The Cold War

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C O N T E M P O R A R Y W O R L D H I S T O R Y

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SIXTH EDITION SIXTH

EDITION

C O N T E M P O R A R Y W O R L D H I S T O R Y

W I L L I A M J . D U I K E R The Pennsylvania State University

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

W I L L I A M J . D U I K E R is liberal arts professor emeritus of East Asian studies at The Pennsylvania State University. A former U.S. diplomat with service in Taiwan, South Vietnam, and Washington, D.C., he received his doctorate in Far Eastern history from Georgetown University in 1968, where his dissertation dealt with the Chinese educator and reformer Cai Yuanpei. At Penn State, he has written extensively on the history of Vietnam and modern China, including the highly acclaimed The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (revised edition, Westview Press, 1996), which was selected for a Choice Out- standing Academic Book Award in 1982–1983 and 1996–1997. Other recent books are China and Vietnam: The Roots of Conflict (Berkeley, 1987); Sacred War: Nationalism and Rev- olution in a Divided Vietnam (McGraw-Hill, 1995); and Ho Chi Minh (Hyperion, 2000), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2001. He is the author, with colleague Jack- son Spielvogel, of World History (seventh edition, Wadsworth, 2013). While his research specialization is in the field of nationalism and Asian revolutions, his intellectual interests are considerably more diverse. He has traveled widely and has taught courses on the his- tory of communism and non-Western civilizations at Penn State, where he was awarded a Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the spring of 1996.

TO JULES F. DIEBENOW (1929–2013), INVETERATE FELLOW TRAVELER, MENTOR, AND FRIEND.

W.J.D.

B R I E F C O N T E N T S

DOCUMENTS XIII

MAPS XIV

FEATURES XV

PREFACE XVI

I NEW WORLD IN THE MAKING 1 1 THE RISE OF INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY IN THE WEST 2

2 THE HIGH TIDE OF IMPERIALISM: AFRICA AND ASIA IN AN ERA OF WESTERN DOMINANCE 25

3 SHADOWS OVER THE PACIFIC: EAST ASIA UNDER CHALLENGE 47

II CULTURES IN COLLISION 69 4 WAR AND REVOLUTION: WORLD WAR I AND ITS

AFTERMATH 70

5 NATIONALISM, REVOLUTION, AND DICTATORSHIP: ASIA, THE MIDDLE EAST, AND LATIN AMERICA FROM 1919 TO 1939 94

6 THE CRISIS DEEPENS: THE OUTBREAK OF WORLD WAR II 121

III ACROSS THE IDEOLOGICAL DIVIDE 147

7 EAST AND WEST IN THE GRIP OF THE COLD WAR 148

8 THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND LATIN AMERICA 169

9 BRAVE NEW WORLD: THE RISE AND FALL OF COMMUNISM IN THE SOVIET UNION AND EASTERN EUROPE 190

10 POSTWAR EUROPE: ON THE PATH TO UNITY? 210

11 TOWARD THE PACIFIC CENTURY? JAPAN AND THE LITTLE TIGERS 231

IV THIRD WORLD RISING 251 12 THE EAST IS RED: CHINA UNDER COMMUNISM 252

13 NATIONALISM TRIUMPHANT: THE EMERGENCE OF INDEPENDENT STATES IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 271

14 EMERGING AFRICA 291

15 FERMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST 308

V THE NEW MILLENNIUM 329 16 THE CHALLENGE OF A NEW MILLENNIUM 330

GLOSSARY 343

INDEX 348

D E T A I L E D C O N T E N T S

DOCUMENTS XIII

MAPS XIV

FEATURES XV

PREFACE XVI

PART I NEW WORLD IN THE MAKING 1

1 THE RISE OF INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY IN THE WEST 2

The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain 2

The Spread of the Industrial Revolution 3 New Products and New Patterns 4

The Emergence of a Mass Society 6 Social Structures 6 Changing Roles for Women 7

Reaction and Revolution: The Decline of the Old Order 9

Liberalism and Nationalism 9 The Unification of Germany and Italy 11 Roots of Revolution in Russia 12 The Ottoman Empire and Nationalism in

the Balkans 13

Liberalism Triumphant 14 The United States and Canada 14 Tradition and Change in Latin America 15

The Rise of the Socialist Movement 17 The Rise of Marxism 17 Capitalism in Transition 19

Toward the Modern Consciousness: Intellectual and Cultural Developments 19

Developments in the Sciences: The Emergence of a New Physics 19

Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolution 20 Sigmund Freud and the Emergence of

Psychoanalysis 20 Literature and the Arts: The Culture of

Modernity 20 Conclusion 23

Chapter Notes 24

2 THE HIGH TIDE OF IMPERIALISM: AFRICA AND ASIA IN AN ERA OF WESTERN DOMINANCE 25

The Spread of Colonial Rule 25 The Myth of European Superiority 26 The Advent of Western Imperialism 26

The Colonial System 27 The Philosophy of Colonialism 28 O P P O S I N G V I E W P O I N T S WHITE MAN’S BURDEN, BLACK MAN’S SORROW 29

India Under the British Raj 30 The Nature of British Rule 31

The Colonial Takeover of Southeast Asia 33 The Imposition of Colonial Rule 33 Colonial Regimes in Southeast Asia 34

Empire Building in Africa 36 Africa Before the Europeans 37 The Growing European Presence in West Africa 37 Imperialist Shadow over the Nile 39 The Scramble for Africa 39 F I L M & H I S T O R Y KHARTOUM (1966) 40 Bantus, Boers, and British in South Africa 42 Colonialism in Africa 43

Conclusion 44

Chapter Notes 46

3 SHADOWS OVER THE PACIFIC: EAST ASIA UNDER CHALLENGE 47

China at Its Apex 47 Changeless China? 48

Traditional China in Decline 50 Opium and Rebellion 50 The Taiping Rebellion 51 Efforts at Reform 51 The Climax of Imperialism in China 52 The Collapse of the Old Order 54

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Chinese Society in Transition 56 The Impact of Western Imperialism 57 Daily Life in Qing China 57 Changing Roles for Women 57

Traditional Japan and the End of Isolation 58 A “Closed Country” 59 The Opening of Japan 59

Rich Country, Strong Army 60 The Transformation of Japanese Politics 60 Meiji Economics 60 Building a Modern Social Structure 61 Joining the Imperialist Club 62 O P P O S I N G V I E W P O I N T S TWO VIEWS OF THE WORLD 63 Japanese Culture in Transition 64

Conclusion 65

Chapter Notes 65

Reflections Part I 66

PART II CULTURES IN COLLISION 69 4 WAR AND REVOLUTION: WORLD WAR I AND

ITS AFTERMATH 70

The Coming of War 70 Rising Tensions in Europe 71 Crisis in the Balkans, 1908–1913 71 The Outbreak of War 72

The World at War 72 Illusions and Stalemate, 1914–1915 72 The Great Slaughter, 1916–1917 72 O P P O S I N G V I E W P O I N T S “YOU HAVE TO BEAR THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR WAR OR PEACE” 73 The Widening of the War 75 O P P O S I N G V I E W P O I N T S THE EXCITEMENT AND THE REALITY OF WAR 76 The Home Front: The Impact of Total War 77 The Last Year of the War 77 F I L M & H I S T O R Y LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) 78

Seeking Eternal Peace 79 The Vision of Woodrow Wilson 79 The Peace Settlement 80

Revolution in Russia 80 The March Revolution 81 The Bolshevik Revolution 82 The Civil War 84

The Failure of the Peace 85 The Search for Security 85 A Return to Normalcy? 86 The Great Depression 87 Building Socialism in Soviet Russia 89

The Search for a New Reality in the Arts 90 New Schools of Artistic Expression 91 Culture for the Masses 92

Conclusion 92

Chapter Notes 93

5 NATIONALISM, REVOLUTION, AND DICTATORSHIP: ASIA, THE MIDDLE EAST, AND LATIN AMERICA FROM 1919 TO 1939 94

The Spread of Nationalism in Asia and Africa 95 Traditional Resistance: A Precursor to Nationalism 95 Modern Nationalism 96 Gandhi and the Indian National Congress 98 F I L M & H I S T O R Y GANDHI (1982) 100 Nationalist Ferment in the Middle East 100 O P P O S I N G V I E W P O I N T S ISLAM IN THE MODERN WORLD: TWO VIEWS 104 Nationalism and Revolution 106

Revolution in China 108 Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy: The New Culture

Movement 108 The Nanjing Republic 110 Social Change in Republican China 113

Japan Between the Wars 113 Experiment in Democracy 113 A Zaibatsu Economy 114 Shidehara Diplomacy 114

Nationalism and Dictatorship in Latin America 115 A Changing Economy 115 The Effects of Dependency 116 Latin American Culture 118

Conclusion 119

Chapter Notes 120

6 THE CRISIS DEEPENS: THE OUTBREAK OF WORLD WAR II 121

The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes 121 The Birth of Fascism 122 Hitler and Nazi Germany 122 The Spread of Authoritarianism in Europe 124 The Rise of Militarism in Japan 125

viii DETAILED CONTENTS

The Path to War in Europe 126 Stalin Seeks a United Front 126 Decision at Munich 127 O P P O S I N G V I E W P O I N T S THE MUNICH CONFERENCE 128

The Path to War in Asia 129 A Monroe Doctrine for Asia 129 Tokyo’s “Southern Strategy” 130

The World at War 130 The War in Europe 131 The New Order in Europe 133 War Spreads in Asia 134 The New Order in Asia 135 The Turning Point of the War, 1942–1943 137 The Last Years of the War 138

The Peace Settlement in Europe 139 The Yalta Agreement 139 Confrontation at Potsdam 140 The War in the Pacific Ends 140 F I L M & H I S T O R Y LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (2006) 141

Conclusion 142

Chapter Notes 143

Reflections Part II 144

PART III ACROSS THE IDEOLOGICAL DIVIDE 147

7 EAST AND WEST IN THE GRIP OF THE COLD WAR 148

The Collapse of the Grand Alliance 148 The Iron Curtain Descends 149 The Truman Doctrine and the Beginnings of

Containment 149 Europe Divided 150

Cold War in Asia 154 The Chinese Civil War 154 The New China 156 The Korean War 156 Conflict in Indochina 157

From Confrontation to Coexistence 158 Khrushchev and the Era of Peaceful

Coexistence 158 The Cuban Missile Crisis 160 The Sino-Soviet Dispute 160 F I L M & H I S T O R Y THE MISSILES OF OCTOBER (1973) 161

The Second Indochina War 161 O P P O S I N G V I E W P O I N T S CONFRONTATION IN SOUTHEAST ASIA 163

An Era of Equivalence 165 An End to D�etente? 165 Countering the Evil Empire 166 Toward a New World Order 166

Conclusion 167

Chapter Notes 168

8 THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND LATIN AMERICA 169

The United States Since 1945 169 An Era of Prosperity and Social Commitment 169 America Shifts to the Right 171 Seizing the Political Center 173

The Changing Face of American Society 175 A Consumer Society, a Permissive Society 176 The Melting Pot in Action 176 Women and Society 176 The Environment 177 Science and Technology 178

The World of Culture 179 Art and Architecture 179 New Concepts in Music 179 New Trends in Literature 179 Popular Culture 180

Canada: In the Shadow of Goliath 180

Democracy, Dictatorship, and Development in Latin America Since 1945 181

An Era of Dependency 182 Nationalism and the Military: The Examples of

Argentina and Brazil 183 The Mexican Way 185 The Leftist Variant 186 Trends in Latin American Culture 187

Conclusion 188

Chapter Notes 189

9 BRAVE NEW WORLD: THE RISE AND FALL OF COMMUNISM IN THE SOVIET UNION AND EASTERN EUROPE 190

The Postwar Soviet Union 190 From Stalin to Khrushchev 190 The Brezhnev Years, 1964–1982 193

DETAILED CONTENTS ix

Ferment in Eastern Europe 197 Unrest in Poland 198 The Hungarian Uprising 198 The Prague Spring 199 The Persistence of Stalinism in

East Germany 199

Culture and Society in the Soviet Bloc 200 Cultural Expression 200 Social Changes in Eastern Europe 202 Women in the Soviet Bloc 202

The Disintegration of the Soviet Empire 203 The Gorbachev Era 203 Eastern Europe: From Soviet Satellites to Sovereign

Nations 203 End of Empire 204 The New Russia: From Empire to Nation 205

Conclusion 208

Chapter Notes 209

10 POSTWAR EUROPE: ON THE PATH TO UNITY? 210

Western Europe: Recovery and Renewal 210 The Triumph of Democracy in Postwar Europe 211

The Modern Welfare State: Three European Models 211

France 211 Germany: Across the Cold War Divide 214 Great Britain 215 F I L M & H I S T O R Y THE LIVES OF OTHERS (2006) 216 The Fall of the Iron Curtain 219

Western Europe: The Search for Unity 221 The Curtain Rises: The Creation of the Common

Market 222 The European Union 222 Plans for Expansion: A Bridge Too Far? 222 Beware of Greeks Seeking Gifts 224

Aspects of Society in Postwar Europe 224 An Age of Affluence 225 A Transvaluation of Values 226 Expanding Roles for Women 226 The Environment 227

Aspects of Culture in Postwar Europe 228 Postwar Literature 228 Music and the Arts 229

Conclusion 230

Chapter Note 230

11 TOWARD THE PACIFIC CENTURY? JAPAN AND THE LITTLE TIGERS 231

Japan: Asian Giant 231 The Occupation Era 232 The Transformation of Modern Japan: Politics and

Government 232 The Economy 234 A Society in Transition 236 Religion and Culture 239 The Japanese Difference 239

Taiwan: The Other China 239 Taiwan Under Nationalist Rule 240 Crafting a Taiwanese Identity 241

South Korea: A Peninsula Divided 242 The Korean Model 242 South Korea: The Little Tiger with Sharp Teeth 243

Singapore and Hong Kong: The Littlest Tigers 243

On the Margins of Asia: Postwar Australia and New Zealand 245 Conclusion 246

Chapter Notes 247

Reflections Part III 248

PAR T IV THIRD WORLD RISING 251 12 THE EAST IS RED: CHINA UNDER

COMMUNISM 252

China Under Mao Zedong 252 New Democracy 252 The Transition to Socialism 253 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 255 F I L M & H I S T O R Y THE LAST EMPEROR (1987) 256

From Mao to Deng 257 The Four Modernizations 257 Incident at Tiananmen Square 258 Back to Confucius? 258 O P P O S I N G V I E W P O I N T S STUDENTS APPEAL FOR DEMOCRACY 259

Serve the People: Chinese Society Under Communism 261

The Politics of the Mass Line 261 Economics in Command 262 Evaluating the Four Modernizations 264 Chinese Society in Flux 265

x DETAILED CONTENTS

China’s Changing Culture 268 Culture in a Revolutionary Era 268 Art and Architecture 268 Literature 269

Conclusion 269

Chapter Notes 270

13 NATIONALISM TRIUMPHANT: THE EMERGENCE OF INDEPENDENT STATES IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA 271

South Asia 271 The End of the British Raj 272 Independent India 272 O P P O S I N G V I E W P O I N T S TWO VISIONS FOR INDIA 273 The Land of the Pure: Pakistan Since

Independence 275 Poverty and Pluralism in South Asia 276 South Asian Art and Literature Since

Independence 280 What Is the Future of India? 280

Southeast Asia 281 The End of the Colonial Era 282 In the Shadow of the Cold War 282 On the Road to Political Reform 284 F I L M & H I S T O R Y THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY (1983) 285 Regional Conflict and Cooperation: The Rise of

ASEAN 287 Daily Life: Town and Country in Contemporary

Southeast Asia 288 Cultural Trends 289

Conclusion 290

Chapter Notes 290

14 EMERGING AFRICA 291 Uhuru: The Struggle for Independence in Africa 291

The Colonial Legacy 292 The Rise of Nationalism 292

The Era of Independence 294 The Destiny of Africa: Unity or Diversity? 294 Dream and Reality: Political and Economic Conditions in

Independent Africa 294 The Search for Solutions 296 Africa: A Continent in Flux 300

Continuity and Change in Modern African Societies 301 Education 301

Urban and Rural Life 302 African Women 302 African Culture 303 O P P O S I N G V I E W P O I N T S AFRICA: DARK CONTINENT OR RADIANT LAND? 305

Conclusion 306

Chapter Notes 307

15 FERMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST 308 Crescent of Conflict 308

The Question of Palestine 309 Nasser and Pan-Arabism 309 The Arab-Israeli Dispute 311 Revolution in Iran 313 F I L M & H I S T O R Y PERSEPOLIS (2007) 315 Crisis in the Persian Gulf 315 Revolution in the Middle East 317

Society and Culture in the Contemporary Middle East 319

Varieties of Government: The Politics of Islam 319 The Economics of the Middle East: Oil and Sand 320 The Islamic Revival 322 Women in the Middle East 323 Literature and Art 324

Conclusion 325

Chapter Notes 326

Reflections Part IV 327

PAR T V THE NEW MILLENNIUM 329 16 THE CHALLENGE OF A NEW

MILLENNIUM 330

After the Cold War: The End of History? 331

Contemporary Capitalism and Its Discontents 331 Europe: Speed Bumps on the Road to Unity? 331 The United States: Capitalism Ascendant? 331 Asian Miracle or Asian Myth? 332 Eliminating World Poverty 332 From the Industrial to the Technological

Revolution 333

A Transvaluation of Values 334 The Family 334 Religion 334 Technology and Society 335 The Impact of Capitalism 336

DETAILED CONTENTS xi

One World, One Environment 336 Facing the Issue of Global Warming 337 The Population Debate 338

Global Village or Clash of Civilizations? 338 The Future of Liberal Democracy 339 Civilizations at War 339 Globalization: The Pros and the Cons 340

The Arts: Mirror of the Age 341 Chapter Notes 342

GLOSSARY 343

INDEX 348

xii DETAILED CONTENTS

D O C U M E N T S

C H A P T E R 1

DISCIPLINE IN THE NEW FACTORIES 8

ESCAPING THE DOLL’S HOUSE 10

THE CLASSLESS SOCIETY 18

THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 21

C H A P T E R 2

INDIAN IN BLOOD, ENGLISH IN TASTE AND INTELLECT 32

TRAGEDY AT CAFFARD COVE 38

C H A P T E R 3

AN APPEAL FOR CHANGE IN CHINA 52

PROGRAM FOR A NEW CHINA 56

C H A P T E R 4

ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS! 83

C H A P T E R 5

THE DILEMMA OF THE INTELLECTUAL 97

A CALL FOR REVOLT 111

C H A P T E R 6

JAPAN’S PLAN FOR ASIA 136

C H A P T E R 7

THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE 151

A PLEA FOR PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE 162

C H A P T E R 8

“I HAVE A DREAM” 172

C H A P T E R 9

KHRUSHCHEV DENOUNCES STALIN 194

THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF SOVIET CITIZENS 196

THE BREZHNEV DOCTRINE 200

C H A P T E R 1 0

THE TRABI LIVES! 217

MARGARET THATCHER: ENTERING A MAN’S WORLD 218

TOWARD A UNITED EUROPE 223

C H A P T E R 1 1

GROWING UP IN JAPAN 238

RETURN TO THE MOTHERLAND 246

C H A P T E R 1 2

LAND REFORM IN ACTION 254

LOVE AND MARRIAGE IN CHINA 266

C H A P T E R 1 3

SAY NO TO MCDONALD’S AND KFC! 278

THE GOLDEN THROAT OF PRESIDENT SUKARNO 284

C H A P T E R 1 4

STEALING THE NATION’S RICHES 295

MEETING THE CHALLENGES OF INDEPENDENCE 298

C H A P T E R 1 5

THE ARAB CASE FOR PALESTINE 310

I ACCUSE! 318

ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY 321

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M A P S

MAP 1.1 The Industrial Regions of Europe at the End of the Nineteenth Century 4

MAP 1.2 Europe in 1871 12

MAP 2.1 India Under British Rule, 1805–1931 31

MAP 2.2 Colonial Southeast Asia 34

SPOT MAP The Spread of Islam in Africa 37

SPOT MAP The Suez Canal 39

MAP 2.3 Africa in 1914 41

MAP 2.4 The Struggle for Southern Africa 42

MAP 3.1 The Qing Empire 48

SPOT MAP Area Under Taiping Rebellion Control 51

MAP 3.2 Foreign Possessions and Spheres of Influence About 1900 54

MAP 3.3 Japanese Overseas Expansion During the Meiji Era 62

MAP 4.1 Europe in 1914 71

MAP 4.2 World War I, 1914–1918 74

MAP 4.3 Territorial Changes in Europe and the Middle East After World War I 81

SPOT MAP British India Between the Wars 98

SPOT MAP The Middle East in 1923 101

MAP 5.1 The Northern Expedition and the Long March 110

MAP 5.2 Latin America in the First Half of the Twentieth Century 117

SPOT MAP Central Europe in 1939 127

SPOT MAP Japanese Advances into China, 1931–1939 129

MAP 6.1 World War II in Europe and North Africa 132

MAP 6.2 World War II in Asia and the Pacific 135

SPOT MAP Eastern Europe in 1948 149

MAP 7.1 The New European Alliance Systems During the Cold War 153

MAP 7.2 The Chinese Civil War 155

SPOT MAP The Korean Peninsula 157

SPOT MAP Indochina After 1954 158

MAP 7.3 The Global Cold War 159

SPOT MAP South America 181

MAP 9.1 The Soviet Union 191

MAP 9.2 Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union 205

MAP 10.1 Territorial Changes in Europe After World War II 212

MAP 10.2 European Union, 2013 220

MAP 11.1 Modern Japan 233

SPOT MAP Modern Taiwan 239

SPOT MAP The Korean Peninsula Since 1953 242

SPOT MAP The Republic of Singapore 244

SPOT MAP Hong Kong 245

MAP 12.1 The People’s Republic of China 260

MAP 13.1 Contemporary South Asia 274

MAP 13.2 Contemporary Southeast Asia 283

MAP 14.1 Contemporary Africa 293

MAP 15.1 Israel and Its Neighbors 312

SPOT MAP Iran 313

MAP 15.2 The Modern Middle East 316

SPOT MAP Afghanistan 317

SPOT MAP Iraq 317

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F E A T U R E S

FILM & HISTORY Khartoum (1966) 40

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 78

Gandhi (1982) 100

Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) 141

The Missiles of October (1973) 161

The Lives of Others (2006) 216

The Last Emperor (1987) 256

The Year of Living Dangerously (1983) 285

Persepolis (2007) 315

OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS White Man’s Burden, Black Man’s Sorrow 29

Two Views of the World 63

“You Have to Bear the Responsibility for War or Peace” 73

The Excitement and the Reality of War 76

Islam in the Modern World: Two Views 104

The Munich Conference 128

Confrontation in Southeast Asia 163

Students Appeal for Democracy 259

Two Visions for India 273

Africa: Dark Continent or Radiant Land? 305

P R E F A C E

T H E T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y was an era of paradox. When it began, Western civilization was an emerging powerhouse that bestrode the world like a colossus. Inter- nally, however, the continent of Europe was a patchwork of squabbling states that within a period of less than three decades engaged in two bitter internecine wars that threat- ened to obliterate two centuries of human progress. As the century came to an end, the Western world had become prosperous and increasingly united, yet there were clear signs that global economic and political hegemony was be- ginning to shift to the East. In the minds of many observ- ers, the era of Western dominance had come to a close.

