Quote Originally Posted by davidbfpo View Post
Personally I don't think it was a surrender, although Portugal scuttled out rapidly once it became a democracy and Rhodesia / South Africa (inc. SW Africa) were rather protracted political accommodations. At the time much was written and discussed about the successes.

Nearby is Ireland, first the emergence of the Irish Republic (which promptly had a far more vicious civil war) and more recently the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 on power-sharing in Northern Ireland. The later was hyped a lot by all those involved as the way forward; not to overlook the role of the USA either.

Giving India independence after WW2 was a momentous decision, more a negotiated transfer of power than a surrender. Much was written on this, not much recently.
I have looked at South Africa as a democracy lately. They have a interesting power sharing deal with the traditional tribal leaders, essentially paying them and allowing them to remain the de facto local authority despite their non-elected status and paying them to do that ... but they also have the funding from natural resources to make such a plan work.

Ireland is interesting. Funny how transitions to a republican form of government is often followed by a civil war. It seems to take a while for the idea of democratic power sharing and accommodation to minorities to really take hold. This is kind of the essence of my question. If a democracy is granted power from the people, then surrender must come from the people. If the political leader acquiesces that is not a guarantee that the people will cease to continue to fight. There was a fairly active resistance in France during WWII. Once you establish democracy (or where you are trying to establish one), you automatically decentralize power, making the idea of surrender more difficult to define.

India I am not as familiar with. And it also separated after independence along religious lines rather than finding common ground.

If we assume a war between two democracies, how would surrender work?