Setting the Stage
1918 and 1945 were not the same moment
- Hopes for greater self-government were largely unfulfilled following World War I.
- However, in the years following World War II, increasing anti-imperialist sentiment contributed to the dissolution of empires and the restructuring of states.
- The CED's however is the whole point: the same hopes existed in 1918 and were disappointed, and after 1945 they were not.
The CED's word however between 1918 and 1945 marks...
Explaining the difference is the whole subtopic.
The balance of power moved
- Technological and economic gains experienced during World War II by the victorious nations shifted the global balance of power.
- Two of the victors emerged far stronger relative to everyone else, including the older imperial powers.
- So decolonisation and the Cold War have a shared cause: the war changed who was strong, not only who won.
Technological and economic gains by the victorious nations shifted the global balance of ____.
The war changed who was strong, not only who won.
Why 1945 was different
- Imperial powers were exhausted; colonial populations had been mobilised twice for other people's wars.
- The new leading states did not have the same stake in preserving old European empires.
- And the interwar organisations of 7.5 — congresses, parties, unions — were ready to act.
Which condition made what possible?
Sort each element of the post-1945 context.
Select all the conditions this lesson gives for why 1945 differed.
The telegraph belongs to unit 5.
The hopes of 1918 and 1945 were the same; the outcomes were not. The CED writes that self-government hopes were largely unfulfilled after the first war and that anti-imperialist sentiment contributed to the dissolution of empires after the second. Explaining the difference is the subtopic.
Decolonisation and the Cold War are treated as separate periods.
The unit runs them side by side because they happened at once and interacted.
Two stories, one period
- This unit runs decolonisation and the Cold War side by side, because they happened at once and interacted.
- A new state choosing its economic model was making a Cold War decision as well as a domestic one.
- The Non-Aligned Movement of 8.2 exists precisely because those two things were tangled.
"Historical context" as a skill means naming...
And then saying what each condition made possible.
Historical context, as a skill
- The objective is the historical context of the Cold War after 1945.
- Context is not background decoration: it is the set of conditions that made the following events possible.
- So an answer names conditions — exhausted empires, a shifted balance of power, mobilised colonial populations — and then says what each made possible.
A colonial soldier fights in Europe in 1916 and returns to a colony unchanged. His grandson fights in 1943 and returns to an empire that is bankrupt, to a world in which the strongest states have no interest in propping it up, and to a political party that has been organising for twenty years. Same claim, different conditions.
Hopes for greater self-government were largely unfulfilled after World War I; after World War II, increasing anti-imperialist sentiment contributed to the dissolution of empires and the restructuring of states. Technological and economic gains by the victorious nations shifted the global balance of power — the shared cause of both decolonisation and the Cold War.