High School World History · 1945–2020
How the great European empires came apart, how more than eighty former colonies became independent nations, and how the world grew more closely connected after the Cold War.
In 1945, the United Nations had 51 members, and much of Asia and most of Africa were ruled from London, Paris, Brussels, Lisbon, or The Hague. By 2011, the UN had 193 members. Some countries won independence peacefully, through negotiation. Others won it only after long and bloody wars.
I am Herodotus. I wrote about the Persian Empire, the largest the world had known in my day, and about the Greek cities that refused to be ruled by it. In this unit you will see empires far larger than Persia's come apart within a single lifetime. Why did they fall so quickly after 1945? What did freedom mean for the people of the new nations? And what kind of world has grown up since the Cold War ended?
Decolonization is the process by which colonies became independent countries. After 1945, the empires of Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Portugal broke up. India and Pakistan became independent in 1947, Ghana in 1957, and seventeen African countries in 1960 alone. In South Africa, a white minority government kept a system of racial segregation called apartheid until the early 1990s.
After the Cold War ended in 1991, the world became more connected through trade, travel, and the internet. It also faced new wars, genocides, terrorist attacks, a global financial crisis, climate change, and, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic.
World War II left the colonial powers weak and in debt, and it showed people in Asia that European armies could be beaten: Japan had occupied French Indochina in 1940 and 1941, then conquered British, Dutch, and American colonies in a few months in 1941 and 1942. The new United Nations Charter spoke of the "self-determination of peoples," and the United States, now the strongest power on Earth, had promised independence to its own colony, the Philippines. The Philippines became independent on July 4, 1946. The largest and most important colony of all was next.
Britain had ruled most of South Asia for nearly two centuries. The Indian National Congress, founded in 1885, led the campaign for self-rule. Its best-known leader, Mohandas K. Gandhi, called his method satyagraha, or "truth force": mass, nonviolent refusal to obey unjust laws, with protesters willing to accept arrest and beatings without hitting back. In the Salt March of 1930, Gandhi and his followers walked about 240 miles (390 km) to the sea to make salt in defiance of a British tax, and tens of thousands of Indians were jailed in the protests that followed. In 1942, the Congress launched the Quit India movement, and the British arrested its leaders for most of the rest of the war.
Not all Indians followed Congress. The Muslim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, feared that Muslims would be a powerless minority in a Hindu-majority India and demanded a separate state, Pakistan. After the war, Britain's new Labour government decided to leave quickly. Violence between Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs spread in 1946 and 1947, and the last viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, moved the handover forward to August 1947.
British India was divided into two countries. Pakistan, in two parts more than 1,000 miles apart, became independent on August 14, and India, with Jawaharlal Nehru as prime minister, at midnight on August 15. The new borders split the provinces of Punjab and Bengal.
About 15 million people crossed the new borders, Hindus and Sikhs fleeing to India and Muslims to Pakistan, in one of the largest migrations in history. In massacres on both sides, somewhere between 200,000 and 2 million people were killed. India and Pakistan also went to war over Kashmir, which both still claim.
Gandhi, who had fasted to stop the killing, was shot by a Hindu nationalist who blamed him for being too generous to Muslims and Pakistan. His ideas about nonviolent resistance later inspired the civil rights movement in the United States and many other campaigns around the world.
The two halves of Pakistan shared a religion but not a language. After the Pakistani army began a brutal crackdown in East Pakistan, Bengali leaders declared independence on March 26, 1971. After a war in which India intervened, East Pakistan became the independent country of Bangladesh in December 1971.
Britain also left Burma (now Myanmar) in January 1948 and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in February 1948. Malaya, after a long fight against communist guerrillas, followed on August 31, 1957.
Two days after Japan surrendered, on August 17, 1945, Sukarno and Hatta proclaimed the independence of Indonesia. The Netherlands sent troops to take back its colony, and four years of war and negotiation followed. Under pressure from the United Nations and the United States, the Dutch handed over sovereignty on December 27, 1949.
France fought to keep its colonies in Indochina against Vietnamese communists and nationalists led by Ho Chi Minh. After its defeat at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, France withdrew. Vietnam was divided, and the war that followed became part of the Cold War (see the Cold War unit).
