09-22-2020, 04:08 PM
(09-22-2020, 01:05 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(09-22-2020, 12:41 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: World War II ripped apart the assumptions of colonial rule. Small cadres of colonial administrators and business operators and executives could not overpower the much larger populations of British India, French Indochina, and the Dutch East Indies as such people did after those lands were taken out of Japanese domination at the end of WWII.
It was not just that. The United States after World War II forgave Lend Lease loans to powers who renounced closed ports. This was obviously to the US's advantage as they had the shipping and manufacturing and many did not. No closed ports, no captive markets, no cheap sources of raw materials, no point in having colonies. You would end up responsible for a undeveloped area without gaining the economic advantage out of it. Thus, the former mother countries did not attempt to maintain their former domination.
Countries that had colonies also often had to choose between fighting to keep colonies that had cast off the Japanese and rebuilding their domestic infrastructure. The Dutch were not going to fight to keep Indonesia. The United States had already planned to grant independence to the Philippines, and the Japanese imposed an ugly parody of independence in a puppet state. Gandhi and Jinnah had behaved themselves well enough during World War II. The US was more concerned about thwarting Communism than in keeping colonial empires intact.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