In other ways as well, the twentieth century was marked by countervailing trends. While parts of the world experienced rapid industrial growth and increasing eco- nomic prosperity, other regions were still mired in abject poverty. The century’s final decades were characterized by a growing awareness of not only global interdepen- dence, but also burgeoning ethnic and national conscious- ness; the period witnessed both the rising power of science and fervent religiosity and growing doubts about the impact of technology on the human experience. As the closing chapters of this book indicate, these trends have continued and even intensified in the decade that has ensued since the advent of the new millennium.

Contemporary World History (formerly titled Twentieth- Century World History) attempts to chronicle the key events in this revolutionary century and its aftermath while seeking to throw light on some of the underlying issues that shaped the times. Did the beginning of a new millennium indeed mark the end of the long period of Western dominance? If so, will recent decades of Euro- pean and American superiority be followed by a “Pacific century,” with economic and political power shifting to the nations of eastern Asia? Will the end of the Cold War eventually lead to a “new world order” marked by global cooperation, or are we now entering an unstable era of ethnic and national conflict? Why has a time of unparal- leled prosperity and technological advance been accompa- nied by deep pockets of poverty and widespread doubts about the role of government and the capabilities of human reason? Although this book does not promise final answers to such questions, it seeks to provide a frame- work for analysis and a better understanding of some of the salient issues of modern times.

Any author who seeks to encompass in a single vol- ume the history of our turbulent times faces some impor- tant choices. First, should the book be arranged in strict chronological order, or should separate chapters focus on individual cultures and societies in order to place greater emphasis on the course of events taking place in different regions of the world? In this book, I have sought to achieve a balance between a global and a regional approach. I accept the commonplace observation that the world we live in is increasingly interdependent in terms of economics as well as culture and communications. Yet the inescapable reality is that this process of globalization is at best a work in progress, as ethnic, religious, and re- gional differences continue to proliferate and to shape the course of our times. To many observers around the world, the oft-predicted inevitable victory of the demo- cratic capitalist way of life is by no means a preordained vision of the future of the human experience. In fact, in- fluential figures in many countries, from China to Russia and the Middle East, emphatically deny that the forces of globalization will inevitably lead to the worldwide adop- tion of the Western model.

This issue has practical observations as well. College students today are often not well informed about the dis- tinctive character of civilizations such as China, India, and sub-Saharan Africa. Without sufficient exposure to the his- torical evolution of such societies, students will assume all too readily that the peoples in these countries have had historical experiences similar to their own and react to various stimuli in a fashion similar to those living in west- ern Europe or the United States. If it is a mistake to ignore the forces that link us together, it is equally errone- ous to underestimate the factors that divide us.

Balancing the global and regional perspectives means that some chapters focus on issues that have a global impact, such as the Industrial Revolution, the era of impe- rialism, and the two world wars. Others center on individ- ual regions of the world, while singling out contrasts and comparisons that link them to the broader world commu- nity. The book is divided into five parts. The first four parts are each followed by a short section labeled “Reflections,” which attempts to link events in a broad comparative and global framework. The chapter in the fifth and final part examines some of the common prob- lems of our time—including environmental pollution, the

xvi

population explosion, and spiritual malaise—and takes a cautious look into the future to explore how such issues will evolve in the twenty-first century.

Another issue that has recently attracted widespread discussion and debate among historians is how to balance the treatment of Western civilization with other parts of the world. The modern world has traditionally been viewed essentially as the history of Europe and the United States, with other regions treated as mere appendages of the industrial countries. It is certainly true that much of the twentieth century was dominated by events that were initiated in Europe and North America, and in recognition of this fact, the opening chapters in this book focus on the Industrial Revolution and the age of imperialism, both issues related to the rise of the West in the modern world. In recent decades, however, other parts of the world have assumed greater importance, thus restoring a global balance that had existed prior to the scientific and techno- logical revolution that transformed the West in the eigh- teenth and nineteenth centuries. Later chapters examine this phenomenon in more detail, according to regions such as Africa, Asia, and Latin America the importance that they merit today.

In sum, this sixth edition of Contemporary World History seeks to present a balanced treatment of the most impor- tant political, economic, social, and cultural events of the modern era within an integrated and chronologically or- dered synthesis. In my judgment, a strong narrative, link- ing key issues in a broad interpretive framework, is still the most effective way to present the story of the past to young minds.

To supplement the text, I have included a number of boxed documents that illustrate key issues within each chapter. A new feature, Opposing Viewpoints, presents a comparison of two or more primary sources to facilitate stu- dent analysis of historical documents, including examples such as “Islam in the Modern World: Two Views” (Chapter 5), “Two Visions for India” (Chapter 13), and “Africa: Dark Continent or Radiant Land?” (Chapter 14). Film & History features present a brief analysis of the plot as well as the his- torical significance, value, and accuracy of nine films, includ- ing such movies as Khartoum (1966), Gandhi (1982), The Last Emperor (1987), The Lives of Others (2006), and Persepolis (2007). Extensive maps and illustrations, each positioned at the appropriate place in the chapter, serve to deepen the reader’s understanding of the text. “Spot maps” provide details not visible in the larger maps. Suggested Readings, now available on the companion website, review the most recent literature on each period while referring also to some of the older “classic” works in the field.

The following supplements are available to accompany this text.

Instructor Resources Online PowerLecture with Cogn eroVR [ I S B N : 9 7 8 1 2 8 5 4 5 8 2 1 2 ] This PowerLecture is an all-in-one online multimedia resource for class preparation, presenta- tion, and testing. It is accessible through Cengage.com/ login with your faculty account. There you will find avail- able for download: book-specific MicrosoftVR PowerPointVR presentations; a Test Bank in both MicrosoftVR WordVR and CogneroVR formats; an Instructor’s Manual; MicrosoftVR PowerPointVR Image Slides; and a JPEG Image Library.

The Test Bank, offered in MicrosoftVR WordVR and CogneroVR formats, contains multiple-choice and essay questions for each chapter. CogneroVR is a flexible online system that allows you to author, edit, and manage test bank content for Contemporary World History, 6e. Create multiple test versions instantly and deliver through your LMS from your classroom, or wherever you may be, with no special installs or downloads required.

The Instructor’s Manual contains the following for each chapter: an outline, discussion questions, learning objectives, lecture launching suggestions, suggested stu- dent projects, essay topics, and Web resources.

The MicrosoftVR PowerPointVR presentations are ready- to-use, visual outlines of each chapter. These presenta- tions are easily customized for your lectures and offered along with chapter-specific MicrosoftVR PowerPointVR Image Slides and JPEG Image Libraries. Access your Online PowerLecture at www.cengage.com/login.

Comp an ion S it e [ I S B N : 9 7 8 1 2 8 5 4 5 8 2 2 9 ] This web- site for instructors features all of the free student assets, plus an Instructor’s Resource Manual (instructional objec- tives, chapter outlines, discussion questions, suggested lec- ture topics, suggested paper topics, and related Internet resources) and PowerPointVR presentations (lecture out- lines, images, and maps).

CourseReader CourseReader is an online collection of primary and secondary sources that lets you create a cus- tomized electronic reader in minutes. With an easy-to-use interface and assessment tool, you can choose exactly what your students will be assigned—simply search or browse Cengage Learning’s extensive document database to pre- view and select your customized collection of readings. In addition to print sources of all types (letters, diary entries, speeches, newspaper accounts, etc.), the collection includes a growing number of images and video and audio clips.

Each primary source document includes a descriptive headnote that puts the reading into context and is further supported by both critical thinking and multiple-choice questions designed to reinforce key points. For more in- formation visit www.cengage.com/coursereader.

PREFACE xvii

Cengagebrain.com Save your students time and money. Direct them to www.cengagebrain.com for a choice in formats and savings and a better chance to suc- ceed in your class. Cengagebrain.com, Cengage Learning’s online store, is a single destination for more than 10,000 new textbooks, eTextbooks, eChapters, study tools, and audio supplements. Students have the freedom to pur- chase �a la carte exactly what they need when they need it. Students can save 50 percent on the electronic text- book and can pay as little as $1.99 for an individual eChapter.

Student Resources Book Companion Site [ I S B N : 9 7 8 1 2 8 5 4 5 8 2 2 9 ] This website provides a variety of resources to help you review for class. These study tools include a glossary, crossword puzzles, short quizzes, essay questions, critical thinking questions, and primary sources.

Doing History : Research and Writ ing in the Digital Age, 2e [ I S B N : 9 7 8 1 1 3 3 5 8 7 8 8 0 ] Prepared by Michael J. Galgano, J. Chris Arndt, and Raymond M. Hyser of James Madison University. Whether you’re starting down the path as a history major, or simply looking for a straightforward and systematic guide to writing a success- ful paper, you’ll find this text to be an indispensable hand- book to historical research. This text’s “soup to nuts” approach to researching and writing about history addresses every step of the process, from locating your sources and gathering information, to writing clearly and making proper use of various citation styles to avoid pla- giarism. You’ll also learn how to make the most of every tool available to you—especially the technology that helps you conduct the process efficiently and effectively. The second edition includes a special appendix linked to CourseReader (see above), where you can examine and interpret primary sources online.

The History Handbook, 2e [ I S B N : 9 7 8 0 4 9 5 9 0 6 7 6 6 ] Prepared by Carol Berkin of Baruch College, City University of New York, and Betty Ander- son of Boston University. This book teaches students both basic and history-specific study skills such as how to take notes, get the most out of lectures and readings, read pri- mary sources, research historical topics, and correctly cite sources. Substantially less expensive than comparable skill-building texts, The History Handbook also offers tips for Internet research and evaluating online sources.

Additionally, students can purchase and download the eAudio version of The History Handbook or any of its eigh- teen individual units at www.cengagebrain.com to listen to on the go.

Writing for Coll ege History, 1e [ I S B N : 9 7 8 0 6 1 8 3 0 6 0 3 9 ] Prepared by Robert M. Frakes, Clar- ion University. This brief handbook for survey courses in American history, Western civilization/European history, and world civilization guides students through the various types of writing assignments they encounter in a history class. Providing examples of student writing and candid assessments of student work, this text focuses on the rules and conventions of writing for the college history course.

The Modern Researcher, 6e [ I S B N : 9 7 8 0 4 9 5 3 1 8 7 0 5 ] Prepared by Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graff of Columbia University. This classic intro- duction to the techniques of research and the art of expression is used widely in history courses, but is also appropriate for writing and research methods courses in other departments. Barzun and Graff thoroughly cover ev- ery aspect of research, from the selection of a topic through the gathering, analysis, writing, revision, and publication of findings. They present the process not as a set of rules but through actual cases that put the subtleties of research in a useful context. Part One covers the princi- ples and methods of research; Part Two covers writing, speaking, and getting one’s work published.

Ra nd McN ally Historical At la s of t he World , 2e [ I S B N : 9 7 8 0 6 1 8 8 4 1 9 1 2 ] This valuable resource fea- tures more than seventy maps that portray the rich pano- ply of the world’s history from preliterate times to the present. They show how cultures and civilization were linked and how they interacted. The maps make it clear that history is not static. Rather, it is about change and movement across time. The maps show change by pre- senting the dynamics of expansion, cooperation, and con- flict. This atlas includes maps showing the world from the beginning of civilization; the political development of all major areas of the world; extensive coverage of Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East; the current Islamic world; and the world population change in 1900 and 2000.

Custom Options Nobody knows your students like you, so why not give them a text that is tailor-fit to their needs? Cengage Learn- ing offers custom solutions for your course—whether it’s making a small modification to Contemporary World His- tory, 6e to match your syllabus or combining multiple sources to create something truly unique. You can pick and choose chapters, include your own material, and add additional map exercises along with the Rand McNally Atlas to create a text that fits the way you teach. Ensure that your students get the most out of their textbook dol- lar by giving them exactly what they need. Contact your

xviii PREFACE

Cengage Learning representative to explore custom solu- tions for your course.

Acknowledgments I would like to express my appreciation to the reviewers who have read individual chapters and provided useful suggestions for improvement on this edition: Marjorie Berman, Red Rocks Community College; Elizabeth Clark, West Texas A&M University; Margaret B. Denning, Slip- pery Rock University; Hayley Froysland, Indiana Univer- sity, South Bend; Irwin Halfond, McKendree University; Eduardo Magalhaes, Simpson College; and Jeffrey Martin- son, Meredith College.

Jackson Spielvogel, coauthor of our textbook World His- tory, was kind enough to permit me to use some of his sec- tions in that book for the purposes of writing this one. Several of my other colleagues at Penn State—including Kumkum Chatterjee, E-tu Zen Sun, On-cho Ng, and Arthur F. Goldschmidt—have provided me with valuable assistance in understanding parts of the world that are beyond my own area of concentration. Ian Bell, Carol Cof- fin, Ruth Petzold, and my daughter Claire L. Duiker have

provided useful illustrations, while Dale and Jan Peterson have been stimulating travel companions and a steady source of useful books and news items. I have also bene- fited from Nan Johnson’s broad understanding of the growth of the women’s movement in the United States. To Clark Baxter, whose unfailing good humor, patience, and sage advice have so often eased the trauma of text- book publishing, I offer my heartfelt thanks. I am also grateful to Brooke Barbier, product manager, Margaret McAndrew Beasley, senior development editor, and Jane Lee, senior content project manager, for their assistance in bringing this project to fruition, and to John Orr of Orr Book Services, Chris Schoedel of Cenveo Publisher Ser- vices, and Pat Lewis, copyeditor, for production services.

Finally, I am eternally grateful to my wife, Yvonne V. Duiker, Ph.D. Her research and her written contributions on art, architecture, literature, and music have added spar- kle to this book. Her presence at my side has added immeasurable sparkle to my life.

William J. Duiker The Pennsylvania State University

PREFACE xix

P A R TP A R T I

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The Rise of Industrial Society in the West

T H E T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y was a turbulent era, marked by two violent global conflicts, a bitter ideological struggle between two dominant world powers, explosive developments in the realm of science, and dramatic social change. When the century began, the vast majority of the world’s peoples lived on farms, and the horse was still the most common means of transportation. By its end, human beings had trod on the moon and lived in a world increasingly defined by urban sprawl and modern technology.

What had happened to bring about these momentous changes? Although a world as complex as ours cannot be assigned a single cause, a good candidate for consideration is the Industrial Revolution, which began on the British Isles at the end of the eighteenth century and spread steadily throughout the world during the next two hundred years. The Industrial Revolution was unquestionably one of the most important factors in laying the foundation of the modern world. It not only transformed the economic means of production and distribution, but also altered the political systems, the social institutions and values, and the intellectual and cultural life of all the societies that it touched. The impact has been both massive and controversial. While proponents have stressed the enormous material and technological benefits that industrialization has brought, critics have pointed out the high costs involved, from growing economic inequality and environmental pollution to the dehumanization of everyday life. Already in the nineteenth century, the German philosopher Karl Marx charged that factory labor had reduced workers to a mere

“appendage of the machine,” and the English novelist Charles Dickens wrote about an urban environment of factories, smoke, and ashes that seemed an apparition from Dante’s Hell.

C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G

Q What factors appear to explain why GreatBritain was the first nation to enter the industrial age?

The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain Why the Industrial Revolution occurred first in Great Brit- ain rather than in another part of the world has been a subject for debate among historians for many decades. Some observers point to cultural factors, such as the Prot- estant “work ethic” that predisposed British citizens to risk taking and the belief that material rewards in this world were a sign of heavenly salvation to come.

Others point out more tangible factors that contributed to the rapid transformation of eighteenth-century British society from a predominantly agricultural to an industrial and commercial economy. First, improvements in agricul- ture during the eighteenth century had led to a significant increase in food production. British agriculture could now feed more people at lower prices with less labor; even

Sheffield became one of England’s greatest manufacturing cities during the nineteenth century.

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ordinary British families no longer had to use most of their income to buy food, giving them the potential to purchase manufactured goods. At the same time, a rapidly growing population in the second half of the eighteenth century provided a pool of surplus labor for the new fac- tories of the emerging British industrial sector.

Another factor that played a role in promoting the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain was the rapid increase in national wealth. Two centuries of expanding trade had provided Britain with a ready supply of capital for investment in the new industrial machines and the fac- tories that were required to house them. As the historian Kenneth Pomeranz has recently pointed out, it was the country’s access to cheap materials from other parts of the world—notably from Asia and the Americas—that pro- vided the assets that fueled Britain’s entrance into the industrial age (see Chapter 2).1

In addition to profits from trade, Britain possessed an effective central bank and well-developed, flexible credit facilities. Many early factory owners were merchants and entrepreneurs who had profited from the eighteenth- century cottage industry. The country also possessed what might today be described as a “modernization elite”—individuals who were interested in making profits if the opportunity presented itself. In that objective, they were generally supported by the government.

Moreover, Britain was richly supplied with important mineral resources, such as coal and iron ore, needed in the manufacturing process. Britain was also a small coun- try and the relatively short distances made transportation facilities readily accessible. In addition to nature’s provi- sion of abundant rivers, from the mid-seventeenth century onward, both private and public investment poured into the construction of new roads, bridges, and canals. By 1780, roads, rivers, and canals linked the major industrial centers of the north, the Midlands, London, and the Atlan- tic coast.

During the last decades of the eighteenth century, tech- nological innovations, including the flying shuttle, the spin- ning jenny, and the power loom, led to a significant increase in textile production. The cotton textile industry—fueled by the import of cheap cotton fibers from Britain’s growing empire in South Asia—achieved even greater heights of pro- ductivity with the invention of the steam engine, which proved invaluable to Britain’s Industrial Revolution. The steam engine was a tireless source of power and depended for fuel on a substance—namely, coal—that seemed then to be available in unlimited quantities. The success of the steam engine increased the demand for coal and led to an expansion in coal production. In turn, new processes using coal furthered the development of an iron industry, the pro- duction of machinery, and the invention of the railroad.