After World War I, Britain and France had taken control of much of the Middle East under mandates from the League of Nations. Most of these lands became independent states in the 1930s and 1940s, among them Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. The hardest case was Palestine, ruled by Britain. Both Jews and Arabs there saw the land as their homeland. Jewish immigration had grown, especially as Jews fled persecution in Europe, and Arab Palestinians opposed it. Clashes between the two communities, and attacks on the British, grew worse. After the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered, support for a Jewish state grew in many countries.
In 1947, Britain handed the problem to the United Nations. On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly voted for Resolution 181, which recommended dividing Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with Jerusalem under international control. Jewish leaders accepted the plan. Arab leaders rejected it, arguing that it gave a large share of the land to a minority of its people. Fighting broke out at once.
As the British mandate ended, Jewish leaders declared the independence of Israel. The next day, the armies of Egypt, Transjordan (later Jordan), Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon attacked. By the armistices of 1949, Israel held more land than the UN plan had given it. Jordan held the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Egypt held the Gaza Strip. No Arab state of Palestine was created.
About 750,000 Palestinian Arabs (UNRWA's figure) fled or were driven from their homes during the war; estimates range from about 700,000 to 900,000. Israel did not let them return, and many of their descendants still live as refugees. In the years after 1948, hundreds of thousands of Jews also left or were forced out of Arab countries, and most settled in Israel.
In May 1967, Egypt moved large forces into the Sinai, had UN peacekeepers withdrawn, and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, and Jordan signed a defense pact with Egypt; Israel struck first on June 5. In the Six-Day War, Israel took the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. UN Security Council Resolution 242 called for Israel to withdraw from territories it had occupied and for every state in the region to be able to live in peace within secure borders. In October 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year.
At Camp David in 1978, with US help, Egypt and Israel agreed to make peace, and they signed a treaty in 1979; Israel returned the Sinai. After a Palestinian uprising, the intifada, began in 1987, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, and Jordan made peace with Israel in 1994. A final settlement has never been reached.
In Egypt, army officers overthrew the British-backed king in 1952, and Gamal Abdel Nasser became the country's leader. Nasser called for Arab unity and independence from the West. On July 26, 1956, he nationalized the Suez Canal Company, which was owned mainly by British and French shareholders. In late October, Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula, and Britain and France, by secret agreement, attacked Egypt, claiming they were protecting the canal.
The United States, angry that its allies had acted without telling it, and the Soviet Union, which threatened to intervene, both demanded that the invasion stop. Under this pressure, Britain and France accepted a ceasefire in early November. The UN General Assembly created the United Nations Emergency Force, the first armed UN peacekeeping force, to supervise the withdrawal. Suez showed that the old European empires could no longer act on their own against the wishes of the two superpowers.
In 1945, only four African countries were fully independent: Egypt (in name, since 1922), Ethiopia, Liberia, and South Africa, which was ruled by its white minority. Everywhere else, Africans lived under British, French, Belgian, Portuguese, or Spanish rule. Many African soldiers had fought for the Allies in World War II, and they came home asking why they should not be free too. Educated nationalists organized political parties, labor unions, and newspapers.
The British colony of the Gold Coast became Ghana, usually called the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to win independence from European rule. (Sudan, which some lists count as sub-Saharan, became independent from joint British and Egyptian rule in January 1956.) Its leader, Kwame Nkrumah, had organized strikes and boycotts and was jailed by the British before winning elections. He dreamed of a united Africa, and Ghana's success encouraged independence movements across the continent.
In 1960 alone, 17 African countries became independent, most of them former French colonies, along with Nigeria, Somalia, and the Belgian Congo. In February 1960, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told South Africa's parliament that a "wind of change" was blowing through the continent.
Belgium left the vast Congo with almost no preparation. Within days the army mutinied and the mineral-rich province of Katanga tried to break away. A large UN force was sent in, the new prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was overthrown and murdered, and the crisis became part of the Cold War (see the Cold War unit).
