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About 1 hr0 learners Rev. 2026-10-25 0
Picture a child born in Lagos, Hanoi or Algiers in 1945. That child is a colonial subject, ruled by officials no one local elected, from a capital thousands of miles away. Before the child turns thirty, the same streets fly a new flag and the passport carries a new country's name. Hundreds of millions of people lived through that change, and it redrew the map of the world faster than any war.
How did empires that looked permanent in 1939 come apart so quickly, and why did some leave through a conference room while others left after years of war? Soldiers, diplomats, settlers and writers decided the answer, from Indonesia and Suez to Algeria and the Congo, and their choices carry this course. By the end you should be able to weigh competing explanations for the end of empire, read today's quarrels over apologies, borders and returned treasures with a historian's eye, and see why the right of peoples to govern themselves now sits close to the heart of human rights.
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