The Spread of the Industrial Revolution By the turn of the nineteenth century, industrialization had begun to spread to the continent of Europe, where it took a different path than had been followed in Great Britain (see Map 1.1). Governments on the Continent were accustomed to playing a major role in economic affairs and continued to do so as the Industrial Revolution got under way, subsidiz- ing inventors, providing incentives to factory owners, and improving the transportation network. By 1850, a network of iron rails (described by the French novelist �Emile Zola as a “monstrous great steel skeleton”) had spread across much of western and central Europe, while water routes were improved by the deepening and widening of rivers and canals.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, the United States experienced the first stages of its industrial revolution in the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1800, America was still a pre- dominantly agrarian society, as six out of every seven work- ers were farmers. Sixty years later, only half of all workers were farmers, while the total population had grown from 5 to 30 million people, larger than Great Britain itself.

The initial application of machinery to production was accomplished by borrowing from Great Britain. Soon, however, Americans began to equal or surpass British tech- nical achievements. The Harpers Ferry arsenal, for exam- ple, built muskets with interchangeable parts. Because all the individual parts of a musket were identical (for exam- ple, all triggers were the same), the final product could be put together quickly and easily; this innovation enabled Americans to avoid the more costly system in which skilled craftsmen fitted together individual parts made separately. The so-called American system reduced costs and revolu- tionized production by saving labor, an important consid- eration in a society that had few skilled artisans.

Unlike Britain, the United States was a large country, and the lack of a good system of internal transportation ini- tially seemed to limit American economic development by making the transport of goods prohibitively expensive. This difficulty was gradually remedied, however. Thousands of miles of roads and canals were built linking east and west. The steamboat facilitated transportation on rivers and the Great Lakes and in Atlantic coastal waters. Most important of all in the development of an American transportation system was the railroad. Beginning with 100 miles in 1830, more than 27,000 miles of railroad track were laid in the next thirty years. This transportation revolution turned the United States into a single massive market for the manufac- tured goods of the Northeast, the early center of American industrialization, and by 1860, the United States was well on its way to being an industrial nation.

The Spread of the Industrial Revolution 3

New Products and New Patterns During the fifty years before the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Western world witnessed a dynamic age of material prosperity. Thanks to new industries, new sour- ces of energy, and new technological achievements, a sec- ond stage of the Industrial Revolution transformed the human environment and led people to believe that their

material progress would improve world conditions and solve all human problems.

The first major change in industrial development af- ter 1870 was the substitution of steel for iron. Steel, an alloy stronger and more malleable than iron, soon became an essential component of the Industrial Revolu- tion. New methods for rolling and shaping steel made it useful in the construction of lighter, smaller, and faster

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MAP 1.1 The Industrial Regions of Europe at the End of the Nineteenth Century. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution—in steelmaking, electricity, petroleum, and chemicals—had spurred substantial economic growth and prosperity in western and central Europe; it had also sparked economic and political competition between Great Britain and Germany.

Which parts of Europe became industrialized most quckly in the nineteenth century? Why do you think this was?

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4 CHAPTER 1 The Rise of Industrial Society in the West

machines and engines as well as for railways, shipbuild- ing, and armaments. It also paved the way for the build- ing of the first skyscrapers, a development that would eventually transform the skylines of the cities of the West. In 1860, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Bel- gium produced 125,000 tons of steel; by 1913, the total was 32 million tons.

THE INVENTION OF ELECTRICITY Electricity was a major new form of energy that proved to be of great value since it moved relatively effortlessly through space by means of transmitting wires. The first commercially practical generators of electric current were not developed

until the 1870s. By 1910, hydroelectric power stations and coal-fired steam-generating plants enabled entire districts to be tied into a single power distribution system that pro- vided a common source of power for homes, shops, and industrial enterprises.

Electricity spawned a whole series of new products. The invention of the incandescent filament lamp opened homes and cities to illumination by electric lights. Although most electricity was initially used for lighting, it was eventually put to use in transportation. By the 1880s, streetcars and subways had appeared in major European cities. Electricity also transformed the factory. Conveyor belts, cranes, machines, and machine tools could all be powered by elec- tricity and located anywhere. Meanwhile, a revolution in communications ensued when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876 and Guglielmo Marconi sent the first radio waves across the Atlantic in 1901.

THE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE The develop- ment of the internal combustion engine had a similar effect. The processing of liquid fuels—petroleum and its distilled derivatives—made possible the widespread use of the internal combustion engine as a source of power in transportation. An oil-fired engine was made in 1897, and by 1902, the Hamburg-Amerika Line had switched from coal to oil on its new ocean liners. By the beginning of the twentieth century, some naval fleets had been con- verted to oil burners as well.

The internal combustion engine gave rise to the auto- mobile and the airplane. In 1900, world production, ini- tially led by the French, stood at 9,000 cars, but by 1906, Americans had taken the lead. It was an American, Henry Ford, who revolutionized the automotive industry with the mass production of the Model T. By 1916, Ford’s fac- tories were producing 735,000 cars a year. In the mean- time, air transportation had emerged with the Zeppelin airship in 1900. In 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright brothers made the first flight in a fixed-wing plane powered by a gasoline engine. World War I stimu- lated the aircraft industry, and in 1919 the first regular pas- senger air service was established.

TRADE AND MANUFACTURING The growth of indus- trial production depended on the development of markets for the sale of manufactured goods. Competition for for- eign markets was keen, and by 1870, European countries were increasingly compelled to focus on promoting domestic demand. Between 1850 and 1900, real wages increased in Britain by two-thirds and in Germany by one- third. A decline in the cost of food combined with lower prices for manufactured goods because of reduced pro- duction and transportation costs made it easier for Euro- peans to buy consumer products. In the cities, new

The Colossus of Paris. When it was completed for the Paris World’s Fair in 1889, the Eiffel Tower became, at 1,056 feet, the tallest human-made monument in the world. The colossus, which seemed to be rising from the shadows of the city’s feudal past like some new technological giant, symbolized the triumph of the Industrial Revolution and machine-age capitalism, proclaiming the dawn of a new era of endless possibilities and power. Constructed of wrought iron with more than 2.5 million rivet holes, the structure was completed in two years and was paid for entirely by the builder himself, the engineer Gustave Eiffel. From the outset, the monument was wildly popular. Nearly 2 million people lined up at the fair to visit this gravity-defying marvel.

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methods for retail distribution—in particular, the depart- ment store—were used to expand sales of a whole new range of consumer goods made possible by the develop- ment of the steel and electric industries. The desire to own sewing machines, clocks, bicycles, electric lights, and typewriters generated a new consumer ethic that has since become a crucial part of the modern economy.

Meanwhile, increased competition for foreign markets and the growing importance of domestic demand led to a reaction against the free trade that had characterized the European economy between 1820 and 1870. By the 1870s, Europeans were returning to the use of protective tariffs to guarantee domestic markets for the products of their own industries. At the same time, cartels were being formed to decrease competition internally. In a cartel, in- dependent enterprises worked together to control prices and fix production quotas, thereby restraining the kind of competition that led to reduced prices. The Rhenish- Westphalian Coal Syndicate, founded in 1893, controlled 98 percent of Germany’s coal production by 1904.

The formation of cartels was paralleled by a move to- ward larger and more efficient manufacturing plants, espe- cially in the iron and steel, machinery, heavy electric equipment, and chemical industries. The result was a desire to streamline or rationalize production as much as possible. The development of precision tools enabled man- ufacturers to produce interchangeable parts, which in turn led to the creation of the assembly line for production.

By 1900, much of western and central Europe had entered a new era, characterized by rising industrial pro- duction and material prosperity. With its capital, indus- tries, and military might, the region dominated the world economy. Eastern and southern Europe, however, was still largely agricultural and relegated by the industrialized countries to providing food and raw materials. The pres- ence of Romanian oil, Greek olive oil, and Serbian pigs and prunes in western Europe served as reminders of an economic division in Europe that continued well into the twentieth century.

The Emergence of a Mass Society The new world created by the Industrial Revolution led to the emergence of a mass society in western Europe and the United States by the end of the nineteenth century. A mass society meant new forms of expression for the lower classes as they benefited from the extension of voting rights, an improved standard of living, and compulsory el- ementary education. But there was a price to pay. Urban- ization and rapid population growth led to overcrowding

in the burgeoning cities and increasing public health prob- lems. As the number and size of cities continued to mush- room, by the 1880s governments came to the reluctant conclusion that private enterprise could not solve the housing crisis. In 1890, a British law empowered local town councils to construct cheap housing for the working classes. Similar activity had been set in motion in Germany by 1900. In general, however, such measures failed to do much to meet the real housing needs of the working classes. Nevertheless, the need for planning had been rec- ognized, and in the 1920s, municipal governments moved into housing construction on a large scale. More and more, governments were stepping into areas of social en- gineering that they would never have touched earlier.

Social Structures At the top of European society stood a wealthy elite, con- stituting only 5 percent of the population but controlling between 30 and 40 percent of its wealth. This privileged minority was an amalgamation of the traditional landed aristocracy that had dominated European society for cen- turies and the emerging upper middle class, sometimes called the bourgeoisie (literally “burghers” or “city peo- ple”). In the course of the nineteenth century, aristocrats coalesced with the most successful industrialists, bankers, and merchants to form a new elite.

Increasingly, aristocrats and the affluent bourgeoisie fused as the latter purchased landed estates to join the aristocrats in the pleasures of country living, while the aristocrats bought lavish town houses for part-time urban life. Common bonds were also created when the sons of wealthy bourgeois families were admitted to the elite schools dominated by the children of the aristocracy. This educated elite assumed leadership roles in the govern- ment and the armed forces. Marriage also served to unite the two groups. Daughters of tycoons gained titles, and aristocratic heirs gained new sources of cash. When the American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt married the duke of Marlborough, the new duchess brought £2 million (approximately $10 million) to her husband.

A NEW MIDDLE CLASS Below the upper class was a mid- dle level of the bourgeoisie that included professionals in law, medicine, and the civil service as well as moderately well-to-do industrialists and merchants. The industrial expansion of the nineteenth century also added new voca- tions to Western society such as business managers, office workers, engineers, architects, accountants, and chemists, who formed professional associations as the symbols of their newfound importance. At the lower end of the mid- dle class were the small shopkeepers, traders, manufac- turers, and prosperous peasants. Their chief preoccupation

6 CHAPTER 1 The Rise of Industrial Society in the West

was the provision of goods and services for the classes above them.

The moderately prosperous and successful members of this new mass society shared a certain style of life, one whose values tended to dominate much of nineteenth- century society. They were especially active in preaching their worldview to their children and to the upper and lower classes of their society. This was especially evident in Victorian Britain, often considered a model of middle-class society. It was the European middle classes who accepted and promulgated the importance of progress and science. They believed in hard work, which they viewed as the pri- mary human good, open to everyone and guaranteed to have positive results. They also believed in the good con- duct associated with traditional Christian morality.

Such values were often scorned at the time by members of the economic and intellectual elite, and in later years, it became commonplace for observers to mock the Victorian era—the years of the long reign of Queen Victoria (r. 1837–1901) in Great Britain—for its vulgar materialism, cultural philistinism, and conformist values. As the historian Peter Gay has recently shown, however, this harsh portrayal of the “bourgeois” character of the age distorts the reality of an era of complexity and contradiction, with diverse forces interacting to lay the foundations of the modern world.2

THE WORKING CLASS The working classes constituted almost 80 percent of the population of Europe. In rural areas, many of these people were landholding peasants, agricultural laborers, and sharecroppers, especially in east- ern Europe. Only about 10 percent of the British popula- tion worked in agriculture, however; in Germany, the figure was 25 percent.

There was no homogeneous urban working class. At the top were skilled artisans in such traditional handicraft trades as cabinetmaking, printing, and jewelry making. The Industrial Revolution also brought new entrants into the group of highly skilled workers, including machine-tool specialists, shipbuilders, and metalworkers. Many skilled workers attempted to pattern themselves after the middle class by seeking good housing and educating their children.

Semiskilled laborers, including such people as carpen- ters, bricklayers, and many factory workers, earned wages that were about two-thirds of those of highly skilled work- ers (see the box on p. 8). At the bottom of the hierarchy stood the largest group of workers, the unskilled laborers. They included day laborers, who worked irregularly for very low wages, and large numbers of domestic servants. One of every seven employed persons in Great Britain in 1900 was a domestic servant.

Urban workers did experience a betterment in the ma- terial conditions of their lives after 1870. A rise in real

wages, accompanied by a decline in many consumer costs, especially in the 1880s and 1890s, made it possible for workers to buy more than just food and housing. Work- ers’ budgets now included money for more clothes and even leisure at the same time that strikes and labor agita- tion were winning ten-hour days and Saturday afternoons off. The combination of more income and more free time produced whole new patterns of mass leisure.

Among the least attractive aspects of the era, however, was the widespread practice of child labor. Working con- ditions for underage workers were often abysmal. Accord- ing to a report commissioned in 1832 to inquire into the conditions for child factory workers in Great Britain, chil- dren as young as six years of age began work before dawn. Those who were drowsy or fell asleep were tapped on the head, doused with cold water, strapped to a chair, or flogged with a stick. Another commission convened in the 1840s described conditions for underage workers in the coal mines as follows: “Chained, belted, harnessed like dogs in a go-cart, black, saturated with wet, and more than half naked—crawling upon their hands and feet, and dragging their heavy loads behind them—they present an appearance indescribably disgusting and unnatural.”3

Changing Roles for Women The position of women during the Industrial Revolution was also changing. During much of the nineteenth cen- tury, many women adhered to the ideal of femininity popularized by writers and poets. Tennyson’s poem The Princess expressed it well:

Man for the field and woman for the hearth: Man for the sword and for the needle she: Man with the head and woman with the heart: Man to command and woman to obey; All else confusion.

The reality was somewhat different. Under the impact of the Industrial Revolution, which created a wide variety of service and white-collar jobs, women began to accept employment as clerks, typists, secretaries, and salesclerks. Compulsory education opened the door to new opportu- nities in the teaching profession, and the expansion of hos- pital services enabled more women to find employment as nurses. In some countries in western Europe, women’s legal rights increased. Still, most women remained con- fined to their traditional roles of homemaking and child rearing. The less fortunate were compelled to undertake marginal work as domestic servants or as pieceworkers in sweatshops.

Paradoxically, however, employment in the new textile mills in the United States served as an effective means for young women in New England to escape their homes and

The Emergence of a Mass Society 7

establish an independent existence. As one female factory worker expressed it:

Despite the toil we all agree Out of the mill or in, Dependent on others we ne’er will be As long as we’re able to spin.4

Many of the improvements in women’s position occurred as a result of the rise of the first feminist

movements. Feminism in Europe had its origins in the social upheaval of the French Revolution, when some women advocated equality for women based on the doctrine of natural rights. In the 1830s, a number of women in the United States and Europe sought improvements for women by focusing on family and marriage law to strengthen the property rights of wives and enhance their ability to secure a divorce (see the box on p. 10). Later in the century, attention shifted to the issue of equal political rights. Many feminists

Discipline in the New Factories Workers in the new factories of the Industrial Revolution had been accustomed to a lifestyle free of overseers. Unlike the cottage industry, where home-based workers spun thread and wove cloth in their own rhythm and time, the factories demanded a new, rigorous discipline geared to the requirements and operating hours of the machines. This selection is taken from a set of rules for a factory in Berlin in 1844. They were typical of company rules everywhere the factory system had been established.

Factory Rules, Foundry and Engineering Works, Royal Overseas Trading Company In every large works, and in the coordination of any large number of workmen, good order and harmony must be looked upon as the fundamentals of success, and therefore the following rules shall be strictly observed.

1. The normal working day begins at all seasons at 6 A.M. precisely and ends, after the usual break of half an hour for breakfast, an hour for dinner, and half an hour for tea, at 7 P.M., and it shall be strictly observed. . . .

2. Workers arriving 2 minutes late shall lose half an hour’s wages; whoever is more than 2 minutes late may not start work until after the next break, or at least shall lose his wages until then. Any disputes about the correct time shall be settled by the clock mounted above the gatekeeper’s lodge. . . .

3. No workman, whether employed by time or piece, may leave before the end of the working day, with- out having first received permission from the over- seer and having given his name to the gatekeeper. Omission of these two actions shall lead to a fine of ten silver groschen payable to the sick fund.

4. Repeated irregular arrival at work shall lead to dis- missal. This shall also apply to those who are found idling by an official or overseer, and refused to obey their order to resume work. . . .

6. No worker may leave his place of work otherwise than for reasons connected with his work.

7. All conversation with fellow-workers is prohibited; if any worker requires information about his work, he must turn to the overseer, or to the particular fellow- worker designated for the purpose.

8. Smoking in the workshops or in the yard is prohib- ited during working hours; anyone caught smoking shall be fined five silver groschen for the sick fund for every such offense. . . .

10. Natural functions must be performed at the appropri- ate places, and whoever is found soiling walls, fences, squares, etc., and similarly, whoever is found wash- ing his face and hands in the workshop and not in the places assigned for the purpose, shall be fined five sil- ver groschen for the sick fund. . . .

12. It goes without saying that all overseers and officials of the firm shall be obeyed without question, and shall be treated with due deference. Disobedience will be punished by dismissal.

13. Immediate dismissal shall also be the fate of anyone found drunk in any of the workshops. . . .

14. Every workman is obliged to report to his superiors any acts of dishonesty or embezzlement on the part of his fellow workmen. If he omits to do so, and it is shown after subsequent discovery of a misdemeanor that he knew about it at the time, he shall be liable to be taken to court as an accessory after the fact and the wage due to him shall be retained as punishment.

Which, if any, of these regulations do you believe would be acceptable to employers and employees in today’s labor market? Why?

SOURCE: From Documents of European Economic History by Sidney Pollard and Colin Holmes (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1968). Copyright ª 1968 by S. Pollard and C. Holmes.

8 CHAPTER 1 The Rise of Industrial Society in the West

believed that the right to vote was the key to all other reforms to improve the position of women.

The British women’s movement was the most vocal and active in Europe, but it was divided over tactics. Mod- erates believed that women must demonstrate that they would use political power responsibly if they wanted Par- liament to grant them the right to vote. Another group, however, favored a more radical approach. In 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928) and her daughters, Christabel and Sylvia, founded the Women’s Social and Political Union, which enrolled mostly middle- and upper- class women. The members of Pankhurst’s organization realized the value of the media and used unusual publicity stunts to call attention to their insistence on winning women the right to vote and other demands. They pelted government officials with eggs, chained themselves to lampposts, smashed the windows of department stores on

fashionable shopping streets, burned railroad cars, and went on hunger strikes in jail.

Before World War I, demands for women’s rights were being heard throughout Europe and the United States, although only in Norway and a few American states as well as in Australia and New Zealand did women actually receive the right to vote before 1914. It would take the dramatic upheaval of World War I before male- dominated governments capitulated on this basic issue.

Reaction and Revolution: The Decline of the Old Order While the Industrial Revolution shook the economic and social foundations of European society, similar revolution- ary developments were reshaping the political map of the Continent. These developments were the product of a va- riety of factors, including not only the Industrial Revolu- tion itself but also the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. The influence of these new forces resulted in a redefinition of political conditions in Europe. The conser- vative order—based on the principle of hereditary mon- archy and the existence of great multinational states such as Russia, the Habsburg Empire, and the Ottoman Empire—had emerged intact from the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, but by mid- century, it had come under attack along a wide front. Arrayed against the conservative forces was a set of new political ideas that began to come into their own in the first half of the nineteenth century and continue to affect the entire world today.

Liberalism and Nationalism One of these new political ideas was liberalism. Liberal- ism owed much to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century and the American and French Revolutions that erupted at the end of that century, all of which pro- claimed the autonomy of the individual against the power of the state. Opinions diverged among people classified as liberals—many of them members of the emerging middle class—but all began with a common denominator, a con- viction that in both economic and political terms, people should be as free from restraint as possible. Economic liber- alism, also known as classical economics, was based on the tenet of laissez-faire—the belief that the state should not interfere in the free play of natural economic forces, espe- cially supply and demand. Political liberalism was based on the concept of a constitutional monarchy or constitutional state, with limits on the powers of government and a writ- ten charter to protect the basic civil rights of the people.

Cracks in the Glass Ceiling. Women were largely excluded from male-dominated educational institutions in the United States before 1900. Consequently, the demand for higher education for women led to the establishment of women’s colleges, as well as specialized institutes and medical schools. The Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in the city of Philadelphia was the world’s first medical school created specifically for women. In this 1911 photograph, we see an operation performed by women surgeons as they instruct their students in the latest medical techniques.

