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Decolonization is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby Imperialism nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas.Note however discussion of (for example) the Russian and Nazi empires below. The meanings and applications of the term are disputed. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on Separatism in the Colony and the collapse of global . John Lynch, ed. Latin American Revolutions, 1808–1826: Old and New World Origins (1995).
As a movement to establish independence for colonized territories from their respective Metropole, decolonization began in 1775 in North America. Major waves of decolonization occurred in the aftermath of the First World War and most prominently after the Second World War.
Critical scholars extend the meaning beyond independence or equal rights for colonized peoples to include broader economic, cultural and psychological aspects of the colonial experience. (2025). 9789004260443, Brill. ISBN 9789004260443 Extending the meaning of decolonization beyond political independence has been disputed and received criticism.
The United Nations (UN) states that the Human rights to self-determination is the core requirement for decolonization, and that this right can be exercised with or without political independence. A UN General Assembly Resolution in 1960 characterised colonial foreign rule as a violation of human rights. In states that have won independence, Indigenous people living under settler colonialism continue to make demands for decolonization and self-determination.Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz (1984). 9780030009174, New York : Praeger Publishers, Inc.. . ISBN 9780030009174
Although discussions of hegemony and power, central to the concept of decolonization, can be found as early as the writings of Thucydides, there have been several particularly active periods of decolonization in modern times. These include the decolonization of Africa, the breakup of the Spanish Empire in the 19th century; of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire, and following World War I; of the British Empire, French, Dutch Empire, Portuguese, Belgian, Italian Empire, and Japanese Empires following World War II; and of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War.
Early studies of decolonisation appeared in the 1960s and 1970s. An important book from this period was The Wretched of the Earth (1961) by Martiniquan author Frantz Fanon, which established many aspects of decolonisation that would be considered in later works. Subsequent studies of decolonisation addressed economic disparities as a legacy of colonialism as well as the annihilation of people's cultures. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o explored the cultural and linguistic legacies of colonialism in the influential book Decolonising the Mind (1986).
"Decolonization" has also been used to refer to the intellectual decolonization from the colonizers' ideas that made the colonized feel inferior. Issues of decolonization persist and are raised contemporarily. In the Americas and South Africa, such issues are increasingly discussed under the term decoloniality.
A great deal of scholarship attributes the ideological origins of national independence movements to the Age of Enlightenment. Enlightenment social and political theories such as individualism and liberalism were central to the debates about national constitutions for newly independent countries. Contemporary Decoloniality has critiqued the emancipatory potential of Enlightenment thought, highlighting its erasure of Indigenous epistemologies and failure to provide subaltern and Indigenous people with liberty, equality, and dignity.
With the invasion of Spain by Napoleon in 1806, the American colonies declared autonomy and loyalty to King Ferdinand VII. The contract was broken and each of the regions of the Spanish Empire had to decide whether to show allegiance to the Junta of Cadiz (the only territory in Spain free from Napoleon) or have a junta (assembly) of its own. The economic monopoly of the metropolis was the main reason why many countries decided to become independent from Spain. In 1809, the independence wars of Latin America began with a revolt in La Paz, Bolivia. In 1807 and 1808, the Viceroyalty of the River Plate was invaded by the British. After their 2nd defeat, a Frenchman called Santiague de Liniers was proclaimed a new Viceroy by the local population and later accepted by Spain. In May 1810 in Buenos Aires, a Junta was created, but in Montevideo it was not recognized by the local government who followed the authority of the Junta of Cadiz. The rivalry between the two cities was the main reason for the distrust between them. During the next 15 years, the Spanish and Royalist on one side, and the rebels on the other fought in South America and Mexico. Numerous countries declared their independence. In 1824, the Spanish forces were defeated in the Battle of Ayacucho. The mainland was free, and in 1898, Spain lost Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Spanish–American War. Puerto Rico became an unincorporated territory of the US, but Cuba became independent in 1902.
After World War I, several former German and Ottoman territories in the Middle East, Africa, and the Pacific were governed by the UK as League of Nations mandates. Some were administered directly by the UK, and others by British dominions – Nauru and the Territory of New Guinea by Australia, South West Africa by the Union of South Africa, and Western Samoa by New Zealand.
