Many histories and analyses of decolonization stress the post-World War Ⅱ era, which seems sensible since this is the period when most decolonization occurred – in seventy territories between 1945 and 1979, many of these by 1960 – and when anti-colonial normative beliefs were fully articulated. Yet although European colonialism in Africa and Asia looked strong in 1945, the foundations for the change in argument, belief, and culture were laid well before that period. Between 1750 and the 1930s, arguments made by reformers against the fundamental constitutive practices of colonialism – slavery and forced labor – challenged and ultimately led to changes in important aspects of the institution, so that it was no longer possible to view colonialism itself as legitimate. These changes in colonial practices were significant enough to say that the colonialism which ended in the mid-twentieth century was not quite the same institution that had reached its zenith in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Post-World War Ⅱ decolonization may be considered the implementation and extension of already articulated normative beliefs and arguments. Thus, at this point, much of my explanatory purchase rests on path dependent processes and institutionalization.