The End of Empires

In 1914, a handful of empires ruled most of the world’s land and people. Britain, France, Russia, the Ottomans, Austria-Hungary, Germany and Japan, plus older empires like Portugal’s.

In Asia, only a few states, among them Japan, China, Siam and Persia, were not ruled directly by a European power, and most of those were under heavy outside pressure.

The First World War destroyed four empires: the Russian in 1917, the German and Austro-Hungarian in 1918, and the Ottoman by 1922. New states appeared across Eastern Europe.

At Paris in 1919, the victors spoke of self-determination, but mostly applied it in Europe. Ottoman Arab lands and German colonies became “mandates” run by Britain and France.

Siam had joined the war on the Allied side in 1917. It sat at the peace conference and joined the League of Nations, and used that position to start renegotiating its unequal treaties.

Japan built an empire on the Western model: Taiwan in 1895, Korea in 1910, Manchuria in 1931, then war with China from 1937.

From December 1941 it overran Southeast Asia, from Burma to the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies, under the slogan of an Asia freed from Western rule. Its occupation was often brutal.

Its defeat in 1945 ended its empire. But European powers returning to Asia found that the old colonial order could not simply be restored.

Indonesia declared independence on 17 August 1945 and fought the Dutch until 1949. The Philippines became independent from the United States in 1946.

On 15 August 1947 British India became two states, India and Pakistan. Partition caused mass migration of perhaps 15 million people, and violence in which hundreds of thousands, perhaps over a million, died.

Burma and Ceylon, today’s Sri Lanka, became independent in 1948.

In Vietnam, France fought the Viet Minh from 1946. Its defeat at Điện Biên Phủ in 1954 ended French Indochina.

Laos and Cambodia had gained independence by 1953. Vietnam was divided, and the war that followed lasted until 1975.

Malaya became independent from Britain in 1957. Malaysia formed in 1963, and Singapore became a separate state in 1965.

In 1957 Ghana became the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to win independence. In 1960, the “Year of Africa”, seventeen African countries became independent.

Some transitions were peaceful. Others came through long wars: Algeria fought France from 1954 to 1962, and Kenya saw the Mau Mau uprising against Britain.

Portugal held on longest. After a revolution in Lisbon in 1974, Angola, Mozambique and its other colonies became independent in 1975.

The United Nations was founded in 1945 with 51 members. In 1960 its General Assembly declared that colonialism should be brought to a speedy end.

Membership grew as each colony became a state. Today there are 193 members; the newest, South Sudan, joined in 2011.

For the first time in history, almost every person on Earth lives in a state that claims to govern in the name of its own people.

The Soviet Union was a federation of fifteen republics, and after 1945 it also dominated the communist states of Eastern Europe.

Some historians call it an empire, pointing to central control from Moscow and the use of force in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Others stress that it officially rejected empire and promoted its many nationalities.

In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. On 26 December 1991 the Soviet Union was dissolved, and fifteen independent states took its place.

On 1 July 1997 Britain handed Hong Kong to China. Portugal returned Macau in 1999. They were the last major European colonies in Asia.

The United Nations still lists 17 “non-self-governing territories”, from Western Sahara to small islands in the Pacific and Caribbean.

Some, like Gibraltar or the Falklands, are disputed. Others have voted to keep their links with former imperial powers.

Many of today’s borders were drawn by empires, especially in Africa and the Middle East, where straight lines on maps cut across peoples.

English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian and Arabic spread as world languages through empire. Fifty-six countries, most of them former British territories, belong to the Commonwealth.

Debates continue: about apologies and reparations, about museum objects taken in colonial times, and about how to teach this history.

Watch four thousand years again at speed. First the river empires: Akkad, Egypt, Babylon and Assyria.

Then Persia, the Mauryas, Qin and Han, and Rome.

Then the caliphates, Angkor, the Mongols and the Ottomans.

Then the Aztecs and Incas, and the sea empires. Every empire in this series fell. Some lasted decades, some centuries. None lasted for ever.

Empires shaped the languages we speak, the religions we follow, the borders we cross and the foods we eat.

Understanding them, in order and side by side, helps explain why the world looks as it does today.

Thank you for watching the World Empires series. Every episode is listed below.