N Nationalism and Political Identities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America

* Nationalism and Political Identities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America * India: * Self-determination was a powerful motivator for Asian peoples looking to escape imperialism. * The construction of a national rail system combined with an elites class of educated Indians tied the vast sub-continent together. * Exposed to the values of the Enlightenment. * As a result, a nationalist movement developed. * Indian National Congress in 1885. * Stressed collaboration with the British as a way to self-rule. * Supported by many prominent Hindus and Muslims. * 1906 – Muslim League was formed. * Strain between the two dominant religions. * INC would replace the British with Hindu leadership. * During WW I, Indians helped to support Britain’s war effort. * Discontent returned after the war ended. * British response was harsh, repressive, and ineffective. * However, now the independence movement had a figure around whom it could mobilize. * Mohandas Kramchand Gandhi. * Devout Hindu. * Trained as a lawyer in London. * Practiced law in South Africa. * Returned to India in 1915 to organize against social inequalities. * Passive resistance to authority. * Tolerance. * Nonviolence. * With his message of equality, he fought particularly hard for the Untouchables. * Simple message and personal charisma appealed to the Indian population. * Mahatma (“Great Soul”). * Gandhi and the INC organized two mass movements against the British. * Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920-1922. * Boycott of British goods. * Return to homespun cotton clothing. * Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930. * Protest against the government’s monopoly on salt. * The Salt March proved the efficacy of civil disobedience. * Despite Gandhi’s admonition against violence, both British authorities and protestors often resorted to it. * Years of resistance did prove effective when the British passed the Government of India Act that established autonomous legislatures in the provinces. * Bicameral national assembly. * Executive under the control of the British. * Did not work. * WHY? * India’s 600 princes refused to cooperate. * Muslims believed it to be an instrument of Hindu nationalism. * Support for the Muslim League grew. * Ali Jinnah. * Proposed a two-state solution to independence where Muslims would be granted their own state. * Throughout the 1930s, relentless pressure from the Indian National Congress Party and Mohandas Gandhi, along with the Muslim League lead by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, compelled Great Britain to move gradually toward self-rule for its Indian domain * World War II, however, stalled that push * Once WW II was over and a new more liberal Labour government was installed in Britain, moves toward Indian independence proceeded * As the likelihood of independence grew, so did Muslim fears about their minority status in an independent India dominated by Hindus * Muhammad Ali Jinnah frankly expressed his desire for a separate Muslim state, despite continuing attempts by Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru to reassure Muslim and urged all Indians to act and feel as one nation * In August 1946, Muslim leaders called for a Day of Direct Action to push the British closer to granting Indian independence * This demonstration-turned-riot resulted in the death of six thousand Indians and fueled Jinnah’s fears * Communalism, an ideology which promotes religious identity over national identity, was undermining hopes for a united Indian nation * As Hindus, perhaps Gandhi and Nehru could not fully understand the Muslim fears of being a minority submerged in a large majority culture * However, their fears of “rivers of blood” resulting from partition came to chilling fruition * More than ten million Muslim and Hindu refugees migrated to either Muslim Pakistan or to Hindu India between 1947 and 1948 and up to one million of those migrants died in the ensuing violence * Hostility between migrating Muslims and Hindus became hostility between nations- Pakistan and India- as the two went to war in 1947 over the contested province of Kashmir * Pakistan lost the battle and sought a U.S. alliance to strengthen its position * India responded by accepting aid from the Soviet Union although Nehru insisted on India remaining nonaligned in the superpower standoff * Even Gandhi’s assassination in 1948 did not quell the violence * Though Britain granted full independence to India in August 1947, it chose to rely on its previously tested model of decolonization rather than battle to retain its Asian colonies as the French and the Dutch would painfully and unsuccessfully try to do * Instead, like Canada before them, India and Pakistan became Dominion members of the British Commonwealth and retained English as their first official language * India set another example for other nations grappling with the issues of decolonization: it zealously protected its nonaligned strategy * One of the most outspoken defenders of nonalignment was Indian prime minister Nehru who warned of the dangers of newly independent nations getting caught in a superpower tug of war * Nehru’s and other leaders’ stance on nonalignment was clearly articulated at a meeting in April 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia dedicated to the struggle against colonialism and racism * Promoted the ideal of a “third path” as an alternative to aligning with either the United States or with the Soviet Union * This “third path” proved an elusive reality even as the Nonaligned Movement took form * Though the movement’s primary goal was to maintain formal neutrality, a constant lack of unity among members and inconsistent and informal ties between nations and superpowers made the movement more theoretical than real * While other developing Asian nations developed varying authoritarian rule, India maintained its political stability and its democratic system gained in 1947 * Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter and no relation to Mohandas Gandhi, served