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hi, i’m john green; this is crash courseworld history and today we’re going to talk about decolonization. the empires europeanstates formed in the 19th century proved about as stable and long-lasting as genghis khan’sleading to so many of the nation states we know and love today. yes, i’m looking atyou, burundi. [singing] did you ever know you’re my burundi?you’re everything [theme music] stan, don’t cut to the intro! i sing likean angel! so unless you’re over 60-- and let’s faceit, internet, you’re not-- you’ve only ever known a world of nation states. but aswe’ve seen from egypt to alexander the great

to china to rome to the mongols, who, foronce, are not the exception here, [mongoltage] to the ottomans and the americas, empire has longbeen the dominant way we’ve organized ourselves politically -- or at least the way thatother people have organized us. mr. green, mr. green! so to themstar wars would’ve been, like, a completely different movie. most of them would’ve beenlike, go empire! crush those rebels! yeah, also they’d be like what is this screenthat displays crisp moving images of events that are not currently occurring? also, notto get off-topic, but you never learn what happens after the rebel victory in star wars.and, as as we’ve learned from the french revolution to the arab spring, revolutionis often the easy part. i mean, you think

destroying a death star is hard? try negotiatinga trade treaty with gungans. right, anyway. so, the late 20th century was not the firsttime that empires disintegrated. rome comes to mind. also the persians. and of coursethe american revolution ended one kind of european imperial experiment. but in all thosecases, empire struck back… heh heh, you see what i did there? i mean, britain lostits 13 colonies, but later controlled half of africa and all of india. and what makesthe recent decolonization so special is that at least so far, no empires have emerged toreplace the ones that fell. and this was largely due to world war ii becauseon some level, the allies were fighting to stop nazi imperialism. hitler wanted to takeover central europe, and africa, and probably

the middle east-- and the ally defeat of thenazis discredited the whole idea of empire. so the english, french, and americans couldn’tvery well say to the colonial troops who’d fought alongside them, “thank you so muchfor helping us to thwart germany’s imperialistic ambitions. as a reward, please hand in yourrifle and return to your state of subjugation.” plus, most of the big colonial powers-- especiallyfrance, britain, and japan-- had been significantly weakened by world war ii, by which i meanthat large swaths of them looked like this. so, post-war decolonization happened all overthe place: the british colony that had once been “india” became three independentnations. by the way, is this gandhi or is this ben kingsley playing gandhi? in southeastasia, french indochina became cambodia, laos,

and vietnam. and the dutch east indies becameindonesia. but of course when we think about decolonization, we mostly think about africagoing from this to this. so we’re gonna oversimplify here, becausewe have to, but decolonization throughout afro-eurasia had some similar characteristics.because it occurred in the context of the cold war, many of these new nations had tochoose between socialist and capitalist influences, which shaped their futures. while many ofthese new countries eventually adopted some form of democracy, the road there was oftenrocky. also, decolonization often involved violence, usually the overthrow of colonialelites. but we’ll turn now to the most famous nonviolent--or supposedly so, anyway-- decolonization:

that of india. so the story begins, more orless, in 1885 with the founding of the indian national congress. congress party leadersand other nationalists in india were usually from the elite classes. initially, they didn’teven demand independence from britain. but they were interested in creating a modernindian nation rather than a return to some ancient pre-colonial form, possibly becauseindia was-- and is--hugely diverse and really only unified into a single state when underimperial rule by one group or another, whether the mauryans, the guptas, the mughals, orthe british. okay, let’s go to the thought bubble. the best known indian nationalist, mohandask. gandhi, was a fascinating character. a british educated lawyer born to a wealthyfamily, he’s known for making his own clothes,