Egypt became independent in 1922, although the UK retained security prerogatives, control of the Suez Canal, and effective control of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The Balfour Declaration of 1926 declared the British Empire as equals, and the 1931 Statute of Westminster established full legislative independence for them. The equal dominions were six– Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, the Irish Free State, New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa; Ireland had been brought into a union with Great Britain in 1801 creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922. However, some of the Dominions were already independent de facto, and even de jure and recognized as such by the international community. Thus, Canada was a founding member of the League of Nations in 1919 and served on the council from 1927 to 1930. That country also negotiated on its own and signed bilateral and multilateral treaties and conventions from the early 1900s onward. Newfoundland ceded self-rule back to London in 1934. Iraq, a League of Nations mandate, became independent in 1932.
In response to a growing Indian independence movement, the UK made successive reforms to the British Raj, culminating in the Government of India Act 1935. These reforms included creating elected legislative councils in some of the provinces of British India. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, India's independence movement leader, led a peaceful resistance to British rule. By becoming a symbol of both peace and opposition to British imperialism, many Indians began to view the British as the cause of India's problems leading to a newfound sense of nationalism among its population. With this new wave of Indian nationalism, Gandhi was eventually able to garner the support needed to push back the British and create an independent India in 1947.
Africa was only fully drawn into the colonial system at the end of the 19th century. In the north-east the continued independence of the Ethiopian Empire remained a beacon of hope to pro-independence activists. However, with the anti-colonial wars of the 1900s (decade) barely over, new modernizing forms of Africa nationalism began to gain strength in the early 20th century with the emergence of Pan-Africanism, as advocated by the Jamaican journalist Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) whose widely distributed newspapers demanded swift abolition of European imperialism, as well as republicanism in Egypt. Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) who was inspired by the works of Garvey led Ghana to independence from colonial rule.
Independence for the colonies in Africa began with the independence of Sudan in 1956, and Ghana in 1957. All of the British colonies on mainland Africa became independent by 1966, although Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence in 1965 was not recognized by the UK or internationally.
Some of the British colonies in Asia were directly administered by British officials, while others were ruled by local monarchs as or in subsidiary alliance with the UK.
In 1947, British India was partitioned into the independent dominions of India and Pakistan. Hundreds of , states ruled by monarchs in a treaty of subsidiary alliance with Britain, were integrated into India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan fought several wars over the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. French India was integrated into India between 1950 and 1954, and India annexed Portuguese India in 1961, and the Kingdom of Sikkim merged with India by popular vote in 1975.
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India against British East India Company. It was characterized by massacres of civilians on both sides. It was not a movement for independence, however, and only a small part of India was involved. In the aftermath, the British pulled back from modernizing reforms of Indian society, and the level of organised violence under the British Raj was relatively small. Most of that was initiated by repressive British administrators, as in the Amritsar massacre of 1919, or the police assaults on the Salt March of 1930.On the nonviolent methodology see Large-scale communal violence broke out between Hindus and Muslims and between Muslims and Sikhs after the British left in 1947 in the newly independent of India and Pakistan. Much later, in 1970, further communal violence broke out within Pakistan in the detached eastern part of East Bengal, which became independent as Bangladesh in 1971.
Cyprus, which came under full British control in 1914 from the Ottoman Empire, was culturally divided between the majority Greek Cypriots (which demanded "enosis" or union with Greece) and the minority Turks. London for decades assumed it needed the island to defend the Suez Canal; but after the Suez crisis of 1956, that became a minor factor, and Greek violence became a more serious issue. Cyprus became an independent country in 1960, but ethnic violence escalated until 1974 when Turkey invaded and partitioned the island. Each side rewrote its own history, blaming the other.
Palestine became a British mandate from the League of Nations after World War I, initially including Transjordan. During that war, the British gained support from Arabs and Jews by making promises to both (see McMahon–Hussein Correspondence and Balfour Declaration). Decades of ethno—religious violence reached a climax with the UN Partition Plan and the ensuing war. The British eventually pulled out, and the former Mandate territory was divided between Israel, Jordan and Egypt.
After World War I, France administered the former Ottoman territories of Syria and Lebanon, and the former German colonies of French Togoland and French Cameroons, as League of Nations mandates. Lebanon declared its independence in 1943, and Syria in 1945.
In some instances, decolonization efforts ran counter to other concerns, such as the rapid increase of antisemitism in Algeria in the course of the nation's resistance to French rule.Heuman, J. (2023). The silent disappearance of Jews from Algeria: French anti-racism in the face of antisemitism in Algeria during the decolonization. Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 22(2), 149-168.
