Hopes for Greater Self-Government

The high point of empires and colonization was World War I. The British, the French, and other Europeans had colonized almost all of Africa, India, and Southeast Asia, and they dominated China. The Turkish Ottoman Empire controlled the Middle East. But the desire for self-government that had fueled colonial rebellions throughout the Americas in the 18th and 19th centuries as well as national independence movements in Europe in the 19th century spread throughout the world in the 20th century. The two world wars crystallized the opposition to the empires. Although most hopes for independence remained unfulfilled after World War I, the war did result in the breakup of two large multiethnic empires, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey.

World War II, however, accelerated the dismantling of global colonial empires. Between the end of World War II in 1945 and the year 2000, the number of independent states more than doubled, going from around 75 to around 190.

As the Cold War established new alignments among both newer and established states, it extended far beyond its ideological roots and exerted political, economic, social, and cultural influence on nearly all parts of the globe.