THE DISSOLUTION OF EUROPE’S COLONIAL EMPIRES BRITISHFRENCH 1931: Statute of Westminster for Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa 1944: Charles de Gaulle promises a “French Union” at Brazzaville in French Congo 1947: Independence for India : Vietnamese War 1948: Independence for Israel : Algerian War 1956: Israel, France, & Britain attack Nasser’s Egypt : Independence for most African colonies : Independence for all African colonies 1979: Majority rule in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe : Portugal fights bloody wars to hold Angola & Mozambique 1994: Majority rule in South Africa

Mohandas K. Gandhi ( ) as a young attorney in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1913

Gandhi’s “salt march” of 1930

Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru ( ) at a Congress Party leadership conference in 1937

Gandhi discusses the final details of British withdrawal from India with Lord Mountbatten in 1947

Mohammed Ali Jinnah of the Muslim League demands an independent Pakistan beside India, June 1947

An elderly Muslim, dying of exhaustion on the road to Pakistan. Bodies pile up in the street as a result of communal riots in August Gandhi resorted to a hunger strike to stop the fighting in Calcutta.

Mourners at Gandhi’s funeral, New Delhi, 1948

The Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini in Berlin, 1941

David Ben-Gurion in London, May 1939

Young kazetniks arrive in Haifa in July 1945, but the British retained strict limits on immigration

The “Exodus” outside Haifa harbor, July 1947

The bombing of the King David Hotel by Irgun agents in Jerusalem, July 1946, when 91 people died British commentators assumed that Zionism would forfeit all sympathy in the world

The U.N. plan to divide Palestine in 1947 and the actual outcome of the first Arab- Israeli War of 1948/49

Fawzi el-Kaoukji, commander of the Arab Liberation Army

Israeli forces capture Kastel, near Jerusalem, April 1948

David Ben-Gurion proclaims the founding of the State of Israel beneath a portrait of Theodor Herzl, Tel Aviv, 14 May 1948

Egypt, Jordan, Syria, & Iraq invaded Israel on May 15, 1948; a truce was arranged on June 10, as heavy weapons poured into Israel

On the Jewish side, everyone fought in 1948, including women and the ultra-orthodox

There were 914,000 Palestinian refugees registered with the UN in 1950 and 4.3 million in 2005

Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana ( ): Educated at Lincoln University (PA) and the London School of Economics; returned to the Gold Coast in 1947, rose toPrime Minister in 1953: A “nondenominational Christian and Marxist socialist.”

FRANCE CONQUERED ALGERIA FROM 1829 TO 1892 It was integrated into metropolitan France, but with suffrage limited to the 1 million European settlers.

The National Liberation Front rebelled in November 1954, but all French parties replied, Ici, c’est la France! The grant of independence to Morocco and Tunisia in 1956 fueled the rebellion.

With 500,000 troops the French conquered most rural strongholds of the FLN in 1956

The Battle of Algiers began in June 1956, when the FLN declared that 100 Frenchmen would be killed for every comrade executed

French paratroopers took charge of urban policing by January Torture was authorized.

Frantz Fanon ( ), spokesman for the National Liberation Front of Algeria; born on Martinique, the descendant of African slaves; enlisted in Free French army and served in Algeria as an army doctor

Rumors that the politicians in Paris would surrender to the FLN caused a military coup in Algiers in May French party leaders asked Charles de Gaulle to found a Fifth Republic. Here the paratrooper commander in Algeria, General Massu, presides over Marianne’s wedding

But de Gaulle soon negotiated a transfer of power to the FLN leaders Ahmed ben Bella (left) and Houari Boumedienne