Introduction

The narrative of the World Wars and the interwar period has traditionally been told through a Eurocentric lens, focusing primarily on the clash of European powers, the collapse of empires, and the disruption of colonial trade systems. This perspective, while not incorrect, is woefully incomplete. It reduces a complex global transformation to a story of European decline, treating the rest of the world as merely the stage upon which Western powers enacted their drama or as passive recipients of decisions made in London, Paris, or Berlin.

This traditional framing not only distorts our understanding of history but perpetuates harmful hierarchies of whose experiences matter in our collective memory. When we examine the World Wars exclusively through the lens of “lost empires” and “collapsed trade systems,” we implicitly accept the colonial premise that European imperial power was the natural order of things, rather than recognizing it as a relatively brief and violently imposed aberration in human history.

By broadening our perspective to include the experiences, agency, and contributions of peoples across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific, we gain not only a more accurate historical understanding but also crucial insights into the forces that shaped our contemporary world. These multiple perspectives reveal the World Wars not simply as European conflicts that spilled over into colonial territories, but as truly global transformations that fundamentally altered power relationships, accelerated decolonization movements, and laid foundations for today’s international order.

Moving Beyond Eurocentric Narratives of Victimhood

The traditional narrative of the World Wars often portrays European powers as the primary victims – nations that sacrificed their young men on battlefields, lost their imperial possessions, and saw their global influence diminish. This framing, while acknowledging real European suffering, inverts the actual power dynamics that existed during this period.

European powers may have lost empires, but colonized peoples had already lost their sovereignty, their resources, and often their lives under imperial rule. The “collapse of colonial trade systems” meant something very different to the African farmer forced to grow cash crops at the expense of food security, or the Asian laborer working in mines under brutal conditions, than it did to European merchants and industrialists.

The Belgian Congo lost approximately ten million people – half its population – during King Leopold’s rubber extraction regime in the early 20th century. British policies contributed to famines in India that killed millions. Japanese occupation of Korea involved systematic cultural suppression and forced labor. These realities of colonial rule provide essential context for understanding how non-European peoples experienced and interpreted the world wars.

When we center non-European perspectives, a different picture emerges. For many colonized peoples, the wars represented not just suffering but opportunity – moments when colonial powers were vulnerable, when the contradictions of imperial rhetoric became apparent, and when new possibilities for resistance and self-determination could be imagined.

In India, World War I accelerated the nationalist movement as the British sought Indian troops and resources while making vague promises of reform. The interwar period saw the rise of mass politics under Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. World War II further undermined British authority as Japanese forces defeated supposedly invincible European armies in Southeast Asia, and Britain’s wartime exploitation of Indian resources contributed to the devastating Bengal Famine of 1943.

Similarly, in Africa, wartime conscription of soldiers and carriers exposed millions to new ideas and experiences that challenged colonial mythologies. Veterans returned with broader worldviews and practical skills that would later fuel independence movements. The contrast between wartime rhetoric about freedom and democracy and the reality of continued colonial subjugation created powerful arguments for decolonization.

Acknowledging Agency and Resistance

The “lost empires” narrative implicitly portrays decolonization as something that happened to European powers rather than something actively achieved by colonized peoples through decades of resistance, organization, and struggle. This framing denies agency to the millions who fought against colonial rule in ways both subtle and overt.

Throughout the world wars and interwar period, anti-colonial movements developed sophisticated political strategies, leveraging international institutions, public opinion, and the contradictions in imperial rhetoric. The 1919 Pan-African Congress in Paris, organized by W.E.B. Du Bois, directly challenged the colonial order at the Versailles Peace Conference. The League Against Imperialism, founded in 1927, brought together anti-colonial activists from across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Armed resistance also continued throughout this period. The Rif War in Morocco (1921-1926) saw Abd el-Krim lead a significant challenge to Spanish and French colonial forces. The 1930 Yen Bay mutiny in French Indochina, though unsuccessful, demonstrated continuing Vietnamese resistance to colonial rule. During World War II, numerous colonized peoples engaged in complex calculations about whether to support their colonial rulers against Axis powers or to seek advantage in the conflict.

