IR.

102 World History II (Section 1)

Third World:
Political Change and Decolonization
Decolonization 1
• Nation-building after 1945
• 51 original members of the UN increased to 76 by 1955, and to 122 by 1965

• Decolonisation in Asia
• The partition of India and Pakistan (1947), Pakistan and Bangladesh (1971)
• Indonesian independence from the Dutch in 1949
• Phillippines’ independence from the US in 1946
• Malaysian independence from the British in 1948, and Singapore in 1965
• Developments in French Indochina
Decolonization 2

• Decolonisation in Africa
• Hard-won Algerian independence from France in 1962
• Independence of Ghana from the British in 1957 and Kwame Nkrumah
• Republic of Kenya in 1964 (old British colony)
• Independence of the west African states by 1960
• Independence of the Portugese colonies in 1975 (Angola and Mozambique)
• From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe in 1980
• Apartheid in South Africa after 1949
• Rise of opposition of the African National Congress with Nelson Mandela
Middle East in the Post-War Period
• Independence in Syria & Lebanon (1945), Egypt (1952), Iraq (1958), Jordan (1956)
• The overthrown of Musaddıq in Iran by a Anglo-American coup d’etat in 1953
• The problem of Israel
• Background of the problem
• The emergence of Zionism (Theordor Herzl) and the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1897
• French banker Baron de Rothchild’s financial support for the establishment of 90.000 Jews in Palestine by
1914
• Britain’s Balfour Declaration in 1917: British support for Zionist plans for Jewish home in Palastine
• Emigration of the Jews to Palestine in the 1930s and the rise of Arab-Jewish conflict
• Partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in 1947 by the UN
• Israels’s declaration of independence in 1948
• 1967 and 1973 Wars in the Middle East
• Suez War in 1956
• Iranian Revolution in 1979
Chinese Revolution (Mao Period)
• 1949 Chinese Revolution
• 1949-1956: Reconstruction and growth by the technical and material support
from the USSR
• After 1956: Deterioration of relations with the USSR, turn towards the Non-
Aligned Movement
• 1955-1957: Collectivisation of peasant farming
• Mao’s Great Leap Forward in 1958
• Cultural Revolution in 1966
• Rapproachment between the US and China after 1971
• After the death of Mao in 1976: Market liberalisation and decentralisation by
Deng Xiaoping
• 1989 Tiananmen Square: Setting the limits of reforms
Political and Economic Change in the Third World

• Political, economic and social problems after independence

• Authoritarian rules
• The need for economic development
• Import-substitution developmentalist strategies
• Non-aligned nations of the Third World during the Cold War
• 1955 Bandung Conference
• Led by Indonesia’s Sukarno, India’s Nehru, Ghana’s Nkrumah and Egypt’s Gamal Abd al-Nasir
• Balancing game between the first and the second worlds
• Transformations within the Third World after 1970s
• The rise of the NICs (Newly Industrialised Countries)
• Under-development in Africa
• 1973-4 Oil Crisis
• OPEC in 1960
• OPEC embargo against the US and Netherlands in 1973
Discussion Questions
• Compare and contrast British and French responses to national
liberation in their colonies.
• Discuss the role of Britain and France in the development of the
Palestine-Israeli conflict.
• Discuss the importance of the Suez War in the great power rivalries.
• Was China a Second or Third World country? Why?
• What were the specificities of Chinese socialist revolution?
• Discuss the importance of the Bandung Conference in 1955 in Cold
War politics.
• Discuss the importance of the formation of OPEC for international
economic and political relations.