Thirty-two independent African states founded the Organization of African Unity. It agreed to keep the borders drawn by the colonial powers, to avoid endless wars over them, and to support movements still fighting for independence. In 2002 it was replaced by the African Union.
France treated Algeria not as a colony but as part of France itself, home to about a million European settlers. On November 1, 1954, the National Liberation Front (FLN) launched a war for independence. The war was fought with great brutality on both sides: the FLN attacked civilians as well as soldiers, and the French army, which grew to some 500,000 troops, used torture, mass arrests, and forced relocation of villagers. The war divided France and brought down its government in 1958, returning Charles de Gaulle to power. In 1959, de Gaulle accepted that Algerians had a right to decide their own future. The Évian Accords of March 1962 ended the war, and Algeria became independent on July 5, 1962. Most of the European settlers left for France.
In Kenya, British settlers had taken much of the best farmland in the central highlands. In the early 1950s, a rebellion among the Kikuyu people, known as Mau Mau, attacked settlers and Africans loyal to the colonial government. Britain declared a state of emergency in October 1952 and detained tens of thousands of people (more than 70,000 at the 1954 peak by official count; historians estimate that far more were held over the whole Emergency), and many were abused in the camps. Official figures say more than 11,000 rebels were killed; some scholars think the true number was more than 20,000. Mau Mau fighters killed 32 European civilians and about 1,800 African civilians. Kenya became independent on December 12, 1963, led by Jomo Kenyatta, whom the British had imprisoned. In 2013, the British government said that it "sincerely regrets that these abuses took place" and agreed to pay compensation to 5,228 Kenyans who had been held and mistreated.
Portugal, a dictatorship, refused to give up its African colonies and fought long wars against independence movements in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau from the early 1960s. The wars were so costly that in the Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974, Portuguese army officers overthrew the dictatorship at home. The new government quickly let the colonies go: Guinea-Bissau in 1974, and Mozambique and Angola in 1975. In Angola, rival movements, backed by the superpowers, Cuba, and South Africa, went on fighting a civil war for decades. In Southern Rhodesia, a white minority government declared independence from Britain in 1965 to avoid majority rule; after a guerrilla war, the country became independent as Zimbabwe in 1980. Namibia, ruled by South Africa, won independence in 1990.
Each new country could join the United Nations, and each had one vote in the General Assembly, the same as the United States or the Soviet Union. As the chart shows, the UN's membership nearly quadrupled between 1945 and 2011. By the end of the 1960s, the countries of Asia and Africa together held more than half the seats in the General Assembly, and they used it to press for an end to colonial rule.
Number of member states at the end of each year shown. South Sudan, which joined in 2011, became the 193rd member. Source: United Nations, "Growth in United Nations Membership."
Leaders from 29 Asian and African governments, including Nehru, Nasser, Sukarno, and China's Zhou Enlai, met to oppose colonialism and to call for cooperation among their peoples. It was the first great meeting of the new nations without the Western powers.
Twenty-five countries founded the Non-Aligned Movement, which promised not to join either the American or the Soviet bloc in the Cold War. Its founders included Nehru, Nasser, Sukarno, Ghana's Nkrumah, and Yugoslavia's Tito. In practice, some members leaned toward one side or the other.
The General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples by 89 votes to none, with 9 countries, including Britain, France, and the United States, abstaining. It declared that colonial rule denied human rights (see Primary Sources).
South Africa had been self-governing since 1910, but only its white minority, about one person in five, could vote in national elections. In 1948, the National Party won power and began to build apartheid, an Afrikaans word meaning "separateness." Laws classified every South African by race, banned marriage between races, and set aside separate and unequal schools, hospitals, beaches, and neighborhoods. Black South Africans had to carry passes and could be expelled from cities, and millions were forced to move to rural "homelands."
The African National Congress (ANC) led the resistance, at first through strikes, boycotts, and peaceful defiance of the laws. On March 21, 1960, police at Sharpeville opened fire on a crowd protesting the pass laws and killed at least 69 people. The government then banned the ANC. Some of its leaders, including Nelson Mandela, decided that peaceful protest alone could not work and formed an armed wing to sabotage government targets. In 1964, Mandela and other leaders were sentenced to life in prison. On June 16, 1976, police in Soweto fired on schoolchildren protesting against being taught in Afrikaans, and hundreds were killed in the unrest that followed.
