ABSTRACT
The Great Depression of the 1930s still held the world in its grip when World War II erupted. The Depression had exposed the embarrassing reality that the imperial powers were unable to provide adequate sustenance for all of their citizens; the war soon revealed that some of them could not defend their citizens, either. Those revelations transformed the perceptions that the inhabitants of the far-flung imperial empires held of their ruling powers, resulting in a growing assertiveness on the part of nationalist leaders in their dealings with their administrations. In some protectorates—particularly those that had experienced considerable prewar nationalist organization or that came under enemy occupation during the war—nationalist leaders seized the advantage that wartime disruptions created and pushed for independence. Once the process of decolonization began, it proceeded much faster than had the race to create the empires in the first place: Whereas the period of the New Imperialism lasted a little more than four decades, the process of decolonization took less than half that time.
