Britain extends emergency rule across Malaya

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...

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...

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was proclaimed north of the 38th parallel after the establishment of a rival government in the South. The division followed the end of Japanese colonial...

The UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after the destruction and mass violence of World War II. The declaration set out a common rights standard, but colonial...

The General Assembly adopted Resolution 194, creating a Conciliation Commission and stating that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace should be permitted to do so, with...

Egypt and Israel signed an armistice agreement under UN mediation. It ended active fighting between the two forces and set a military line, while the agreement expressly treated the line as...