Chapter 23

It is rather interesting because as I opened my book to read chapter 23, I actually looked at the book in some amazement becuase we are literally at the end of this text. I am so surprised because very rarely do you ever reach the end of textbooks in a class, so I was pretty excited, and also, this chapter deals with issues from modern day, something you rarely deal with in a world HISTORY class.

In this chapter, the end of Empire in World History. In 1900, European colonial empires in Africa and Asia appeared as permanent features of the worlds political landscape. Before the end of the 20th Century, they were all gone. The first major breakthrough occurred in Asia and the Middle East in the late 1940s, when India, Pakistan, Burma, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, and Israel achieved independence. From the 1950s to the 1970s, Africa gained their independence, colony after colony.
India also ended British rule in their country. There were attempts in early centuries to do this, but they never truly succeeded. Unlike previous rulers, the British never assimilated into Indian society due to their small sense of racial and cultural distinctiveness. This served to intensify Indians awareness of their collective difference from their alien rulers. There was a prominent role of Islam in Turkey and also in Iran. There were many experiements with Freedom during this period of about 100 years. There were attempts to create political order to contend with a set of common conditions. Populations were booming, and expectations for independence ran high, exceeding the available resources. Most delevoping countries were culturally diverse with a small amount of loyalty to the central state. Nonetheless, public employment ballooned as the state assumed greater responsibility for economic development. Colonial rule had been highly authoritarian and bureaucratic with little interst in African participation, during hthe 1950s, the British, French and Belgians attempted to transplant democratic institutions to their colonies. They created legislatures, permitted elections, allowed policial parties to operate, and in general anticipated the development of constitutional, parliamentary, multiparty democracies similar to their own.  By the early 1970s, there were very few regimes left among the new states of Africa, and many had led the struggle for independence. Those that did lost mass support and were swept away by military coups.