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I recently read "The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781-1997,” by Piers Brendon and it's a most enlightening book. And entertaining too, this Brendon guy is one Hell of a writer.
Just an observation, the end of the Second World War marked the first appearance of the first two true super powers: the United States and the Soviet Union.
Could the Cold War that ensued possibly have been a cause for the dissolution of the European empires?
Colonialism didn't end - hence Puerto Rico, but it does seem like in this day and age we ought not to have territories.
Tell that to the PRs. They have had opportunities to vote for independance, statehood or the status quo. The status quo wins overwhelmingly each time. Perhaps the first case in history of voting for colonialism.
Tell that to the PRs. They have had opportunities to vote for independance, statehood or the status quo. The status quo wins overwhelmingly each time. Perhaps the first case in history of voting for colonialism.
When the Comoro Islands voted for independence, the four islands voted separately. One of them (Mayotte) chose to remain French, and the other three formed a republic. Today the republic of Comoros has a per capita GDP of $800, and the French overseas department of Mayotte has a per capita GDP of $2,600.
The UN is trying to support the Comoros claim to Mayotte, but France vetoed it.
The population of Mayotte is less than 2% European French. In two referendums, in the 70's, , they voted 68% and 99% in favor of remaining French, and have voted 95% in favor of becoming an overseas department of France, the equivalent of Hawaii.
Colonialism didn't end - hence Puerto Rico, but it does seem like in this day and age we ought not to have territories.
PR, Saipan, the Falklands, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Ceuta, and St. Pierre-et-Miquelon don't really count. Those are the last remnants. (Some might say Gibraltar but referring to Gibraltar as a colony would start an immense flame war, although I don't know how many people in this forum would care enough.)
And support for independence in PR is only held amongst a small minority of PR's population. There are far more supporters of Puerto Rican independence in New York City and Chicago than in Puerto Rico itself. The numbers of inhabitants of Ceuta who want it returned to Morocco are so small as to be less than insignificant, even amongst its Muslim population.
You have to make a very sharp distinction between places like Gibraltar and Falklands and St. Pierre, whose population consists almost exclusively of people from the colonial motherland, and Puerto Rico and Martinique whose population mostly has no ancestry at all in the colonial motherland, and are culturally an alien people under foreign occupation.
You have to make a very sharp distinction between places like Gibraltar and Falklands and St. Pierre, whose population consists almost exclusively of people from the colonial motherland, and Puerto Rico and Martinique whose population mostly has no ancestry at all in the colonial motherland, and are culturally an alien people under foreign occupation.
Very little of the population of Gibraltar is "almost exclusively from the colonial motherland". The Gibraltarians are a mixture of British, Irish, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Greek ancestry with a disproportionate number of Sephardic Jews (only Israel has a higher Jewish percentage of its population than Gibraltar), and culturally more like their Andalusian neighbors than like Brits. They voted to stay under British rule in the '60s mainly because they didn't want to be ruled by Franco. It is true that virtually no one in Gibraltar wants to be part of Spain ; those who don't support continued territory status would support independence within the EU. (The Brits you'd see in Gibraltar are either military or expats from the Costa del Sol). Gib's unique financial and banking laws (which is why it has more corporations than people) would have to be changed if it were part of Spain.
However referring to Gibraltar as a "colony" is inherently inflammatory - on this forum very few people would care, but on other forums that topic could easily degenerate into a major flame war.
Gib is somewhere in between the Falklands and St. Pierre on one side and PR, Martinique, and Saipan on the other - it has its own culture and traditions but has its ties to the motherland and virtually no Llanito would refer to it as being under "foreign occupation". (Interesting that despite the end of the border closure after Spain's return to democracy, most Llanitos attending universities do so in Britain and not in much more convenient Cadiz or Seville). It's also fully bilingual as well as having its own "spanglish" type dialect ("Yanito").
As for Martinique - its considerable mixed-race population wouldn't be totally alien from France, and the population speaks French and Creole so there are linguistic ties.
BTW, American Samoa is a country whose cultural roots are even more different from that of the US than Puerto Rico and which truly is under foreign occupation, yet there is little desire to reunify from Samoa and even less of a desire for statehood (as statehood would mean having to abide by US anti-discrimination and laws).
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