protest and mass petitions. Britain extended the vote to women on equal terms with men in 1928.
also in The British Empire and its dark history
Mahatma Gandhi led a 24-day march to the coastal village of Dandi to make salt in defiance of the British salt tax and monopoly. The act of civil disobedience triggered a mass movement across India and drew international attention to the independence campaign. Tens of thousands were arrested, including Gandhi himself.
Congress launched a mass campaign demanding an immediate end to British rule during the Second World War. The British responded by jailing Gandhi and most Congress leaders and suppressing protests. Though crushed in the short term, it showed British rule could no longer be sustained by consent.
Japan's surrender ended 35 years of colonial rule over Korea. Instead of full independence, the peninsula was split at the 38th parallel into Soviet and American zones of occupation. The division hardened into two rival states and led to the Korean War.
Days after Japan's surrender, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta declared Indonesia independent from Dutch colonial rule. The Netherlands tried to reassert control, leading to four years of armed and diplomatic struggle. The proclamation marked the birth of the Indonesian republic.
Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Viet Minh, declared Vietnam independent, quoting the American Declaration of Independence in his speech. France sought to restore colonial rule, leading to the First Indochina War. The declaration opened three decades of conflict over Vietnam's future.
The Fifth Pan-African Congress brought together future leaders including Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta. Unlike earlier meetings, it called openly for the end of colonial rule and for African self-government. Many of its delegates went on to lead independence campaigns in their home countries.
The United States granted independence to the Philippines, following an earlier promise and the disruption of the Second World War. The country had been a US colony since Spain ceded it in 1898, after Filipino forces had already declared their own republic. Independence made it one of the first Asian colonies of the postwar era to become fully sovereign.
British India became independent and was split into India and Pakistan along broadly religious lines. The partition triggered one of the largest and most violent mass migrations in history, with estimates of the dead ranging widely into the hundreds of thousands or more. Independence for the subcontinent stood as a turning point in the fall of the British Empire.
Burma became independent from Britain, choosing to leave the Commonwealth entirely. Its independence leader Aung San, who negotiated the terms, had been assassinated with much of his cabinet months earlier in 1947. The new nation soon faced ethnic conflicts that persist to this day.
Ceylon became independent from Britain through a peaceful, negotiated transition. Unlike neighboring India, its path avoided partition or mass violence at the moment of independence. The country was renamed Sri Lanka in 1972.
After a war and heavy international pressure, the Netherlands formally transferred sovereignty to Indonesia. Dutch military campaigns during the revolution were later the subject of official inquiries into abuses. The handover confirmed Indonesia as an independent nation.
also in The British Empire
A revolt among the Kikuyu against colonial land seizures was met with a harsh British crackdown, mass detention, and abuse in camps. The brutal suppression hastened the end of colonial rule in Kenya.
France recognized Laos as a fully independent kingdom under a treaty of friendship. Full independence was confirmed by the 1954 Geneva Accords that ended the First Indochina War. The country soon fell into its own long civil conflict tied to the wider wars in the region.
King Norodom Sihanouk secured Cambodia's full independence from France through a campaign of pressure he called his royal crusade. It came as France's grip on Indochina weakened during the war with the Viet Minh. Independence was confirmed at the Geneva talks the next year.
Viet Minh forces under General Giap overran the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu after a long siege. The defeat broke France's will to hold Indochina. It led directly to the Geneva talks and the end of French colonial rule in the region.
also in Segregation: Jim Crow and its global cousins
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, overturning the separate but equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, led by Thurgood Marshall, argued the case. Many Southern school districts resisted the ruling for years, and full desegregation took over a decade to enforce in much of the South.
The Geneva Accords ended the First Indochina War and recognized the independence of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Vietnam was split at the 17th parallel pending elections that were never held. The division set the stage for the later Vietnam War.
The National Liberation Front (FLN) launched coordinated attacks against French rule, opening a brutal eight-year war. France treated Algeria as part of France itself, not a colony, which made the conflict especially bitter. Both sides used tactics later widely condemned, including French use of torture documented by later inquiries.
also in Colonialism: the conquest of the world
Leaders of newly independent Asian and African states met to oppose colonialism and Cold War domination. The conference gave voice to a growing non-aligned movement of the decolonizing world.
Never before had leaders of so many former colonies— their countries had 1.6 billion inhabitants, more than half of humanity— gathered to set a common course.The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War , p. 226-229
also in Segregation: Jim Crow and its global cousins
Black residents of Montgomery boycotted the city's segregated bus system for over a year after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. The boycott was organized by the Montgomery Improvement Association, led by a young pastor named Martin Luther King Jr. It ended when the Supreme Court ruled Montgomery's bus segregation unconstitutional in Browder v. Gayle.
also in Nkrumah and Ghana: the first colony to fall, Pan-Africanism: from the color line to independence
Led by Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People's Party, the Gold Coast became independent Ghana, the first sub-Saharan African colony to break from European rule. Nkrumah tied Ghana's freedom to the wider liberation of the whole continent. The event became a model and a rallying point for independence movements across Africa.