his long fasts, and his battles to alleviatepoverty, improve the rights of women, and achieve a unified indian independence frombritain. in terms of decolonization, he stands out for his use of nonviolence and his linkingit to a somewhat mythologized view of indian history. i mean, after all, there’s plentyof violence in india’s past and in its heroic epics, but gandhi managed to hearken backto a past that used nonviolence to bring change. gandhi and his compatriot jawaharlal nehrubelieved that a single india could continue to be ruled by indian elites and somehow transcendthe tension between the country’s hindu majority and its sizable muslim minority. in this they were less practical than theircontemporary, muhammad ali jinnah, the leader

of the muslim league who felt-- to quote historianainslie embree-- "that the unified india of which the congress spoke was an artificialone, created and maintained by british bayonets.” jinnah proved correct and in 1947 when thebritish left, their indian colony was partitioned into the modern state of india and west and east pakistan,the latter of which became bangladesh in 1971. while it’s easy to congratulate both thebritish and the indian governments on an orderly and nonviolent transfer of power, the realityof partition was neither orderly nor nonviolent. about 12 million people were displaced ashindus in pakistan moved to india and muslims in india moved to pakistan. as people lefttheir homes, sometimes unwillingly, there was violence, and all tolled as many as halfa million people were killed, more than died

in the bloody indonesian battle for independence.so while it’s true that the massive protests that forced britain to end its colonizationof india were nonviolent, the emergence of the independent states involved really wasn’t.thanks, thought bubble. all this violence devastated gandhi, whoselengthy and repeated hunger strikes to end violence had mixed results, and who was eventuallyassassinated by a hindu nationalist who felt that gandhi was too sympathetic to muslims.oh, it’s time for the open letter? an open letter to hunger strikers. but first, let’s see what’s in the secretcompartment today. a cupcake? stan, this just seems cruel. theseare from meredith the intern to celebrate

merebration, the holiday she invented to celebratethe anniversary of her singleness. dear hunger strikers, do you remember earlierwhen i said that gandhi hearkened back to a mythologized indian past? well it turnsout that hunger striking in india goes back all the way to, like, the 5th century bce.hunger strikes have been used around the world including british and american suffragettes,who hunger struck to get the vote. and in pre-christian ireland, when you felt wrongedby someone, it was common practice to sit on their doorstep and hunger strike untilyour grievance was addressed. and sometimes it even works. i really admire you, hungerstrikers. but i lack the courage of your convictions. also, this is an amazing cupcake.best wishes, john green

since independence, india has largely beena success story, although we will talk about the complexity of india’s emerging globalcapitalism next week. for now, though, let’s travel east to indonesia,a huge nation of over 13,000 islands that has largely been ignored here on crash courseworld history due to our long-standing bias against islands. like, we haven’t even mentionedgreenland on this show. the greenlanders, of course, haven’t complained because theydon’t have the internet. so, the dutch exploited their island colonieswith the system of cultuurstelsel, in which all peasants had to set aside one fifth oftheir land to grow cash crops for export to the netherlands. this accounted for 25% ofthe total dutch national budget and it explains

why they have all kinds of fancy buildingsdespite technically living underwater. they’re like sea monkeys. this system was rather lesspopular in indonesia, and the dutch didn’t offer much in exchange. they couldn’t evendefend their colony from the japanese, who occupied it for most of world war ii, duringwhich time the japanese furthered the cause of indonesian nationalism by placing nativeindonesians in more prominent positions of power, including sukarno, who became indonesia’sfirst prime minister. after the war, the dutch-- with british help--tried to hold onto their indonesian colonies with so-called “police actions,” whichwent on for more than four years before indonesia finally won its independence in 1950. overin the french colonies of indochina, so called

because they were neither indian nor chinese,things were even more violent. the end of colonization was disastrous in cambodia, wherethe 17-year reign of norodom sihanouk gave way to the rise of the khmer rouge, whichmassacred a stunning 21% of cambodia’s population between 1975 and 1979. in vietnam, the french fought communist-lednationalists, especially ho chi minh from almost the moment world war ii ended until1954, when the french were defeated. and then the americans learned that there was a landwar available in asia, so they quickly took over from the french and communists did notfully control vietnam until 1975. despite still being ostensibly communist, vietnamnow manufactures all kinds of stuff that we

