all right we've been bandying about the Cold War for the last few videos but now it's time to consider the other massive development in this time period namely decolonization so if you're ready to get them brain cow's milks let's get to it so in terms of decolonization throughout the world there were two basic means by which nations gained their freedom from their Imperial parents and the first was through negotiated Independence and I've got two examples for you first let's visit our friends in India which as you may remember was Britain's most prosperous and valuable Colony as such they invested a great deal of money to build up India's infrastructure including railroads and sea portch and urban development now all of that investment yielded enormous returns but all of it was built for the sake of enriching the British Empire and not India however that modernization produced the same results in India that it did in other places namely producing a growing and educated middle class who became increasingly influenced by nationalism and the desire for greater degrees of self-rule to that end Indians formed the Indian National Congress in 1885 whose goal was to petition the British government for more of a voice in Indian policy but those petitions not surprisingly were largely ignored by the British so with that level of snubbing it may surprise you then that Indians fought by the Millions for the British cause in World War I I mean they didn't really have a choice about it but regardless Indians fought because they believed that such sacrifices would earn them a greater degree of self-rule but their hopes were again essentially ignored and so the discontent that followed nearly erupted into violent resistance especially after British troops slaughtered hundreds of peaceful Indian protesters in the Amritsar Massacre but thanks to the powerful leadership of Indian nationalist mandas Gandhi the Imperial resistance movement took on the character of nonviolent resistance and so by the 1920s in response to that increasing pressure the British government did transfer some limited authority to the Indians themselves however when World War II began the British again called up millions of Indian troops to fight for their cause to which the Indians responded seriously but they did fight and once the war was over Indians demanded their independence and this time it was a different story as it turns out the British were broke enough from the war and had amassed enough pro-independence politicians in Parliament that they officially recognized India's independence in 1947 and hey before things take a turn for the worst let me just mention that if you need help getting an A in your class and a five on your exam in May you might just want to check out my AP World himler review guide which has everything you need to study everything as fast as possible it's got whole unit review videos that you won't see here on YouTube no guides to follow along practice questions practice exams and answer keys for every dang bit of it so if that's something that you're into check the link in the description anyway India's independent and that's great and I wish I could tell you that India's independence marked the beginning of an era suffused with peace and puppies and rainbows but no you see even though the official process of India's Independence was negotiated and peaceful the establish M of India as a new state was fraught with Incredible violence and here's what so reach all the way back into the brain folds that you developed for units 1 and two and you remember that for centuries India was home to a substantial Muslim minority and so the Muslims fearing that they would be marginalized in an independent India formed a religious and ethnic movement called the Muslim League and called for a new state of their own in the independence negotiation the result was the partition of India that created the new state of Pakistan and would be the home of India's Muslim minority but once the two states were created Hindus fled South while Muslim Muslims fled North and each side committed unspeakable violence against the other and once the dust had settled hundreds of thousands or some estimates say over a million people died as a result and then the second and shorter example of negotiated Independence occurred in Africa namely the Gold Coast now this was also a colony of Great Britain and in 1947 an independence movement was led by kwam and kruma so as he began negotiations with Britain the situation was similar to India no longer was there much public support for imperialism and Britain was in no position to spend money on quelling rebellions while they were busy rebuilding from the war therefore as a result of the negoti the new state of Ghana was born in 1957 okay now the second major category for how decolonization occurred was through the process of armed struggle now I can multiply examples of negotiated Independence and armed conflict all day but for the sake of Simplicity let me just tell you what was often the deciding factor that determined whether the process of colonial Independence was peaceful or violent and in many cases it came down to the size of a colony's white European population you see for those colonies in which a large population of European settlers had made their homes they resisted decolonization and that resistance caused outbreaks of violence in the name of Independence and let me just give you two examples first let's consider the independence movement in the French colony of Algeria now here's the interesting thing here in Africa the French held Colonial possessions here in Morocco Tunisia and Algeria from Morocco and Tunisia France recognized their independence through negotiation and without Bloodshed but France would do no such thing with Algeria and why white people you're dang straight white people so remember from the previous period that Algeria had been a hot spot of French migration for a long time and therefore French citizens living there resisted Algerian Independence fiercely and so in 1954 Arab and Berber Muslims responded by forming the National Liberation Front in stage a series of violent attacks against French troops and civilians in the name of Independence and the French went ahead and responded with a brutality that made the struggle for Independence among the bloodiest in the period French soldiers targeted civilians without restraint and committed human rights abuses on a massive scale and the war continued until 1962 when President Charles de gal opened negotiations with the algerians and declared the end of the war and algeria's Independence okay the second example of decolonization through armed struggle was also in Africa namely Angola so Angola was a Portuguese colony and by the 1950s three angolan political groups had joined together to oppose their colonial rule and violence broke out during a spontaneous Insurrection protesting inhumane treatment of farmers by the Portuguese as a result both sides Unleashed violence against one another and neither made much progress however in 1974 a bloodless coup occurred in Portugal and the angolans took the opportunity to open negotiations for Independence which came in 1975 and that's great but like India and so many other decolonized nations violence immediately followed yes those three r angolan ethnic groups had United in order to OU the stinking Portuguese but once they had done it those groups immediately fell into a civil war to determine which of them would hold power and since the three groups represented communist and anti-communist the angolan conflict became yet another proxy war in the larger context of the Cold War now the most basic explanation for why so many Colonial Independence movements quickly descended into Civil War after winning their freedom is because of the problem of colonial boundaries recall from the previous period that Imperial Powers Drew their boundaries around their territorial Holdings without respect for the the various ethnic and religious groups living within them which was a problem in many places but none more pronounced than in Africa in some cases those boundaries brought rival groups together and in other cases those boundaries split ethnic and religious groups apart and so that carelessness on the part of Imperial Powers often led to Violent power struggles after Colonial Independence and though there are countless examples let me just mention how that phenomenon played out in Nigeria so in 1960 Nigerians negotiated their independence from Britain lot a civil war broke out by 1967 over who would gain control over the newly independent Nigeria it began when the Igbo people who westernized Christian people in the South tried to secede and form their own Nation called bafra now because their land was rich in oil the northern government was like ah heck no and resisted that secession violently and ultimately the north won out in 1970 and established at last a United Nigeria but the legacy of colonial boundaries in Africa and in various places throughout the world continue to cause tension to this very day all right click here to keep reviewing for unit a and click here to grab my AP World History H review guide which has everything you need to get an A in your class and a five on your exam in May I'm glad we got to hang out and not catch on the flipflop hi out