The Federation of Malaya became independent from Britain after a negotiated transition during a communist insurgency known as the Emergency. Independence came through political bargaining among its Malay, Chinese, and Indian communities. Malaya later joined with other territories to form Malaysia in 1963.
In a referendum on joining a reformed French Community, Guinea voted no under the leadership of Ahmed Sekou Toure, choosing immediate independence instead. France responded by withdrawing abruptly, pulling out staff and equipment. Guinea became independent in October 1958, the only French African colony to reject the Community outright.
also in Colonialism: the conquest of the world
Seventeen African colonies gained independence in a single year, most of them French. It marked the high point of the post-war wave of decolonization on the continent.
This speech was given by the author on 31 January 1990 in accepting an award from the New York State Senate naming him New York City Teacher of the Year.Dumbing Us Down , p. 55-61
Miss M. was selected as a Manhattan Teacher of the Year in 1985 and was nominated the following year for the Woman of Conscience Award given by the National Council of Women.Dumbing Us Down , p. 77-84
South African police opened fire on a crowd protesting the apartheid pass laws, killing 69 people, many shot in the back. The killings drew global condemnation and pushed the ANC and PAC toward armed resistance. The date is now marked internationally as a day against racial discrimination.
The Belgian Congo became independent with Patrice Lumumba as its first prime minister. Within weeks the state fell into crisis with an army mutiny, the secession of Katanga, and foreign intervention. Lumumba was removed and, in January 1961, killed; later inquiries pointed to Belgian and Western complicity, and Belgium formally expressed regret in 2002.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous territory, became independent from Britain as a federation of regions. Its size and mix of peoples made it a major test case for post-colonial nation-building. Regional and ethnic tensions would later erupt into the Biafran civil war.
Uprisings against Portuguese rule opened a long war fought by rival movements, most prominently the MPLA. Portugal, unlike other European powers, refused to give up its African colonies. The war dragged on until Portugal's own government fell in 1974.
also in Organizing the world
Leaders including Tito, Nehru, Nasser, Sukarno and Nkrumah open the first summit of nonaligned states in Belgrade, founding a movement of countries refusing to join either Cold War bloc.
Armed fighters opened a struggle against Ethiopian rule after Eritrea's federation with Ethiopia was eroded and then annexed. The war lasted three decades, one of Africa's longest. It drew in Cold War backers on both sides before the fighters finally prevailed.
Tanganyika became independent under Julius Nyerere and his TANU party through a largely peaceful campaign. Nyerere became a leading voice for African unity and later for a socialist model of self-reliance. In 1964 Tanganyika joined with Zanzibar to form Tanzania.
After the Evian Accords and a referendum, Algeria became independent from France, ending 132 years of colonial rule. Estimates of the war dead vary widely and remain contested between French and Algerian sources. Hundreds of thousands of European settlers and pro-French Algerians fled in the aftermath.
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Leaders of 32 newly independent African states sign the OAU Charter in Addis Ababa to promote unity and complete decolonization of the continent. The date is celebrated as Africa Day.
More than 200,000 people gathered for jobs and freedom, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his 'I Have a Dream' speech. The march built pressure for federal civil rights legislation. It became one of the defining moments of the American civil rights movement.
Malaya joined with Singapore, Sarawak, and North Borneo (Sabah) to form the new federation of Malaysia. Indonesia opposed it with a low-level armed confrontation known as Konfrontasi. Singapore left the federation two years later to become independent.
Kenya became independent from Britain with Jomo Kenyatta and the Kenya African National Union leading the new government. It followed years of political organizing and the Mau Mau emergency. Kenya became a republic exactly one year later.
Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders were sentenced to life in prison for sabotage and plotting against the apartheid state. At the trial Mandela gave his 'I am prepared to die' speech, defending the turn to armed struggle after peaceful protest was met with force. The sentence removed the movement's leaders for a generation but made Mandela a global symbol of the struggle.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 followed, banning practices used to block Black Americans from voting. Together they marked the legislative peak of the civil rights movement.
The Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), led by Eduardo Mondlane, began an armed struggle against Portuguese rule. The guerrilla war gradually wore down Portuguese control of the countryside. Mozambique became independent in 1975 after the fall of Portugal's dictatorship.