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Reaction and Revolution: The Decline of the Old Order 9

Escaping the Doll’s House Although a majority of women probably followed the nineteenth-century middle-class ideal of women as keepers of the household and nurturers of husband and children, an increasing number of women fought for the rights of women. This selection is taken from Act III of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879), in which the character Nora Helmer declares her independence from her husband’s control over her life.

Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House NORA: (Pause) Does anything strike you as we sit here? HELMER: What should strike me? NORA: We’ve been married eight years: does it not strike

you that this is the first time we two, you and I, man and wife, have talked together seriously?

HELMER: Seriously? What do you mean, seriously? NORA: For eight whole years, and more—ever since the

day we first met—we have never exchanged one serious word about serious things. . . .

HELMER: Why, my dearest Nora, what have you to do with serious things?

NORA: There we have it! You have never understood me. I’ve had great injustice done to me, Torvald; first by father, then by you.

HELMER: What! Your father and me? We, who have loved you more than all the world?

NORA: (Shaking her head) You have never loved me. You just found it amusing to think you were in love with me.

HELMER: Nora! What a thing to say! NORA: Yes, it’s true, Torvald. When I was living at home

with father, he told me his opinions and mine were the same. If I had different opinions, I said nothing about them, because he would not have liked it. He used to call me his doll-child and played with me as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house.

HELMER: What a way to speak of our marriage! NORA: (Undisturbed) I mean that I passed from father’s

hands into yours. You arranged everything to your taste and I got the same tastes as you; or pretended to—I don’t know which—both, perhaps: sometimes one, sometimes the other. When I look back on it now, I seem to have been living here like a beggar, on handouts. I lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald. But that was how you wanted it. You and father have done me a great wrong. It is your fault that my life has come to naught.

HELMER: Why, Nora, how unreasonable and ungrateful! Haven’t you been happy here?

NORA: No, never. I thought I was, but I never was. HELMER: Not—not happy! . . . NORA: I must stand quite alone if I am ever to know

myself and my surroundings; so I cannot stay with you. HELMER: Nora! Nora! NORA: I am going at once. I daresay [my friend] Christina

will take me in for tonight. HELMER: You are mad! I shall not allow it! I forbid it! NORA: It’s no use your forbidding me anything now.

I shall take with me only what belongs to me; from you I will accept nothing, either now or later.

HELMER: This is madness! NORA: Tomorrow I shall go home—I mean to what was

my home. It will be easier for me to find a job there. HELMER: Oh, in your blind inexperience— NORA: I must try to gain experience, Torvald. HELMER: Forsake your home, your husband, your children!

And you don’t consider what the world will say. NORA: I can’t pay attention to that. I only know that

I must do it. HELMER: This is monstrous! Can you forsake your holiest

duties? NORA: What do you consider my holiest duties? HELMER: Need I tell you that? Your duties to your

husband and children. NORA: I have other duties equally sacred. HELMER: Impossible! What do you mean? NORA: My duties toward myself. HELMER: Before all else you are a wife and a mother. NORA: That I no longer believe. Before all else I believe

I am a human being, just as much as you are—or at least that I should try to become one. I know that most people agree with you, Torvald, and that they say so in books. But I can no longer be satisfied with what most people say and what is in books. I must think things out for myself and try to get clear about them.

Why is Nora dissatisfied with her life in the “doll’s house”? What is her husband’s response?

SOURCE: From Wesley D. Camp, Roots of Western Civilization. Copyright ª 1988 McGraw-Hill Companies.

10 CHAPTER 1 The Rise of Industrial Society in the West

Nineteenth-century liberals, however, were not democrats in the modern sense. Although they held that people were entitled to equal civil rights, the right to vote and to hold office would be open only to men who met certain prop- erty qualifications.

Nationalism was an even more powerful ideology for change in the nineteenth century. The idea arose out of an awareness of being part of a community that had com- mon institutions, traditions, language, and customs. In some cases, that sense of identity was based on shared ethnic or linguistic characteristics. In others, it was a con- sequence of a common commitment to a particular reli- gion or culture. Such a community came to be called a “nation,” and the primary political loyalty of individuals would be to this “nation” rather than, as was the case in much of Europe at that time, to a dynasty or a city-state or some other political unit. Nationalism did not become a popular force for change until the French Revolution, when the concept arose that governments should coincide with nationalities. Thus, a divided people such as the Germans wanted national unity in a German nation-state with one central government. Subject peoples, such as the Czechs and the Hungarians, wanted national self- determination, or the right to establish their own autonomy rather than be subject to a German minority in a multinational state such as the Habsburg Empire.

Liberalism and nationalism began to have an impact on the European political scene in the 1830s, when a revolt led by reformist forces installed a constitutional monarchy in France, and nationalist uprisings, often given active support by liberal forces, took place in Belgium (which was then attached to the Dutch Republic), in Italy, and in Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). Only the Belgians were successful, as Russian forces crushed the Poles’ attempt to liberate themselves from foreign domi- nation, while Austrian troops intervened to uphold reac- tionary governments in a number of Italian states.

In the spring of 1848, a new series of uprisings against established authority broke out in several countries in cen- tral and western Europe. The most effective was in France, where an uprising centered in Paris overthrew the so-called bourgeois monarchy of King Louis Philippe and briefly brought to power a new republic composed of an alliance of workers, intellectuals, and progressive repre- sentatives of the urban middle class.

The Unification of Germany and Italy Within a few months, however, it became clear that opti- mism about the imminence of a new order in Europe had not been justified. In France, the shaky alliance between

workers and the urban bourgeoisie was ruptured when workers’ groups and their representatives in the govern- ment began to demand extensive social reforms to provide guaranteed benefits to the poor. Moderates, frightened by rising political tensions in Paris, resisted such demands. Facing the specter of class war, the French nation drew back and welcomed the rise to power of Louis Napoleon, a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. Within three years, he declared himself Emperor Napoleon III. Elsewhere in Europe—in Germany, in the Habsburg Empire, and in Italy—popular uprisings failed to unseat autocratic mon- archs and destroy the existing political order.

But the rising force of nationalism was not to be quenched. Nationalist sentiment, at first restricted primar- ily to the small educated elite, began to spread among the general population with the rise in literacy rates and the increasing availability of books, journals, and newspapers printed in the vernacular languages. Ordinary Europeans, previously unconcerned about political affairs, now became increasingly aware of the nationalist debate and sometimes became involved in the political process.

Italy, long divided into separate kingdoms, was finally united in the early 1860s. Germany followed a few years later. Unfortunately, the rise of nation-states in central Europe did not herald the onset of liberal principles or greater stability. To the contrary, it inaugurated a period of heightened tensions as an increasingly aggressive Ger- many began to dominate the politics of Europe. In 1870, Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) had provoked a war with France. After the latter’s defeat, a new German Empire was declared in the Hall of Mir- rors at the Palace of Versailles, just outside Paris.

Many German liberals were initially delighted at the unification of their country after centuries of division. But they were soon to discover that the new German Empire would not usher in a new era of peace and freedom. Under Prussian leadership, the new state quickly pro- claimed the superiority of authoritarian and militaristic values and abandoned the principles of liberalism and con- stitutional government. Nationalism had become a two- edged sword, as advocates of a greater Germany began to exert an impact on domestic politics.

Liberal principles made similarly little headway else- where in central and eastern Europe. After the transforma- tion of the Habsburg Empire into the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary in 1867, the Austrian part received a con- stitution that theoretically recognized the equality of the nationalities and established a parliamentary system with the principle of ministerial responsibility. But the prob- lem of reconciling the interests of the various nationalities remained a difficult one. The German minority that gov- erned Austria felt increasingly threatened by the Czechs,

Reaction and Revolution: The Decline of the Old Order 11

Poles, and other Slavic groups within the empire, and when representatives of the latter began to agitate for autonomy, the government ignored the parliament and relied increas- ingly on imperial emergency decrees to govern. On the eve of World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was far from solving its minorities problem (see Map 1.2).

Roots of Revolution in Russia To the east, in the vast Russian Empire, neither the Indus- trial Revolution nor the European Enlightenment had

exerted much impact. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Russia was overwhelmingly rural, agricultural, and autocratic. The Russian tsar was still regarded as a divine-right monarch with unlimited power, although the physical extent of the empire made the claim impractica- ble. For centuries, Russian farmers had groaned under the yoke of an oppressive system that tied the peasants to poverty conditions and the legal status of serfs under the authority of their manor lord. An enlightened tsar, Alexander II (r. 1855–1881), had emancipated the serfs in 1861, but under conditions that left most Russian peasants

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MAP 1.2 Europe in 1871. German unification in 1871 upset the balance of power that had prevailed in Europe for more than half a century and eventually led to a restructuring of European alliances. By 1907, Europe was divided into two opposing camps: the Triple Entente of Great Britain, Russia, and France and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.

Which of the countries identified on this map could be described as multinational empires?

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12 CHAPTER 1 The Rise of Industrial Society in the West

still poor and with little hope for social or economic bet- terment. In desperation, the Russian peasants periodically lashed out at their oppressors in sporadic rebellions, but all such uprisings were quelled with brutal efficiency by the tsarist regime.

In western Europe, as we have seen, it was the urban bourgeoisie that took the lead in the struggle for change. In preindustrial Russia, the middle class was still small in size and lacking in self-confidence. A few, however, had traveled to the West and were determined to import Western values and institutions into the Russian environ- ment. At mid-century, a few progressive intellectuals went out to the villages to arouse their rural brethren to the need for change. Known as narodniks (from the Russian term narod, for “people” or “nation”), they sought to ener- gize the peasantry as a force for the transformation of Russian society. Although many saw the answer to Rus- sian problems in the western European model, others insisted on the uniqueness of the Russian experience and sought to bring about a revitalization of the country on the basis of the communal traditions of the native village.

For the most part, such efforts achieved little. The Rus- sian peasant was resistant to change and suspicious of out- siders. In desperation, some radicals turned to terrorism in the hope that assassinations of public officials would spark tsarist repression, thereby demonstrating the brutal- ity of the system and galvanizing popular anger. Chief among such groups was the Narodnaya Volya (“the People’s Will”), a terrorist organization that assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881.

The assassination of Alexander II convinced his son and successor, Alexander III (r. 1881–1894), that reform had been a mistake, and he quickly returned to the repres- sive measures of earlier tsars. When Alexander III died, his son and successor, Nicholas II (r. 1894–1917), began his rule armed with his father’s conviction that the abso- lute power of the tsars should be preserved.

But it was too late, for conditions were changing. Although industrialization came late to Russia, it pro- gressed rapidly after 1890, especially with the assistance of foreign investment. By 1900, Russia had become the fourth-largest producer of steel, behind the United States, Germany, and Great Britain. At the same time, Russia was turning out half of the world’s production of oil. Con- ditions for the working class, however, were abysmal, and opposition to the tsarist regime from workers, peasants, and intellectuals finally exploded into revolt in 1905. Fac- ing an exhausting war with Japan in Asia (see Chapter 3), Tsar Nicholas reluctantly granted civil liberties and agreed to create a legislative assembly, the Duma, elected directly by a broad franchise. But real constitutional monarchy proved short-lived. By 1907, the tsar had curtailed the

power of the Duma and fell back on the army and the bureaucracy to rule Russia.

The Ottoman Empire and Nationalism in the Balkans Like the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire was threatened by the rising nationalist aspirations of its subject peoples. Beginning in the fourteenth century, the Ottoman Turks had expanded from their base in the Ana- tolian peninsula into the Balkans and southern Russia, and along the northern coast of Africa. Soon they controlled the entire eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea. But by the nineteenth century, despite state reform programs designed to modernize the empire, increasing social unrest and the intervention of the European powers in Ottoman affairs challenged the legitimacy of the Ottoman state.

Gradually, the emotional appeal of nationhood began to make inroads among the various ethnic and linguistic groups in southeastern Europe. In the course of the nine- teenth century, the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire began to gain their freedom, although the intense rivalry in the region between Austria-Hungary and Russia complicated the process. Greece became an independent kingdom in 1830 after a successful revolt. After Russia’s defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1878, Serbia and Roma- nia were recognized as independent states. Bulgaria achieved autonomous status under Russia’s protection, and the Balkan territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina were placed under Austria’s. Despite such changes, the force of Balkan nationalism was by no means stilled.

Meanwhile, other parts of the empire began to break away from central control. In Egypt, the ambitious gover- nor Muhammad Ali declared the region’s autonomy from Ottoman rule and initiated a series of reforms designed to promote economic growth and government efficiency. During the 1830s, he sought to improve agricultural pro- duction and reform the educational system, and he imported machinery and technicians from Europe to carry out the first industrial revolution on African soil. In the end, however, the effort failed, partly because Egypt’s manufactures could not compete with those of Europe and also because much of the profit from the export of cash crops went into the hands of conservative landlords.

Measures to promote industrialization elsewhere in the empire had even less success. By mid-century, a small industrial sector, built with equipment imported from Europe, took shape, and a modern system of transport and communications began to make its appearance. By the end of the century, however, the results were meager, and members of the empire’s small Westernized elite became increasingly restive (see Chapter 5).

Reaction and Revolution: The Decline of the Old Order 13

Liberalism Triumphant In western Europe, where an affluent urban middle class represented a growing political force, liberal principles experienced a better fate. The British political and eco- nomic elites had been frightened by the specter of social revolution that periodically raged on the Continent, and by 1871 the country had a functioning two-party parlia- mentary system. Both the governing Liberal and Conserva- tive parties were dominated by a coalition of aristocratic landowners, who were also frequently involved in indus- trial and financial activities, and upper-middle-class busi- nessmen. But both parties also saw the necessity of adopting political reforms and competed in supporting legislation that expanded the right to vote. Reform acts in 1867 and 1884 greatly expanded the number of adult males who could vote, and by the end of World War I, all males over twenty-one and women over thirty had that right.

The political reforms grudgingly enacted in the last half of the nineteenth century led eventually to the growth of trade unions and the emergence in 1900 of the Labour Party, which dedicated itself to workers’ interests. As a result, the Liberals felt pressure to seek the workers’ support by promoting a program of social welfare. The National Insurance Act of 1911 provided benefits for workers in case of sickness or unemployment, to be paid for by compulsory contributions from workers, employ- ers, and the state. Additional legislation provided a small pension for those over seventy and compensation for those injured in accidents at work.

A similar process was under way in France, where the overthrow of Napoleon III’s Second Empire in 1870 led to the creation of a republican form of government. France failed, however, to develop a strong parliamentary system on the British two-party model because the existence of a dozen political parties forced the premier to depend on a coalition of parties to stay in power. The Third Republic was notorious for its changes of government. Between 1875 and 1914, there were no fewer than fifty cabinet changes; during the same period, the British had eleven. Nevertheless, the government’s political and social reforms gradually won more and more middle-class and peasant support, and by 1914, the Third Republic com- manded the loyalty of most French people.

By 1870, Italy had emerged as a geographically united state, but sectional differences (a poverty-stricken south and an industrializing north) weakened any sense of community. Chronic turmoil between labor and industry undermined the social fabric, as did the prevalence of extensive corruption among government officials and the lack of stability created by ever-changing government

coalitions. Abroad, Italy’s pretensions to great-power sta- tus proved equally hollow when it became the first Eu- ropean power to lose a war to an African state, Ethiopia, a humiliation that later led to the costly (but successful) attempt to compensate by conquering Libya in 1911 and 1912.

The United States and Canada Between 1860 and World War I, the United States made the shift from an agrarian to a mighty industrial nation. American heavy industry stood unchallenged in 1900. In that year, the Carnegie Steel Company alone produced more steel than Great Britain’s entire steel industry. In- dustrialization also led to urbanization. While established cities, such as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, grew even larger, other moderate-size cities, such as Pittsburgh, grew by leaps and bounds because of industrialization and the arrival of millions of immigrants from eastern Europe. Whereas 20 percent of Americans lived in cities in 1860, more than 40 percent did in 1900. One factor underlying the change was a vast increase in agricultural productivity, creating a food surplus that enabled millions of Americans to move from the farm to the factory.

By 1900, the United States had become the world’s rich- est nation and greatest industrial power. Less inclined than their European counterparts to accept government inter- vention as a means of redressing economic or social ills, Americans experienced both the benefits and the disadvan- tages of unfettered capitalism. In 1890, the richest 9 percent of Americans owned an incredible 71 percent of all the wealth. Labor unrest over unsafe working condi- tions, strict work discipline, and periodic cycles of devastat- ing unemployment led workers to organize. By the turn of the twentieth century, one national organization, the American Federation of Labor, emerged as labor’s domi- nant voice. Its lack of real power, however, is reflected in its membership figures: in 1900, it constituted but 8.4 percent of the American industrial labor force. And part of the U.S. labor force remained almost entirely disenfran- chised. Although the victory of the North in the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery, political, economic, and social opportunities for the African American population remained limited, and racist attitudes were widespread.

During the so-called Progressive Era after 1900, the reform of many features of American life became a primary issue. At the state level, reforming governors sought to achieve clean government by introducing elements of direct democracy, such as direct primaries for selecting nominees for public office. State governments also enacted economic and social legislation, including laws that gov- erned hours, wages, and working conditions, especially for

14 CHAPTER 1 The Rise of Industrial Society in the West

women and children. The realization that state laws were ineffective in dealing with nationwide problems, however, led to a progressive movement at the national level.

National progressivism was evident in the administra- tions of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Under Roosevelt (1901–1909), the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act provided for a limited degree of federal regulation of corrupt industrial practices. Wilson (1913–1921) was responsible for the creation of a graduated federal income tax and the Federal Reserve Sys- tem, which gave the federal government a role in impor- tant economic decisions formerly made by bankers. Like many European nations, the United States was moving into policies that extended the functions of the state.

Canada, economically somewhat more homogeneous than its southern neighbor, faced fewer problems in addressing issues related to social and economic equality. The larger issue for Canada was that of national unity. At the beginning of 1870, the Dominion of Canada had only four provinces: Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. With the addition of two more provinces in 1871—Manitoba and British Columbia—the Dominion now extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. But real unity was difficult to achieve because of the distrust between the English-speaking and the French-speaking peoples of Canada, most of whom lived in the province of Quebec. Fortunately for Canada, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who became the first French Canadian prime minister in 1896, was able to reconcile Canada’s two major groups and resolve the issue of separate schools for French Canadians. Laurier’s administration also witnessed increased industri- alization and successfully encouraged immigrants from central and eastern Europe to help populate Canada’s vast territories.

Tradition and Change in Latin America In the three centuries following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Western Hemisphere in 1492, South and Central America fell increasingly into the European orbit. Portugal dominated Brazil, and Spain created a vast empire that included most of the remainder of South America as well as Central America. Hence, the entire area is generally described as Latin America. Almost from the beginning, it was a multicultural society composed of European settlers, indigenous American Indians, immi- grants from Asia, and black slaves brought from Africa to work on the sugar plantations and in other menial occupa- tions. Intermarriage among the four groups resulted in the creation of a diverse population with a less rigid view of race than was the case in North America. Latin American

culture also came to reflect a rich mixture of Iberian, Asian, African, and Native American themes.

THE EMERGENCE OF INDEPENDENT STATES Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the various Latin American societies were ruled by colonial officials appointed by monarchical governments in Europe. An additional instrument of control was the Catholic Church, which undertook a major effort to Christianize the indige- nous peoples and transform them into docile and loyal subjects of the Portuguese and Spanish Empires. By 1800, however, local elites, mostly descendants of Europeans who had become permanent inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere, became increasingly affected by the spirit of nationalism that had emerged after the Napoleonic era in Europe. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century, under great leaders like Sim�on Bol�ıvar of Venezuela and Jos�e de San Mart�ın of Argentina, they launched a series of revolts that led to the eviction of the monarchical regimes and the formation of independent states from Argentina and Chile in the south to Mexico in North America. Brazil received its independence from Portugal in 1825.

Many of the new states were based on the adminis- trative divisions that had been established by the Spanish in the early colonial era. Although all shared the legacy of Iberian culture brought to the Americas by the conquistadors, the particular mix of European, African, and indigenous peoples resulted in distinctive characteris- tics for each country.

One of the goals of the independence movement had been to free the economies of Latin America from Euro- pean control and to exploit the riches of the continent for local benefit. In fact, however, political independence did not lead to a new era of prosperity for the people of Latin America. Most of the powerful elites in the region earned their wealth from the land and had few incentives to fol- low the European model of promoting an industrial revo- lution. As a result, the previous trade pattern persisted, with Latin America exporting raw materials and foodstuffs (wheat and sugar) as well as tobacco and hides in exchange for manufactured goods from Europe and the United States.

