Between the two world wars, Western and Japanese imperial states predominantly maintained control over colonial holdings; in some cases, they gained additional territories through conquest or treaty settlement and in other cases faced anti-imperial resistance.
Decolonization
Civil Disobedience
Indian National Congress
Salt March
Chinese Communist Party
Pakistan
Amritsar
Zionists
Jomo Kenyatta
Sykes-Picot
Balfour Declaration
The end of WWI and the signing of the Versailles Treaty brought significant changes to Europe and across colonized states. Instead of developing a stable world order and power balance, England and France used the Versailles conference as a forum to severely punish the losing nations while taking the spoils of war for England and France. The peace created in Versailles after WWI set the stage for WWII.
One of the biggest failures of the peace process after WWI was the division of land and territory. England and France largely dictated post-war territorial changes. Changes served to benefit the French and British states, not create a more stable and equitable world order that prevented future wars.
Anti-colonial resistance movements confronted colonial control in Asia and Africa between the world wars. While most were unsuccessful, they set the stage for successful anti-colonial resistance after WWII. There were two primary motivating factors for anti-colonial movements in the 1920s & 1930s.
The Indian National Congress (INC) wasnfirst assembled in 1885 and was British India’s earliest significant nationalist movement. Many of the movement’s early and most famous leaders were the British-educated Indian elite. Mahatma Gandhi and independent India’s first prime minister both lived & attended school in Britain. Before WWI, the INC primarily advocated for increasing the rights of native Indians within the British colonial system.