What If Decolonization Never Happened? An Alternate History Dilemma

How would you resolve it?

Americans tend to think of the post-war years as the time of the Cold War, the four-decade span when World War III seemed nigh. But it’s odd to define a period by a big event that didn’t happen… even if that event was the apocalypse. That’s why it makes more sense to think of the post-war years as the Era of Decolonization — the time when the vast area long ruled by European powers became independent.* British India was the most populous of these colonies, and close to the first to break away. By the end of 1975, almost nothing was left of the former empires of Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, or Portugal.

The driving force behind decolonization was, of course, nationalism. Modern media (and varying degrees of Soviet sponsorship) convinced native elites that they were not “truly” subjects of the British, French, Dutch, Belgian, or Portuguese empires, but rather mislabeled Indians, Algerians, Indonesians, Congolese, and Angolans. Once colonized elites embraced these new national identities, they started convincing lower-status natives to do the same. Every time the intensity of nationalism doubled, European powers’ cost of retaining control multiplied by a factor of 5 or 10.

How much did the median inhabitant of British India actually care about independence? Barely at all, in my estimation. But once independence movements had native elites and 20% of the population on their side, Europeans hastily threw in the towel.

Which raises an intriguing question: If nationalism had not taken root in European colonies, what would have happened instead?

I have little doubt that the results would have been vastly better overall. Visualize…

• No horrifying wars against the European “occupiers.”

• No horrifying civil wars between rival independence factions to take command after the Europeans’ departure.

• No mad dashes to full-blown socialism.

• No nationalizations of foreign investors.

• No inane attempts to achieve autarchy.

• No draconian population control.

Within this idyllic space, however, a wide spectrum of outcomes still remains. How I see the plausible endpoints of this continuum:

The most optimistic plausible scenario: Each empire turns into a zone of free trade and free migration. For the vast British and French Empires, this approximates open borders. The gains for the Dutch, Belgian, and Portuguese Empires are far smaller, but still plausibly lead to much higher economic growth for home countries and colonies alike. Added bonus: The free migration zone dramatically curtails the European welfare state, because offering First World benefits to unlimited Third World migrants would be both massively expensive and politically horrifying.

The least optimistic plausible scenario: Despite lack of nationalist sentiment in the colonies, nationalism grows in the mother countries. Instead of creating zones of free trade and free migration, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Portugal turn to protectionism and restrictionism against their own colonial possessions. Despite these barriers, sharing a single government almost inevitably leads to high levels of integration, sparking the rise of vocal European movements to “give” their colonies independence whether they like it or not. They might call it “divestment” or “severance” or just “independence,” but it ends with a world much like our own. Probably minus most of the horrific violence of actually-existing decolonization.

Granted, both of these “plausible endpoints” still strain credulity. In the most-optimistic scenario, Europeans adopt extremely expansive notions of group identity. The English would have to accept Indians, if not as metaphorical “brothers,” then at least as metaphorical “cousins.” The French would have to do the same not only for North African Muslims, but black Africans. And so on. Yes, 19th-century Parisians managed to convince Bretons, Provencals, Catalans, and Basques that they were all “French.” Yes, the European Union loosely united the long-fractious peoples of Europe. But it’s still hard to believe that the British, French, Dutch, Belgian, and Portuguese identities could expand so far so quickly.

The main implausibility of my least-optimistic scenario, in contrast, is simply that countries almost never force independence on any piece of territory they control. Malaysia’s expulsion of Singapore is the sole example I know of in all of history.

So what really would have happened if nationalism had not taken root in Europe’s colonies? My best guess is that the empires would have endured to this day, and all five would have something close to free trade zones. Free migration, sadly, would be much less likely, but I think that migration would have been free enough to make one-third of the current residents of the European colonial powers non-European.

Of course, that’s just a guess. What do you think would have happened? In this flipped post, I invite you to share your thoughts in the comments. Please avoid hyperbole and paranoia, and focus on what actually would have happened rather than what you hope would have happened.

I rarely respond to comments, but if there’s a good pool of thoughtful replies, I’ll react in a follow-up post.

P.S. To simplify the narrative, I knowingly omitted U.S. rule over the Philippines. I doubt the islands would have gained statehood, but in the absence of a Filipino nationalist movement, I think there’s at least a 30% chance the two countries would now belong to a common zone of free trade and free migration.

*If you correctly identify the Soviet Union with the Russian Empire, the Era of Decolonization continues to 1991 when Russia finally lost its fourteen colonies.