as India’s second prime minister from 1966 to 1977 and from 1980 to 1984 during a time in which India was beset with problems * Food production * Overpopulation * Sectarian conflicts * Feeling forced to declare a national emergency, Gandhi attempted to push her programs of population control, including forced sterilizations, on the Indian populace * Riots ensued * Population growth did not decrease and Gandhi rapidly lost favor * Faced with a growing Sikh autonomy movement, Gandhi ordered her army to attack the Sikh’s sacred Golden Temple at Amristrar which harbored Sikh extremists * Two months later, two of her Sikh bodyguards assassinated Gandhi * Likewise, her son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated by terrorists in 1991 * Brutal assassinations and continued quests for peace and religious tolerance seem to be the pattern in modern India * Asian Paths to Autonomy * Japan: * Industrialized economy was affected by the Great Depression. * In the 1920s, economic unrest fueled political and social demands. * Industrial reforms. * Increased suffrage. * Social welfare. * After 1925, all males could vote. * However, conservatives blocked further legislation and espoused either extreme xenophobia or one- party rule. * Campaign of political assassinations intimidated their opponents. * Japan had gained status in WW I. * One of the “Big Five” powers in the League of Nations. * Entered into agreements that limited military and naval actions. * Nevertheless, Chinese unification under the Guomindang threatened Japan’s economic and political interests. * In 1931, the Japanese army blew up a small portion of their Manchurian railroad and blamed it on the Chinese. * They used this “Mukden Incident” as an excuse to attack the Chinese. * Japanese forces took control of Manchuria and made it a puppet state. * In response, Chiang Kai-shek appealed to the League of Nations. * They were helpless to do anything more than request withdrawal. * Japanese withdrew from the League of Nations. * A pattern of appeasement of expansionist nations was born that continued through the 1930s. * to yield or concede to the belligerent demands of (a nation, group, person, etc.) in a conciliatory effort, sometimes at the expense of justice or other principles * China * The 1911 revolution had thrown out the Qing dynasty before there was a dominant faction to take control. * Sun Yatsen became the president of a Chinese republic. * Political chaos. * Warlords with private armies took control of different regions. * Warlords favored a returned to the opium trade. * National government was never able to rid itself of the unequal treaties of the late Qing period. * National sentiment developed quickly. * Looked to the U.S.A. and Europe to grant autonomy. * Instead, * Gave legitimacy to Japanese seizures during WW I. * May Fourth Movement. * Chinese people made mass protests against the presence of the Japanese to no avail. * Some Chinese turned to Marxism and the Soviet Union as an answer to nationalism. * Mao Zedong. * Formed the CCP in 1921. * Mao, a former teacher and librarian, agreed with the radical communist platform that included: * women’s equality. * social revolution. * dictatorship of the proletariat. * Earlier, Sun Yatsen had attempted to bring the country under the leadership of one party. * Guomindang, or Nationalist’s People’s Party. * At first the Communists joined the party and made up 1/3 of the membership. * 1925 – Sun Yatsen dies. * Chiang Kai-shek takes over. * The Communists were purged from the party in a series of bloody murders. * Meanwhile, Chiang Kai-shek had embarked on a military campaign to bring China under his control. * Within one year, he had: * Occupied Beijing. * Set up a capital in Nanjing. * Goumindang to be China’s government. * The Communists had retreated to the far southeastern corner of China. * Nationalist government faced 3 challenges in the 1930s: * Only controlled part of China. * Threat from Communists and warlords. * Japanese presence in the north. * Chiang Kai-shek placed a priority on eliminating the Communists. * Under military pressure from the Guomindang, the CCP made a 6,000 mile journey fleeing nationalist forces to northwestern China. * Called The Long March. * Thousands died. * Mao solidified his role as leader of the CCP. * Devised his own Marxist/Leninist philosophy. * This philosophy was uniquely suited to China. * Based on a successful social revolution on the peasantry rather than a nonexistent Chinese proletariat. * After the defeat of Japan in 1945, China erupted into civil war between the Guomindang and the CCP * Challenges To Superpower Hegemony * Initially, Mao set out to reproduce Soviet communism but eventually, he broke with the USSR and proclaimed a uniquely Chinese communism * The early steps established a form of government * 1949, former nationalists were purged from society by imprisonment and execution * The Chinese developed their own Five Year Plan to power rapid industrialization * Landowners were purged from society * Collective farms replaced private farms while health care and education were centered around the collectives * Social reforms that benefited women: * Banning child marriages and foot binding * Granting women access to divorce * Legalizing abortion * By recognizing Russia’s foremost role in global communism, China received enormous military and economic aid * China became the Soviet Union’s primary trading partner in the 1950s * However, the Chinese grated under the constant lecturing of their Soviet tutors * Resented the unequal quality of the relationship * The USSR required full repayment of its aid during the Korean War before granting more aid * In 1955, Soviets gave more aid to noncommunist countries like India and Egypt * Moscow even declared neutrality in the rivalry for Tibet between China and India * Finally, small border clashes between China and the USSR exacerbated the deteriorating relationship * In 1964, the two nations broke out into a spate of public name-calling that combined with China’s successful nuclear weapons test to finish the split * After Independence: Long-Term Struggles in