By acknowledging this ongoing resistance, we recognize colonized peoples as historical actors shaping their own destinies rather than passive subjects whose fate was determined entirely by European decisions. This recognition is not only more historically accurate but restores dignity to peoples whose agency has been systematically erased in traditional narratives.

Uncovering Hidden Contributions

The “lost empires” framing also obscures the enormous contributions that colonized peoples made to the Allied war efforts in both world wars. These contributions, often extracted through coercion, were essential to Allied victory yet have been consistently marginalized in Western historical memory.

During World War I, approximately 4 million non-European soldiers and laborers served the Allied powers. France mobilized nearly 500,000 colonial troops from Africa and Indochina. British forces included over 1.3 million Indian soldiers, while also conscripting hundreds of thousands of carriers in East Africa. These forces fought and died on battlefields from Flanders to Mesopotamia to East Africa.

World War II saw even larger colonial contributions. Over 2.5 million Indian soldiers served in the British Indian Army, fighting in North Africa, Italy, and throughout Asia. African American troops faced segregation and discrimination while serving in the US military. Chinese forces tied down millions of Japanese troops in the longest continuous campaign of the war. Brazilian soldiers fought in the Italian campaign, while Mexico sent an air squadron to the Philippines.

Beyond combat forces, colonized peoples provided essential resources and labor. Malaysian rubber, Congolese uranium, Indian textiles, and Latin American foodstuffs supported Allied war production. Colonial territories served as bases, training grounds, and transit routes. Millions worked in mines, plantations, and factories to produce materials for war industries, often under coercive conditions with inadequate compensation.

By acknowledging these contributions, we create a more accurate accounting of how the wars were won while raising questions about the justice of post-war settlements that maintained colonial relationships despite these sacrifices.

Understanding Contemporary Global Dynamics

Perhaps most importantly, examining the world wars through multiple perspectives helps us better understand the roots of contemporary global challenges and relationships. Many current conflicts, boundaries, and international tensions have direct connections to decisions made during and immediately after the world wars.

The artificial borders drawn by European powers during the post-war settlements continue to generate conflict in regions from the Middle East to Central Africa. The 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain and France, which divided the Ottoman territories in the Middle East with little regard for ethnic or religious realities, created state boundaries that remain contested today. Similar arbitrary borders across Africa have contributed to ethnic tensions and civil conflicts.

The Cold War, which dominated international relations for half a century after World War II, had its origins in wartime tensions and the post-war settlement. Soviet-American competition played out primarily in former colonial territories, where superpower intervention often thwarted democratization and development efforts. The “third world” emerged not as a natural category but as a direct consequence of colonial histories and Cold War politics.

Current economic inequalities between nations also have deep roots in this period. The extraction of resources from colonies to support war efforts, the destruction of indigenous industries to protect metropolitan manufacturers, and the establishment of dependent economic relationships all contributed to underdevelopment that many formerly colonized nations continue to struggle with today.

Even contemporary migration patterns often reflect colonial histories established or reinforced during the world wars. Labor shortages in Europe during and after both wars led to recruitment from colonies, establishing migration corridors that persist to this day. The presence of large South Asian communities in Britain, North African populations in France, and Indonesian groups in the Netherlands all have connections to colonial relationships intensified during the world wars.

The Interwar Period Beyond European Crisis

The interwar period (1919-1939) is typically portrayed in Western narratives as a time of European crisis – economic depression, the rise of fascism, and the failure of the Versailles settlement. While these developments were certainly significant, focusing exclusively on Europe obscures equally important transformations occurring across the colonized world.

This period saw the emergence of mass anti-colonial movements that would eventually lead to independence. In India, Gandhi’s non-cooperation and civil disobedience campaigns mobilized millions. The Chinese Revolution of 1925-27, though ultimately unsuccessful, demonstrated growing nationalist consciousness. Pan-African conferences brought together activists from across Africa and the African diaspora to challenge colonial rule.

