ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the question of how global the interwar period was from the angle of the histories of anticolonialism and anti-imperialism, as well as the question of whether the years between 1918/1919 and 1939 constituted a distinctive period for these histories. The chapter surveys the dynamics of opposition to empire from a global angle, including the breakup of former multinational, continental empires, such as the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, European colonial empires in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, and informal imperialism exercised by countries such as the United States in Latin America. The main argument is that, as the fallout of World War I in Europe had global repercussions, treating anticolonialism and anti-imperialism together allows for a historical interpretation that identifies the interwar years as a distinctive period. Its starting point in 1919, however, was clearer than its fuzzier multiple endpoints in the late 1930s.