the Postcolonial Era * China, under Mao Zedong, served as a model for nations seeking political development away from the paths of their former colonial masters * Mao transformed communism, a distinctively European ideology, into a distinctly Chinese system of control * Bringing unity to China for the first time since the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1912 * He envisioned the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) as a way to push industrial and agricultural production by abolishing all private property and by communalizing all farming and industry * It was a total failure, especially in the agricultural realm where, coupled with bad weather and poor harvests, almost twenty million Chinese died of malnutrition and starvation * In 1966, Mao tried again to mobilize the Chinese populace and reignite their revolutionary spirit * Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution was designed to further the revolution and to root out any revisionists who were seen as traitors or simply not revolutionary enough * This disastrous era cost China more than seven million lives, annihilated China’s intellectual elite, and cost China years of stable development * Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping, himself imprisoned and persecuted during the Cultural Revolution * Commitment to Chinese self-sufficiency and isolation by encouraging the normalization of relations between China and the west * Deng re-opened China to the west by sending thousands of Chinese students to foreign universities to rebuild China’s intellectual elite * An unintended consequence of this western education was the exposure of Chinese youth to the democratic traditions of western Europe and the United States * Deng bloodily crushed their pro-democracy Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989 * The question remains as to how China will reap the benefits of a global economy without compromising its identity and its authoritarian political hold * Independence in Asia * Vietnam’s struggle for independence got all tied up in cold war issues * Ho Chi Minh had been interested in independence for Vietnam since World War I and had even sought to have his nation’s independence discussed at the Versailles peace conference * His hopes were not realized then, nor in 1920s or 1930s * Ho had helped to oust the Japanese from Vietnam during World War II and again sought independence for Vietnam, this time issuing the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence modeled after the founding American document * France, however, still stinging from their resounding loss to the Germans, was anxious to rebuild its international reputation and status as a world power * Determined to retain its lucrative prewar colonial holdings, including Vietnam * Using British and U.S. weapons, France recouped Saigon and much of southern Vietnam in 1945, but the northern part of the country proved much more difficult to reclaim * French mercilessly bombed the cities of Hanoi and Haipong, killing at least ten thousand civilians * By 1947, it appeared that the French had regained control of their colony, so they were unprepared for the guerilla war led by Ho and General Vo Nguyen Giap * Ho and Giap found willing supporters among the Vietnamese people and after 1949 from the Chinese communists * The humiliating French loss at Dienbienphu in 1954 forced the former colonial power to sue for peace * However, peace would not last * At the 1954 Peace Conference in Geneva, it was determined that Vietnam would be divided at the seventeenth parallel with Ho and the communists controlling the north * South remaining in the hands of the non-communists * The Geneva Agreement ordered national elections to be held in 1956 * “domino effect” of all of southeast Asia falling to communist control if such elections were held, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower avoided the elections * Ngo Dinh Diem, a U.S.-backed leader, as president of South Vietnam * Diem was never popular with the Vietnamese people * Ho found support among many Vietnamese in the south * National Liberation Front (NLF) was founded in 1960 in South Vietnam to fight for freedom from U.S.-propped South Vietnamese rule * Supported by Ho’s communist government in the north * economic and military assistance from China and Russia * NLF (Viet Cong) met with continued success against South Vietnamese forces * Challenges To Superpower Hegemony * After the French left Vietnam and communists had taken control of the north, the United States began to support noncommunist South Vietnam as a part of its containment theory * U.S. presidents from Eisenhower to Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) then militarized the U.S. presence in the south until by 1968 more than a half million U.S. troops were in Vietnam * Still, the south Vietnamese were losing the Vietnam War * The American public became increasingly outraged by U.S. casualties * President Richard M. Nixon (1968-1974) began a process of Vietnamization where the United States began to hand over the war to the South Vietnamese * An escalation of the war in North Vietnam and an invasion into Cambodia combined with secret talks with the North Vietnamese resulted in U.S. withdrawal in 1973 * The Paris Peace Accords ended U.S. participation and two years later the communists unified their nation * Independence in Asia * Ho died in 1969, but the military stalemate in Vietnam continued until 1973, when the U.S phase of the war ended with the Paris Peace Accords * South Vietnam lasted until 1975, and by 1976, Vietnam was a unified country, as Ho had wanted since 1919 * Challenges To Superpower Hegemony * In nonaligned Afghanistan, a pro-Soviet coup in 1978 ended its neutrality * The new government issued radical reforms which led to an intense backlash that soon became an armed rebellion * Soviet forces entered Afghanistan to assist the communist government and nine years later made no headway against the mujahideen (Islamic holy warriors) supported by the American, Chinese, Saudi, Pakistani, and Iranian governments * A cease-fire accord withdrew Soviet