ABSTRACT
The Indian sub-continent and Southeast Asia were completely absent from the group of rich nations, while Australia and New Zealand were the only countries in Oceania among the wealthy. China’s per capita income was just a fifth of the world average, making it one of the least developed countries. The Second World War brought profound changes for both countries. India obtained its independence from Britain peacefully in 1947, while China’s Civil War between Mao Zedong’s Communist forces and the Nationalist Kuomintang ended in 1949 with the Nationalist flight to Formosa. French West Africa was decolonized in 1960 and Belgian rule ended in the Congo. The process was not always peaceful: 1962 saw the end of the war between France and Algeria, the most dramatic and bloody colonial independence struggle, which lasted seven years and cost almost 200,000 lives.