PROBLEMS OF ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE With eco- nomic growth came a boom in foreign investment. Between 1870 and 1913, British investments—mostly in railroads, mining, and public utilities—grew from £85 million to £757 million, which constituted two-thirds of all foreign investment in Latin America. By the end of the century, however, the U.S. economic presence began to increase dramatically. As Latin Americans struggled to cre- ate more balanced economies after 1900, they concentrated

Liberalism Triumphant 15

on building a manufacturing base, notably in textiles, food processing, and construction materials.

Nevertheless, the growth of the Latin American econ- omy came largely from the export of raw materials, and the gradual transformation of the national economies in Latin America simply added to the region’s growing de- pendence on the capitalist nations of the West. Modern- ization was basically a surface feature of Latin American society; past patterns still largely prevailed. Rural elites dominated their estates and their rural workers. Although slavery was abolished by 1888, former slaves and their de- scendants were still at the bottom of society. The Native Americans remained poverty-stricken, debt servitude was still a way of life, and the region remained economically dependent on foreigners. Despite its economic growth, Latin America was still sorely underdeveloped.

One potential bright spot for the future economic prosperity of Latin America was the discovery of natural rubber in Brazil. Derived from the sap of a tree native to the Amazon River basin, rubber rapidly achieved popular- ity throughout the world as products made of it—from erasers, footwear, and raincoats to automobile tires— flooded the markets of Europe and the United States. The boom was short-lived, however. After seeds of the rubber tree were secretly shipped to Great Britain in the 1870s, rubber plantations began to be established by European growers in colonial Southeast Asia, and the Brazilian industry—plagued by poor management practices— quickly declined in the first quarter of the twentieth cen- tury (see Chapter 2).

The surface prosperity that resulted from the emer- gence of an export economy had a number of repercus- sions. One result was the modernization of the elites, who

grew determined to pursue their vision of progress. Large landowners increasingly sought ways to rationalize their production methods to make greater profits. As a result, cattle ranchers in Argentina and coffee barons in Brazil became more aggressive entrepreneurs.

Another result of the new prosperity was the growth of a small but increasingly visible middle class—lawyers, merchants, shopkeepers, businessmen, schoolteachers, professors, bureaucrats, and military officers. Living mainly in the cities, these people sought education and decent incomes and increasingly regarded the United States as the model to emulate, especially in regard to in- dustrialization and education.

As Latin American export economies boomed, the working class expanded, and this in turn led to the growth of labor unions, which often advocated the use of the gen- eral strike as an instrument for change. By and large, how- ever, the governing elites succeeded in stifling the political influence of the working class by restricting the right to vote. The need for industrial labor also led Latin American countries to encourage European immigrants. Between 1880 and 1914, 3 million Europeans, primarily Italians and Spaniards, settled in Argentina. More than 100,000 Europeans, mostly Italian, Portuguese, and Span- ish, arrived in Brazil each year between 1891 and 1900.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CHANGES As in Europe and the United States, industrialization led to urbanization. Buenos Aires (known as the “Paris of South America” for its European atmosphere) had 750,000 inhabitants by 1900 and 2 million by 1914—one-fourth of Argentina’s popula- tion. By that time, urban dwellers made up 53 percent of Argentina’s population overall. Brazil and Chile also

The Opera House at Manaus. The discovery of rubber in the mid-nineteenth century was one of the most significant events in the history of Brazil. Natural rubber, much of it produced by slave labor, became the source of great wealth for Brazilian plantation owners until the rubber boom declined after 1900. The most visible symbol of “king rubber” is the Opera House at Manaus, the largest city on the Amazon. Built in 1896 in an opulent style that included the profligate use of Italian marble, it has recently been renovated and stands as a beacon of promise for one of Latin America’s fastest- growing regions, as well as a reminder of a shameful period in the history of Latin America.

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16 CHAPTER 1 The Rise of Industrial Society in the West

witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of urban dwellers.

Latin America also experienced a political transforma- tion after 1870. Large landowners began to take a more direct interest in national politics, sometimes expressed by a direct involvement in governing. In Argentina and Chile, for example, landholding elites controlled the gov- ernments, and although they produced constitutions simi- lar to those of the United States and European countries, they were careful to ensure their power by regulating vot- ing rights.

In some countries, large landowners made use of dicta- tors to maintain their interests. Porfirio D�ıaz, who ruled Mexico from 1876 to 1911, established a conservative gov- ernment with the support of the army, foreign capitalists, large landowners, and the Catholic Church, all of whom benefited from their alliance. But there were forces for change in Mexico that sought to precipitate a true social revolution. D�ıaz was ousted from power in 1911, opening an extended era of revolutionary unrest.

Sometimes political instability led to foreign interven- tion. In 1898, the United States sent military forces in sup- port of an independence movement in Cuba, bringing an end to four hundred years of Spanish rule on the island. U.S. occupation forces then remained for several years, despite growing opposition from the local population. The United States also intervened militarily in Nicaragua, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic to restore law and order and protect U.S. economic interests in the region, sparking cries of “Yankee imperialism.”

The Rise of the Socialist Movement One of the less desirable consequences of the Industrial Revolution was the yawning disparity in the distribution of wealth. While industrialization brought increasing afflu- ence to an emerging middle class, it brought grinding hardship to millions of others in the form of low-paying jobs in mines or factories characterized by long working hours under squalid conditions. The underlying cause was clear: because of the rapid population growth taking place in most industrializing societies in Europe, factory owners remained largely free to hire labor on their own terms, based on market forces.

Beginning in the last decades of the eighteenth century, radical groups, inspired by the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution, began to seek the means to rectify the problem. Some found the answer in intellectual schemes that envisaged a classless society based on the elimination of private property. Others prepared for an armed revolt

to overthrow the ruling order and create a new society controlled by the working masses. Still others began to form trade unions to fight for improved working condi- tions and higher wages. Only one group sought to com- bine all of these factors into a comprehensive program to destroy the governing forces and create a new egalitarian society based on the concept of “scientific socialism.” The founder of that movement was Karl Marx, a German who had abandoned an academic career in philosophy to take up radical political activities in Paris.

The Rise of Marxism Marxism made its first appearance in 1847 with the publi- cation of a short treatise, The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx (1818–1883) and his close collaborator, Frie- drich Engels (1820–1895). In the Manifesto, the two authors predicted the outbreak of a massive uprising that would overthrow the existing ruling class and bring to power a new revolutionary regime based on their ideas (see the box on p. 18).

Marx, the son of a Jewish lawyer in the city of Trier in western Germany, was trained in philosophy and became an admirer of the German philosopher Georg W. F. Hegel, who viewed historical change as the result of con- flict between contending forces. The clash between such forces would eventually lead to synthesis in a new and higher reality.

Marx appropriated Hegel’s ideas and applied them to the economic and social conditions of mid-nineteenth- century Europe, where he envisioned an intense struggle between the owners of the means of production and dis- tribution and the oppressed majority who labored on their behalf. During the feudal era, landless serfs rose up to overthrow their manor lords, giving birth to capitalism. In turn, Marx predicted, the proletariat (the urban working class) would eventually revolt against subhuman condi- tions to bring down the capitalist order and establish a new classless society to be called communism. According to Marx, the achievement of communist societies through- out the world would represent the final stage of history.

When revolutions broke out all over Europe in the eventful year of 1848, Marx and Engels eagerly but mis- takenly predicted that the uprisings would spread throughout Europe and lead to a new revolutionary re- gime led by workers, dispossessed bourgeois, and com- munists. When that did not occur, Marx belatedly concluded that urban merchants and peasants were too conservative to support the workers and would oppose revolution once their own immediate economic demands were satisfied. As for the worker movement itself, it was clearly still too weak to seize power and could not expect

The Rise of the Socialist Movement 17

to achieve its own objectives until the workers had become politically more sophisticated and better orga- nized. In effect, Marx concluded that revolution would not take place in western Europe until capitalism had “ripened,” leading to a concentration of capital in the hands of a wealthy minority and an “epidemic of over- production” because of inadequate purchasing power by the impoverished lower classes. Then a large and increas- ingly alienated proletariat could drive the capitalists from power and bring about a classless utopia.

For the remainder of his life, Marx acted out the logic of these conclusions. From his base in London, he under- took a massive study of the dynamics of the capitalist sys- tem, a project that resulted in the publication of the first volume of his most ambitious work, Das Kapital (Capital), in 1869. In the meantime, he attempted to prepare for the future revolution by organizing the scattered radical par- ties throughout Europe into a cohesive revolutionary movement, called the International Workingmen’s Associ- ation (usually known today as the First International), that

The Classless Society In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels predicted the creation of a classless society as the end product of the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In this selection, they discuss the steps by which that classless society would be reached.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto We have seen . . . that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class. . . . The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.

These measures will of course be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all right of inheritance. . . . 5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by

means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State. . . .

8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of indus- trial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distri- bution of the population over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Aboli- tion of children’s factory labor in its present form. . . .

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

How did Marx and Engels define the proletariat? The bourgeoisie? Why did Marxists come to believe that this distinction was paramount for understanding history? For shaping the future?

SOURCE: From Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto.

18 CHAPTER 1 The Rise of Industrial Society in the West

would be ready to rouse the workers to action when the opportunity came.

Unity was short-lived. Although all members of the First International shared a common distaste for the capi- talist system, some preferred to reform it from within (many of the labor groups from Great Britain), whereas others were convinced that only violent insurrection would suffice to destroy the existing ruling class (Karl Marx and the anarchists around Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin). Even the radicals could not agree. Marx believed that revolution could not succeed without a core of committed communists to organize and lead the masses; Bakunin contended that the general insurrection should be a spontaneous uprising from below. In 1871, the First International disintegrated.

Capitalism in Transition While Marx was grappling with the problems of preparing for the coming revolution, European society was under- going significant changes. The advanced capitalist states such as Great Britain, France, and the Low Countries (Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) were gradu- ally evolving into mature, politically stable societies in which Marx’s dire predictions were not being borne out. His forecast of periodic economic crises was correct enough, but his warnings of concentration of capital and the impoverishment of labor were somewhat wide of the mark, as capitalist societies began to eliminate or at least reduce some of the more flagrant inequities apparent in the early stages of capitalist development. These reforms occurred because workers and their representatives had begun to use the democratic political process to their own advantage, organizing labor unions and political parties to improve working conditions and enhance the role of workers in the political system. Some of these political parties were led by Marxists, who were learning that in the absence of a social revolution to bring the masses to power, the capitalist democratic system could be reformed from within to improve the working and living conditions of its constituents. In 1889, after Marx’s death, several such parties (often labeled “social democratic” par- ties) formed the Second International, dominated by reformist elements committed to achieving socialism within the bounds of the Western parliamentary system.

Marx had also underestimated the degree to which nationalism would appeal to workers in most European countries. Marx had viewed nation and culture as false idols diverting the interests of the oppressed from their true con- cern, the struggle against the ruling class. In his view, the proletariat would throw off its chains and unite in the sa- cred cause of “internationalist” world revolution. In reality,

workers joined peasants and urban merchants in defending the cause of the nation against its foreign enemies. A gener- ation later, French workers would die in the trenches defending France from workers across the German border.

A historian of the late nineteenth century might have been forgiven for predicting that Marxism, as a revolu- tionary ideology, was dead. To the east, however, in the vast plains and steppes of central Russia, it was about to be reborn (see Chapter 4).

Toward the Modern Consciousness: Intellectual and Cultural Developments The physical changes that were taking place in societies exposed to the Industrial Revolution were accompanied by an equally significant transformation in the arena of culture. Before 1914, most Westerners continued to believe in the values and ideals that had been generated by the impact of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlight- enment. The ability of human beings to improve them- selves and achieve a better society seemed to be well demonstrated by a rising standard of living, urban improvements, and mass education. Between 1870 and 1914, however, a dramatic transformation in the realm of ideas and culture challenged many of these assumptions. A new view of the physical universe, alternative views of human nature, and radically innovative forms of literary and artistic expression shattered old beliefs and opened the way to a modern consciousness. Although the real impact of many of these ideas was not felt until after World War I, they served to provoke a sense of confusion and anxiety before 1914 that would become even more pronounced after the war.

Developments in the Sciences: The Emergence of a New Physics A prime example of this development took place in the realm of physics. Throughout much of the nineteenth cen- tury, Westerners adhered to the mechanical conception of the universe postulated by the classical physics of Isaac Newton (1642–1727). In this perspective, the universe was a giant machine in which time, space, and matter were objective realities that existed independently of the parties observing them. Matter was thought to be composed of indivisible, solid material bodies called atoms.

But these views began to be questioned at the end of the nineteenth century. Some scientists had discovered that certain elements such as radium and polonium spon- taneously gave off rays or radiation that apparently came

Toward the Modern Consciousness: Intellectual and Cultural Developments 19

from within the atom itself. Atoms were therefore not hard material bodies but small worlds containing such subatomic particles as electrons and protons that behaved in a seemingly random and inexplicable fashion. Inquiry into the disintegrative process within atoms became a cen- tral theme of the new physics.

Building on this work, in 1900, a Berlin physicist, Max Planck (1858–1947), rejected the belief that a heated body radiates energy in a steady stream but maintained instead that it did so discontinuously, in irregular packets of energy that he called “quanta.” The quantum theory raised fundamental questions about the subatomic realm of the atom. By 1900, the old view of atoms as the basic building blocks of the material world was being seriously questioned, and Newtonian physics was in trouble.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955), a German-born patent offi- cer working in Switzerland, pushed these new theories of thermodynamics into new terrain. In 1905, Einstein pub- lished a paper setting forth his theory of relativity. Accord- ing to relativity theory, space and time are not absolute but relative to the observer, and both are interwoven into what Einstein called a four-dimensional space-time contin- uum. Neither space nor time has an existence independent of human experience. Moreover, matter and energy reflect the relativity of time and space. Einstein concluded that matter was nothing but another form of energy. His ep- ochal formula E ¼ mc2—each particle of matter is equiva- lent to its mass times the square of the velocity of light— was the key theory explaining the vast energies contained within the atom. It led to the atomic age.

Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolution Equally dramatic changes took place in the biological sci- ences, where the British scientist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) stunned the world in 1859 with the publica- tion of his book The Origin of Species. Drawing from evi- dence obtained during a scientific expedition to the Galapagos Islands, Darwin concluded that plants and ani- mals were not the product of divine creation but evolved over time from earlier and simpler forms of life through a process of natural selection. In the universal struggle for existence, only the fittest species survived. Later, Darwin provoked even more controversy by applying his theory of organic evolution to human beings. Speculating that modern humans had evolved over millions of years from primates and were thus not the unique creation of God but “a co-descendant with other mammals of a common progenitor,” Darwin’s theory represented a direct affront to the biblical interpretation of the creation of man as described in the book of Genesis (see the box on p. 21).

Critics mocked his ideas as demeaning to human dignity and made scathing references to his own forebears.

Sigmund Freud and the Emergence of Psychoanalysis Although poets and mystics had revealed a world of unconscious and irrational behavior, many scientifically oriented intellectuals under the impact of Enlightenment thought continued to believe that human beings responded to conscious motives in a rational fashion. But at the end of the nineteenth century, the Viennese doctor Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) put forth a series of theories that undermined optimism about the rational nature of the human mind. Freud’s thought, like the new physics, added to the uncertainties of the age. His major ideas were published in 1900 in The Interpretation of Dreams, which laid the basic foundation for what came to be known as psychoanalysis.

According to Freud, human behavior is strongly deter- mined by the unconscious—former experiences and inner drives of which people are largely oblivious. To explore the contents of the unconscious, Freud relied not only on hypnosis but also on dreams, which were dressed in an elaborate code that needed to be deciphered if the con- tents were to be properly understood.

Why do some experiences whose influence persists in controlling an individual’s life remain unconscious? According to Freud, repression is a process by which unsettling experiences are blotted from conscious aware- ness but still continue to influence behavior because they have become part of the unconscious. To explain how repression works, Freud elaborated an intricate theory of the inner life of human beings.

Although Freud’s theory has had numerous critics, his insistence that a human being’s inner life is a battleground of contending forces undermined the prevailing belief in the power of reason and opened a new era of psychoanal- ysis, in which a psychotherapist assists a patient in prob- ing deep into memory to retrace the chain of repression back to its childhood origins and bring about a resolution of the inner psychic conflict. Belief in the primacy of rational thought over the emotions would never be the same.

Literature and the Arts: The Culture of Modernity The revolutions in physics and psychology were paralleled by similar changes in literature and the arts. Throughout much of the late nineteenth century, literature was domi- nated by Naturalism. Naturalists accepted the material

20 CHAPTER 1 The Rise of Industrial Society in the West

world as real and believed that literature should be realis- tic. By addressing social problems, writers could contrib- ute to an objective understanding of the world.

The novels of the French writer �Emile Zola (1840–1902) provide a good example of Naturalism. Against a backdrop of the urban slums and coalfields of northern France, Zola showed how alcoholism and differ- ent environments affected people’s lives. The materialistic science of his age had an important influence on Zola. He had read Darwin’s Origin of Species and had been impressed by its emphasis on the struggle for survival and the importance of environment and heredity.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the belief that the task of literature was to represent

“reality” had lost much of its meaning. By that time, the new psychology and the new physics had made it evident that many people were not sure what constituted reality anyway. The same was true in the realm of art, where in the late nineteenth century, painters were beginning to respond to ongoing investigations into the nature of optics and human perception by experimenting with radical new techniques to represent the multiplicity of reality. The changes that such cultural innovators produced have since been called Modernism.

The first to embark on the challenge were the Impres- sionists. Originating in France in the 1870s, they rejected indoor painting and preferred to go out to the countryside to paint nature directly. As Camille Pissarro (1830–1903),

The Theory of Evolution Darwin published his theory of organic evolution in 1859, followed twelve years later by The Descent of Man, in which he argued that human beings, like other animals, evolved from lower forms of life. The theory provoked a firestorm of criticism, especially from the clergy. One critic described Darwin’s theory as a “brutal philosophy— to wit, there is no God, and the ape is our Adam.”

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man The main conclusion here arrived at, and now held by many naturalists, who are well competent to form a sound judgment, is that man is descended from some less highly organized form. The grounds upon which this conclusion rests will never be shaken, for the close similarity between man and the lower animals in embryonic development, as well as in innumerable points of structure and constitution, both of high and of the most trifling importance,—the rudiments which he retains, and the abnormal reversions to which he is occasionally liable,—are facts which cannot be disputed. They have long been known, but until recently they told us nothing with respect to the origin of man. Now when viewed by the light of our knowledge of the whole organic world, their meaning is unmistakable. The great principle of evolution stands up clear and firm, when these groups of facts are considered in connection with others, such as the mutual affinities of the members of the same group, their geographical distribution in past and present times, and their geological succession. It is incredible that all these facts should speak falsely. He who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation.

He will be forced to admit that the close resemblance of the embryo of man to that, for instance, of a dog—the construction of his skull, limbs and whole frame on the same plan with that of other mammals, independently of the uses to which the parts may be put—the occasional reappearance of various structures, for instance of several muscles, which man does not normally possess . . . —and a crowd of analogous facts—all point in the plainest manner to the conclusion that man is the co-descendant with other mammals of a common progenitor. . . .

Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it; and I have given the evidence to the best of my ability. We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system— with all these exalted power—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

What evidence does Darwin cite to defend his theory of evolution? What is the essence of the theory?

SOURCE: From Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (New York: Appleton, 1876), pp. 606–607, 619.

Toward the Modern Consciousness: Intellectual and Cultural Developments 21

one of the movement’s founders, expressed it: “Don’t pro- ceed according to rules and principles, but paint what you observe and feel. Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression.” The most influ- ential of the Impressionists was Claude Monet (1840–1926), who painted several series of canvases on the same object—such as haystacks, Rouen Cathedral, and water lilies in the garden of his house on the Seine River—in the hope of breaking down the essential lines, planes, colors, and shadows of what the eye observed. His paintings that deal with the interplay of light and reflec- tion on a water surface are considered to be among the wonders of modern painting.

The growth of photography gave artists another reason to reject visual realism. Invented in the 1830s, photogra- phy became popular and widespread after George East- man created the first Kodak camera for the mass market in 1888. What was the point of an artist’s doing what the camera did better? Unlike the camera, which could only

mirror reality, artists could create reality. As in literature, so also in modern art, individual consciousness became the source of meaning. Between the beginning of the new cen- tury and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, this search for individual expression produced several new schools of painting that would have a significant impact on the world of art for decades to come.

In Expressionism, the artist employed an exaggerated use of colors and distorted shapes to achieve emotional expression. Painters such as the Dutchman Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) and the Norwegian Edvard Munch (1863–1944) were interested not in capturing the optical play of light on a landscape but in projecting their inner selves onto the hostile universe around them. Who can- not be affected by the intensity of van Gogh’s dazzling sunflowers or by the ominous swirling stars above a church steeple in his Starry Night (1890)?