forces but Afghanistan erupted into civil war two years later * In 1996, the Taliban, an army of religious conservatives, triumphed and installed a rigid, Islamic regime * Both episodes proved the superpowers had overextended themselves and exposed the weaknesses of their militaries and state policies * In addition to the obvious problems that had been revealed in a bipolar world, young individuals from all countries began to criticize the cold war * A global countercultural movement began * In 1968, students in the United States and France protested government policies * Mao supported a complete youth remake of Chinese society, the so-called Cultural Revolution * Rock and roll music which had been merely shocking now became part of the youth revolution * One U.S. president, Nixon, was partly brought down by the effects of student protests as he authorized illegal wiretaps on protest leaders and the press * These were revealed in the Watergate hearings and he resigned in disgrace * Even superpower leaders had become vulnerable to public opinion * Independence in Asia * First Egypt, then Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan gained complete independence after the war * Palestine, however, remained and remains a problem * After WW I and the end of the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain had controlled Palestine * G.B. made conflicting promises to Palestine Arabs seeking a nation and to Jews emigrating to Palestine hoping to establish a homeland where they could escape persecution * The Balfour Doctrine of 1917 had committed the British government to supporting a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and the Zionist dream of a national Jewish state in Palestine had also been supported at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 * In seeking to fulfill both conflicting promises, the British government allowed limited Jewish immigration to Palestine while simultaneously promising to protect the Palestinian Arabs’ civil and economic rights * The British could maintain these conflicting interests only through the use of imperial military forces against many opposing elements * Arab Palestinians rejected British rule imperial and Jewish immigration as illegal * Mostly of European descent, the Jews expected the British to fulfill their promise * They immigrated to Palestine * Purchased land * Established kibbutzim, communal farms, which promised to turn the “desert into a garden” * Such actions threatened Arab interests in the region * Arab Muslims resented Jews as interlopers on land they considered rightly theirs * Such overlapping conflicts erupted into sporadic open violence in the 1920s and 1930s * An increase in Jewish immigration fleeing Germany and Europe in the late 1930s and 1940s only increased the tension and the complications of the settlement as Zionists in Palestine began to arm themselves to protect Jewish settlers against Arab reprisals * As the surrounding Arab states gained their independence, a sense of Arab nationalism grew to include supporting their Arab kinsmen in Palestine against growing Jewish presence in lands they considered Arab * The Holocaust increased the pressure on the British government and the free world to make good on a promise of a secure homeland for the Jews, especially those who had miraculously survived the Nazi’s “final solution” * The British could find no answer to this conundrum * 1947 - they gave up and announced that they were turning the contested lands over to the newly organized United Nations to administer * The United Nations, operating with both U.S. and USSR approval for the plan, announced that two states, one Arab, one Jewish, would be created * The Arabs found this decision unacceptable * In May 1948, the Jews announced the creation of an independent state, the modern nation of Israel * Almost immediately, Egypt, Jordan, Syria Lebanon, and Iraq led an attack on Israel in support of the Palestinian Arabs * But their actions were uncoordinated * underestimated Israeli determination and military skills * Ironically, the Israelis won the conflict so decisively that they ended up with a nation whose boundaries far exceeded the ones they had originally been defending, far larger than those granted to the Jewish state under the U.N.’s original partition * A truce went into effect in 1949 as did the new partition * Jerusalem and the Jordan River Valley were divided between the new state of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan * Israel controlled the coastal regions of Palestine and the Negev Desert to the Red Sea * Thousands of Arabs fled during the fighting, and even after the partition, as they feared life under Jewish political control * Those refugees served, and their descendants serve, as a spur to Arab nations’ determination to rid the region of Israel * Egypt, under the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser sought to take the lead among Arab nations in opposing Israel * To do so, he and his military supporters abandoned Egypt’s new constitutional government * Began to use militarism to promote state reform, culminating in a bloodless coup which toppled Egypt’s King Farouk * Nasser named himself Egyptian prime minister in 1954 and took complete control of the government which he hoped to make the fountainhead of pan-Arab nationalism * Like Nehru, Nasser believed cold war politics were simply a new form of imperialism * He adopted an “internationalist position” under which Egypt would seek to extract pledges of economic and military support from both the U.S. and the USSR without aligning * with either superpower * Nasser was an anti-imperialist in every sense * He worked to destroy the nation of Israel which he viewed as an imperialist creation * Also, he gave aide to the Algerians in their fight to oust the French * He abolished British military rights to the Suez Canal * Nationalized the canal and use the canal’s revenues to finance the building of a dam on the Nile River at Aswan * When Nasser refused to back down on his attempt to totally control the canal, a combined force of British, French, and Israeli troops simply took