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Introduction The First Wave: Latin America (1800s) The Second Wave: Asia (20th Century) The Third Wave: Africa (1950s–1970s) What Drove These Movements The Consequences of Independence ConclusionBetween 1800 and 2000, the political map of the world was redrawn more completely than in any comparable period in history. In 1800, European empires controlled enormous portions of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. By 2000, almost every colony had become an independent state. In 1945, there were 64 independent states in the world. Today there are over 190. The movements that produced this change were not uniform, some were peaceful, some were violent, some were led by lawyers and politicians, others by armed guerrillas. But they shared a common thread: the belief that colonized peoples had the right to govern themselves.
The earliest major wave of independence in this period came from Latin America, and it was driven largely by the disruption that Napoleon's wars caused in Europe. When Napoleon invaded Spain in 1806 and placed his brother on the Spanish throne, Spanish colonies in the Americas faced a political question: who exactly were they loyal to? The crisis of legitimacy opened space for independence movements led by the criollos, people of Spanish descent born in the colonies, who had long resented being governed from Madrid.
Leaders like Simón Bolívar in Venezuela and Colombia and José de San Martín in Argentina and Chile organized military campaigns that freed most of Spanish South America by the mid-1820s. Mexico declared independence in 1810 and achieved it in 1821. Brazil followed a different path, when the Portuguese royal family returned to Lisbon from Brazil in 1821, Prince Pedro stayed behind and declared himself emperor of an independent Brazil in 1822.
The Haitian Revolution stands apart as the most radical independence movement of this era. Haiti's enslaved population rose up against French colonial rule, defeated Napoleon's forces, and established the world's first Black republic. It was one of the only successful slave rebellions in history and sent shockwaves through every slave-holding society in the Americas.
These Latin American independence movements did not produce radical social transformation for most people. Power shifted from Spanish colonial administrators to local elites. Indigenous populations and formerly enslaved people largely remained at the bottom of the social order. Political independence and social justice were not the same thing.
India's independence movement was one of the most carefully organized and watched political campaigns of the 20th century. The Indian National Congress, founded in 1885, had by 1906 adopted swaraj, self-rule, as its goal. Mohandas Gandhi, who returned from South Africa in 1915, transformed the movement through satyagraha, a discipline of nonviolent resistance, civil disobedience, and economic boycott.
Key campaigns included the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920–22), the Salt March of 1930 in which Gandhi walked 240 miles to make salt from seawater in deliberate defiance of British taxation, and the Quit India Movement of 1942. World War II accelerated British willingness to negotiate, the war had drained British finances and exposed the limits of imperial power. India gained independence on August 15, 1947.
The independence was accompanied by Partition, the division of British India into the new nations of India and Pakistan along religious lines. The Partition triggered one of the largest forced migrations in history, as an estimated 10 to 15 million people moved between the two new countries. Communal violence during this period killed an estimated 200,000 to 2 million people.
Vietnam's path was entirely different. Ho Chi Minh had been organizing the Viet Minh independence movement since the 1940s, combining nationalism with communism. After Japan occupied Vietnam during World War II and France attempted to reassert colonial control afterward, the Viet Minh launched an armed struggle. The French were defeated decisively at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, where a French garrison of around 15,000 men surrendered to Viet Minh forces after a 57-day siege. Vietnam was then divided at the 17th parallel, with communist North Vietnam and US-backed South Vietnam: a division that led directly into the Vietnam War.
Africa's decolonization happened with remarkable speed. In 1945, the continent had only four fully independent states: Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia, and South Africa. By 1975, almost all of Africa had gained independence. The speed, however, varied widely by path.
Ghana was the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence from colonial rule, in 1957. Kwame Nkrumah, who had been educated in Britain and the United States, organized mass political mobilization through the Convention People's Party. Through strikes, boycotts, and political pressure, Ghana negotiated independence from Britain without significant violence. Nkrumah became a symbol of African self-determination and Pan-Africanism across the continent.
Algeria's path was among the most brutal of any decolonization. The National Liberation Front (FLN) launched a guerrilla war against French rule in 1954. France, which had governed Algeria since 1830 and considered it constitutionally part of France, responded with over 400,000 troops and practices that included systematic torture. The war killed an estimated 300,000 to 1.5 million Algerians. France finally withdrew in 1962 after a referendum, following eight years of conflict.
In Kenya, the Mau Mau Rebellion (1952–1960), led primarily by the Kikuyu ethnic group, resisted British land policies through armed resistance. Britain declared a state of emergency and detained over 150,000 Kenyans. Kenya gained independence in 1963, but the legacy of the Mau Mau period remained contested for decades. The British government formally acknowledged and paid compensation to Kenyan torture survivors only in 2013.
Across all these cases, several factors consistently pushed independence movements forward:
Gaining independence was only the beginning of a new set of problems. European powers had in many cases deliberately done little to prepare their colonies for self-governance. When France withdrew from Guinea in 1958, French officials destroyed infrastructure and recalled thousands of trained personnel, including teachers, judges, and doctors, before leaving.
Colonial borders, drawn by European powers at conferences like the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 with no regard for existing ethnic, cultural, or political boundaries, created nations containing groups that had no history of common governance. This contributed directly to conflicts like the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70), the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, and ongoing instability across much of sub-Saharan Africa.
Economic independence proved harder to achieve than political independence. Former colonies remained tied to world markets as exporters of raw materials, often dependent on the same European companies that had operated under colonial rule. The term neocolonialism, coined by Nkrumah, described this continued economic dependency even after political independence was achieved.
Independence movements between 1800 and 2000 produced one of the most significant political transformations in world history. They dismantled empires that had existed for centuries and created dozens of new nations. The methods varied, from Gandhi's nonviolent campaigns to the armed struggle of Algeria's FLN, but the underlying demand was consistent: the right of people to determine their own political future. The legacy of this period is still being worked out, in the ongoing challenges of political stability, economic development, and the long aftereffects of borders and institutions that were never designed to serve the people living within them.