The Cold War and a World Remade · Ages 16–17
Decolonization After the Second World War
Name: Date:
This worksheet is designed for 11th-grade history students. Answer each question directly using complete sentences and evidence from post-1945 world history.
Identify two major European colonial powers whose economies were severely depleted by 1945.
Name the year in which British India gained independence and was partitioned into two sovereign states.
Explain why French political leaders resisted granting independence to Algeria far more aggressively than to other colonies.
What was the primary goal of the leaders who met at the 1955 Bandung Conference and later formed the Non-Aligned Movement?
Analyze this statement from a 1956 British political speech: 'We granted freedom gracefully when our overseas wards came of age.' Contrast this perspective with the viewpoint of anti-colonial leaders in India or Kenya.
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Identify two major European colonial powers whose economies were severely depleted by 1945.
Great Britain and France (the Netherlands and Belgium are also correct).
Name the year in which British India gained independence and was partitioned into two sovereign states.
1947.
Explain why French political leaders resisted granting independence to Algeria far more aggressively than to other colonies.
France viewed Algeria not as an ordinary colony but as legally part of metropolitan France, and around one million European settlers (pieds-noirs) lived there and lobbied fiercely against independence.
What was the primary goal of the leaders who met at the 1955 Bandung Conference and later formed the Non-Aligned Movement?
To safeguard their newly won independence by refusing to join either the American-led or Soviet-led Cold War military blocs.
Analyze this statement from a 1956 British political speech: 'We granted freedom gracefully when our overseas wards came of age.' Contrast this perspective with the viewpoint of anti-colonial leaders in India or Kenya.
The British speech frames decolonization as a planned, generous transfer of power to prepared populations. In contrast, anti-colonial leaders viewed independence as a right won through decades of struggle, boycotts, and armed resistance against exploitative foreign rule that had been maintained by force.