From Wikipedia

Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World

Episode Six

Empire for Sale

The last in the series examines how the British Empire sacrificed itself during the two world wars to defeat Germany and Japan. Following the conflicts, America emerged as the most successful former colony - but now, as the US wages war on terrorism, presenter Niall Ferguson suggests that the country looks set to follow in Britain's imperial footsteps.

Britain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany in September 1939 included the Crown colonies and India but did not automatically commit the Dominions. Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand all soon declared war on Germany, but the Irish Free State chose to remain legally neutral throughout the war. After the German occupation of France in 1940, Britain and the Empire were left standing alone against Germany until the entry of the Soviet Union to the war in 1941. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill successfully lobbied President Franklin D. Roosevelt for military aid from the United States, but Roosevelt was not yet ready to ask Congress to commit the country to war. In August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt met and signed the Atlantic Charter, which included the statement that "the rights of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live" should be respected. This wording was ambiguous as to whether it referred to European countries invaded by Germany, or the peoples colonised by European nations, and would later be interpreted differently by the British, Americans and nationalist movements.

In December 1941, Japan launched in quick succession attacks on British Malaya, the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, and Hong Kong. Japan had steadily been growing as an imperial power in the Far East since its defeat of China in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, envisioning a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere under its leadership. The Japanese attacks on the British and American possessions in the Pacific had an immediate and long-lasting impact on the British Empire. Churchill's reaction to the entry of the United States into the war was that Britain was now assured of victory and the future of the Empire was safe, but the manner in which the British rapidly surrendered irreversibly altered Britain's standing and prestige as an imperial power. Most damaging of all was the fall of Singapore, which had previously been hailed as an impregnable fortress and the eastern equivalent of Gibraltar. The realisation that Britain could not defend the entire Empire pushed Australia and New Zealand, which now appeared threatened by Japanese forces, into closer ties with the United States, which after the war eventually resulted in the 1951 ANZUS Pact between Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America.

Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, key leaders of the Indian independence movement

The pro-decolonisation Labour government elected at the 1945 general election and led by Clement Attlee, moved quickly to tackle the most pressing issue facing the Empire, that of Indian independence. India's two independence movements—the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League—had been campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed as to how it should be implemented. Congress favoured a unified Indian state, whereas the League, fearing domination by the Hindu majority, desired a separate state for Muslim-majority regions. Increasing civil unrest and the mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy during 1946 led Attlee to promise independence no later than 1948, but when the urgency of the situation and risk of civil war became apparent to Britain's newly appointed (and last) Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, partitioned independence was hastily brought forward to 15 August 1947. The borders drawn by the British to broadly partition India into Hindu and Muslim areas left tens of millions as minorities in the newly independent states of India and Pakistan. Millions of Muslims subsequently crossed from India to Pakistan and Hindus in the reverse direction, and violence between the two communities cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burma, which had been administered as part of the British Raj, and Ceylon gained their independence the following year in 1948. India, Pakistan and Ceylon became members of the Commonwealth, though Burma chose not to join.

The British Mandate of Palestine, where an Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority, presented the British with a similar problem to that of India. The matter was complicated by large numbers of Jewish refugees seeking to be admitted to Palestine following Nazi oppression and genocide in the Second World War. Rather than deal with the issue, Britain announced in 1947 that it would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter to the United Nations to solve, which it did by voting for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state.

Following the defeat of Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese resistance movements in Malaya turned their attention towards the British, who had moved to quickly retake control of the colony, valuing it as a source of rubber and tin. The fact that the guerrillas were primarily Malayan-Chinese Communists meant that the British attempt to quell the uprising was supported by the Muslim Malay majority, on the understanding that once the insurgency had been quelled, independence would be granted. The Malayan Emergency, as it was known, began in 1948 and lasted until 1960, but by 1957, Britain felt confident enough to grant independence to the Federation of Malaya within the Commonwealth. In 1963, the 11 states of the federation together with Singapore, Sarawak and British North Borneo joined to form Malaysia, but in 1965 Chinese-dominated Singapore left the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations. Brunei, which had been a British protectorate since 1888, declined to join the union and maintained its status until independence in 1984.