Another important artist obsessed with finding a new way to portray reality was the French painter Paul

Paul C�ezanne, Bathing Women. Paul C�ezanne (1839–1906) was one of the outstanding figures in modern art, propelling it to seek new ways of expressing reality. Abandoning the one-point perspective of Renaissance painting, he tried to extract the internal dimension underlying the panorama of his canvases. In Bathing Women, he is not interested in re-creating the surface details of individual women, but rather the inner pulse of energy emanating from a group of women in harmony with their surroundings. The blue of the lake and the sky is reflected on their skin as they relax, chat, and embrace one another in the midst of a natural scene.

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22 CHAPTER 1 The Rise of Industrial Society in the West

C�ezanne (1839–1906). Scorning the photographic duplica- tion of a landscape, he sought to isolate the pulsating structure beneath the surface. During the last years of his life, he produced several paintings of Mont Sainte-Vic- toire, located near Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. Although each canvas differed in perspective, composi- tion, and color, they all reflect the same technique of reducing the landscape to virtual geometric slabs of color to represent the interconnection of trees, earth, tiled roofs, mountain, and sky.

Following C�ezanne was the Spaniard Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), one of the giants of twentieth-century paint- ing. Settling in Paris in 1904, he and the French artist Georges Braque (1882–1963) collaborated in founding Cubism, the first truly radical approach in representing vis- ual reality. To the Cubist, any perception of an object was a composite of simultaneous and different perspectives.

Modernism in the arts also revolutionized architecture and architectural practices. A new principle known as functionalism motivated this revolution by maintaining that buildings, like the products of machines, should be “functional” or useful, fulfilling the purpose for which they were constructed. Art and engineering were to be unified, and all unnecessary ornamentation was to be stripped away.

The United States took the lead in this effort. Unprec- edented urban growth and the absence of restrictive ar- chitectural traditions allowed for new building methods, especially in the relatively new city of Chicago. The Chi- cago school of the 1890s, led by Louis H. Sullivan

(1856–1924), used reinforced concrete, steel frames, elec- tric elevators, and sheet glass to build skyscrapers virtu- ally free of external ornamentation. One of Sullivan’s most successful pupils was Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959), who became known for innovative designs in domestic architecture. Wright’s private houses, built chiefly for wealthy patrons, featured geometric structures with long lines, overhanging roofs, and severe planes of brick and stone. The interiors were open spaces and included cathedral ceilings and built-in furniture and light- ing features. Wright pioneered the modern American house.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, develop- ments in music paralleled those in painting. Expressionism in music was a Russian creation, the product of composer Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) and the Ballet Russe, the dance company of Sergei Diaghilev (1872–1929). Together they revolutionized the world of music with Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring. When it was performed in Paris in 1913, the savage and primitive sounds and beats of the music and dance caused a near riot among an audience outraged at its audacity.

By the end of the nineteenth century, then, traditional forms of literary, artistic, and musical expression were in a state of rapid retreat. Freed from conventional tastes and responding to the intellectual and social revolution that was getting under way throughout the Western world, painters, writers, composers, and architects launched a variety of radical new ideas that would revolu- tionize Western culture in coming decades.

CONCLUSION D U R I N G T H E C O U R S E O F T H E N I N E T E E N T H

century, Western society underwent a number of dra- matic changes. Countries that were predominantly agri- cultural in 1750 had by 1900 been transformed into essentially industrial and urban societies. The amount of material goods available to consumers had increased manyfold, and machines were rapidly replacing labor- intensive methods of production and distribution. The social changes were equally striking. Human beings were becoming more mobile and enjoyed more creature com- forts than at any time since the Roman Empire. A mass society, based on the principles of universal education, limited government, and an expanding franchise, was in the process of creation.

The Industrial Revolution had thus vastly expanded the horizons and the potential of the human race. It had also broken down many walls of aristocratic privilege and

opened the door to a new era based on merit. Yet the costs had been high. The distribution of wealth was as unequal as ever, and working and living conditions for millions of Europeans had deteriorated. The psychological impact of such rapid changes had also produced feelings of anger, frustration, and alienation on the part of many who lived through them. With the old certainties of reli- gion and science now increasingly under challenge, many faced the future with doubt or foreboding.

Meanwhile, along the borders of Europe—in Russia, in the Balkans, and in the vast Ottoman Empire—the Indus- trial Revolution had not yet made an impact or was just getting under way. Old autocracies found themselves under increasing pressure from ethnic minorities and other discontented subjects but continued to resist pres- sure for reform. As the world prepared to enter a new century, the stage was set for dramatic change.

Conclusion 23

TIMELINE

1800 1825 1850 1875 1900

Europe Battle of Waterloo (1815)

Russia

The Americas Wars of independence in Latin America (1804–1824)

American Civil War (1861–1865)

Rule of Porfirio Díaz in Mexico (1876–1911)

Emancipation of Russian serfs (1861)

Assassination of Tsar Alexander II (1881)

Creation of Third Republic of France (1870)

Revolutions of 1848

Unification of Germany and Italy (1860–1871)

Industrial Revolution begins in western Europe

Impressionism

Charles Darwin‘s Origin of Species (1859)

Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (1847)

Sigmund Freud‘s Interpretation of Dreams

(1900)

CHAPTER NOTES

1. See Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2000).

2. See Peter Gay, Pleasure Wars: The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud (New York, 1998).

3. Quoted in Barbara Freese, Coal: A Human History (New York, 2003), p. 78.

4. From Stephen Yafa, Cotton: The Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber (New York, 2005), p. 94, citing William Moran, The Belles of New England (New York, 2002), p. 23.

24 CHAPTER 1 The Rise of Industrial Society in the West

C H A P T E R

2 The High Tide of Imperialism: Africa and Asia in an Era of Western Dominance

I N 1 8 7 7 , T H E Y O U N G B R I T I S H E M P I R E builder Cecil Rhodes drew up his last will and testament. He bequeathed his fortune, achieved as a diamond magnate in South Africa, to two of his close friends and acquaintances. He also instructed them to use the inheritance to form a secret society with the aim of bringing about “the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom . . . especially the occupation of the whole continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia [Crete], the whole of South America . . . the ultimate recovery of the United States as an integral part of the British Empire . . . [and] finally the foundation of so great a power to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.”1 A fervent supporter of the British imperial vision, Rhodes actively promoted the extension of British rule until his untimely death in 1902.

Nowhere were Rhodes’s ambitious ideas more evident than in Africa, as he and many of his contemporaries sought to bring much of that enormous continent under the paternal sway of British colonial rule. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, British troops and civilian administrators fanned out across the region in a bid to create the most extensive empire the world had ever known.

C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G

Q What were the consequences of the newimperialism of the nineteenth century for the colonies of the European powers? How should the motives and stated objectives of the imperialist countries be evaluated?

The Spread of Colonial Rule Preposterous as Cecil Rhodes’s ideas seem to us today, they serve as a graphic reminder of the hubris that characterized the worldview of Rhodes and many of his European contemporaries during the Age of Imperialism, as well as the complex union of moral concern and vault- ing ambition that motivated their actions on the world stage. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centu- ries, Western colonialism spread throughout much of the non-Western world. Spurred by the demands of the Industrial Revolution, a few powerful states—notably Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States—competed avariciously for consumer markets and raw materials for their expanding economies. By the end of the nineteenth century, virtually all of the tradi- tional societies in Asia and Africa were under direct or indirect colonial rule.

Revere the conquering heroes: British rule in Africa

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The Myth of European Superiority To many Western observers at the time, the ease of the European conquest provided a clear affirmation of the innate superiority of Western civilization to its counter- parts elsewhere in the world. Influenced by the popular theory of social Darwinism, which applied Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection to the evolution of human societies (see Chapter 1 and “The Philosophy of Colonialism” later in this chapter), historians in Europe and the United States began to view world history as essentially the story of the inexorable rise of the West, from the glories of ancient Greece to the emergence of modern Europe after the Enlightenment and the Indus- trial Revolution. The extension of Western influence to Africa and Asia, a process that began with the arrival of European fleets in the Indian Ocean in the early sixteenth century, was thus viewed as a reflection of Western cul- tural superiority and represented a necessary step in bring- ing civilization to the peoples of that area.

The truth, however, was quite different, for Western global hegemony was a relatively recent phenomenon. Prior to the age of Christopher Columbus, Europe was only an isolated appendage of a much larger world system of states stretching across the Eurasian landmass from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. The center of gravity in this trade network was not in Europe or even in the Mediter- ranean Sea but much farther to the east, in the Persian Gulf and in Central Asia. The most sophisticated and tech- nologically advanced region in the world was not Europe but China, whose proud history could be traced back sev- eral thousand years to the rise of the first Chinese state in the Yellow River valley.

As for the transcontinental trade network that linked Europe with the nations of the Middle East, South Asia, and the Pacific basin, it had not been created by Portu- guese and Spanish navigators but had already developed under the Arab empire, which had its capital in Baghdad. Later the Mongols took control of the land trade routes during their conquest of much of the Eurasian superconti- nent in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. During the long centuries of Arabic and Mongolian hegemony, the caravan routes and sea lanes stretching across Eurasia and the Indian Ocean between China, Africa, and Europe carried not only commercial goods but also ideas and inventions such as the compass, paper, Arabic numerals, and gunpowder. Inventions such as these, many of them originating in China or India, would later play a major role in the emergence of Europe as a major player on the world’s stage. Only in the sixteenth century, with the onset of the Age of Exploration, did Europe become important in the process. For the next three centuries, the

ships of several European nations crossed the seas in quest of the spices, silks, precious metals, and porcelains of the Orient.

For the first time since the decline of the Roman Empire, Europe now became a major player in the global trade network. In a few cases, Europeans engaged in mili- tary conquest as a means of seeking their objective. They were aided by technological advances in shipbuilding and weaponry that gave them a distinct advantage over their rivals. Spain, Portugal, and later other nations of western Europe divided up the Americas into separate colonial ter- ritories. During the eighteenth century, the islands of the Indonesian archipelago were gradually brought under Dutch colonial rule, and the British inexorably extended their political hegemony over the South Asian subconti- nent. For the most part, however, European nations were satisfied to trade with their Asian and African counterparts from coastal enclaves that they had established along the trade routes that threaded across the seas from the ports along the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea to their far- off destinations.

The Advent of Western Imperialism In the nineteenth century, a new phase of Western expan- sion into Asia and Africa began. Whereas European aims in the East before 1800 could be summed up in the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama’s famous phrase “Christians and spices,” in the early nineteenth century, a new relationship took shape: European nations began to view Asian and African societies as a source of indus- trial raw materials and a market for Western manufac- tured goods. No longer were Western gold and silver exchanged for cloves, pepper, tea, silk, and porcelain. Now the prodigious output of European factories was sent to Africa and Asia in return for oil, tin, rubber, and the other resources needed to fuel the Western industrial machine.

THE IMPACT OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION The reason for this change, of course, was the Industrial Revo- lution. Now industrializing countries in the West needed vital raw materials that were not available at home as well as a reliable market for the goods produced in their facto- ries. The latter factor became increasingly crucial as capi- talist societies began to discover that their home markets could not always absorb domestic output. When con- sumer demand lagged, economic depression threatened.

As Western economic expansion into Asia and Africa gath- ered strength during the last quarter of the nineteenth cen- tury, it became fashionable to call the process imperialism.

26 CHAPTER 2 The High Tide of Imperialism: Africa and Asia in an Era of Western Dominance

Although the term imperialism has many meanings and can trace its linguistic heritage back to the glories of ancient Rome, in this instance it referred to the efforts of capitalist states in the West to seize markets, cheap raw materials, and lucrative areas for capital investment beyond traditional Western countries. In this interpretation, the primary motives behind the Western expansion were economic. The best- known promoter of this view was the British political econ- omist John A. Hobson, who in 1902 published a major analysis, Imperialism: A Study. In this influential book, Hobson maintained that modern imperialism was a direct consequence of the modern industrial economy. In his view, the industrialized states of the West often produced more goods than could be absorbed by the domestic market and thus had to export their manufactures to make a profit.

The issue was not simply an economic one, however, since economic concerns were inevitably tinged with po- litical ones and with questions of national grandeur and moral purpose as well. In nineteenth-century Europe, eco- nomic wealth, national status, and political power went hand in hand with the possession of a colonial empire, at least in the minds of observers at the time. To global strategists of the day, colonies brought tangible benefits in the world of power politics as well as economic profits, and many nations became involved in the pursuit of colo- nies as much to gain advantage over their rivals as to acquire territory for its own sake.

The relationship between colonialism and national sur- vival was expressed directly in a speech by the French pol- itician Jules Ferry in 1885. A policy of “containment or abstinence,” he warned, would set France on “the broad road to decadence” and initiate its decline into a “third- or fourth-rate power.” British imperialists agreed. To Cecil Rhodes, the extraction of material wealth from the colo- nies was only a secondary matter. “My ruling purpose,” he remarked, “is the extension of the British Empire.”2

That British Empire, on which (as the saying went) “the sun never set,” was the envy of its rivals and was viewed as the primary source of British global dominance during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

TACTICS OF CONQUEST With the change in European motives for colonization came a corresponding shift in tac- tics. Earlier, when their economic interests were more lim- ited, European states had generally been satisfied to deal with existing independent states rather than attempt to estab- lish direct control over vast territories. There had been exceptions where state power at the local level was on the point of collapse (as in India), where European economic interests were especially intense (as in Latin America and the East Indies), or where there was no centralized authority (as

in North America and the Philippines). But for the most part, the Western presence in Asia and Africa had been limited to controlling the regional trade network and establishing a few footholds where the foreigners could carry on trade and mis- sionary activity.

After 1800, the demands of industrialization in Europe created a new set of dynamics. Maintaining access to indus- trial raw materials, such as oil and rubber, and setting up reliable markets for European manufactured products required more extensive control over colonial territories. As competition for colonies increased, the colonial powers sought to solidify their hold over their territories to protect them from attack by their rivals. During the last two de- cades of the nineteenth century, the quest for colonies became a scramble as all the major European states, now joined by the United States and Japan, engaged in a global land grab. In many cases, economic interests were second- ary to security concerns or national prestige. In Africa, for example, the British engaged in a struggle with their rivals to protect their interests in the Suez Canal and the Red Sea. In Southeast Asia, the United States seized the Philip- pines from Spain at least partly to keep them out of the hands of the Japanese, and the French took over Indochina for fear that it would otherwise be occupied by Germany, Japan, or the United States.

By 1900, virtually all the societies of Africa and Asia were either under full colonial rule or, as in the case of China and the Ottoman Empire, on the point of virtual collapse. Only a handful of states, such as Japan in East Asia, Thailand in Southeast Asia, Afghanistan and Iran in the Middle East, and mountainous Ethiopia in East Africa, managed to escape internal disintegration or political sub- jection to colonial rule. As the twentieth century began, European hegemony over the ancient civilizations of Asia and Africa seemed complete.

The Colonial System Once they had control of most of the world, what did the colonial powers do with it? As we have seen, their pri- mary objective was to exploit the natural resources of the subject areas and to open up markets for manufactured goods and capital investment from the mother country. In some cases, that goal could be realized in cooperation with local political elites, whose loyalty could be earned (or purchased) by economic rewards or by confirming them in their positions of authority and status in a new colonial setting. Sometimes, however, this policy of indirect rule was not feasible because local leaders refused to cooperate with their colonial masters or even actively resisted the foreign conquest. In such cases, the

The Colonial System 27

local elites were removed from power and replaced with a new set of officials recruited from the mother country.

The distinction between direct rule and indirect rule was not always clearly drawn, and many colonial powers vacillated between the two approaches, sometimes in the same colonial territory. The decision often had fateful con- sequences for the peoples involved. Where colonial powers encountered resistance and were forced to overthrow local political elites, they often adopted policies designed to erad- icate the source of resistance and destroy the traditional cul- ture. Such policies often had corrosive effects on the indigenous societies and provoked resentment that not only marked the colonial relationship but even affected relations after the restoration of national independence (see Part V).

The situation in Latin America was a special case. There the Western powers sought to protect their economic inter- ests and preserve access to crucial raw materials and markets by propping up pseudo-independent regimes. The United States, in particular, sent troops to protect its interests in Central America and the Caribbean on several occasions.

The Philosophy of Colonialism To justify their conquests, the colonial powers appealed, in part, to the time-honored maxim of “might makes

right.” Western powers viewed industrial resources as vital to national survival and security and felt that no moral justifica- tion was needed for any action to protect access to them. By the end of the nineteenth cen- tury, that attitude received pseudoscientific validity from the concept of social Darwin- ism, which maintained that only societies that moved aggressively to adapt to chang- ing circumstances would sur- vive and prosper in a world governed by the Darwinist law of “survival of the fittest.”

THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN

Some people, however, were uncomfortable with such a brutal view of the law of na- ture and sought a moral justifi- cation that appeared to benefit the victim. Here again, social Darwinism pointed the way: since human societies, like liv-

ing organisms, must adapt to survive, the advanced nations of the West were obliged to assist the backward peoples of Asia and Africa so that they, too, could adjust to the challenges of the modern world. Few expressed this view as graphically as the English poet Rudyard Kipling, who called on the Anglo-Saxon peoples (in particular, the United States) to take up the “white man’s burden” in Asia (see the box on p. 29).

Buttressed by such comforting theories, humane souls in Western countries could ignore the brutal aspects of the colonial process and persuade themselves that in the long run, the results would be beneficial to both sides. Some saw the issue primarily in religious terms. During the nineteenth century, Christian missionaries by the thousands went to Asia and Africa to bring the gospel to the “heathen masses.” To others, the objective was the more secular one of bringing the benefits of Western de- mocracy and capitalism to the tradition-ridden societies of the Orient. Either way, sensitive Western minds could console themselves with the belief that their governments were bringing civilization to the primitive peoples of the world. If commercial profit and national prestige hap- pened to be by-products of that effort, so much the better. Few were as effective at making the case as the silver- tongued French colonial official Albert Sarraut. Conceding

The Company Resident and His Puppet. The British of the East India Company gradually replaced the sovereigns of the once independent Indian states with puppet rulers who carried out the company’s policies. Here we see the company’s resident dominating a procession in Tanjore in 1825, while the Indian ruler, Sarabhoji, follows like an obedient shadow. As a boy, Sarabhoji had been educated by European tutors and had filled his life and home with English books and furnishings.

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28 CHAPTER 2 The High Tide of Imperialism: Africa and Asia in an Era of Western Dominance

OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS

White Man’s Burden, Black Man’s Sorrow

One of the justifications for modern imperialism was the notion that the supposedly “more advanced” white peoples had the moral responsibility to raise presumably ignorant indigenous peoples to a higher level of civilization. Few captured this notion better than the British poet Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) in his famous poem The White Man’s Burden. His appeal, directed to the United States, became one of the most famous sets of verses in the English-speaking world.

That sense of moral responsibility, however, was often misplaced or, even worse, laced with hypocrisy. All too often, the consequences of imperial rule were detrimental to those living under colonial authority. Few observers described the destructive effects of Western imperialism on the African people as well as British journalist Edmund Morel. His book The Black Man’s Burden, as well as a number of articles written during the first decade of the twentieth century, pointed out some of the more horrific aspects of colonialism in the Belgian Congo. Morel’s reports on the brutal treatment of Congolese workers involved in gathering rubber, ivory, and palm oil for export helped to spur the formation of an investigative commission, whose report in 1904 ultimately led to reforms.

Rudyard Kipling, The White Man’s Burden Take up the White Man’s burden— Send forth the best ye breed— Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild— Your new-caught sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man’s burden— In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain To seek another’s profit, And work another’s gain.

Take up the White Man’s burden— The savage wars of peace— Fill full the mouth of Famine

And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch Sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought.

Edmund Morel, The Black Man’s Burden It is [the Africans] who carry the “Black man’s burden.” They have not withered away before the white man’s occupation. Indeed . . . Africa has ultimately absorbed within itself every Caucasian and, for that matter, every Semitic invader, too. In hewing out for himself a fixed abode in Africa, the white man has massacred the African in heaps. The African has survived, and it is well for the white settlers that he has. . . .

What the partial occupation of his soil by the white man has failed to do; what the mapping out of European political “spheres of influence” has failed to do; what the Maxim and the rifle, the slave gang, labour in the bowels of the earth and the lash, have failed to do; what imported measles, smallpox and syphilis have failed to do; whatever the overseas slave trade failed to do; the power of modern capitalistic exploitation, assisted by modern engines of destruction, may yet succeed in accomplishing.

