A New Day? Revolution, Cold War, and Decolonization, 1950–1965

In the aftermath of World War II, global realities seemed to have been grouped into binary formats: the United States and the USSR in a policy the United States called “containment” and included the establishment of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the Berlin Airlift, the Cuban Missile Crisis; and the Korean War. Violent decolonization rose for Great Britain in Malaysia and Kenya and for France in Vietnam and Algeria. Another chapter dichotomy was the general success of the civil rights movement in the United States and the concomitant strengthening of apartheid in South Africa.