The Colonial War Within a World War

When imperial powers went to war in 1939, they claimed to be fighting for freedom, civilisation, and a just international order. Yet the armies, labour forces, and resources that sustained their campaigns were drawn from populations in Asia and Africa who lacked basic political rights. The Colonial War Within a World War uncovers how this contradiction turned the Second World War into a decisive moment of anti-colonial resistance, in which subjects used the upheaval of total war to challenge the very empires they were told to defend.

Moving from India to Southeast Asia, North Africa to West and Central Africa, the book traces how wartime mobilisation expanded states' capacity to control, but also widened the space for dissent. Emergency laws, forced labour, and censorship intensified colonial repression, yet they also provoked strikes, mutinies, and underground organising. Some movements sought Japanese or German backing as opportunistic alliances; others gambled on Allied promises of reform and self-government, invoking Atlantic Charter language and the emerging norms of the United Nations. Across these varied cases, Arjun Varquel offers a comparative empire perspective that connects local struggles to shifting ideas of imperial legitimacy.

Written for students, general readers, and scholars of global history and politics, the book shows that decolonisation was not a sudden postwar rupture but a decolonisation momentum generated during the war itself. Readers come away with a clear analytical framework for understanding how violence, organisation, and rhetoric intersected to erode imperial authority. By treating World War II as both global conflict and colonial crisis, The Colonial War Within a World War invites a rethinking of mid-twentieth-century history and the long afterlives of empire in today's world.