control of the canal away from him * However, Nasser did win the diplomatic fight, as the former allies had not consulted with the U.S. before taking action against Egypt * U.S. strongly condemned their military actions * USSR likewise objected forcefully and managed to enhance its image as a strong supporter of Arab nationalism * Oil interests and a sustained U.S. commitment to Israel made a tangle of cold war politics * Southwest Asia, popularly called the Middle East, challenged the bipolar view of the world and the orientations of the two superpowers * After Independence: Long-Term Struggles in the Postcolonial Era * The Arab and the Muslim worlds geographically converged in southwest Asia and in north Africa where Arab nationalism became intermingled with the religious force of Islam to provide a model for those nations that wished to fend off U.S. or European influence * The continuing animosity toward Israel provided another linking factor between these Arab nations * However, pan-Arab unity did not develop, in large part due to * cold war splits * jealousies among authoritarian regimes * religious splits between divergent Sunni and Shia traditions * Israel’s resounding defeat of Egypt and Syria in the Arab-Israeli War (1967) and in the Yom Kippur War (1973) greatly intensified the tensions in the region * Ironically led to a long series of peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt resulting in treaties signed in 1978 and 1980 * Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian leader who had supported those peace negotiations with Israel, was assassinated in 1980 by opponents of his Israeli policies * The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which served as the government in exile for Palestinians displaced by Israel, was created and headed by Yasser Arafat to promote Palestinian rights * Violent conflicts between the PLO and Israel characterized the 1990s * Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat reached a series of agreements designed to advance the notion of a limited Palestinian self-rule in Israeli-occupied territories * Rabin’s assassination in 1995 by a Jewish extremist altered that process * The path toward conciliation was further complicated by the rise of Islamism, the term used to describe the desire for reassertion of Islamic values in Muslim politics * Many Muslims had become skeptical of the economic, political, and social values apparent in western, particularly U.S. society * For Islamists, the solution lay in the revival of Islamic identity, values, and power * The vast majority of Islamic activists saw this return to Islamic values as inherently peaceful * However, a minority claimed a mandate from God calling for violent transformation * These extremists took the ideal of jihad- which literally means a struggle to protect the faith-and used it to rationalize and legitimize their terrorist actions * The 1979 Iranian revolution demonstrated the power of Islam as a means of holding back secular foreign influences * Iranian leader Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi had come to power in Iran in 1953 with political help from the U.S. CIA, the monies generated by Iran’s oil fields, and military support from the U.S. government * Iran became a bastion of anti-communism in the region * By the late 1970s, the shah’s secular and very western lifestyle had become increasingly unacceptable to Islamists and especially to Iranian Shias who found his secular regime reprehensible * Iranian small businesspeople resented U.S. influences, and leftist politicians rejected the shah’s repressive tactics * The shah was forced to flee Iran in 1979 seeking medical treatment in the U.S., and Islamist Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had been maneuvering for the shah’s expulsion from many years, assumed power * The Iranian revolution took a strongly anti-American tact in November 1979, when Shia militants captured sixty-nine hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held fifty-five of them for 444 days, until January 1981 * Iranian leaders shut down U.S. bases in Iran * Confiscated U.S.-owned economic ventures * Inspired other terrorists to undertake similar actions * Iraq, Iran’s neighbor to the west, was also a Muslim nation but Iraq is an Arab nation and Iran is a Persian nation * Those ethnic differences, coupled with differing religious (Sunni vs. Shia) and secular ideals, contributed to the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) * Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, believing in the likelihood of a swift victory, attacked Iran in September of 1980 * Although Iraqi troops were initially successful and Hussein boasted he would be in Tehran in three days * The Iranians were determined in their counterattack, and the war settled into a long conflict of attrition costing more than a million deaths before the U.N. brokered a halt to the fighting in 1988 * Saddam Hussein was not finished in his attempt to promote Iraq as the leader in the Arab world * He invaded Kuwait in 1990, and incited the Gulf War in 1991 * U.S. President George W. Bush vastly expanded the U.S. war on terror to include a coalition of forces led by the United States who invaded Iraq in order to destroy Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” and Iraq’s capacity to harbor global terrorists * Hussein was captured by American troops in December 2003 * Executed * Africa Under Colonial Domination * Africa Under Colonial Domination * The Great War and the Great Depression made the quest for independence in Africa more difficult. * Over 1 million African troops participated in World War I. * Africa Under Colonial Domination * They saw whites killing whites and were themselves encouraged to kill enemy whites. * Reversal of what they experienced under colonial control. * Africans were recruited in various ways. * Volunteerism. * Impressment. * Conscription. * African leaders were given a quota. * They could recruit any way they wished. * Ultimately, more than 150,000 Africans were killed, and more were disabled. * As the war continued, more Europeans had to leave the colonies