Population, migration & cities

Topics represented

British Empire (27) · Migration & diaspora (15) · Colonization & sovereignty (13) · Law & imperial government (13) · Población, migración y ciudades (11) · Resistance & colonized agency (9) · Decolonization & independence (8) · War & conquest (8) · Indigenous peoples & dispossession (7) · Self-government & Commonwealth (5) · Companies, trade & extraction (4) · Slavery & coerced labor (4)

Records and sources

Ordered by start date. Long lives and processes may begin before the period you want to study.

1. 1948–1960

   Counterinsurgency and resettlement in the Malayan Emergency

   The Malayan Communist Party’s guerrillas fought colonial and later independent government. The Briggs Plan isolated insurgents through food controls, detention, and relocation of nearly half a million rural residents, chiefly Chinese, into “New Villages”; independence in 1957 preceded the emergency’s end

2. 1948–1949

   Imperial citizenship accompanies Windrush migration

   Caribbean passengers from Empire Windrush disembarked at Tilbury in June 1948 as part of migration flows both before and after that voyage. The British Nationality Act, effective in 1949, created Citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies and retained broad entry rights; the “Windrush generation” spans many routes, ships, and arrivals

3. 1952–1960

   The Kenya Emergency fights the Mau Mau uprising

   The Kenya Land and Freedom Army, associated chiefly with Kikuyu communities, fought over land and colonial rule. The state detained, interrogated, and relocated hundreds of thousands, executed more than a thousand convicted people, and imposed villages; insurgents also killed Africans and Europeans. Records and totals remain incomplete and disputed

4. 1961–1964

   Ten territories gain independence in four years

   Sierra Leone, Kuwait, Tanganyika, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Malta, and Zambia gained independence through distinct local trajectories. Julius Nyerere, Alexander Bustamante, Eric Williams, Milton Obote, Jomo Kenyatta, Hastings Banda, and Kenneth Kaunda led some governments, but unions, women, farmers, and veterans sustained the movements

5. 1966–1984

   The Caribbean, Africa, Gulf, and Pacific dismantle formal empire

   Among others, Guyana, Botswana, Lesotho, Barbados, South Yemen, Mauritius, Eswatini, Fiji, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, Seychelles, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Kiribati, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Zimbabwe, Vanuatu, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Brunei became independent. Each process had its own conflicts and coalitions

6. 1968–1973

   Chagossians are removed to make way for a military base

   British authorities prevented returns and removed Chagos’s population, mainly to Mauritius and Seychelles, while closing plantations and enabling a US base on Diego Garcia. Official documents falsely characterized permanent inhabitants as transient workers; displacement and its intergenerational harms remain the subject of litigation and protest

7. 2002

   The Act renames territories and extends British citizenship

   The British Overseas Territories Act replaced “Dependent Territories” with “Overseas Territories” and granted British citizenship to most of their citizens. Exceptions, inequalities, and sovereignty disputes persisted. In 2026 the UN still listed ten UK-administered territories as non-self-governing, alongside separately treated questions such as Chagos

8. 2018–2026

   Windrush exposes the harm of “hostile environment” policy

   Lawfully resident Caribbean people were detained, lost work and housing, or were removed after failing to prove a status the state had poorly documented. The government apologized and created status and compensation schemes; Wendy Williams’s 2020 review identified institutional ignorance of race and colonial history. Commissioner Clive Foster and rules updated in July 2026 show that redress remains open

9. 2019

   The ICJ finds Mauritius’s decolonization incomplete

   In an advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice found that Chagos’s 1965 separation was not based on free and genuine expression and that the UK should end its administration as rapidly as possible. The General Assembly endorsed that conclusion by a large majority and requested withdrawal within six months; the opinion was authoritative but advisory, and the UK did not meet that deadline

10. 2022

    The law opens citizenship to Chagossian descendants

    The Nationality and Borders Act added fee-free registration routes for descendants of people born in the British Indian Ocean Territory. The measure addressed intergenerational exclusion, but citizenship is not a right of return and does not resolve sovereignty, resettlement, or reparation