Britain's and France's attitudes towards decolonization on the eve of WWII

[Futurist]

Does anyone here know what Britain's and France's attitudes towards decolonization were on the eve of World War II in 1939?

I know that WWII ushered in a grand era of decolonization and that Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany in order to protect Poland's independence, but I am wondering as to what Britain's and France's attitudes towards national self-determination for non-White peoples were at the start of WWII.

Anyway, any thoughts on this?

[wm]

100 percent negative

[Tom from Cornwall]

wm wrote:

100 percent negative.

But that all depends on who and what you mean by "Britain and France"? Did 100% of British people (however defined) support the continuation of the British Empire - I doubt it!

Regards

Tom

[Loïc]

totally agree...in France it has ever existed a deep and deaf hostility against the colonization for economic, cultural, political reasons from the nationalist right to the Interwars communists and in the French public opinion a great indifference in the best case to not say more, but we know that the governments do it is not always in complete adequacy with their own public opinion...

[wm]

The communists were against colonization (for doctrinal reasons, no problem with communist colonization), and many people in Britain believed India should have been granted some kind of independence (because demonstrably India was advanced culturally and otherwise) but other less fortunate and advanced colonies were out of luck, and the attitudes were at best neutral - especially that not that much national self-determination was going on at that time.