to fight. * Africans took advantage of that situation to protest imperialism. * The major resentment that fostered revolt came with compulsory conscription and impressment. * Involved shifting of valuable military resources. * European nations had two goals for African economies after the war: * Export of raw materials. * Making the colonized pay for their own maintenance. * Self-sufficient African economies were erased. * Great Depression. * Dependent colonial economies suffered severe reversals. * Trade fell more than 50%. * African Nationalism: * Contributions by African troops. * Ideas of self-determination. * Led Africans to believe they might be given greater freedom. * However, African hopes of autonomy were dashed as the colonial system was reinvigorated. * Ideas of African nationalism persisted with the development of a European-educated urban class. * Jomo Kenyatta * Future president of Kenya. * Spent 15 years in Europe attending universities. * London School of Economics. * New elite used European languages. * Adopted European dress. * Still managed to forge new ideas of African identity. * New elite saw the European concept of nationhood as a way to forge bonds between African groups. * Different concepts of African nationalism. * Some looked to the pre-colonial past for inspirations and institutions. * Others looked to the concept of the African race as a unifying factor. * Interestingly, this idea caught on in the USA and the Caribbean. * Marcus Garvey (1887-1940). * Black pride. * Return to Africa. * Other nationalists rejected race and looked to geography based on existing colonial borders. * It would take another world war to bring them into fruition. * Decolonization in Africa * The cold war also affected decolonization in Africa, a process already complicated by reluctant colonial powers and internal tribal conflicts * The French resisted decolonization, especially in Algeria * More than two million French had settled in Algeria by the mid-1940s, and those individuals and their descendants demanded protection for themselves and their property * Beginning with a deadly riot in May 1945 and continuing though the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), the conflict pitted the National Liberation Front (NLF) against more than a half million French soldiers and was especially violent * Frantz Fanon, the most famous Algerian revolutionary, supported the use of violence against colonial oppressors as a way of overcoming a history of racist degradation * Nationalism flourished in sub-Saharan Africa before and after World War II * The Negritude movement, which celebrated Africa’s great poets, writers, traditions, and cultures, was tied to the pan-African movement which was expanding in the United States, the Caribbean, and especially among French-speaking west Africans * Grassroots protests against colonialism became increasingly common among workers in areas like the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) and Northern Rhodesia * The presence of white settlers and the pressures from the cold war complicated the process of decolonization * Ghana was the first sub-Saharan African nation to become independent in March 1957 * Many of these new nations took names honoring their pre-colonial past: * Zambia * Malawi * Zimbabwe * Nations like Rwanda, Burundi, and Angola would become independent much later, with much violence and bloodshed sometimes continuing beyond official independence dates * Ghana’s early independence and its charismatic leader Kwame Nkrumah inspired other African nationalist movements and symbolized changing times in Africa * But independence was not always peaceful as it had been in Ghana * Decolonization in Kenya, a British colony in east Africa, would be bloody and protracted * In 1947 Kikuyu rebels began an intermittent violent campaign against white settlers and those Africans they deemed “traitorous” * The Kikuyu resented the British removal of Kikuyu farmers from their fertile highland farmland and their relocation to “tribal reserves” and their reduced status as wage slaves * The violent interactions continued throughout the 1940s and 1950s * members of this Kikuyu movement were either labeled as communists or called Mau Mau subversives * In 1952, the British colonial government in Kenya established a state of emergency, and moved to suppress all Kenyan nationalists including Jomo Kenyatta * The British then mounted a major military offensive against the rebel forces including the use of artillery, bombers and jet fighters * Effectively crushed all military resistance in the conflict which claimed more than twelve thousand Africans and one hundred Europeans * By 1959, however, the calls for independence in Kenya from around the world had grown too strong, and, ignoring the calls by white supremacists, the British government lifted the state of emergency * 1963, Kenya had negotiated its independence * Most of the developing nations in south, southeast, and east Asia adopted some form of authoritarian or militarist political system after World War II * India and Japan are the exceptions * After Independence: Long-Term Struggles in the Postcolonial Era * Africa * The optimism with which African nations had approached independence soon waned under social, economic, and political pressures * The boundaries of many African nations were the result of artificial lines drawn by European colonial powers * Lines did not follow traditional ethnic and political divisions * Political institutions failed to thrive amidst inadequate political administration * Military pressure * Increasing, grinding poverty * The Organization of African Unity (OAU) was established in 1963 to address these issues in hope of preventing intervention by former colonial powers * While the political lines of these African nations have continued, problems and conflicts were not addressed * Military coup and ensuing dictatorial one-party rule became commonplace * Ironically, South Africa has become a model for multiethnic African transformation * Years of “apartheid,” or separateness, instituted in 1948 when the Afrikaner National Party came to power * The