For from the evils of the latter, scientifically applied and enforced, there is no escape for the African. Its destructive effects are not spasmodic; they are permanent. In its permanence resides its fatal consequences. It kills not the body merely, but the soul. It breaks the spirit. It attacks the African at every turn, from every point of vantage. It wrecks his polity, uproots him from the land, invades his family life, destroys his natural pursuits and occupations, claims his whole time, enslaves him in his own home.

According to Kipling, why should Western nations take up the “white man’s burden”? What was the “black man’s burden,” in the eyes of Edmund Morel?

SOURCES: Rudyard Kipling, The White Man’s Burden. From Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden,” McClure’s Magazine 12 (Feb. 1899). Edmund Morel, The Black Man’s Burden. From Edmund Morel, The Black Man’s Burden (New York: Metro Books, 1972).

The Colonial System 29

that colonialism was originally an “act of force” taken for material profit, he declared that the end result would be a “better life on this planet” for conqueror and conquered alike.

But what about the possibility that historically and culturally, the societies of Asia and Africa were funda- mentally different from those of the West and could not, or would not, be persuaded to transform them- selves along Western lines? After all, even Kipling had remarked that “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” Was the human condition univer- sal, in which case the Asian and African peoples could be transformed, in the quaint American phrase for the subject Filipinos, into “little brown Americans”? Or were human beings so shaped by their history and geo- graphic environment that their civilizations would inevi- tably remain distinctive from those of the West? If so, a policy of cultural transformation could not be expected to succeed.

ASSIMILATION AND ASSOCIATION In fact, colonial theory never decided this issue one way or the other. The French, who were most inclined to philosophize about the problem, adopted the terms assimilation (which implied an effort to transform colonial societies in the Western image) and association (collaborating with local elites while leaving local traditions alone) to describe the two alternatives and then proceeded to vacillate between them. French policy in Indochina, for example, began as one of association but switched to assimilation under pres- sure from liberal elements who felt that colonial powers owed a debt to their subject peoples. But assimilation aroused resentment among the local population, many of whom opposed the destruction of their culture and traditions.

Most colonial powers were not as inclined to debate the theory of colonialism as the French were. The United States, in formulating a colonial policy for the Philip- pines, adopted a strategy of assimilation in theory but was not quick to put it into practice. The British refused to entertain the possibility of assimilation and generally treated their subject peoples as culturally and racially dis- tinct (as Queen Victoria declared in 1858, her govern- ment disclaimed “the right and desire to impose Our conditions on Our subjects”). Although some observers have ascribed this attitude to a sense of racial superiority, not all agree. In his recent book Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire, historian David Cannadine argues that the British simply attempted to replicate their own hierarchical system, based on the institutions of monarchy and aristocracy, and apply it to the peoples of the empire.

India Under the British Raj The first of the major Asian civilizations to fall victim to European predatory activities was India. An organized so- ciety (commonly known today as the Harappan civiliza- tion) had emerged in the Indus River valley in the fourth and third millennia B.C.E. After the influx of Aryan peoples across the Hindu Kush into the Indian subcontinent around 1500 B.C.E., a new civilization based on sedentary agriculture and a regional trade network gradually emerged, with its central focus in the Ganges River basin in north central India. A religious faith brought to the sub- continent by the Aryan people, known today as Hindu- ism, evolved into the dominant religion of the Indian people.

Beginning in the eleventh century, much of northern India fell under the rule of Turkic-speaking people who penetrated into the subcontinent from the northwest and introduced the Islamic religion and civilization. Indian so- ciety, however, was not entirely receptive to the new faith. Where Islam was fiercely monotheistic, the Indian cosmos was peopled with a multiplicity of deities, each representing different aspects of an all-knowing world spi- rit known as Brahma. While Islam was egalitarian, Indian society since early times had been divided into several classes (known as varna, or “color”), each historically iden- tified with a particular economic or social function— priests, warriors, merchants, and farmers. Although such functions had blurred over time, the system also pos- sessed a religious component that determined not only one’s status in society but also one’s hope for heavenly salvation. At the bottom of the social and religious scale were the “untouchables,” individuals who were assigned to carry out the myriad “unclean” tasks in Indian society.

The Indian people did not belong to one of the classes as individuals, but as part of a larger kinship group, a system of extended families known in English as castes. Each caste was identified with a particular varna, creating a highly stratified society in which social movement along the scale was extremely unusual; individuals thus lived their entire lives within the boundaries of caste distinctions.

At the end of the fifteenth century, a powerful new force penetrated the Indian subcontinent from the moun- tains to the north. The Mughals, as they were known, were a Turkic-speaking people whose founding ruler Babur (1483–1530) traced his ancestral heritage back to the great Mongol chieftain Genghis Khan. Although for- eigners and Muslims like many of their immediate prede- cessors, the Mughals nevertheless brought India to a level of political power and cultural achievement that inspired admiration and envy throughout the entire region.

30 CHAPTER 2 The High Tide of Imperialism: Africa and Asia in an Era of Western Dominance

The Mughal Empire reached the peak of its greatness under the famed Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605). Eventually, however, the dynasty began to weaken as Hindu forces in southern India sought to challenge the authority of the Mughal court in Delhi. This process of fragmentation was probably hastened by the growing presence of European traders, who began to establish enclaves along the fringes of the subcontinent. By the end of the eighteenth century, the British and the French had begun to seize control of the

regional trade routes and to meddle in the internal politics of the sub- continent. Soon nothing remained of the empire but a shell. Into the vacuum left by its final decay stepped the British, who used a combination of firepower and guile to consolidate their power over the subcontinent. Some territories were taken over directly by the privately run East India Company, which at that time was given authority to administer Asian territories under British occupation, while others were ruled indirectly through their local maharajas (see Map 2.1). Brit- ish rule extended northward as far as present-day Afghanistan, where British fears of Russian expansion- ism led to a lengthy imperialist ri- valry that was popularly labeled “the Great Game.”

The Nature of British Rule British rule in India brought stabil- ity to a region that had been wracked by civil strife, as the Brit- ish adopted reforms that led to a relatively honest and efficient gov- ernment that in some respects operated to the benefit of the av- erage Indian. For example, height- ened attention was given to education. Through the efforts of the British administrator and histo- rian Lord Macaulay, a new school system was established to train the children of Indian elites, and the British civil service examina- tion was introduced (see the box on p. 32).

British rule also brought an end to some of the more inhumane aspects of Indian tradition. The practice of sati (cremation of a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre) was outlawed, and widows were legally permitted to remarry. The British also attempted to put an end to the brigandage (known as thuggee, which gave rise to the English word thug) that had plagued travelers in India since time imme- morial. Railroads, the telegraph, and the postal service were introduced to India shortly after they appeared in

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RAJPUTANA UNITED PROVINCES

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Territory under British rule

Territories permanently administered by government of India (mostly tribal)

States and territories under Indian administration

Portuguese enclave

French enclave

Hindu-majority provinces

Muslim-majority provinces

Area of large Sikh population

MAP 2.1 India Under British Rule, 1805–1931. This map shows the different forms of rule that the British applied in India under their control. The Sikhs, located primarily in the Punjab, were adherents of a religion that began in the sixteenth century as an attempt to reconcile the Hindu and Muslim traditions and ultimately developed into an alternative to both.

Where were the major cities of the subcontinent located, and under whose rule did they fall?

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India Under the British Raj 31

Great Britain. A new penal code based on the British model was adopted, and health and sanitation conditions were improved.

AGRICULTURAL REFORMS But in some ways the Indian people paid dearly for the peace and stability brought by the British raj (from the Indian raja, or prince). Perhaps the most flagrant cost was economic. In rural areas, the British adopted the existing zamindar system, according to which local landlords were authorized to collect taxes from peasants and turn the taxes over to the government. The British mistakenly anticipated that by continu- ing the system, they would not only facilitate the collec- tion of agricultural taxes but also create a landed gentry that could, as in Britain itself, become the conservative foundation of imperial rule. But the local gentry took advantage of their authority to increase taxes and force the less fortunate peasants to become tenants or lose their land entirely. When rural unrest threatened, the govern- ment passed legislation protecting farmers against eviction

and unreasonable rent increases, but this measure had little effect outside the southern provinces, where it was origi- nally enacted.

MANUFACTURING British colonialism was also remiss in bringing modern science and technology to India. Industrial development was still in its infancy during the Mughal era, although foreign trade thrived, as Indian goods, notably textiles, tropical food products, spices, and precious stones, were exported in return for gold and sil- ver. Under the British, limited forms of industrialization took place, notably in the manufacturing of textiles and rope. The first textile mill opened in 1856; seventy years later, there were eighty mills in the city of Bombay (now Mumbai) alone. Nevertheless, the lack of local capital and the advantages given to British imports prevented the emergence of other vital new commercial and manufac- turing operations, and the introduction of British textiles put thousands of Bengali women out of work and severely damaged the village textile industry.

Indian in Blood, English in Taste and Intellect Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) was named a member of the Supreme Council of India in the early 1830s. In that capacity, he was responsible for drawing up a new educational policy for British subjects in the area. In his Minute on Education, he considered the claims of English and various local languages to become the vehicle for educational training and decided in favor of the former. It is better, he argued, to teach Indian elites about Western civilization so as “to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” Later Macaulay became a prominent historian.

Thomas Babington Macaulay, Minute on Education We have a fund to be employed as government shall direct for the intellectual improvement of the people of this country. The simple question is, what is the most useful way of employing it?

All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India contain neither literary or scientific information, and are moreover so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them. . . .

What, then, shall the language [of education] be? One half of the Committee maintain that it should be the English. The other half strongly recommend the Arabic and Sanskrit. The whole question seems to me to be, what language is the best worth knowing?

I have no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic—I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanskrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. . . .

It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England.

How does Macaulay justify the teaching of the English language in India? How might a critic respond?

SOURCE: From Speeches by Lord Macaulay, With His Minute on Indian Education by Thomas B. MacAuley. AMS Press, 1935.

32 CHAPTER 2 The High Tide of Imperialism: Africa and Asia in an Era of Western Dominance

A CIVILIZING MISSION? Foreign rule also had an effect on the psyche of the Indian people. Although many Brit- ish colonial officials sincerely tried to improve the lot of the people under their charge, the government made few efforts to introduce democratic institutions and values to the Indian people. Moreover, British arrogance and con- tempt for local traditions cut deeply into the pride of many Indians, especially those of high caste who were ac- customed to a position of superior status in India.

By the end of the nineteenth century, increasingly disil- lusioned with the failure of the British to live up to their “civilizing mission,” educated Indians began to clamor for a greater role in the governance of their country, and in 1885 a new organization designed to represent the inter- ests of the indigenous population—the Indian National Congress—was born (see Chapter 5).

The Colonial Takeover of Southeast Asia Southeast Asia had been one of the first destinations for European fleets en route to the East. Lured by the riches of the Spice Islands (at the eastern end of present-day Indonesia), European adventurers sailed to the area in the early sixteenth century in the hope of seizing control of the spice trade from Arab and Indian merchants. A cen- tury later, the trade was fast becoming a monopoly of the Dutch, whose sturdy ships and ample supply of capital gave them a significant advantage over their rivals.

Well before the arrival of the first Europeans, how- ever, Southeast Asia had been an active participant in the global trade network, purchasing textiles from India and luxury goods from China in return for spices, precious metals, and various tropical woods and herbs. Although no single empire had ever controlled all of Southeast Asia, several powerful states had emerged in the region since the early centuries of the first millennium C.E. Some, like Sailendra and Srivijaya in the Indonesian archipelago, were primarily trading states. Others, like Vietnam, Angkor (in present-day Cambodia), and the Burmese empire of Pagan on the subcontinent, were predominantly agricul- tural. Most had patterned their political systems and their religious beliefs after those of the Indian subcontinent. Vietnam was strongly influenced by China. Then, by the thirteenth century, Islam began to make inroads into the southern part of the region, promoted by Muslim merchants from India and the Middle East who were active in the spice trade.

In 1800, only two societies in Southeast Asia were under effective colonial rule: the Spanish Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. The British had been driven out of

the Spice Islands trade by the Dutch in the seventeenth century and possessed only a small enclave on the south- ern coast of the island of Sumatra and some territory on the Malay peninsula. The French had actively engaged in trade with states on the Asian mainland, but their activity in the area was eventually reduced to a small missionary effort run by the Society for Foreign Missions. The only legacy of Portuguese expansion in the region was the pos- session of half of the small island of Timor. The remain- der of the region continued to be governed by indigenous rulers.

The Imposition of Colonial Rule During the second half of the nineteenth century, how- ever, European interest in Southeast Asia grew rapidly, and by 1900, virtually the entire area was under colonial rule (see Map 2.2). The process began after the Napo- leonic wars, when the British, by agreement with the Dutch, abandoned their claims to territorial possessions in the East Indies in return for a free hand in the Malay pen- insula. In 1819, the colonial administrator Stamford Raffles founded a new British colony on a small island at the tip of the peninsula. Called Singapore (“City of the Lion”), it had previously been used by Malay pirates as a base for raiding ships passing through the Strait of Malacca. When the invention of steam power enabled merchant ships to save time and distance by passing through the strait rather than sailing with the westerlies across the southern Indian Ocean, Singapore became a major stopping point for traf- fic to and from China and other commercial centers in the region. A few decades later, the British took over the king- dom of Burma and placed it under the colonial adminis- tration in India.

The British advance into Burma was watched nerv- ously in Paris, where French geopoliticians were ever anx- ious about British operations in Asia and Africa. The French still maintained a clandestine missionary organiza- tion in Vietnam despite harsh persecution by the local authorities, who viewed Christianity as a threat to impe- rial rule and internal stability. But Vietnamese efforts to prohibit Christian missionary activities were hindered by the internal rivalries that had earlier divided the country into two separate and mutually hostile governments in the north and south.

In 1857, the French government decided to compel the Vietnamese to accept French protection to prevent the British from obtaining a monopoly of trade in South China. A naval attack launched a year later was not a total success, but the French eventually forced the Vietnamese court to cede territories in the southern part of the coun- try. A generation later, French rule was extended over the

The Colonial Takeover of Southeast Asia 33

remainder of Vietnam. By the end of the century, French seizure of neighboring Cambodia and Laos had led to the creation of the French-ruled Indochinese Union.

With the French conquest of Indochina, Thailand—then known as Siam—was the only remaining independent state on the Southeast Asian mainland. During the last quarter of the century, British and French rivalry threatened to place the Thai, too, under colonial rule. But under the as- tute leadership of two remarkable rulers, King Mongkut (familiar to millions in the West as the monarch—played by actor Yul Brynner—in the 1956 film The King and I) and his son King Chulalongkorn, the Thai sought to introduce Western learning and maintain relations with the major Eu- ropean powers without undermining internal stability or inviting an imperialist attack. In 1896, the British and the French agreed to preserve Thailand as an independent buffer zone between their possessions in Southeast Asia.

The final piece of the colonial edifice in Southeast Asia was put in place in 1898, when U.S. naval forces under Commodore George Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on the island of Luzon in the Spanish Philip- pines. Since gaining independence in the late eighteenth century, the United States had always considered itself to be

an anticolonialist nation, but by the end of the nineteenth century, many Americans believed that the United States was ready to expand abroad. The Pacific islands were the scene of great-power competi- tion and witnessed the entry of the United States on the imperialist stage. Eastern Samoa became the first important American colony; the Hawaiian Islands were the next to fall. Soon after an American na- val station had been established at Pearl Harbor in 1887, American set- tlers gained control of the sugar industry on the islands. When the local Hawaiians tried to reassert their authority, the U.S. Marines were brought in to “protect” Amer- ican lives. Hawaii was annexed by the United States in 1898 during the era of American nationalistic fervor generated by the Spanish- American War, which broke out af- ter an explosion damaged a U.S. battleship anchored at Havana on the Spanish-held island of Cuba.

The defeat of Spain encouraged the Americans to extend their

empire by acquiring Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philip- pine Islands. Although President William McKinley justi- fied the seizure of the Philippines on moral grounds, the real reason was to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Japanese. In fact, the Americans (like the Spanish before them) found the islands a convenient jumping-off point for the China trade (see Chapter 3). Although guerrilla forces led by Emilio Aguinaldo fought bitterly against U.S. troops to maintain independence, the resistance collapsed in 1901. President McKinley had his stepping-stone to the rich markets of China.

Colonial Regimes in Southeast Asia In Southeast Asia, economic profit was the immediate and primary aim of the colonial enterprise. For that purpose, colonial powers tried wherever possible to work with local elites to facilitate the exploitation of natural resources. Indi- rect rule reduced the cost of training European administra- tors and had a less corrosive impact on the local culture.

COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION In the Dutch East Indies, for example, officials of the Dutch East India Company

VIETNAM (1859)

LAOS (1893)

CAMBODIA (1863)

THAILAND

BURMA (1826)

MALAYA (1786)

SINGAPORE (1819)

SARAWAK (1888)

BRUNEI (1888)

NORTH BORNEO (1888)

INDONESIA (early 1600s)

TIMOR (1566)

PHILIPPINES (Spain, 1521;

United States, 1898)

MALACCA (Port., 1511)

CHINA

NEW GUINEA

Portuguese

Spanish and American

Dutch

British

French

Not colonized

Date of initial claim or control

(1895)

0 500 1,000 Miles

0 500 1,000 1,500 Kilometers

MAP 2.2 Colonial Southeast Asia. European colonial rule spread into Southeast Asia between the sixteenth century and the end of the nineteenth.

What was the significance of Malacca?

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34 CHAPTER 2 The High Tide of Imperialism: Africa and Asia in an Era of Western Dominance

(VOC, from the initials of its Dutch name) entrusted local administration to the indigenous landed aristocracy, known as the priyayi. The priyayi maintained law and order and collected taxes in return for a payment from the VOC. The British followed a similar practice in Malaya. While establishing direct rule over areas of crucial importance, such as the commercial centers of Singapore and Malacca and the island of Penang, the British signed agreements with local Muslim rulers to maintain princely power in the interior of the peninsula.

In some instances, however, local resistance to the co- lonial conquest made such a policy impossible. In Burma, faced with staunch opposition from the monarchy and other traditionalist forces, the British abolished the mon- archy and administered the country directly through their colonial government in India. In Indochina, the French used both direct and indirect means. They imposed direct rule on the southern provinces in the Mekong delta, which had been ceded to France as a colony after the first war in 1858–1860. The northern parts of the country, seized in the 1880s, were governed as a protectorate, with the emperor retaining titular authority from his palace in Hu�e. The French adopted a similar policy in Cambodia and Laos, where local rulers were left in charge with French advisers to counsel them. Even the Dutch were eventually forced into a more direct approach. When the

development of plantation agriculture and the extraction of oil in Sumatra made effective exploitation of local resources more complicated, they dispensed with indirect rule and tightened their administrative control over the ar- chipelago. Whatever method was used, colonial regimes in Southeast Asia, as elsewhere, were slow to create dem- ocratic institutions. The first legislative councils and assemblies were composed almost exclusively of Euro- pean residents in the colonies. The first representatives from the indigenous population were wealthy and con- servative in their political views. When Southeast Asians began to complain, colonial officials gradually and reluc- tantly began to broaden the franchise, but even such lib- eral thinkers as Albert Sarraut advised patience in awaiting the full benefits of colonial policy. “I will treat you like my younger brothers,” he promised, “but do not forget that I am the older brother. I will slowly give you the dignity of humanity.”3

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Colonial powers were equally reluctant to shoulder the “white man’s burden” in the area of economic development. As we have seen, their primary goals were to secure a source of cheap raw mate- rials and to maintain markets for manufactured goods. So colonial policy concentrated on the export of raw materials—teakwood from Burma; rubber and tin from

The Production of Rubber. Natural rubber was one of the most important cash crops in the European colonies in Asia. Rubber trees, native to the Amazon River basin in Brazil, were eventually transplanted to Southeast Asia, where they became a major source of profit. Workers on the plantations received few benefits, however. Once the sap of the tree, called latex, was extracted, as shown on the left, it was hardened and pressed into sheets (right photo) and then sent to Europe for refining.

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The Colonial Takeover of Southeast Asia 35

Malaya; spices, tea, coffee, and palm oil from the East Indies; and sugar and copra from the Philippines.

In some Southeast Asian colonial societies, a measure of industrial development did take place to meet the needs of the European population and local elites. Major manufac- turing cities, including Rangoon in lower Burma, Batavia on the island of Java, and Saigon in French Indochina, grew rapidly. Although the local middle class benefited in various ways from the Western presence, most industrial and com- mercial establishments were owned and managed by Euro- peans or, in some cases, by Indian or Chinese merchants who had long been active in the area. In Saigon, for exam- ple, even the manufacture of nuoc mam, the traditional Viet- namese fish sauce, was under Chinese ownership. Most urban residents were coolies (laborers), factory workers, or rickshaw drivers or eked out a living in family shops as they had during the traditional era.

