HAOL, Núm. 13 (Primavera, 2007), 61-77 ISSN 1696-2060 GLOBAL ORIGINS OF WORLD WAR ONE. PART TWO: A CHAIN OF REVOLUTIONARY EVENTS ACROSS THE WORLD ISLAND Anthony D’Agostino San Francisco State University, United States. E-mail: [email protected] Recibido: 25 Enero 2007 / Revisado: 28 Febrero 2007 / Aceptado: 06 Marzo 2007 / Publicación Online: 15 Junio 2007 Abstract: The road to the Great War led out of Theodore Roosevelt sent the Great White Fleet the alignments formed by the Scramble for around the Horn, into the Pacific, and around the Concessions in the Far East. The world crisis of world in 1908. Roosevelt had hoped that a show 1904-1905 had shaped the alignments. It only of force would quiet Japanese indignation about remained to shift the locus of the confrontation, unfavorable American immigration policies, yet by a chain of revolutionary events, across the America had neither the wherewithal nor the world island into Europe. After Russia’s defeat inclination to oppose Japanese dominance of in the war with Japan, she and her adversary had Asia. little difficulty dividing their Asian spheres of influence. Japan made a similar settlement with The Great War itself did not finally break out in the French. Japan was at this point in effect a the Far East, but rather in the Near East, that is, member of the Triple Entente. She also in the Balkans. It began there because of the attempted to settle matters with the United spread of the international effects of the Russo- States. Japanese war across the Eurasian ecumene. The Keywords: Great War, World Island, Japan, vehicle for this was the Russian revolution of United States, Europe, International Relations. 1905. As would be the case in 1917, revolution ______________________ had grown out of military defeat. It was the defeat of a European great power by a non- he road to the Great War led out of the European. As such it sent a thrill throughout the alignments formed by the Scramble for third world, or at least through the hearts of the TConcessions in the Far East. The world revolutionary intelligentsia of the third world. It crisis of 1904-1905 had shaped the alignments. was a bigger and more dramatic version of the It only remained to shift the locus of the defeat of the Italians before Abyssinia in 1896. confrontation, by a chain of revolutionary New voices in Asia began to echo the themes of events, across the world island into Europe. western anti-imperialism, as stated for example After Russia’s defeat in the war with Japan, she in J.A. Hobson’s Imperialism of 1902. In Japan and her adversary had little difficulty dividing and China there emerged theorists of Asianism their Asian spheres of influence. Japan made a and admirers of socialist and anarchist writers in similar settlement with the French. Japan was at the west. Liang Chi’-ch’ao, the Chinese this point in effect a member of the Triple nationalist and monarchist, probably had more Entente. She also attempted to settle matters influence than any other Chinese intellectual on with the United States. By virtue of the the movement that was to culminate in the American victory over the Philippine insurgents revolution of 1911. Liang called Russia, “the in 1902, the American and Japanese spheres one and only genuinely despotic state on the faced each other warily across the Luzon strait globe.” For the young Chinese nationalist Sun that divides the Philippines from Formosa. Yat-sen, Japanese military success “raised the Wizened Japanese knew that their relations with standing of all Asian peoples.” In India, the America would not go smoothly once the Brahmin intellectual Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Panama Canal, on which the United States was known as “the father of Indian unrest,” held a working and which would be completed by special meeting in Poona to salute the Japanese 1914, was able to shift the American fleet to victories at Mukden and Tsushima. Of the Asian waters. This was underlined when Russian revolutionary model, he said: “once the © Historia Actual Online 2007 61 Global Origins of World War One. Part Two Anthony D’Agostino government resorts to repressive measures in the of them thought, and new possibilities would Russian spirit, the Indian subjects of England open for their enemies. They were impressed by must imitate, at least in part, the methods of the the continuing mobilization of counter- Russian people.”1 The Russian revolution was revolutionary forces by the Russian Tsar. The not generally perceived as a socialist or gangs that were called Black Hundreds proletarian revolt but a struggle for liberty and identified modernism as the enemy and the Jews tolerance, even tolerance of Islam. Muslims had as its agents, conjuring up propaganda imagery achieved representation for confessional parties that was to prove infectious throughout eastern in the Russian Duma. Two Muslim Congresses and