Since the Gunpowder Revolution, Europeans had surpassed the constraints of the feudal system. The ever rising cost of war and managing the state became the impetus for the Age of Exploration which saw the rapid global domination of European powers and the start of a hegemony which began to unravel at the climax of these empire’s power. The growing rivalries and demands of managing such a system put a great toll on the colonies, whose very life blood and livelihoods fueled the conflicts. WWII saw this taken to the extreme, with global powers putting the colonial system to the test once more and to its eventual collapse in the post-war period.
As victors, the British and French should have been confident in their dominance over the old world, but this was not the case. The revolutions in Asia and the loss of those colonies in the post-war brought colonial possession into question. The intensity of the fighting and the demands that Europe place on their colonies caused the drive for self-determination and recognition that erupted into revolution. F. Cooper, the author of Reconstructing Empire, names the colonies as the most important aspect of wartime and post-war, the problem was that the world knew this as well. The demands of the war made an “inclusive” empire that made returning to the empire of old impossible (Cooper, p. 200). To address this, 2nd class citizenship was disseminated to tribal entities at the expense of true control over these colonies (Ibid, p. 203). He concludes that Europe’s survival depended on the colonies and that France needed to refocus their efforts to Africa; however, this contrasted the moral implications of enforcing an empire.
Colonialism, in essence, relied on the subjugation of a people who were culturally, politically, and militarily inferior to their retainers. While France as a whole was still stronger than any of their individual holdings, their ability to keep control over their many possessions required military action. In Algeria, the French switched from a policy of “promotion musulmane”, multiculturalism, but they also resorted to violent suppression as well. The French-Algerian War was especially bloody, with over 2.4 million Algerians place in death camps as a tool of collective punishment (Sartre, p. 72). The suppression of rights itself went counter to French spirit of nationalism and Republic, yet the necessity of colonial resources outranked this. As a result, France was at conflict with what it needed to survive and the essence of their national ideology and beliefs. For Sartre, the situation in Africa represented the decline of French hegemony and showed that the need to use terror against colonies proved that France was too weak to maintain an empire. The fact that so many African soldiers, as many as 250-350,000, had suffered in WWII and were refused to recompense especially tolled on French morality (Schmidt, p. 446). The images above show African service members in the fighting in the war effort, yet they were still not afforded the basic rights that a victor of a conflict such as WWII would be expected to deliver. Because of this, states revolted and sought self-determination on their own terms instead of through the colonial system that been created.
Imperial powers were caught in a rough place in the post-war. On one hand, they needed colonial assets to rebuild and survive; however, the morality and sustainability of this system was called into question. Massive casualties in revolution and suppression outline these conflicts and Britain and France were unable to sustain this following the toll of WWII. Today, these colonies have formed their own nation-states, albeit unstable ones, and they drew off of the institutions and systems that Europe had left in place, which were purposefully debilitating ones. The Rwandan Genocide stands as one of the most notable modern examples, with hundreds of thousands dead in an ethnic conflict that resulted from a divisive Dutch system. In our world now, empires exist through economic coalitions that influence the world through collective action, or inaction, instead of direct control over foreign entities. We need to recognize how empires coalesce power over others and use their influence to maintain their way of life. The US does this today, and it maintains an uneasy balance in the use of its power against the world’s direction.
I found it interesting to see what these old European Powers did with their colonies that were occupied during the war. They lost practically all control in the South East Asian Islands after the war due to the lack of resources. Your post did a great job covering this topic, great work!
You highlight an important fact of how the African nations today build upon broken systems left by the Europeans that ultimately used for exploiting them for their manpower and resources. Additionally the issue of Europeans needing to rebuild after the war but to continue exploiting the African citizens was an addition point you hit well upon. Your images was not what I was expecting when I first though of Colonial troops.
I like how you discussed the legacy of colonial systems in African countries because I think colonial systems played an enormous role in developing governmental structures in newly created states like you said. However, I would not go as far as to say that colonial powers left in place purposefully debilitating systems. The colonial powers did not try to rig the new countries for failure as they left out of spite, but merely extracted as much wealth as possible before they abruptly left with little care about the consequences of their actions.