Although France was ultimately a victor of World War II, Nazi Germany's occupation of France and its North African colonies during the war had disrupted colonial rule. On 27 October 1946, France adopted a new constitution creating the Fourth Republic, and substituted the French Union for the colonial empire. However power over the colonies remained concentrated in France, and the power of local assemblies outside France was extremely limited. On the night of 29 March 1947, a Madagascar nationalist uprising led the French government headed by Paul Ramadier (Socialist) to violent repression: one year of bitter fighting, 11,000–40,000 Malagasy died. In late 1946, the Viet Minh attacked France in Hanoi, leading to the Indochina War (1946–54). France later recognized independence of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in 1949. France also recognized the unity of Vietnam and supported the anti-communist faction in this country against the communists who fought in the name of anti-colonialism, the war thus became part of the world-wide Cold War. Cambodia and Laos became fully independent in late 1953, Vietnam became fully independent on 4 June 1954, and the Geneva Accords of 21 July 1954 left Vietnam divided into the North Vietnam and South Vietnam with the fact that France recognized communists gaining the North. After North Vietnamese military victory, Vietnam would be united under communism on 2 July 1976.
In 1956, Morocco and Tunisia gained their independence from France. In 1960, eight independent countries emerged from French West Africa, and five from French Equatorial Africa. The Algerian War of Independence raged from 1954 to 1962. To this day, the Algerian war – officially called a "public order operation" until the 1990s – remains a trauma for both France and Algeria. Philosopher Paul Ricœur has spoken of the necessity of a "decolonisation of memory", starting with the recognition of the 1961 Paris massacre during the Algerian war, and the decisive role of African and especially North African immigrant manpower in the Trente Glorieuses post–World War II economic growth period. In the 1960s, due to economic needs for post-war reconstruction and rapid economic growth, French employers actively sought to recruit manpower from the colonies, explaining today's multiethnic population.
After 1898 direct intervention expanded in Latin America. The United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867 and annexed Hawaii in 1898. Following the Spanish–American War in 1898, the US added most of Spain's remaining colonies: Puerto Rico, Philippines, and Guam. Deciding not to annex Cuba outright, the U.S. established it as a client state with obligations including the perpetual lease of Guantánamo Bay to the U.S. Navy. The attempt of the first governor to void the island's constitution and remain in power past the end of his term provoked a rebellion that provoked a reoccupation between 1906 and 1909, but this was again followed by devolution. Similarly, the McKinley administration, despite prosecuting the Philippine–American War against a native republic, set out that the Territory of the Philippine Islands was eventually granted independence. In 1917, the U.S. purchased the Danish West Indies (later renamed the US Virgin Islands) from Denmark and Puerto Ricans became full U.S. citizens that same year. (2025). 9780742549838, Rowman and Littlefield. ISBN 9780742549838 The US government declared Puerto Rico the territory was no longer a colony and stopped transmitting information about it to the United Nations Decolonization Committee. As a result, the UN General Assembly removed Puerto Rico from the U.N. list of non-self-governing territories. Four referendums showed little support for independence, but much interest in statehood such as Hawaii and Alaska received in 1959.
The Monroe Doctrine was expanded by the Roosevelt Corollary in 1904, providing that the United States had a right and obligation to intervene "in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence" that a nation in the Western Hemisphere became vulnerable to European control. In practice, this meant that the United States was led to act as a collections agent for European creditors by administering customs duties in the Dominican Republic (1905–1941), Haiti (1915–1934), and elsewhere. The intrusiveness and bad relations this engendered were somewhat checked by the Clark Memorandum and renounced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor Policy".
The Fourteen Points were preconditions addressed by President Woodrow Wilson to the European powers at the Paris Peace Conference following World War I. In allowing allies France and Britain the former colonial possessions of the German and Ottoman Empires, the US demanded of them submission to the League of Nations mandate, in calling for V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable government whose title is to be determined. See also point XII.
After World War II, the U.S. poured tens of billions of dollars into the Marshall Plan, and other grants and loans to Europe and Asia to rebuild the world economy. At the same time American military bases were established around the world and direct and indirect interventions continued in Korean War, Vietnam War, Latin America ( inter alia, the 1965 occupation of the Dominican Republic), Africa, and the Middle East to oppose Communist movements and insurgencies. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States has been far less active in the Americas, but invaded Afghanistan and Iraq War following the September 11 attacks in 2001, establishing army and air bases in Central Asia.
