India becomes an independent dominion as British rule ends

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 British Parliament enacted the Indian Independence Act, creating the dominions of India and Pakistan from 15 August. It divided Punjab and Bengal and ended British sovereignty over British...

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...

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...

David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel as the British Mandate over Palestine ended. The declaration asserted Jewish national self-determination after generations of antisemitism and the...

The expiration of the British Mandate and the new war marked a decisive phase in the displacement and dispossession Palestinians remember as the Nakba. Flight and expulsions had begun earlier and...