India and Pakistan Palestine, Cyprus, Suez Malaya Kenya Aden in .NET

Generation QR Code in .NET India and Pakistan Palestine, Cyprus, Suez Malaya Kenya Aden

After the Second World War, the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite countries were so menacing that the British had to maintain large forces in Germany The Soviet Union, however, preferred to fight this Cold War by proxy rather than in person, involving British troops in a conventional war in Korea and a prolonged anti-terrorist campaign in Malaya For more on the final days of the Empire, see Sean Lang s British History For Dummies (published by Wiley)

Palestine, 1945 1948

Palestine had never been a British colony, but the British had governed the country under a League of Nations mandate after the dismemberment of the Ottoman empire, following the First World War After the Holocaust in Europe killed so many Jews in the Second World War, large numbers of the survivors wished to emigrate to their spiritual home and form their own state Uncontrolled immigration would have swamped the indigenous Arab population of Palestine, so a necessity existed to control immigration as fairly as possible However, when the pressure exceeded reasonable proportions, the British had to turn away would-be entrants and house them in camps This provoked bitter hostility among Jewish Americans, who gladly provided funds for their co-religionists to buy arms Many Jews entered Palestine illegally, displacing Arabs Terrorists on both sides attacked the British: The Arabs because they were letting too many Jews in, and the Jews because they were not letting enough in And when Jew and Arab were not murdering British soldiers, they were murdering each other The situation in Palestine grew beyond control and the British government announced its decision to withdraw its troops when the League of Nations mandate expired in 1948 Prior to embarkation to return home, the British presence concentrated in enclaves around Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Haifa At this point the Jewish terrorists surfaced to try their hand at conventional warfare Unfortunately for them, they weren t very good at it and left the British army seriously alone for its last two weeks in Palestine Needless to say, the troops were delighted to leave

India and Pakistan, 1947

India and Pakistan were the first former colonies to achieve independence, and understandably the rest of the countries in the British Empire wanted their freedom as well The British government did not want to dispute the

Part VI: The Second World War (and Beyond)

issue and merely insisted that the necessary political infrastructure had to be in place before each country became self-governing The United Kingdom had promised to grant independence to India, and it did so in August 1947 Unfortunately, Hindu and Muslim politicians refused to work together in one state, so two nations India and Pakistan came into being This resulted in large-scale population movements across the new frontier So long as British troops were present little violence occurred, but after the troops withdrew the new national governments were not able to prevent horrific massacres of Muslims by Hindus and vice versa as ancient hatreds surfaced Some regiments of the old Indian army that recruited primarily in Muslim areas transferred to the newly formed Pakistan army In cavalry regiments that contained both Muslim and Hindu squadrons, the religion of the majority determined the army in which the regiment would serve in future, those in the minority being posted to regiments across the border When this happened soldiers on both sides wept openly, not only because of the lost comradeship but because they suspected that one day their respective politicians would make them fight each other; they were not disappointed Nor did the new Indian army wish to retain all the existing Gurkha regiments, which recruited in Nepal, so the British army absorbed several of these regiments As for the former British officers of the old Indian army, some stayed for a while as advisers to the new states, some retired voluntarily, and some transferred to the British army for the remainder of their service

Malaya, 1948 1960

Hardly had the dust from Palestine settled than another, and far more serious, outbreak of terrorist activity took place in Malaya The terrorists called themselves the Malayan Races Liberation Army, but they were nothing of the kind They were almost exclusively Chinese communists, many of whom had taken part in a resistance campaign against the Japanese Their targets were government officials, the police, the army, planters, and anyone who didn t agree with them, including their own people They lived in the jungle, were highly organised, and were difficult to get to grips with On 5 April 1950 Lieutenant General Sir Harold Briggs was appointed Director of Operations The British had already introduced detention without trial, issued identity cards (without which people were not able to purchase food), and instituted limited curfews Briggs established greater cooperation between the armed services, the police, and the civil authorities, including sharing and coordinating intelligence His greatest achievement, however, was a resettlement programme that, over a two-year period, moved Chinese squatters into protected villages The army escorted food supplies into the villages, but did not allow any food out Hungry, the terrorists were forced to operate in smaller groups