government designated over 85% of the South African territory for white residents * Remaining land as homelands for black and colored citizens who were designated into a variety of ethnic classifications * Mixed, or colored * Indians * Bantu * Which were then further subdivided into numerous distinct tribal affiliations * The system worked well in keeping blacks in positions of political, social, and economic subordination * Organizations like the African National Congress (ANC) labored for decades to wrest their freedom from the white-controlled government who branded all such activities as communists and thus enemies of the state * Massacres such as in Sharpeville in 1960 * Soweto in 1976 * Galvanized domestic and international support for the end of apartheid oh yeah ;) * In 1989, when F.W. de Klerk became president of South Africa, he began to dismantle the apartheid system * Freed Nelson Mandela from jail after 27 years * Legalized the ANC * Began to negotiate for an end to white-only rule * In 1994, South Africa was proclaimed “free at last” by its first president, Nelson Mandela * South Africa’s political stability was not common * The former Belgian Congo, reconfigured as Zaire in 1971 and renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1991 * This country has seen a litany of rulers all ousted or killed in a series of military coups * The death of Laurent Kabila in January 2001 was the most recent * Most African nations still struggle as developing nations * Though rich in natural resources, an ever-growing population and the lack of capital, technology, * Foreign markets, and a managerial class slows economic growth * Foreign debt further hinders African economic development * Latin America Struggles With Neocolonialism * Although most South American nations had shed European colonialism in the 19th century, they were still tied economically to dominant colonial interests. * Colonial powers also interfered in military and political matters. * The biggest change was that Latin American nations were less dependent on former colonial rulers like Spain and Portugal. * During the neocolonial period, Britain and the United States moved to the forefront of domination. * After the Russian Revolution and with the ongoing Mexican revolution. * Disenchanted intellectuals in Latin America began to consider Marxism as a solution to their problems of dependent economies and impoverishment. * The Enlightenment principles that had driven their revolutions had lost credibility in societies where corruption and inequality were so rampant. * The United States became the most powerful country in the world after the Great War. * Latin Americans felt the direct effect of its power. * Capitalism came under attack in South America. * The first to protest were university students who began to demand reforms. * South American universities became the breeding ground for future revolutionaries like Fidel Castro (1926-) of Cuba. * Radicalism spread into political parties as they embraced anti-imperialist policies as well as Marxism. * Peru’s Jose Carlos Mariategui of Peru pushed Marxist reforms for the alleviation of the conditions for the poor and indigenous peoples. * Peru became a hotbed of revolutionary fervor offering another political party with non-Marxist reforms (the Alianza Popular Revolutionaria Americana or APRA). * The ruling elite were able to contain the radical reformers but the ideas remained persistently popular. * The ideological yearnings of Latin America were represented in the murals of Diego Rivera (1886- 1957), a popular Mexican painter. * He celebrated indigenous art and pre-Columbian motifs along with socialist ideology in enormous controversial canvasses that he executed for the public. * When commissioned to paint murals in the United States, he incorporated all the symbols of American imperialism and oppression to the dismay of the American public. * A World Without Borders * The Global Economy * Since the collapse of communism in 1990, a new economic order has been organizing around expansion of trade, global investing, privatization of state economies and deregulation of businesses * Modern technology in the form of computers, the internet, satellites, fiber optics, and semiconductors have eliminated national borders and made global business possible * The International Monetary Fund established near the end of WW II has underwritten most of the progress in free trade and market economies * Free trade means that trade occurs without any constraints on it by borders or state-imposed limits * Two other agreements have promoted free trade: * General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) * World Trade Organization (WTO) * The WTO, formed in 1994, settles international trade disputes and has the power to enforce its decisions * World trade since the signing of GATT in 1947 has been marked by continued growth * Global corporations have replaced multinational corporations where business sites operated under the laws of each country * Today, a corporation has a small headquarters staff making decisions with multiple sites around the world producing its products * General Motors * Nestle * Examples of companies who have transformed from multinational corporations to global enterprises * Global companies are no longer tied to labor and tax obligations in one country of city * They operate where the costs are lower * In the United States, taxes paid by these companies now generate almost 2/3’s less than they once did so not only do workers lose their jobs but governments lose income * Asia has been the site of several “economic miracles” since WW II * Japan * In the 1960s, they moved from labor-intensive goods like steel and textiles to electronics and motor vehicles * “Four Little Asian Tigers” * South Korea * Hong Kong * Singapore * Taiwan * They shared the basic problems of few natural resources but an abundant labor force * Moved into exports * By the 1990s, they were strong competition for Japan in the same commodities * China * In the 1970s, gave way to foreign trade and investors * Gradually been functioning as a socialist market * Its enormous