Indian Independence Act makes partition law

The Council’s first session marked the launch of a system that included territories held under League of Nations mandates. The UN framework promised political, social, and educational advancement...

Foreign troops completed their departure from Syria after years of nationalist pressure and diplomatic disputes over the French mandate. A three-day celebration in Damascus followed. The withdrawal...

The United States recognized the Republic of the Philippines as independent. Formal sovereignty followed decades of US rule and wartime occupation, but economic dependence persisted through trade...

Prime Minister Clement Attlee told Parliament that Britain would transfer power in India no later than June 1948. The announcement came amid mass anticolonial mobilization, labor unrest, naval revolt,...

The British government accepted a plan to divide British India into two independent dominions, India and Pakistan, with partition of Punjab and Bengal. The plan responded to political deadlock and...

The transfer of power established Pakistan as a self-governing dominion, created from Muslim-majority regions of British India. The new state inherited a divided geography, urgent administrative...

India became an independent dominion at the end of British rule. Independence followed decades of mass movements, labor and peasant organizing, and political negotiation, as well as India’s large...

The boundary commission reports for Punjab and Bengal were published two days after the two dominions became independent. The late disclosure left communities uncertain about which state they would...

Burma ended British colonial rule and became a sovereign republic outside the Commonwealth. Independence followed mass anticolonial organizing and the wartime struggle, but the assassination of Aung...

Ceylon became an independent dominion, but a defense agreement that came into force on the same date allowed British forces to use agreed naval and air facilities. Independence ended direct colonial...