(i) Decolonisation proceeded rapidly after 1945, in some areas with limited violence and loss of life. For example, French West Africa was divided into independent Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Ivory Coast, Guinea and other states after 1958, while British West Africa was divided into the independent nation-states of Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria between 1957 and 1961.

(ii) The British imprisoned thousands of Indians during the 'Quit India' agitation in 1942, but the Indian independence struggle thereafter involved less violence between Indians and British. However, millions of South Asians lost their lives or were displaced across borders in the ensuing partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan.

(iii) Independence of some neighbouring regions of the former British Raj occurred with less violence –in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Burma (now Myanmar).

(iv) Morocco and Tunisia in North Africa separated peacefully from France during the 1950s.

(v) Algeria gained independence in 1962 only after an eight-year struggle in which hundreds of thousands of Algerians and thousands of French died.

(vi) The people of present-day Angola and Mozambique (in southern Africa) freed themselves from Portuguese rule after more than a decade of fighting and heavy loss of life. Among Africans and the occupying Portuguese in 1975.

(vii) People of Malaysia fought against Japanese occupation during the Second World War; the same Malayan Anti-Japanese People's Army then resisted re-occupation by the British.

(viii) Over the next ten years, as many as 100,000 British soldiers were present in Malaya at one time to fight what British leaders called a 'communist insurgency'. Britain had to withdraw its forces in 1957 and recognised the federation of Malaysia as a semi-independent member of the British.