potential has attracted foreign investments and by 2001, it gained entrance into the WTO * Pacific Rim economies * Thailand * Malaysia * Indonesia * Philippines * Hugely successful but there were problems starting in 1997 * Affected by an economic downturn * Each economy shot downward and recovery has been slow * Trading Blocs * Groups of nations have joined together to gain more advantages in the marketplace * European Union (EU) * Formed by six nations in 1957 as the European Economic Community * It has grown to include all western European nations and many eastern European nations in 2004 * The former Soviet Republics are still negotiating for membership while the Balkans and Turkey also have high hopes * The EU has agreed on a common currency, the Euro, used by 11 member nations * Agreed to dismantle all trade barriers between members * Southeast Asia has set up its own Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) * North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has done the same in the Americas * The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is a cartel formed in 1960 that controls much of the world’s oil production * It has reacted to political events by embargoes such as during the Arab-Israeli War of 1973 * The result was a global recession that affected not only large countries but much smaller underdeveloped countries as well * Critics of globalization are often nongovernmental organizations who are interested in indigenous peoples and environmental causes and feel globalization threatens those interests * They claim that only a few benefit and most become impoverished by global business * Believe it threatens the sovereignty of nations by sending political power into the hands of business * They also hold it responsible for the widening gap between rich and poor * Homogenization of world culture * Cross-Cultural Exchanges and Global Communications * While the fall of the Berlin Wall represents specific examples of the disappearance of borders, the process started happening long before that with the erasure of cultural borders brought on by television and consumer products like Coca-Cola * The local traditions of the early 20th century have been augmented and sometimes replaced by global culture * McDonalds * Wal-Mart * Coca-Cola * Western musical artists * Clothes * As industrialization mass-produced products in the 19th century, consumption increased * Later, products became an expression of personality and inclusion in the world cultural scene * People throughout the world drink Coca-Cola, eat at McDonalds, and listen to western music * At the same time, they have a heightened awareness of local culture; * hence, the production of a local Barbie * local Coca-Cola recipe * vegetarian items on McDonalds menus in India * Not only do American products have global appeal but so do * Swiss watches * Italian designer clothes * Perrier water * Evita * The 20th century had an explosion of communication technologies * Radio * Television * Fax machine * Networked computers * Satellite dishes * However, access requires capital expenses, so the more impoverished regions have fallen behind the rest of the world * Critics of mass communications see it as a form of imperialism * English has become the universal language of global communication * Internet * Some places, like China, object so much that they have put up a large firewall in their computer access systems to prevent its spread into China * Great Wall * Television has been controlled successfully by the most restrictive governments like Myanmar, and North Korea * In most places, satellite dishes have made that virtually impossible * Global Problems * Enormous population increases since the 19th due to improvements in sanitation, food crops, and disease control are now a large global problem * The world increased by five times during the 20th century and that population of 5.5 billion people has put pressure on the world’s resources * However, the AIDS crisis and a falling fertility rate seem to have slowed the growth * Human expansion has added more pollution * Eliminated other species * Consumed more resources * Global warming from emissions of greenhouse gases seems evident * As nations enter into more prosperity, they purchase more cars * Heat their homes with fossil fuels * In 1997, the Kyoto Agreement was signed by 159 countries who agreed to cut their emissions * China and India, the most densely populated countries seeing new prosperity, were not required to cut their emissions * Population control * China has the one-child policy that has been draconian but effective in reducing population * Hindu India still sees fertility as a cultural value and has a much harder time reducing it growth rate * Developing areas of the globe have appalling rates of poverty where malnutrition and starvation are common * The poor have been forced to live without adequate hygiene, clean water, and sewage disposal * There is a misdistribution of the world’s resources that favor wealthy nations * Globalization has not helped as it generates more wealth for wealthy nations and less for poor nations * Labor servitude similar to slavery is a feature of many poor regions * Child labor is particularly abusive in south and southeast Asia where children between 5 and 14 work in agriculture, family businesses, domestic service, and the sex trade * Human trafficking is a form of modern slavery in which people are bought and sold across international and national borders * Usually, a person is tricked into servitude with promises of legitimate jobs but find that once they get to their destination, the job does not exist * There is a bustling trade in Russian and Ukrainian women * Most victims are low-status young women who find themselves caught in distant regions as servants or prostitutes with no ability to escape * Often, in south Asia and other areas, impoverished families still find it necessary to sell their family members * Sadly, trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal activity in the world today * Environmental Problems * Rachel Carson – Silent Spring * AIDS * Global Terrorism * 09/11/2001