--- title: How empires fell: the map of the 20th century — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «How empires fell: the map of the 20th century», a lesson of the geography course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: In 1914 a world map looked like a few huge patches of colour: European empires, with the USA and Japan, ruled most of the --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/) / How empires fell: the map of the 20th… # How empires fell: the map of the 20th century Lesson 37 of the geography course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/0/) — In 1914 a world map looked like a few huge patches of colour: European empires, with the USA and Japan, ruled most of the land and people on Earth, and the British Empire alone later covered about a quarter of the world's land. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/1/) — Within one lifetime those patches broke into many small ones, like a giant jigsaw spilled on the floor and put back as dozens of separate pictures. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/2/) — After the First World War four old empires fell apart; after the Second, colony after colony in Asia and Africa became free, some by long campaigns like Gandhi's in India, some only after cruel wars like Algeria's. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/3/) — Europa Universalis 5 ends in 1836, when the empires are still growing, but its colonial map is already cracking: most of Spanish America and Brazil had become independent by then. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/4/) — The breaking up went on to the end of the century: the Soviet Union split into 15 countries in 1991, and Hong Kong and Macau went back to China in 1997 and 1999. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/5/) — In 1914 European empires, along with the USA and Japan, ruled most of the world's land and people. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/6/) — The British Empire at its largest, around 1920, covered about a quarter of the world's land. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/8/) — The Ottoman Empire ended in 1922, and the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/9/) — Borders such as those of Iraq, Syria and Jordan were largely drawn by Britain and France after the First World War. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/10/) — Most Spanish colonies in the Americas, and Portuguese Brazil, became independent between about 1810 and 1825, with leaders such as Simón Bolívar. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/12/) — India won independence from Britain in 1947 after decades of peaceful campaigning led by figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, whose Salt March of 1930 protested against a British tax on salt. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/13/) — Ghana became independent in 1957, the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to do so. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/14/) — In 1960 alone, 17 African countries became independent, and it is called the Year of Africa. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/15/) — Some colonies won independence only after long wars, such as Algeria from France between 1954 and 1962, and Angola and Mozambique from Portugal in 1975. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/16/) — The Soviet Union, the communist state that grew out of the Russian Empire, broke up into 15 countries in 1991, including Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia and the Baltic states. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/37-how-empires-fell-the-map-of-the-20th-century/17/) — Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997 and Portugal handed Macau back in 1999, among the last pieces of the old European empires in Asia. - ← previous: [The people who were already there: what colonisation did](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/36-the-people-who-were-already-there/) - next →: [Today's world: the UN, the EU and the Commonwealth](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/38-todays-world-the-un-the-eu-and-the-commonwealth/) - ↑ back to [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/)