section_path: After World War II/Decolonization and the rise of nationalism in Asia
section_name: Decolonization and the rise of nationalism in Asia
paragraph_text: Decolonization and the rise of nationalism in Asia
  
  In the aftermath of World War II, European colonies, controlling more than one billion people throughout the world, still ruled most of the Middle East, South East Asia, and the Indian Subcontinent. However, the image of European pre-eminence was shattered by the wartime Japanese occupations of large portions of British, French, and Dutch territories in the Pacific. The destabilisation of European rule led to the rapid growth of nationalist movements in Asia—especially in Indonesia, Malaya, Burma, and French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos).
  
  The war, however, only accelerated forces already in existence undermining Western imperialism in Asia. Throughout the colonial world, the processes of urbanisation and capitalist investment created professional merchant classes that emerged as new Westernised elites. While imbued with Western political and economic ideas, these classes increasingly grew to resent their unequal status under European rule.