Cultural and intellectual movements flourished as colonized peoples asserted their identities against imperial domination. The Harlem Renaissance, Négritude movement, and various forms of cultural nationalism created alternative visions to Western modernity. These movements rejected both colonial subordination and uncritical Westernization, instead imagining new syntheses of tradition and modernity.

The interwar period also witnessed the emergence of new forms of international solidarity among colonized peoples. Anti-colonial activists increasingly recognized their common struggles against imperialism, developing networks and organizations that transcended imperial boundaries. These connections laid groundwork for later movements like the Non-Aligned Movement and various South-South cooperation initiatives.

By examining the interwar period through these multiple perspectives, we see not just a time of European crisis but a global moment of ferment and possibility, when colonized peoples began to imagine and work toward a post-imperial world order.

The World Wars as Catalysts for Global Transformation

Rather than viewing the world wars primarily as events that destroyed European empires, we might more productively understand them as catalysts for a global transformation in power relationships that had been building for decades. This transformation involved not just the formal end of colonial rule but fundamental reconsiderations of sovereignty, rights, and international order.

The wars accelerated this transformation through multiple mechanisms. They exposed the vulnerability of European powers previously portrayed as invincible, particularly when Japan defeated Western forces in Southeast Asia during World War II. They created contradictions between wartime rhetoric about freedom and democracy and the reality of continued colonial subjugation. They provided military experience and organizational skills to colonized peoples that would later be deployed in independence struggles.

The Atlantic Charter, issued by Roosevelt and Churchill in 1941, proclaimed the right of all peoples to self-determination – a principle that anti-colonial movements immediately seized upon despite Churchill’s insistence that it didn’t apply to British colonies. The establishment of the United Nations after World War II, despite its limitations, created a forum where newly independent nations could assert their interests and challenge remaining colonial relationships.

When viewed from multiple perspectives, then, the world wars appear less as the death throes of European empires and more as crucial moments in a longer process of global reconfiguration. This framing recognizes the agency of colonized peoples in shaping this transformation while acknowledging the structural changes that made decolonization possible.

Methodological Challenges and Opportunities

Incorporating multiple perspectives on the world wars presents significant methodological challenges. Western archives and sources have traditionally dominated historical research, while colonial subjects often left fewer written records due to literacy barriers and archival biases. Power imbalances shaped what was recorded and preserved, creating enduring gaps in our historical knowledge.

However, innovative methodological approaches have begun to address these challenges. Oral history projects have recovered memories and perspectives that didn’t enter official records. Subaltern studies approaches have developed techniques for “reading against the grain” of colonial archives to uncover the experiences of marginalized groups. Material culture studies examine artifacts, architecture, and landscapes for evidence of how ordinary people navigated wartime conditions.

Digital humanities approaches have made previously inaccessible sources available to researchers worldwide, democratizing access to historical materials. Collaborative research projects connecting scholars across former colonial boundaries have fostered transnational perspectives that transcend national historiographies.

These methodological innovations create exciting opportunities for richer, more inclusive historical understanding. By bringing diverse sources and perspectives into conversation, we develop more nuanced interpretations of how the world wars transformed societies across the globe.

Pedagogical Implications

The way we teach the world wars has profound implications for how future generations understand global history and contemporary international relationships. Traditional curricula that focus exclusively on European battlefields, treaties, and political leaders implicitly reinforce colonial hierarchies of whose experiences matter in our collective memory.

Incorporating multiple perspectives doesn’t mean abandoning European experiences but contextualizing them within a truly global understanding of the conflicts. Students can learn about the Western Front while also studying the East African campaign, the Chinese resistance to Japan, or the impact of war economies on Latin American societies. Primary sources from diverse participants can supplement traditional materials, allowing students to hear directly from those previously silenced in historical narratives.

