Liberation movements were among the most influential political and social forces of the modern era. From the nineteenth-century struggles for national independence in Latin America to the great wave of decolonization after the Second World War, peoples under colonial or foreign domination developed diverse forms of resistance in pursuit of self-determination, sovereignty, citizenship, and control over national resources. These movements were never uniform. Some relied mainly on mass politics, civil disobedience, labor organization, diplomacy, and electoral mobilization, while others combined political action with armed struggle. Their ideologies ranged from nationalism and liberal constitutionalism to socialism, Pan-Africanism, Pan-Arabism, anti-imperialism, and religious or cultural revival. This article examines the historical roots, regional experiences, methods, international context, achievements, and limitations of liberation movements across Asia, Africa, the Arab world, Latin America, and the Caribbean. It also analyzes the importance of the United Nations, the Bandung Conference, the Non-Aligned Movement, and Cold War rivalry in reshaping the possibilities of independence. Particular attention is given to India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Ghana, Kenya, Algeria, the Portuguese colonies, South Africa, and selected Latin American experiences. The article argues that liberation movements transformed the international system by converting empires into a world of formally sovereign states, but political independence did not automatically remove economic dependency, social inequality, contested borders, or institutional weaknesses. Their legacy therefore includes both the achievement of national sovereignty and the continuing challenge of giving substantive meaning to independence.