In 1931, Japan seized Manchuria from the Republic of China, setting up a puppet state under Puyi, the last Manchu emperor of China. In 1933 Japan seized the Chinese province of Rehe Province, and incorporated it into its Manchurian possessions. The Second Sino-Japanese War started in 1937, and Japan occupied much of eastern China, including the Republic's capital at Nanjing. An estimated 20 million Chinese died during the 1931–1945 war with Japan.
In December 1941, the empire of Japan joined World War II by invading the European and U.S. colonies in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, including French Indochina, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Burma, British Malaya, Indonesia, Portuguese Timor, and others. Following its surrender to the Allies in 1945, Japan was deprived of all its colonies with a number of them being returned to the original colonizing Western powers. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan in August 1945, and shortly after occupied and annexed the southern Kuril Islands, which Japan still claims.
From 1933 to 1974, Portugal was an authoritarian state (ruled by António de Oliveira Salazar). The regime was fiercely determined to maintain the country's colonial possessions at all costs and to aggressively suppress any insurgencies. In 1961, India annexed Goa and by the same year nationalist forces had begun organizing in Portugal. Revolts (preceding the Portuguese Colonial War) spread to Angola, Guinea Bissau and Mozambique.John P. Cann, Counterinsurgency in Africa: The Portuguese Way of War 1961–74 Solihull, UK (Helion Studies in Military History, No. 12), 2012. Lisbon escalated its effort in the war: for instance, it increased the number of natives in the colonial army and built strategic hamlets. Portugal sent another 300,000 European settlers into Angola and Mozambique before 1974. That year, a left-wing revolution inside Portugal overthrew the existing regime and encouraged pro-Soviet elements to attempt to seize control in the colonies. The result was a very long and extremely difficult multi-party Civil War in Angola, and lesser insurrections in Mozambique.Norrie MacQueen, The Decolonisation of Portuguese Africa: Metropolitan Revolution and the Dissolution of Empire
The UNCTAD however was not very effective in implementing the NIEO, and social and economic inequalities between industrialized countries and the Third World grew throughout the 1960s until the 21st century. The 1973 oil crisis which followed the Yom Kippur War (October 1973) was triggered by the OPEC which decided an embargo against the US and Western countries, causing a fourfold increase in the price of oil, which lasted five months, starting on 17 October 1973, and ending on 18 March 1974. OPEC nations then agreed, on 7 January 1975, to raise crude oil prices by 10%. At that time, OPEC nations – including many who had recently nationalized their oil industries – joined the call for a New International Economic Order to be initiated by coalitions of primary producers. Concluding the First OPEC Summit in Algiers they called for stable and just commodity prices, an international food and agriculture program, technology transfer from North to South, and the democratization of the economic system. But industrialized countries quickly began to look for substitutes to OPEC petroleum, with the oil companies investing the majority of their research capital in the US and European countries or others, politically sure countries. The OPEC lost more and more influence on the world prices of oil.
The second oil crisis occurred in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Then, the 1982 Latin American debt crisis exploded in Mexico first, then Argentina and Brazil, which proved unable to pay back their debts, jeopardizing the existence of the international economic system.
The 1990s were characterized by the prevalence of the Washington consensus on neoliberalism policies, "structural adjustment" and "shock therapies" for the former Communist states.
In 1945, Africa had four independent countries – Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia, and South Africa.
After Italy's defeat in World War II, France and the UK occupied the former Italian colonies. Libya became an independent kingdom in 1951. Eritrea was merged with Ethiopia in 1952. Italian Somaliland was governed by the UK, and by Italy after 1954, until its independence in 1960. By 1977, European colonial rule in mainland Africa had ended. Most of Africa's island countries had also become independent, although Réunion and Mayotte remain part of France. However the black majorities in Rhodesia and South Africa were disenfranchised until 1979 in Rhodesia, which became Zimbabwe-Rhodesia that year and Zimbabwe the next, and until 1994 in South Africa. Namibia, Africa's last UN Trust Territory, became independent of South Africa in 1990.
Most independent African countries exist within prior colonial borders. However Morocco merged French Morocco with Spanish Morocco, and Somalia formed from the merger of British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland. Eritrea merged with Ethiopia in 1952, but became an independent country in 1993.
Most African countries became independent as . Morocco, Lesotho, and Eswatini remain monarchies under dynasties that predate colonial rule. Burundi, Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia gained independence as monarchies, but all four countries' monarchs were later deposed, and they became republics.