central Europe. The popular French writer were held in Russia in 1905 and 1906, both Georges Sorel, a disciple of Nietzsche who stating claims for recognition of local religious believed in the master morality of the Romans and educational rights. This impressed the as opposed to the slave morality of modern Muslim mosques throughout Asia. In Persia and democracy, exulted about the return of Turkey, the mullahs turned decisively to the revolutionary violence and its regenerating constitutional idea. effect, not only for the left, but for the right. One can see the tendencies toward a new left Yet the actions of the Russian workers changed and a new right gathering strength from the the face of European Marxism, up to then a eighteen-nineties. 1905 seemed to sum them up. peaceful legal movement of agitation for trade From then on, meetings of the second union rights, political parties and campaigns to international would be debating the general win representatives to parliament. Anarchists strike and even adopting it in 1907 as a slogan to who preached direct action and even terror had organize resistance to a European war. When been sharply rejected and excluded from the war did come in 1914, these preparations proved Marxist Social Democratic International. Of the to be worthless. The workers did not strike and syndicalist slogan of the general strike, The did not stop the war. Those who said that war German Social Democrat Ignaz Auer said “the and patriotism would be far stronger than general strike is general nonsense”. After the proletarian internationalism were shown to be Russian general strike of 1905, however, the line right. This was at any rate the case until the war that separated Marxism and anarchism, at least failed to issue in a brief glorious conclusion. A on the tactical level, was less clear. The Polish- long war, of the type that would ensue after German socialist Rosa Luxemburg advanced a 1915, would be a different matter altogether. theory of “mass strike” as a means to fight for the suffrage and restore the revolutionary side of The Russian revolution spread immediately into social democracy. In Russia Lev Trotsky Persia. After the general strike of October 1905 argued that the experience of 1905 had shown had forced to Tsar to offer a constitution, the that the soviets emerging from a general strike bazaar and the mosques sprang into action, could be the point of departure for a struggle for largely under the influence of the pan-Islamist socialism. He called this heresy to traditional Jamal-ud-Din el Afghani. This began in Marxism the theory of the “permanent December with a general strike and resulted revolution.” Lenin, by contrast, did not yet within a few months in the formation of a accept the possibility of socialism in Russia. parliament, the majlis. To its supporters But 1905 convinced him that the Russians were Constitutionalism was a “secret of strength”2. going to repeat the French revolution and that, The Persian revolutionaries knew that the when this happened, a socialist party might preoccupation of the Russian state with its own participate with other radical democrats in a revolution precluded the expected Russian “democratic dictatorship” like that of the French intervention to suppress theirs. They saw their Jacobins of 1793-4. The Jacobin whole situation as having arisen from the special “Revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat circumstances of the British intervention in the and the Peasantry” would be the Bolshevik Far East. Britain therefore was their model and slogan down to April 1917. inspiration. They expected that the British would ward off the Russian counter-revolution. This was a shock for the leaders of European The electoral law provided a restricted franchise social democracy because it meant that a new and resulted in a majlis in which the nobility, period of tests of strength between workers and merchants and mullahs were in the majority. It employers was in prospect, something they was a kind of attempt, on Persian terms, to dreaded. The peaceful evolution of society onto imitate the British system of constitutional a socialist path would now be jeopardized, many monarchy, as the Italians had done in the 62 © Historia Actual Online 2007 Anthony D’Agostino Global Origins of World War One. Part Two Risorgimento. The majlis refused Russian loans drastically, it moved similarly against the and looked to the British for financial as well as Persian revolutionary regime. Shuster resisted political help. this in the name of the majlis and, in the minds of some Persians, in the name of an American But it was not British policy to help the Persian alternative to Russia and to a pro-Russian revolution against Russia. Not that the Persian Britain. He was ousted six months later when revolutionaries were foolish to have considered the Russians invaded and closed down the the idea.