The UN condemned apartheid, and many countries banned trade, sports, and cultural ties with South Africa. In 1986, the US Congress passed economic sanctions over President Reagan's veto. Banks and businesses pulled out, and the economy suffered.
President F. W. de Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC and released Mandela after 27 years in prison. The two men negotiated an end to apartheid amid serious violence, and they shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
In South Africa's first election in which all adults could vote, millions waited in long lines to cast a ballot. The ANC won, and on May 10, 1994, Mandela became the country's first Black president. He called for reconciliation between the races.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard from thousands of victims of human rights abuses on all sides. People who confessed fully to political crimes could apply for amnesty. Some South Africans felt it brought healing; others felt it let wrongdoers go free.
When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, fifteen republics became independent countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania first, in September, and the other twelve by the time the Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26, 1991. It was the last great wave of new nations (see the Cold War unit). Some people hoped that, with the Cold War over, the world would become more peaceful and more democratic. In parts of Europe and the world it did. In others, the end of old governments led to terrible wars.
In the Maastricht Treaty, signed on February 7, 1992, twelve countries created the European Union, which took effect in November 1993. A shared currency, the euro, followed in 1999, and euro notes and coins came into use in twelve countries on January 1, 2002. On May 1, 2004, ten more countries joined, most of them former communist states in Central and Eastern Europe.
Yugoslavia was a federation of six republics and several peoples. When Slovenia and Croatia declared independence in June 1991, war followed. In Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995), about 100,000 people were killed, and armed forces drove people of other ethnic groups from their homes, a practice called ethnic cleansing. NATO bombing and US-led talks ended the war with the Dayton Agreement in December 1995. In 1999, NATO bombed Yugoslavia to stop a Serbian campaign against Albanians in Kosovo. Kosovo declared independence in 2008. Many countries recognize it, but Serbia and many others do not.
Bosnian Serb forces captured Srebrenica, a town the UN had declared a "safe area," and killed more than 8,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys. The international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ruled that the killings were genocide.
Rwanda, once a Belgian colony, was home to a Hutu majority and a Tutsi minority. Belgian rulers had treated the two groups as separate races and recorded each person's group on identity cards. After independence, Hutu governments discriminated against Tutsi, and a Tutsi-led rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, invaded in 1990. On April 6, 1994, the plane carrying Rwanda's president was shot down. Within hours, Hutu extremists in the army, the government, and militias began killing Tutsi and moderate Hutu, urged on by radio broadcasts, often using machetes and lists of names. In about 100 days, from April to July 1994, they killed somewhere between 500,000 and more than 1,000,000 people, most of them Tutsi. Between 150,000 and 250,000 women were raped. The killing ended when the Rwandan Patriotic Front won control of the country in July.
The world did little to stop it. The small UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda was cut to about 270 troops after ten Belgian peacekeepers were murdered. The UN later set up the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which indicted 93 people and became the first international court ever to deliver verdicts for genocide. In Rwanda itself, community courts called gacaca heard more than a million cases.
Globalization means the growing connection of the world's peoples through trade, money, travel, migration, and communication. It is not new, but after 1991 it sped up. Goods, money, and ideas crossed borders faster than ever before. Globalization lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, but it also cost some workers their jobs, spread financial crises and diseases quickly, and raised hard questions about how to share a crowded planet.
After Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping opened China to foreign trade and investment and allowed private farming and business, while the Communist Party kept full political control. On December 11, 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization as its 143rd member. According to the World Bank, nearly 800 million Chinese people rose out of extreme poverty in the four decades after 1978, about three-quarters of the reduction in the whole world.
Britain returned Hong Kong, its colony since the 1840s, to China. Under a 1984 agreement, China promised that Hong Kong would keep its own legal and economic system for 50 years, a policy called "one country, two systems." Portugal returned Macau to China in 1999. Hong Kong and Macau were among the last European colonies in Asia.
