The struggles for independence of African and Asian peoples in the twentieth century

The struggles for independence of African and Asian peoples in the twentieth century

The struggles for independence of African and Asian peoples in the twentieth century differ in various ways from the struggle for independence of “new nations” in the Americas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  The differences involve decolonization, military rule, democracy multiparty democracies, ethnic conflict and dominance of their colonizers.  In African and Asian peoples in the twentieth century as well as in “new nations” in the Americas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they experienced ethnic conflict, class resentments and economic disappointments.

The Americas “new nations” were still experiencing military interventions, and military rule was ordinary in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and armed forces had long intervened in political life. On the other hand, the struggle for independence in African states in African peoples, the military rule had declined in most independent states and had abandoned dictators, single-party democracy and military-controlled regimes. In Asia, authoritarian regimes gave way to the more pluralistic and participatory political system in South Korea, Indonesia, Iraq, Thailand and Taiwan. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the Americas states, they lived in the shadow of the dominant United States, for example, “poor Mexico”. In contrast, in African states in the twentieth century, the states remained connected to their former European rulers.  In Asia and Africa in the twentieth century, for example in Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Tunisia, they proclaimed their commitment to honest government, human dignity and democracy something which the “new nations” in Americas in the eighteenth and nineteenth century was not present.