like in america, especially sneakers. more about that next week, too, but now toegypt. you’ll remember that egypt bankrupted itself in the 19th century, trying to industrializeand ever since had been ruled by an egyptian king who took his orders from the british.so while technically egypt had been independent since 1922, it was very dependent independence.but, that changed in the 1950s, when the king was overthrown by the army. the army commanderwho led that coup was gamal abdul nasser, who proved brilliant at playing the us andthe ussr off each other to the benefit of egypt. nasser’s was a largely secular nationalism,and he and his successors saw one of the other anti-imperialistic nationalist forces in egypt,the muslim brotherhood, as a threat. so once

in power, nasser and the army banned the muslimbrotherhood, forcing it underground, where it would disappear and never become an issueagain. wait, what’s that? …really? and finally let’s turn to central and southernafrica. one of the most problematic legacies of colonialism was its geography. colonialboundaries became redefined as the borders of new nation states, even where those boundarieswere arbitrary or, in some cases, pernicious. the best known example is in rwanda, wheretwo very different tribes, the hutu and the tutsis were combined into one nation. but,more generally, the colonizers’ focus on value extraction really hurt these new nations.europeans claimed to bring civilization and economic development to their colonies, butthis economic development focused solely on

building infrastructure to get resources andexport them. now whether european powers deliberately sabotageddevelopment in africa is a hot-button topic we’re going to stay well away from, butthis much is inarguably true: when the europeans left, african nations did not have the institutionsnecessary to thrive in the post-war industrial world. they had very few schools, for instance,and even fewer universities. like, when the congo achieved independence from belgium in1960, there were sixteen college graduates in a country of fourteen million people. also, in many of these new countries, thetraditional elites had been undermined by imperialism. most europeans didn’t ruletheir african possessions directly but rather

through the proxies of local rulers. and oncethe europeans left, those local rulers, the upper classes, were seen as illegitimate collaborators.and this meant that a new group of rulers had to rise up to take their place, oftenwith very little experience in governance. i mean, zimbabwe’s long-serving dictatorrobert mugabe was a high school teacher. let that be a lesson to you. your teachers mayhave dictatorial ambitions. but most strongmen have emerged, of course, from the military:joseph mobutu seized power in the congo, which he held from 1965 until his death in 1997.idi amin was military dictator of uganda from 1971 to 1979. muammar gaddafi ruled libyafrom 1977 until 2011. the list goes on, but i don’t want to give the wrong impressionabout africa.

because while the continent does have lessfreedom and lower levels of development than other regions in the world, many african nationsshow strong and consistent signs of growth despite the challenges of decolonization.botswana for instance has gone from 70% literacy to 85% in the past 15 years and has seen steadygdp growth over 5%. benin’s economy has grown in each of the past 12 years, whichis better than europe or the us can say. in 2002, kenya’s life expectancy was 47; todayit’s 63. ethiopia’s per capita gdp has doubled over the past 10 years; and mauritania hasseen its infant mortality rate fall by more than 40%. now, this progress is spotty and fragile,but it’s important to note that these nations have existed, on average, about 13 years lessthan my dad. of course, past experience with

the fall of empires hasn’t given us causefor hope, but many citizens of these new nations are seeing real progress. that said, disastermight lurk around the corner. it’s hard to say. i mean, now more than ever, we’retrying to tell the story of humans… from inside the story of humans. thanks for watching. i’ll see you next week. crash course is produced and directed by stanmuller. our script supervisor is meredith danko. the associate producer is danica johnson.the show is written by my high school history teacher, raoul meyer, and myself. and ourgraphics team is thought bubble. last week’s phrase of the week was “meatloaf’s career.”if you want to guess at this week’s phrase

of the week or suggest future ones, you cando so in comments where you can also ask questions about today’s video that will be answeredby our team of historians. thanks for watching crash course and as we say in my hometown,don't forget to be awesome.