The internet grew from ARPANET, a US research network begun in 1969. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist at CERN in Switzerland, invented the World Wide Web, and in 1993 CERN made it free for anyone to use. Smartphones spread after 2007. By 2019, about 4.1 billion people, just over half the world, were online, according to the UN's International Telecommunication Union.
On September 11, 2001, terrorists of the Islamist group al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, hijacked four airliners. They flew two into the World Trade Center in New York and one into the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., and the fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back. The attacks killed 2,977 people, not counting the hijackers. In October 2001, the United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan, whose Taliban rulers had sheltered al-Qaeda. In March 2003, a US-led coalition invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein, saying he had weapons of mass destruction; none were found. Both wars lasted for years and cost many thousands of lives, most of them Afghan and Iraqi. US combat troops left Iraq in 2011, and the last US forces left Afghanistan in 2021.
Banks had made huge bets on risky home loans in the United States. When house prices fell, the bets went bad. On September 15, 2008, the investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, and panic spread through the world's banks. Governments spent vast sums to rescue banks, and in 2009 the world economy shrank for the first time since World War II. Millions of people lost jobs and homes.
On December 17, 2010, a Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire to protest his treatment by officials. Protests spread, and Tunisia's president fled on January 14, 2011. In Egypt, mass protests forced President Hosni Mubarak to resign on February 11. Uprisings followed in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria. Results varied: Tunisia held democratic elections, while Libya, Yemen, and Syria fell into long civil wars.
Burning coal, oil, and gas releases carbon dioxide, which traps heat in the atmosphere. In 1988, the UN helped create the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to assess the science. In 1992, countries signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and in 1997 the Kyoto Protocol set limits on emissions for wealthy countries. In the Paris Agreement, adopted on December 12, 2015, nearly every country agreed to hold global warming to "well below 2°C" above pre-industrial levels and to try to limit it to 1.5°C. Each country sets its own targets. The IPCC reported that the years 2011–2020 were about 1.1°C warmer than 1850–1900, and NASA found that 2020 tied 2016 as the warmest year in its records.
In late 2019, a new coronavirus was first identified in Wuhan, China. The disease it causes, COVID-19, spread around the world in a few months. The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency on January 30, 2020, and called the outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Countries closed borders, schools, and businesses. The first vaccines were approved in December 2020, less than a year later. The WHO estimates that about 14.9 million more people died in 2020 and 2021 than would normally have been expected, with a range of 13.3 to 16.6 million. The pandemic showed both how connected the world had become and how much countries depended on each other.
In 1945, most of the world's people lived under governments they had not chosen, many of them ruled by distant empires. By 2020, almost every part of the world belonged to an independent state, and the idea that peoples have a right to govern themselves was written into international law. But independence did not end every problem. Many new nations inherited borders drawn by colonial powers, economies built to export raw materials, and few trained officials, and many fell under military rule or one-party government. Some of the conflicts that began in this period, in Kashmir, in Israel and the Palestinian territories, and elsewhere, are still unresolved.
Follow the world from the end of World War II to the COVID-19 pandemic. Use the buttons to show one kind of event or one decade at a time.
Sukarno and Hatta proclaim the republic two days after Japan surrenders.
The UN Charter takes effect with 51 founding members.
The United States grants independence to its colony.
Pakistan and India become independent; about 15 million people are displaced.
The General Assembly recommends dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.
A Hindu nationalist shoots Gandhi in New Delhi.
Neighboring Arab states attack the next day; about 750,000 Palestinians become refugees.
The UN General Assembly adopts it in Paris with no votes against.
Four years of fighting and talks end.
Britain fights the Mau Mau rebellion and detains tens of thousands of people.
Vietnamese forces defeat France, ending French rule in Indochina.
The FLN launches its war for independence from France.
Leaders from 29 Asian and African governments meet in Indonesia.
Israel, Britain, and France invade Egypt in the fall, then withdraw under US and Soviet pressure.
Led by Kwame Nkrumah, it is usually called the first sub-Saharan colony to win independence (Sudan, which some lists count, did so in 1956).
Seventeen African countries become independent.
South African police kill at least 69 protesters; the ANC is banned.
A crisis begins within days.
