World War II ended, and everyone was exhausted. The imperial powers were broke. Who were those countries? Britain and France mostly, with extensive holdings in Africa and Asia, Netherlands in the Caribbean and South America and Indonesia, Portugal in Africa mostly. Spain had a few foreign bits left. The Americans, of course, with their Philippines. They weren’t broke, but Britain and France sure were.
Holding those colonies was making less sense by the day, financially speaking.
Plus, pretty much everywhere in the colonies, locals were calling for independence. Sometimes they engaged in various kinds of violence, including organized armed conflict, which is generally labelled “war.”
Maybe the imperial power could bring in troops and impose order in this or that colony, but they couldn’t do it everywhere; there weren’t enough soldiers. So, they had to figure out how to let go. Gradually, if they could or, sometimes, not.
There were serious wars carried on while the imperial countries shed their colonies. The British in Malaya and Kenya, for example. The French in Indochina and Algeria. But not all the colonies were born in violence. Some used documents instead of bullets.
In Tunisia the French were fortunate, as it were, to have a local figurehead, the Bey, already in place. They put together a plan. The Bey, who was a descendant of the local ruler,
