Decolonization changed the spatial order of the globe, the imagination of men and women around the world and established images of the globe. Both individuals and social groups shaped decolonization itself: this volume puts agency squarely at the centre of debate by looking at elites and leaders who changed the course of history across the world.

The end of colonial rule in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean was one of the most important and dramatic developments of the twentieth century. In the decades after World War II, dozens of new states emerged as actors in global politics. Long-established imperial regimes collapsed, some more or less peacefully, others amid mass violence. This book takes an incisive look at decolonization and its long-term consequences, revealing it to be a coherent yet multidimensional process at the heart of modern history. Jan Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel trace the decline of European, American, and Japanese colonial supremacy from World War I to the 1990s. Providing a comparative perspective on the decolonization process, they shed light on its key aspects while taking into account the unique regional and imperial contexts in which it unfolded. Jansen and Osterhammel show how the seeds of decolonization were sown during the interwar period and argue that the geopolitical restructuring of the world was intrinsically connected to a sea change in the global normative order. They examine the economic repercussions of decolonization and its impact on international power structures, its consequences for envisioning world order, and the long shadow it continues to cast over new states and former colonial powers alike. Concise and authoritative, Decolonization is the essential introduction to this momentous chapter in history, the aftershocks of which are still being felt today. --

The global phenomenon of decolonization was born in the Americas in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The First Wave of Decolonization is the first volume in any language to describe and analyze the scope and meanings of decolonization during this formative period. It demonstrates that the pioneers of decolonization were not twentieth-century Frenchmen or Algerians but nineteenth-century Peruvians and Colombians. In doing so, it vastly expands the horizons of decolonization, conventionally understood to be a post-war development emanating from Europe. The result is a provocative, new understanding of the global history of decolonization.

Crises of Empire offers a comprehensive and uniquely comparative analysis of the history of decolonization in the British, French and Dutch empires. By comparing the processes of decolonization across three of the major modern empires, from the aftermath of the First World War to the late 20th century, the authors are able to analyse decolonization as a long-term process. They explore significant changes to the international system, shifting popular attitudes to colonialism and the economics of empire. This new edition incorporates the latest developments in the historiography, as well as: - Increased coverage of the Belgian and Portuguese empires - New introductions to each of the three main parts, offering some background and context to British, French and Dutch decolonization - More coverage of cultural aspects of decolonization, exploring empire 'from below' This new edition of Crises of Empire is essential reading for all students of imperial history and decolonization. In particular, it will be welcomed by those who are interested in taking a comparative approach, putting the history of decolonization into a pan-European framework.

An important building block for further advancing world-system theory, this book considers the theory from the perspectives of global processes and antisystemic movements, feminist theory, and the aftermath of the colonial system. The volume addresses three myths tied to Eurocentric forms of thinking: objectivist and universalist knowledges, the decolonization of the modern world, and developmentalism. All three myths, the authors argue, conceal the continued hierarchical and unequal relations of domination and exploitation between European and Euro-American centers and non-European peripheral regions. In this volume, world-system scholars address these and related aspects of the modern/colonial capitalist world-system. Addressing the myth of universalist knowledge, the volume reminds us that our knowledge is situated in the gender, class, racial, and sexual hierarchies of a specific region in the world-system, while the coloniality of power additionally situates our knowledge. The volume further argues that the postcolonial era retains the hierarchy of colonialism, and the possibility of national development without global structural changes is one of the greatest 20th-century myths. Taking these perspectives into consideration, the contributors examine and help to refine classic world-system theory.

Through innovative and expansive research, Oil Revolution analyzes the tensions faced and networks created by anti-colonial oil elites during the age of decolonization following World War II. This new community of elites stretched across Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Algeria, and Libya. First through their western educations and then in the United Nations, the Arab League, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, these elites transformed the global oil industry. Their transnational work began in the early 1950s and culminated in the 1973–4 energy crisis and in the 1974 declaration of a New International Economic Order in the United Nations. Christopher R. W. Dietrich examines how these elites brokered and balanced their ambitions via access to oil, the most important natural resource of the modern era.

Decolonization is the term commonly used to refer to this transition from a world of colonial empires to a world of nation-states in the years after World War II. This work demonstrates that this process involved considerable violence and instability.