Marchers demanding voting rights were beaten by police on a bridge out of Selma, a day that became known as Bloody Sunday. Televised images of the violence shocked the country and built support for federal action. Within months Congress passed the Voting Rights Act.
The Voting Rights Act banned the literacy tests and other tactics used to keep Black Americans from voting in the South. Unlike the broader Civil Rights Act of the year before, it targeted the ballot directly and let the federal government oversee registration. Black voter registration rose sharply within a few years.
also in Cecil Rhodes and the dream of empire, Colonialism: the conquest of the world, Segregation: Jim Crow and its global cousins, The British Empire, The British Empire and its dark history
Rhodesia's white minority government declared independence to avoid handing power to the Black majority. The move led to sanctions and a long guerrilla war before majority rule arrived as Zimbabwe.
The eastern region broke away as the Republic of Biafra, and Nigeria fought a war to hold the country together. A blockade caused mass starvation, and images of famine drew global attention; estimates of the dead, most from hunger, run from roughly one to three million and remain contested. Biafra collapsed in January 1970 and the region was reabsorbed into Nigeria.
The Polisario Front formed to fight Spanish colonial rule in Western Sahara, and later Moroccan and Mauritanian control. It declared the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in 1976, recognized by some states and not by others. The territory's status remains disputed and largely unresolved.
The PAIGC, founded by the theorist and organizer Amilcar Cabral, declared Guinea-Bissau independent after a successful guerrilla war against Portugal. Cabral was assassinated months before the declaration, in January 1973. His writing on culture and liberation influenced anti-colonial movements well beyond West Africa.
A near-bloodless military coup in Lisbon overthrew Portugal's long dictatorship, driven in part by exhaustion from its colonial wars. The new government moved quickly to grant independence to Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and other territories. It ended the last major European colonial empire in Africa.
Morocco sent hundreds of thousands of civilians marching into Western Sahara to claim the territory as Spain pulled out. Spain handed administration to Morocco and Mauritania rather than to the Sahrawis, against a World Court opinion favoring self-determination. The move triggered a long conflict with the Polisario Front and left the territory's future contested.
also in The long road to civil rights
Thousands of Black schoolchildren protested being forced to learn in Afrikaans, and police killed hundreds, including 12-year-old Hector Pieterson. The uprising reignited resistance to apartheid at home and abroad.
After a long guerrilla war against white-minority Rhodesian rule, Zimbabwe became independent under Robert Mugabe. The Lancaster House Agreement set the terms for majority rule and elections. Independence ended one of the last white settler governments in Africa.
also in The Cold War
Strikes at the Gdansk shipyard led to Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc, under Lech Walesa. The government banned it and imposed martial law, but the movement survived underground. Its return in 1989 helped bring down communist rule in Poland.
Huge nonviolent crowds filled the streets of Manila and forced the dictator Ferdinand Marcos from power. The largely peaceful uprising installed Corazon Aquino as president. It became a widely copied model of people-power revolution.
Students and workers filled Beijing's Tiananmen Square for weeks calling for democratic reform and an end to corruption. The government sent in the army, killing protesters and bystanders in and around the square. The death toll is disputed and censored in China, with estimates ranging from a few hundred to several thousand.
About two million people joined hands in a chain stretching across the three Baltic states to protest Soviet control. It marked 50 years since the pact that led to their annexation. The peaceful demonstration became a symbol of their drive to regain independence, achieved in 1991.
A wave of mostly peaceful revolutions swept communist governments from power across Eastern Europe, symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall. Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and others broke from Soviet control within months. The changes ended the Cold War division of Europe.
Mass peaceful protests, sparked by the beating of student demonstrators, brought down Czechoslovakia's communist government within weeks. The dissident playwright Vaclav Havel became president by year's end. Its near-bloodless course gave it the name the Velvet Revolution.
Protests that began in Timisoara spread nationwide and turned violent as security forces fired on crowds. Unlike the peaceful changes elsewhere in Eastern Europe, Romania's revolution was bloody, and the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were executed after a hasty trial. It ended communist rule in the country.
Namibia became independent from South African control after a long struggle led by SWAPO and a United Nations-supervised transition. It was among the last African territories to gain independence. The settlement was tied to the wider end of regional conflicts in southern Africa.
After a referendum in which Eritreans voted overwhelmingly for independence, Eritrea became a sovereign state. It followed the 1991 victory of Eritrean and allied Ethiopian rebels over the Derg government. Independence ended one of the continent's longest wars.
South Africa held its first fully democratic election, and Nelson Mandela, freed in 1990 after 27 years in prison, became president. It ended decades of apartheid and the long ANC-led struggle against white-minority rule. The transition, though marked by violence, avoided the full civil war many had feared.
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