Burma becomes independent outside the British Commonwealth

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...

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...

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...

After plantation managers were killed in Perak and labor unrest spread, Britain extended the state of emergency across the Federation of Malaya. Emergency regulations expanded detention, arrest,...

The Republic of Korea government was inaugurated south of the 38th parallel after UN-supervised elections in the South. Korea had been under Japanese colonial rule until 1945; the postwar division was...