The General Assembly declares that colonial rule denies human rights.
Twenty-five countries meet in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
The Évian Accords end eight years of war.
Thirty-two African states found it in Addis Ababa.
Jomo Kenyatta leads the new country.
He will spend 27 years behind bars.
After Egypt closes the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, Israel strikes first. It takes Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
A US research network, the ancestor of the internet, sends its first message.
East Pakistan, which declared independence on Mar 26, breaks away after a war in which India intervenes.
Egypt and Syria attack Israel.
Portugal's dictatorship falls; its African colonies are independent by 1975.
Police fire on students protesting lessons in Afrikaans.
Deng Xiaoping opens China to trade and private business.
Egypt becomes the first Arab state to make peace with Israel.
White minority rule in Rhodesia ends after a guerrilla war.
The UN sets up a panel to assess the science of climate change.
Tim Berners-Lee proposes it at CERN.
He leaves prison after 27 years.
South Africa's rule ends.
Slovenia and Croatia declare independence.
All fifteen republics are now independent; Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania left first, in September.
Twelve countries sign the treaty that creates the European Union.
Israel and the PLO sign an agreement at the White House.
Between 500,000 and more than a million people, most of them Tutsi, are murdered.
Mandela becomes president on May 10.
Bosnian Serb forces kill more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys.
Britain hands over its colony under "one country, two systems."
Wealthy countries agree to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Al-Qaeda terrorists kill 2,977 people in the United States.
A US-led coalition attacks the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
It becomes the World Trade Organization's 143rd member.
The shared currency goes into use in twelve countries.
A US-led coalition invades Iraq and overthrows Saddam Hussein.
A global financial crisis deepens.
Protests in Tunisia spread across North Africa and the Middle East.
It becomes the UN's 193rd member.
Nearly every country agrees to hold warming "well below 2°C."
The WHO calls the global outbreak a pandemic.
A primary source was made by people who lived through the events. Read each one closely and ask: Who made this? When? Why? Who was the audience?
"Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance."
Why it matters: Nehru gave this speech, known as "Tryst with Destiny," just before midnight, when India became independent. He spoke of freedom, but on the same night Partition was tearing Punjab and Bengal apart, and Gandhi was not in Delhi to celebrate: he was in Calcutta, trying to stop the killing.
Think: What does Nehru mean by a "tryst with destiny" and a "pledge"? Why do you think he says the pledge is redeemed "not wholly or in full measure"?
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."
Why it matters: The Declaration was written by a committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, with members from many countries. It was not a law, but it set a standard that people under colonial rule, and later the opponents of apartheid, used to argue that their rights were being denied.
Think: In 1948, much of Africa and Asia was still ruled by colonial powers, several of which voted for this Declaration. How could people in the colonies use these words against their rulers?
"1. The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and is an impediment to the promotion of world peace and co-operation.
2. All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development."
Why it matters: The resolution passed by 89 votes to none, with 9 abstentions, in the year that seventeen African countries became independent. Article 3 added that a lack of "preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence," rejecting a common argument of the colonial powers.
Think: Why do you think Britain, France, and the United States abstained instead of voting against? What does "self-determination" mean in your own words?
"During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."
Why it matters: Mandela and other ANC leaders were on trial for sabotage and could have been sentenced to death. Instead of testifying, he spoke from the dock for more than four hours, explaining why the ANC had turned to armed resistance. He was sentenced to life in prison and released in 1990.
Think: Mandela says he fought against "black domination" as well as "white domination." Why might he have said this in a courtroom in 1964? How did the same idea shape South Africa after 1994?
Ten questions. Choose an answer for each, then press Check my answers to see your score and an explanation for every question.
Credits: All illustrations, diagrams, and maps on this page are original artwork made for Jugami. Map coastlines and borders are based on public-domain Natural Earth data; they show today's borders, and independence dates, colonial territories, and disputed areas are approximate and simplified. Death tolls, refugee numbers, and other figures that vary by source are given as ranges, with the institution behind each estimate named where possible. Quoted passages are brief excerpts used for teaching, or come from United Nations documents that may be freely reproduced.