Liberals (moderates) would preserve the structure but
bring its activities up to date. Radicals would scrap the old and
replace it with a new structure and new activities geared to the new
possibilities and the new requirements.
Survival wars from 1914 to 1945 marked not only the end of Britain's
planetary domination but the termination of Europe's planetary regency.
The events of the period also loosened the bonds that had held western
civilization together.
A social structure which includes imperial nuclei and colonial
dependencies is constantly threatened by colonial unrest and revolt.
Colonial revolt, endemic in every civilization, became epidemic after
1943. The path to independence had been blazed by North and South
American colonials. It was followed after 1943 by the inhabitants of
British, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Asia and
Africa. The slogan of the independence movement was "self-determination."
Before self-determination can operate there must be a "self" capable of
making decisions and carrying them into practice. Identification of the
"self," or "nationhood" as it was called in this era, involved bitter
domestic struggle, internal reorganization and consolidation. The
process was typified in the British Colonies of North America between
1770 and 1789 which produced the United States of North America. Asians
and Africans who gained their independence after 1945 faced a double
problem: the establishment of nationhood, and regional consolidation.
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