Introduction

The 1920s and 1930s interwar years brought bitter disappointment to colonial peoples in Asia who shared the appeal to universal principles of common humanity, equality, individual worth and self-determination of peoples that World War I had seemingly been fought for.

In several ways the West contributed to the growth of nationalism in the colonized world. Schools and missions created a small native elite who would hold Europe to its own ideals. Never was there a better example of Western ideals coming back to haunt them.

In some cases, nationalism combined with Marxism across Asia to create new nations, which caused colonial powers to re-think their former policies as the global confrontation between capitalism and communism developed into the post-World War II period.