A year of many crises
The two conflicts that dominate memory of 1967 were the Six-Day War in June and the American escalation in Vietnam. Elsewhere, the year was also busy. Empires were still winding down, the Cold War shaped alliances in every region, and several governments were overthrown or split apart. This survey moves region by region and points to the stories that deserve a closer look.
A few events from 1968 appear below because they grew directly out of the events of 1967. Where that is the case, the text says so.
Europe
Greece. On 21 April 1967 a group of army colonels seized power in Athens a few weeks before a general election. They justified the takeover as a defence against communism and political chaos. The regime, usually called the Greek junta, lasted until 1974. King Constantine II attempted a counter-move in December 1967, failed, and left the country.
France and the Common Market. President Charles de Gaulle had a busy year. In July he ended a speech in Montreal with “Vive le Québec libre”, which angered Ottawa and ended his Canadian visit early. In November he again blocked Britain’s path into the European Economic Community. This was the Common Market veto, the second time he had refused a British application. The two events together show how much personal diplomacy mattered to French foreign policy.
Britain. The Labour government under Harold Wilson applied to join the Community in May and faced a weak economy. The pound devaluation of November 1967 came days before the veto and was cited in French arguments against British entry. In March the tanker Torrey Canyon ran aground off Cornwall, creating the first very large oil spill to hit British shores.
Eastern Europe and the USSR. Reform pressure was building in Czechoslovakia in late 1967, although the Prague Spring itself belongs to 1968. The Soviet leadership marked the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution in November. In March, Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva walked into the American embassy in New Delhi, which led to one of the more striking Cold War defections.
Sweden switched from driving on the left to driving on the right on 3 September, a smaller but telling example of how Europe was modernising.
Africa
Nigeria. The main African story of 1967 was the failure of the Nigerian federation. After two military coups and large-scale killings of Igbo people in the north during 1966, the Eastern Region’s leader, Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, declared the independent Republic of Biafra on 30 May. The Biafra secession turned into a civil war that continued into 1970.
Congo. The Democratic Republic of the Congo remained unstable after independence in 1960. In 1967 foreign mercenaries and some former Katangese gendarmes rose against the government of Joseph-Désiré Mobutu in the east. The former prime minister Moise Tshombe, who was in exile, was taken to Algeria after his aircraft was hijacked in June.
Tanzania. In February, President Julius Nyerere issued the Arusha Declaration, which set out a policy of socialism and self-reliance. It shaped Tanzanian politics for years.
Southern Africa was relatively static: white-minority rule in Rhodesia, South Africa and the Portuguese territories continued, and international sanctions on Rhodesia remained in place.
The Arabian Peninsula and Asia
Aden. Britain had decided in 1966 to leave Aden by 1968. The pace of events, including armed rivalry between two nationalist movements, forced an earlier exit. British forces left at the end of November, and independence on 30 November created South Yemen. It ended a presence that had lasted since 1839.
China. The Cultural Revolution was in its most chaotic phase, with factional fighting in many cities and growing disruption of government. China also tested what it described as its first hydrogen bomb in June. The Hong Kong riots, which began in May and continued through the year, spread some of that turmoil to the British colony.
Indonesia. After the upheavals that followed the events of 1965, General Suharto was named acting president in March 1967, replacing Sukarno in practice. He formally became president in 1968.
Southeast Asia. Apart from Vietnam, the main development was the founding of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Bangkok on 8 August by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
India. The general election in February reduced the Congress Party’s majority, though Indira Gandhi remained prime minister. In May, a peasant uprising at Naxalbari in West Bengal gave a name to the later Naxalite movement.
Latin America
The best-known event was the death of Che Guevara in Bolivia in October, after the Bolivian army captured him in the southeast of the country. His image became a symbol far beyond the region. A quieter achievement came in February, when Latin American states signed the Treaty of Tlatelolco, which created a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the region. In literature, Gabriel García Márquez published One Hundred Years of Solitude in Buenos Aires, and the book became central to magical realism.
What connects these stories
Three themes recur. First, the end of empire: Aden and Biafra were both, in different ways, aftershocks of colonial rule. Second, the Cold War: Greece, Czechoslovakia, Bolivia and Congo all involved outside powers or fears of them. Third, the arrival of a younger generation in politics, a pattern that would become more visible in 1968 as the student movement shook France and other countries.
The year did not form a neat story. Many of these events overlapped, and their effects were uneven. But by December 1967 the map had shifted: Britain had a smaller overseas role and a closed door at the Common Market, Greece was under military rule, and Nigeria was at war with itself.