Effects of the War

The effects of World War I varied around the world. The United States prospered because of all the war materials and agricultural products it sold to Britain and the other Allies. By contrast, the European countries that suffered the greatest damage in the war were economically devastated.

Effects on Colonial Lands While nationalist movements had been brewing for decades in colonies in South Asia and West Africa, the war renewed the hopes of people in these regions for independence. African and Asian colonial troops contributed thousands of soldiers to the Allied war effort. In addition, this disastrous war showed colonial peoples that imperial powers such as Britain and France were not invincible.

German propaganda during the war had predicted that colonial soldiers’ experience in the war would lead to a great uprising against colonial rule. This did not materialize, although there were several local rebellions. Between November 1915 and September 1916, a large group of villages in French West Africa, between the Volta and Bani rivers in what later became Burkina Faso, united in an effort to drive out the French. It was only with a great effort and loss of life on both sides that the French managed to put down the revolt. The rebellion forced the French to recognize that they had an obligation to the people they colonized. After World War I, many war veterans from the French colonies assisted in colonial administration after they returned home.

Colonized people’s war experiences raised their expectations. They thought that the principle of self-determination, as expressed in Wilson’s Fourteen Points, would get them closer to self-rule. Nationalists in Africa and Asia hoped that the blood they had shed for their “home countries” would earn them some respect from Western Europe and thus begin a decolonization process.

However, the peace conference’s Big Three—David Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, and Georges Clemenceau (after Italy left)—were not interested in freeing the colonies. After World War I, European powers granted self-determination only to white countries in Eastern Europe. Middle Eastern lands that had been a part of the Ottoman Empire came under the control of France and Britain in the League of Nations mandate system. Former German colonies in Africa had the same fate. German territories and spheres of influence in East Asia and the Pacific were transferred to various victorious nations of World War I. India and nearly every nation in Africa—as well as most of the Middle East—continued to be controlled by European nations.

Wilson even refused to meet with a group of Vietnamese nationalists, including a young Ho Chi Minh, who asked to speak with him about self-determination for Vietnam. This rejection fueled stronger nationalist movements in colonies scattered across the southern rim of Asia and in parts of Africa. The seeds of African, Arab, and Asian nationalism were sown largely in the aftermath of World War I, although they did not come to fruition until much later.