ABSTRACT
The end of empire primarily in Africa and Asia reversed the course of several centuries of history and created a radical change in the geopolitical map of the world. It not only brought about the demise of white, Western dominance around the globe but also the rise of new states fully determined to exercise their independence and nonalignment by promoting self-determination among people and challenging racial discrimination. Japan played a critical and catalytic role in this development by enhancing these feelings of racial resentment and resistance during the war. At the highly publicized Assembly of the Greater East Asiatic Nations convened in Tokyo during 1943, the Japanese deliberately appealed to fellow-Asians to throw off the domination of the alien white Americans, British, and Dutch. Many Africans and Asians thus began to consider that in this setting, Cold War rivalries not only detracted from their own concerns over the interrelated issues of racial discrimination and colonialism, but actually made them worse.