This approach offers significant pedagogical benefits beyond historical accuracy. It develops critical thinking skills as students analyze how different perspectives illuminate or obscure aspects of historical events. It fosters empathy by encouraging consideration of how diverse peoples experienced and interpreted the same global transformations. And it builds global citizenship by demonstrating the interconnected nature of historical processes and contemporary challenges.

For students from formerly colonized backgrounds, seeing their ancestors’ experiences and contributions represented in historical narratives can be profoundly empowering, counteracting the psychological impacts of historical erasure. For students from dominant groups, encountering multiple perspectives can challenge unexamined assumptions and develop more nuanced understandings of their own historical positions.

Conclusion: Toward a Truly Global History

Moving beyond narratives of “lost empires” and “collapsed trade systems” requires fundamental reconsiderations of how we conceptualize, research, and teach the history of the world wars and interwar period. Rather than treating these events as essentially European stories with global footnotes, we must recognize them as complex international transformations that affected—and were affected by—peoples across every continent.

This approach doesn’t diminish the significance of European experiences or deny the immense suffering that Europeans endured during these conflicts. Instead, it places these experiences within their proper global context, acknowledging both the privileges of imperial power and the genuine human costs that Europeans paid in the wars.

By incorporating multiple perspectives, we create historical narratives that more accurately reflect the complexity of the past while offering deeper insights into our present challenges. We recognize the world wars not simply as the end of one international order but as crucial moments in an ongoing process of negotiating power, sovereignty, and rights that continues to shape our world today.

Most importantly, we restore agency and dignity to the millions of people whose experiences have been systematically marginalized in traditional accounts. Their stories—of sacrifice and suffering, resistance and resilience, creativity and courage—belong at the center of our understanding of these pivotal historical moments, not as exotic additions to an essentially European tale.

In doing so, we move toward a truly global history that honors the full humanity of all participants in these world-transforming events and provides more accurate foundations for addressing our shared contemporary challenges.

Going Forward

In the weeks ahead this summer, I plan to share blogs that I have created about the various aspects of the major wars from the early 20th century—ones that go beyond just army men and maps. I hope to provide teachers with resources for reflection and discussion as we prepare for another school year.

References and Further Reading

Adas, M. (2004). Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology. Journal of World History, 15(1), 31-63.

Anderson, D., & Killingray, D. (Eds.). (1992). Policing and Decolonisation: Politics, Nationalism, and the Police, 1917-65. Manchester University Press.

Barkawi, T. (2017). Soldiers of Empire: Indian and British Armies in World War II. Cambridge University Press.

Burton, A. (2003). Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India. Oxford University Press.

Chakrabarty, D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton University Press.

Cooper, F. (2014). Citizenship between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa, 1945-1960. Princeton University Press.

Das, S. (Ed.). (2011). Race, Empire and First World War Writing. Cambridge University Press.

Echenberg, M. (1991). Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857-1960. Heinemann.

Elkins, C., & Pedersen, S. (Eds.). (2005). Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century: Projects, Practices, Legacies. Routledge.

Gerwarth, R., & Manela, E. (Eds.). (2014). Empires at War: 1911-1923. Oxford University Press.

Go, J. (2016). Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory. Oxford University Press.

Ho, E. (2017). Inter-Asian Concepts for Mobile Societies. Journal of Asian Studies, 76(4), 907-928.

Khan, Y. (2015). The Raj at War: A People’s History of India’s Second World War. Bodley Head.

Manela, E. (2007). The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism. Oxford University Press.

Mazower, M. (2009). No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations. Princeton University Press.

Plummer, B. G. (1996). Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960. University of North Carolina Press.

Thomas, M., Moore, B., & Butler, L. J. (2008). Crises of Empire: Decolonization and Europe’s Imperial States, 1918-1975. Hodder Education.

Von Eschen, P. M. (1997). Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957. Cornell University Press.

Zimmerman, A. (2010). Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South. Princeton University Press.

This is part of a series of blog posts looking at different aspects of WW1 and WW2 that do not always get mentioned in the classroom. To read more of these stories follow the link 20th Century.