TIME was when the nations of Europe, overflowing with vitality, sent men, money and ideas cascading to the ends of the earth. The flags of their empires were planted in every continent by warriors like Cortes and Clive, sailors like Columbus and Cook, explorers like Champlain and De Soto, by missionaries and by fugitives from religious persecution, by traders like the East India Company and Hudson's Bay Company. Modern imperialism reached its height in Europe's golden 19th century, when Kipling wrote The White Man's Burden and Empire-Builder Cecil Rhodes laid his hand on the map of Africa and predicted: "All British." In the 20th century, imperialism has become a word of reproach.
The color maps on the following four pages show the world's contemporary empires, at their peak and at their present ebb. Imperialism itself is in retreat: out of step with the 20th century, it is condemned to anachronism by the urgent drive of black man and yellow man to be free. But not all empires are doomed to sudden extinction. Britain's conspicuously has proven its ability to learn from defeat, to loosen the bonds forged by gunboat and ledger, and to command the loyalty of many of its subjects through freedom instead of force.
Toppling Empires. Imperialism's first great setback is easily pinpointed. It happened near Concord, Mass, one spring day in 1775. The American Revolution served notice that independence can be not only a faith but a fact. The faith spread like quicksilver—to Latin America, where Bolivar ousted the Spaniards, and the Portuguese beat a retreat; to Europe itself, where it mingled with British liberalism and the surge of the French Revolution (1789) to stir Poles, Czechs and Hungarians into clamor for nationhood. Imperialism in Europe faltered; it went down to defeat in the carnage of major war.
In World War I, four old empires died: the Russian, Prussian, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian. The rot spread to Asia, and from the Middle East to Indo-China, the surge towards independence stirred among a billion people. World War II rocked the remaining empires: Japan's was liquidated; so was Mussolini's. In the past ten years, 600 million Arabs and Asians have won political independence, established ten new sovereign states.* France, expelled from Syria and Lebanon after World War II, is on the way out of Indo-China. The once prosperous Dutch East Indies has become the unprosperous Republic of Indonesia. Britain, since World War II, has given freedom and democratic government to 470 million in India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon.
U.S. Involvement. The U.S. has long been pulling out of the colonial business—voluntarily. Hawaii and Alaska are close to statehood; Puerto Rico has been offered more independence than its loyal American citizens are willing to accept. In the Pacific, the U.S. is keeping most of the bases it won from Japan (e.g., Okinawa), but in the Philippines it can point with pride to unprecedented colonial achievement. The Philippine Republic is unique not because it is well run and democratic (many British colonies are, too), but because its people, voting freely, elected President Ramon Magsaysay, a man whose platform is solidarity with the former "imperialist Yankee."