African countries cooperate in various multi-state associations. The African Union includes all 55 African states. There are several regional associations of states, including the East African Community, Southern African Development Community, and Economic Community of West African States, some of which have overlapping membership.
The Republic of China regained control of Japanese-occupied territories in Manchuria and eastern China, as well as Taiwan. Only Hong Kong and Macau remained in outside control until both places were transferred to the People's Republic of China by the UK and Portugal in 1997 and 1999.
The Allied powers divided Korea into two occupation zones, which became the states of North Korea and South Korea. The Philippines became independent of the U.S. in 1946.
The Netherlands recognized Indonesia's independence in 1949, after a four-year independence struggle. Indonesia annexed Netherlands New Guinea in 1963, and Portuguese Timor in 1975. In 2002, former Portuguese Timor became independent as East Timor.
The following list shows the colonial powers following the end of hostilities in 1945, and their colonial or administrative possessions. The year of decolonization is given chronologically in parentheses.Baylis, J. & Smith S. (2001). The Globalisation of World Politics: An introduction to international relations.
Soviet control of its non-Russian member republics weakened as movements for democratization and self-government gained strength during the late 1980s, and four republics declared independence in 1990 and 1991. The Soviet coup d'état attempt in August 1991 accelerated the breakup of the USSR, which formally ended on 26 December 1991. The Republics of the Soviet Union became sovereign states—Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus (formerly called Byelorussia,) Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Historian Robert Daniels says, "A special dimension that the anti-Communist revolutions shared with some of their predecessors was decolonization." Moscow's policy had long been to settle ethnic Russians in the non-Russian republics. After independence, minority rights have been an issue for Russian-speakers in some republics and for non-Russian-speakers in Russia; see Russians in the Baltic states. Meanwhile, the Russian Federation continues to apply political, economic, and military pressure on former Soviet colonies. In 2014, it annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, the first such action in Europe since the end of the Second World War. In March 2023, following the 2022 Russian invasion and subsequent Russian occupation of parts of Ukraine, Ukraine passed a law that did forbid to have toponymy with names associated with Russian ("the occupying state"). This law in particular has been described by Ukrainian media as providing "a legitimate framework and effective mechanisms" for the decolonization of Ukraine.
After the 2022 Russian invasion, scholars of Eastern Europe and Central Asia Studies ("Russian studies") have renewed awareness of Russian colonialism and interest in decolonizing scholarship in their field, with academic conferences organized on the theme by the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) in Stockholm in December 2022, the British Association for Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (BASEES) in April 2023, the Aleksanteri Institute in October, and the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) in Philadelphia in November–December.
Except for a few absolute monarchies, most post-colonial states are either or constitutional monarchies. These new states had to devise , , and other institutions of representative democracy.
In a few cases, settler populations have been Repatriation. For instance, the decolonization of Algeria by France was particularly uneasy due to the large European population (see also pied noir), which largely evacuated to France when Algeria became independent. "Pieds-noirs": ceux qui ont choisi de rester, La Dépêche du Midi, March 2012 In Zimbabwe, former Rhodesia, Robert Mugabe seized property from white African farmers, killing several of them, and forcing the survivors to emigrate.Cybriwsky, Roman Adrian. Capital Cities around the World: An Encyclopedia of Geography, History, and Culture. ABC-CLIO, LLC 2013. pp. 54–275. A large Indian community lived in Uganda as a result of Britain colonizing both India and East Africa, and Idi Amin expelled them for domestic political gain.
...as kids, we tried to act out the things we had seen in the movies. We used to play cowboys and Indians in the mountains around Gondar...We acted out the roles of these heroes, identifying with the cowboys conquering the Indians. We didn't identify with the Indians at all and we never wanted the Indians to win. Even in Tarzan movies, we would become totally galvanized by the activities of the hero and follow the story from his point of view, completely caught up in the structure of the story. Whenever Africans sneaked up behind Tarzan, we would scream our heads off, trying to warn him that 'they' were coming".In Asia, kung fu cinema emerged at a time Japan wanted to reach Asian populations in other countries by way of its cultural influence. The surge in popularity of kung fu movies began in the late 1960s through the 1970s. Local populations were depicted as protagonists opposing "imperialists" (foreigners) and their "Chinese collaborators".
