It seems that, over the course of just a decade or two, the nations of Europe renounced almost all of their colonial possessions. Who enforced this? Was there much resistance?

by Vladith

By resistance, I mean opposition to decolonization and by either the colonizing nation, imported colonial peoples, or indigenous inhabitants.

zhemao

This thread from a year ago has some pretty good answers.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1kkk4w/why_did_decolonization_happen/

In short, it wasn't enforced by any central body. The major colonial powers independently decided to grant independence to their colonies. There were of course overarching reasons at play. The western European countries were severely weakened by two world wars, and there were growing nationalist movements in the colonies.

Was there resistance to decolonization? Yes, of course. Several countries, like Indonesia, Vietnam, and Algeria, saw rather bloody wars of independence. The French-Algerian war was especially long and bitter, since there were a lot of Algerians of European descent (pied-noirs) living in the country. The war in Algeria and related political infighting in France led to the collapse of the French fourth republic and its replacement with the fifth republic.