<P> Economic growth created stakeholders with their own demands, while racial issues meant these people clearly stood apart from the colonial middle - class and had to form their own group . The start of mass nationalism, as a concept and practice, would fatally undermine the ideologies of imperialism . </P> <P> There were, naturally, other factors, from agrarian change (and disaster--French Indochina), changes or developments in religion (Buddhism in Burma, Islam in the Dutch East Indies, marginally people like John Chilembwe in Nyasaland), and the impact of the 1930s Great Depression . </P> <P> The Great Depression, despite the concentration of its impact on the industrialized world, was also exceptionally damaging in the rural colonies . Agricultural prices fell much harder and faster than those of industrial goods . From around 1925 until World War II, the colonies suffered . The colonial powers concentrated on domestic issues, protectionism and tariffs, disregarding the damage done to international trade flows . The colonies, almost all primary "cash crop" producers, lost the majority of their export income and were forced away from the "open" complementary colonial economies to "closed" systems . While some areas returned to subsistence farming (British Malaya) others diversified (India, West Africa), and some began to industrialise . These economies would not fit the colonial straitjacket when efforts were made to renew the links . Further, the European - owned and - run plantations proved more vulnerable to extended deflation than native capitalists, reducing the dominance of "white" farmers in colonial economies and making the European governments and investors of the 1930s co-opt indigenous elites--despite the implications for the future . Colonial reform also hastened their end; notably the move from non-interventionist collaborative systems towards directed, disruptive, direct management to drive economic change . The creation of genuine bureaucratic government boosted the formation of indigenous bourgeoisie . </P> <P> A former colony itself, the United States approached imperialism differently from the other Powers . Much of its energy and rapidly expanding population was directed westward across the North American continent against English and French claims, the Spanish Empire and Mexico . The Native Americans were sent to reservations, often unwillingly . With support from Britain, its Monroe Doctrine reserved the Americas as its sphere of interest, prohibiting other states (particularly Spain) from recolonizing the newly independent polities of Latin America . However, France, taking advantage of the American government's distraction during the Civil War, intervened militarily in Mexico and set up a French - protected monarchy . Spain took the step to occupy the Dominican Republic and restore colonial rule . The Union victory in the Civil War in 1865 forced both France and Spain to accede to American demands to evacuate those two countries . America's only African colony, Liberia, was formed privately and achieved independence early; Washington unofficially protected it . By 1900 the US advocated an Open Door Policy and opposed the direct division of China . </P>

Essay on decolonization after the second world war