Many colonies were serving as resource colonies which produced raw materials and agricultural products, and as a captive market for goods manufactured in the colonizing country. Many decolonized countries created programs to promote industrialization. Some nationalized industries and infrastructure, and some engaged in land reform to redistribute land to individual farmers or create collective farms.
Some decolonized countries maintain strong economic ties with the former colonial power. The CFA franc is a currency shared by 14 countries in West and Central Africa, mostly former French colonies. The CFA franc is guaranteed by the French treasury.
After independence, many countries created regional economic associations to promote trade and economic development among neighboring countries, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
"The engine of economic well-being was now within and between the advanced industrial countries. Domestic economic growth – as now measured and much discussed – came to be seen as far more important than the erstwhile colonial trade.... The economic effect in the United States from the granting of independence to the Philippines was unnoticeable, partly due to the Bell Trade Act, which allowed American monopoly in the economy of the Philippines. The departure of India and Pakistan made small economic difference in the United Kingdom. Netherlands economists calculated that the economic effect from the loss of the great Dutch empire in Indonesia was compensated for by a couple of years or so of domestic post-war economic growth. The end of the colonial era is celebrated in the history books as a triumph of national aspiration in the former colonies and of benign good sense on the part of the colonial powers. Lurking beneath, as so often happens, was a strong current of economic interest – or in this case, disinterest."
In general, the release of the colonized caused little economic loss to the colonizers. Part of the reason for this was that major costs were eliminated while major benefits were obtained by alternate means. Decolonization allowed the colonizer to disclaim responsibility for the colonized. The colonizer no longer had the burden of obligation, financial or otherwise, to their colony. However, the colonizer continued to be able to obtain cheap goods and labor as well as economic benefits (see Suez Canal Crisis) from the former colonies. Financial, political and military pressure could still be used to achieve goals desired by the colonizer. Thus decolonization allowed the goals of colonization to be largely achieved, but without its burdens.
| 1946 | United Kingdom | Anguilla |
| 1946 | United Kingdom | Bermuda |
| 1946 | United Kingdom | British Virgin Islands |
| 1946 | United Kingdom | Cayman Islands |
| 1946 | United Kingdom | Falkland Islands |
| 1946 | United Kingdom | Montserrat |
| 1946 | United Kingdom | Saint Helena |
| 1946 | United Kingdom | Turks and Caicos Islands |
| 1946 | United Kingdom | Gibraltar |
| 1946 | United Kingdom | Pitcairn Islands |
| 1946 | United States | American Samoa |
| 1946 | United States | United States Virgin Islands |
| 1946 | United States | Guam |
| 1946 | New Zealand | Tokelau |
| 1963 | Spain | Western Sahara |
| 1946–47, 1986 | France | New Caledonia |
| 1946–47, 2013 | France | French Polynesia |
On 10 December 2010, the United Nations published its official decree, announcing the Third International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism wherein the United Nations declared its "renewal of the call to States Members of the United Nations to speed up the process of decolonization towards the complete elimination of colonialism". According to an article by scholar John Quintero, "given the modern emphasis on the equality of states and inalienable nature of their sovereignty, many people do not realize that these non-self-governing structures still exist". Some activists have claimed that the attention of the United Nations was "further diverted from the social and economic agenda for towards "firefighting and extinguishing" armed conflicts". Advocates have stressed that the United Nations "remains the last refuge of hope for peoples under the yolk sic of colonialism". Furthermore, on 19 May 2015, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addressed the attendants of the Caribbean Regional Seminar on Decolonization, urging international political leaders to "build on the towards fully eradicating colonialism by 2020".
The sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean is disputed between the United Kingdom and Mauritius. In February 2019, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that the United Kingdom must transfer the islands to Mauritius as they were not legally separated from the latter in 1965. On 22 May 2019, the United Nations General Assembly debated and adopted a resolution that affirmed that the Chagos Archipelago "forms an integral part of the territory of Mauritius". The UK does not recognize Mauritius' sovereignty claim over the Chagos Archipelago. In October 2020, Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth described the British and American governments as "hypocrites" and "champions of double talk" over their response to the dispute.
According to political theorist Kevin Duong, decolonization "may have been the century's greatest act of disenfranchisement", as numerous anti-colonial activists primarily pursued universal suffrage within empires rather than independence: "As dependent territories became nation-states, they lost their voice in metropolitan assemblies whose affairs affected them long after independence."
David Strang writes that the loss of their empires turned France and Britain into "second-rate powers". (1994). 9780521434737 ISBN 9780521434737
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