RURAL POLICIES Despite the growth of an urban econ- omy, the vast majority of people in the colonial societies continued to farm the land. Many continued to live by subsistence agriculture, but the colonial policy of empha- sizing cash crops for export also led to the creation of a form of plantation agriculture in which peasants were recruited to work as wage laborers on rubber and tea plantations owned by Europeans. To maintain a competi- tive edge, the plantation owners kept the wages of their workers at the poverty level. Many plantation workers were “shanghaied” (the English term originated from the practice of recruiting laborers, often from the docks and streets of Shanghai, by the use of force, alcohol, drugs, or other unscrupulous means) to work on plantations, where conditions were often so inhumane that thousands died. High taxes, enacted by colonial governments to pay for administrative costs or improvements in the local infra- structure, were a heavy burden for poor peasants.

The situation was made even more difficult by the steady growth of the population. Peasants in Asia had always had large families on the assumption that a high proportion of their children would die in infancy. But improved sanitation and medical treatment resulted in lower rates of infant mor- tality and a staggering increase in population. The popula- tion of the island of Java, for example, increased from about a million in the precolonial era to about 40 million at the end of the nineteenth century. Under these conditions, the rural areas could no longer support the growing populations, and many young people fled to the cities to seek jobs in fac- tories or shops. The migratory pattern gave rise to squatter settlements in the suburbs of the major cities.

IMPERIALISM IN THE BALANCE As in India, colonial rule did bring some benefits to Southeast Asia. It led to

the beginnings of a modern economic infrastructure, and the development of an export market helped create an entrepreneurial class in rural areas. On the outer islands of the Dutch East Indies (such as Borneo and Sumatra), for example, small growers of rubber, palm oil, coffee, tea, and spices began to share in the profits of the colonial enterprise.

A balanced assessment of the colonial legacy in South- east Asia must take into account that the early stages of in- dustrialization are difficult in any society. Even in western Europe, industrialization led to the creation of an impover- ished and powerless proletariat, urban slums, and displaced peasants driven from the land. In much of Europe, how- ever, the bulk of the population eventually enjoyed better material conditions as the profits from manufacturing and plantation agriculture were reinvested in the national econ- omy and gave rise to increased consumer demand. In con- trast, in Southeast Asia, most of the profits were repatriated to the colonial mother country, while displaced peasants fleeing to cities such as Rangoon, Batavia, and Saigon found little opportunity for employment. Many were left with seasonal employment, with one foot on the farm and one in the factory. The old world was being destroyed, and the new had yet to be born.

Empire Building in Africa The last of the equatorial regions of the world to be placed under European colonial rule was the continent of Africa. European navigators had first established contacts with Africans south of the Sahara during the late fifteenth century, when Portuguese fleets sailed down the Atlantic coast on their way to the Indian Ocean. During the next three centuries, Europeans established port facilities along the coasts of East and West Africa to facilitate their trade with areas farther to the east and to engage in limited commercial relations with African societies. Although Eu- ropean exploration of the area was originally motivated by the search for gold and a route to the Spice Islands of the mysterious Orient, eventually the trade in slaves took precedence, and over the next three centuries several mil- lion unfortunate Africans were loaded onto slave ships destined to serve on the sugar and cotton plantations of the Americas. For a variety of reasons, however, Euro- peans made little effort to penetrate the vast continent and were generally content to deal with African interme- diaries along the coast to maintain their trading relation- ship. The Western psyche developed a deeply ingrained image of “darkest Africa”—a continent without a history, its people living out their days bereft of cultural contact with the outside world.

36 CHAPTER 2 The High Tide of Imperialism: Africa and Asia in an Era of Western Dominance

Africa Before the Europeans There was a glimmer of truth in the Western image of sub-Saharan Africa as a region outside the mainstream of civilization on the Eurasian landmass. Although Africa was the original seedbed of humankind and the site of much of its early evolutionary experience, the desiccation of the Sahara during the fourth and third millennia B.C.E. had erected a major obstacle to communications between the peoples south of the desert and societies elsewhere in the world. The barrier was never total, however. From ancient times, caravans crossed the Sahara from the Niger River basin to the shores of the Mediterranean carrying gold and tropical products in exchange for salt, textile goods, and other manufactured articles from the north. By the seventh century C.E., several prosperous trading societies, whose renown extended to medieval Europe and the Middle East, had begun to arise in the savanna belt (a region of grasslands on the southern edge of the desert) of West Africa.

One crucial consequence of this new trade network was the introduction of Islam to the peoples of the region. Arab armies sweeping westward along the coast of

the Mediterranean Sea had already brought the mes- sage of the Prophet Muhammad as far as Morocco and the Iberian penin- sula. Soon, Islamic religion and culture began to cross the Sahara in the bag- gage of Muslim merchants. Along with the Qur’an, Islam’s holy book, the new faith intro- duced its African

converts to a new code of law and ethics—the Shari’a—and to the Prophet’s uncompromising message of the equality of all in the eyes of God. The city of Timbuktu, on the banks of the Niger River, soon became a major center of Islamic scholarship and schools providing education in the Arabic language.

In the eastern half of the continent, the Sahara posed no obstacle to communication beyond the seas. The long eastern coast had played a role in the trade network of the Indian Ocean since the time of the pharaohs along the Nile. Ships from India, the Persian Gulf, and as far away as China made regular visits to the East African ports of

Kilwa, Malindi, and Sofala, bringing textiles, metal goods, and luxury articles in return for gold, ivory, and various tropical products from Africa. With the settlement of Arab traders along the eastern coast, the entire region devel- oped a new synthetic culture, known as Swahili, that combined elements of Arabic and indigenous cultures. Although the Portuguese briefly seized or destroyed most of the trading ports along the eastern coast, by the eigh- teenth century the Europeans had been driven out, and local authority was restored.

In the vast interior of the continent, from the Congo River basin southward to the Cape of Good Hope, con- tacts with the outside world were rare, and the majority of the population lived in autonomous villages organized by clans or a local chieftain; they supported themselves by farming, pastoral pursuits, or hunting and gathering. In a few cases, some of these individual communities had begun to consolidate into small states, which took part in a growing interregional trade network based on the exchange of metal goods and foodstuffs. It was here, above all, that the Western image of “the dark continent” carried the most plausibility.

The Growing European Presence in West Africa By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the slave trade was in decline. One reason was the growing sense of outrage in Europe over the purchase, sale, and exploita- tion of human beings. Traffic in slaves by Dutch mer- chants effectively came to an end in 1795 and by Danes in 1803. The slave trade was declared illegal in Great Britain in 1807 and in the United States in 1808. The British began to apply pressure on other nations to follow suit, and most did so after the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, leaving only Portugal and Spain as practitioners of the trade south of the equator. Meanwhile, the demand for slaves began to decline in the Western Hemisphere, although an illegal trade in slaves across the Atlantic per- sisted for some time (see the box on p. 38). By the 1880s, slavery had been abolished in all major countries of the world.

The decline of the slave trade in the Atlantic during the nineteenth century, however, did not lead to an over- all reduction in the European presence in West Africa. On the contrary, European interest in what was sometimes called “legitimate trade” in natural resources increased. Exports of peanuts, timber, hides, and palm oil increased substantially during the first decades of the century, and imports of textile goods and other manufactured products also rose.

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Empire Building in Africa 37

Tragedy at Caffard Cove The slave trade was declared illegal in France in 1818, but the clandestine shipment of Africans to the Americas continued for many years afterward. At the same time, slavery was widely tolerated in the French colonies, especially in the Caribbean, where sugar plantations on the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique depended on cheap labor for their profits. It was not until 1849 that slavery was abolished throughout the French Empire.

Among the tragic events that characterized the shipment of slaves to the Americas (often called the “Middle Passage”), few are as poignant as the incident described in the passage below, which took place in 1830 on the island of Martinique. The text, which includes passages from the original official report of the incident, is taken from a memorial erected at the site many years later. Laurent Valère, a local sculptor, erected fifteen statues to commemorate the victims. The name of the ship and the name and nationality of the ship’s captain, as well as the ultimate fate of the surviving victims, remain a mystery to this day.

The Caffard Memorial Around noon on the 8th of April 1830, a sailing ship [was observed] carrying out odd maneuvers off the coast of [the town of] Diamant [on the southern coast of Martinique]; at about five P.M. [the vessel] cast anchor off the dangerous coast of nearby Caffard Cove. François Dizac, a resident of the neighborhood and manager of the Plage du Diamant, a plantation owned by the Count de Latournelle, realized that the ship’s situation was perilous, but a heavy swell prevented him from launching a boat to warn the captain that the vessel was in imminent danger of running aground. He therefore sent signals that the captain either could not, or chose not, to acknowledge.

At 11 P.M. that evening, anguished cries and cracking sounds suddenly began to shatter the silence of the night. Dizac and a party of slaves from the nearby plantation rushed promptly to the scene, only to encounter a horrifying sight: the ship had been dashed on the rocks and its passengers thrown into the fury of the raging seas. The rescuers on shore then observed a large number of panic- stricken males clinging desperately to the ship’s foremast, which suddenly broke in two, tossing them into the foam or onto the rocks. Broken masts lying on the rocks, fragments of torn sails floating alongside ropes caught in the reef where the ship itself lay on the rocks all provided visual evidence of the frightful incident that had just occurred.

Forty-six bodies, four of whom were white males, were lying amidst the rocks. . . . “I ordered the bodies of the black victims to be buried at a short distance from the shore, then directed that those of the white males be carried to the cemetery of Diamant parish, where they received a Christian burial. I was then taken to the cabin of a certain Borrom�e, a free man of color, where those black castaways who had been rescued from the shipwreck had been given temporary shelter. Among the victims, six were found to be in such poor condition that they could not be taken to the Latournelle plantation. The other 80 survivors were handed over to the naval authorities at Fort Royal. In all, 86 African captives, of whom 60 were women or girls, were rescued out of a ship’s “cargo” estimated at nearly 300 persons.

“I ordered the interrogation of the surviving black castaways by interpreters, and it became clear from their testimony that the ship had been at sea for four months, and that most of the white sailors on board had died during the crossing [of the Atlantic], and that an additional 70 blacks had died from illness and had been thrown overboard during the voyage. Another 260 individuals remained on the ship when it was sunk off the coast of Diamant. . . . Only a few males had thus survived, since all of them were shackled together in the ship’s hold with irons on their feet at the time of the wreck.”

At that point, a legal issue was raised: what should be done with the surviving castaways who, although they could not be classified as slaves under existing law (since they were victims of illegal trade), yet could not be considered in this colony as men and therefore couldn’t be freed. In May 1830, the Privy Council of Martinique ordered that the captured Negroes were to be shipped to Cayenne [the capital of French Guiana] in order to avoid having in the [French] West Indies a special class of people who could not be classified either as slaves or as free individuals. . . .

Thus, in July 1830, a second deportation followed the first, adding to the ordeal of the [African] slaves who had survived the shipwreck at Caffard Cove.

How were the surviving victims of the shipwreck at Caffard Cove dealt with by the government authorities in Martinique? Under what provisions of the law was the decision reached?

SOURCE: Association de Sauvegarde du Patrimoine du Diamant. Text by Merlande, MOANDA SATURNIN, historian. Translation from the original French by the author.

38 CHAPTER 2 The High Tide of Imperialism: Africa and Asia in an Era of Western Dominance

Stimulated by growing commercial interests in the area, European governments began to push for a more permanent presence along the coast. During the first de- cades of the nineteenth century, the British established settlements along the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) and in Sierra Leone, where they attempted to set up agricul- tural plantations for freed slaves who had returned from the Western Hemisphere or had been liberated by British ships while en route to the Americas. A similar haven for ex-slaves was developed with the assistance of the United States in Liberia. The French occupied the area around the Senegal River near Cape Verde, where they attempted to develop peanut plantations.

The growing European presence in West Africa led to tensions with African governments in the area. British efforts to increase trade with Ashanti, in the area of the present-day state of Ghana, led to conflict in the 1820s. British influence in the area intensified in later decades. Most African states, especially those with a fairly high degree of political integration, were able to maintain their independence from this creeping European encroachment, called “informal empire” by some historians, but eventu- ally, in 1874, the British stepped in and annexed the Ashanti kingdom as Britain’s first African colony of the Gold Coast. At about the same time, the British extended an informal protectorate over warring tribal groups in the Niger delta.

Imperialist Shadow over the Nile A similar process was under way in the Nile valley. Ever since the voyages of the Portuguese explorers at the close of the fifteenth century, European trade with the East had been carried on almost exclusively by the route around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. But from the outset, there was interest in shortening the route by digging a canal east of Cairo, where only a low, swampy isthmus separated the Mediterranean from the Red Sea. The Ottoman Turks, who controlled the area, had consid- ered constructing a canal in the sixteenth century, but noth- ing was accomplished until 1854, when the French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps signed a contract to begin construction of the canal, which was completed in 1869. The project brought little immediate benefit to Egypt, however, which was attempting to adopt reforms on the European model under the vigorous rule of the Ottoman official Muhammad Ali. The costs of construction imposed a major debt on the Egyptian government and forced a growing level of dependence on foreign financial support. When an army revolt against the increasing for- eign influence broke out in 1881, the British stepped in to protect their investment (they had bought Egypt’s canal

company shares in 1875) and set up an informal protec- torate that would last until World War I.

Rising discon- tent in the Sudan added to Egypt’s in- ternal problems. In 1881, the Muslim cleric Muhammad Ahmad, known as the Mahdi (in Arabic, the “rightly guided one”), led a religious revolt that brought much of the upper Nile under his control. The famous British general Charles Gordon led a military force to Khartoum to restore Egyptian authority, but his besieged army was captured in 1885 by the Mahdi’s troops, thirty-six hours before a British rescue mission reached Khartoum. Gordon himself died in the battle (see the Film & History feature on p. 40).

The weakening of Turkish rule in the Nile valley had a parallel farther along the Mediterranean coast to the west, where autonomous regions had begun to emerge under local viceroys in Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers. In 1830, the French, on the pretext of reducing the threat of piracy to European shipping in the Mediterranean, seized the area surrounding Algiers and annexed it to the kingdom of France. By the mid-1850s, more than 150,000 Europeans had settled in the fertile region adjacent to the coast, though Berber resistance continued in the desert to the south. In 1881, the French imposed a protectorate on neighboring Tunisia. Only Tripoli and Cyrenaica (Otto- man provinces that make up modern-day Libya) remained under Turkish rule until the Italians took them in 1911–1912.

The Scramble for Africa At the beginning of the 1880s, most of Africa was still in- dependent. European rule was limited to the fringes of the continent, and a few areas, such as Egypt, lower Nige- ria, Senegal, and Mozambique, were under various forms of loose protectorate. But the trends were ominous, as the pace of European penetration was accelerating and the constraints that had limited European rapaciousness were fast disappearing.

The scramble began in the mid-1880s, when several European states engaged in what today would be called a

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Empire Building in Africa 39

feeding frenzy. All sought to seize a piece of African terri- tory before the carcass had been picked clean. By 1900, vir- tually the entire continent had been placed under one form or another of European rule (see Map 2.3). The British had consolidated their authority over the Nile valley and seized additional territories in East Africa. The French retaliated by advancing eastward from Senegal into the central

Sahara, where they eventually came eyeball to eyeball with the British in the Nile valley They also occupied the island of Madagascar and other coastal territories in West and Central Africa. In between, the Germans claimed the hin- terland opposite Zanzibar, as well as coastal strips in West and Southwest Africa north of the Cape, and King Leopold II of Belgium claimed the Congo.

FILM & HISTORY

Khartoum (1966) The tragic mission of General Charles “Chinese” Gordon to Khartoum in 1884 was one of the most dramatic news stories of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Gordon was already renowned in his native Great Britain for his successful efforts to bring an end to the practice of slavery in North Africa. He had also attracted attention for helping the Manchu Empire suppress the Taiping Rebellion in China in the 1860s (see Chapter 3), hence his nickname. The Khartoum affair not only marked the culmination of his storied career but also symbolized in broader terms the epic struggle in Britain between advocates and opponents of imperial expansion. The battle for Khartoum thus became an object lesson in modern British history. Proponents of British imperial expansion argued that the country must assert its power in the Nile River valley to protect the Suez Canal as its main trade route to the East. Critics argued that imperial overreach would inevitably entangle the country in unwinnable wars in far-off places.

The movie Khartoum (1966) dramatically captures the ferocity of the battle for the Nile as well as its significance for the future of the British Empire. General Gordon, stoically played by the American actor Charlton Heston, is a devout Christian who has devoted his life to carrying out the moral imperative of imperialism in the continent of Africa. When peace in the Sudan (then a British protectorate in the upper Nile River valley) is threatened by the forces of radical Islam led by the Muslim mystic Muhammad Ahmad—known as the Mahdi—Gordon leads a mission to Khartoum under orders to prevent catastrophe there. But Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, admirably portrayed by the British actor Sir

Ralph Richardson, fears that Gordon’s messianic desire to save the Sudan will entrap his government in an unwinnable war; he thus orders Gordon to lead an evacuation of the city. The most fascinating character in the film is the Mahdi himself (played brilliantly by Sir Laurence Olivier), who firmly believes that he has a sacred mandate to carry the Prophet’s words to the global Muslim community.

The conclusion of the film, set in the breathtaking beauty of the Nile River valley, takes place as the clash of wills reaches a climax in the battle for control of Khartoum. Although the film’s portrayal of a face-to-face meeting between Gordon and the Mahdi is not based on fact, the narrative serves as an object lesson on the dangers of imperial overreach and as an eerie foretaste of the clash between militant Islam and Christendom in our own day. n

General Charles Gordon (Charlton Heston) astride his camel in Khartoum, Sudan.

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40 CHAPTER 2 The High Tide of Imperialism: Africa and Asia in an Era of Western Dominance

THE MOTIVES What had happened to spark the sudden imperialist hysteria that brought an end to African inde- pendence? Economic interests in the narrow sense were not at stake as they had been in South and Southeast Asia: the level of trade between Europe and Africa was simply not sufficient to justify the risks and the expense of con- quest. Clearly, one factor was the growing rivalry among the imperialist powers. European leaders might be pro- voked into an imperialist takeover not by economic con- siderations but by the fear that another state might do so, leaving them at a disadvantage.

Another consideration might be called the “missionary factor,” as European religious interests lob- bied with their governments for a colonial takeover to facilitate their efforts to convert the African popu- lation to Christianity. In fact, con- siderable moral complacency was inherent in the process. The con- cept of the “white man’s burden” persuaded many that it was in the interests of the African people to be introduced more rapidly to the benefits of Western civilization. Even the highly respected Scottish missionary David Livingstone had become convinced that missionary work and economic development had to go hand in hand, pleading to his fellow Europeans to intro- duce the “three Cs” (Christianity, commerce, and civilization) to the continent. How much easier such a task would be if African peoples were under benevolent European rule! There were more prosaic rea- sons as well. Advances in Western technology and European superior- ity in firearms made it easier than ever for a small European force to defeat superior numbers. Further- more, life expectancy for Europeans living in Africa had improved. With the discovery that quinine (extracted from the bark of the cinchona tree) could provide partial immunity from the ravages of malaria, the mortality rate for Europeans living in Africa dropped dramatically in the 1840s. By the end of the century, European residents in tropical Africa

faced only slightly higher risks of death by disease than individuals living in Europe.

Under these circumstances, King Leopold of Belgium used missionary activities as an excuse to claim vast terri- tories in the Congo River basin—Belgium, he said, as “a small country, with a small people,” needed a colony to enhance its image.4 The royal land grab set off a desperate race among European nations to stake claims throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Leopold ended up with the territories south of the Congo River, while France occupied areas to the north. Rapacious European adventurers established

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Which European countries possessed the most colonies in Africa? Why did Ethiopia remain independent?

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Empire Building in Africa 41

plantations in the new Belgian Congo to grow rubber, palm oil, and other valuable export products.

THE BERLIN CONFERENCE As rivalry among the com- peting powers heated up, a conference was convened at Berlin in 1884 to avert war and reduce tensions among Eu- ropean nations competing for the spoils of Africa. It proved reasonably successful at achieving the first objective but less so at the second. During the next few years, African territo- ries were annexed without provoking a major confronta- tion between Western powers, but in the late 1890s, Britain and France reached the brink of conflict at Fashoda, a small town on the Nile River in the Sudan. The French had been advancing eastward across the Sahara with the transparent objective of controlling the regions around the upper Nile. In 1898, British and Egyptian troops seized the Sudan and then marched southward to head off the French. After a tense face-off between units of the two European countries at Fashoda, the French government backed down, and British authority over the area was secured. Except for Djibouti, a tiny portion of the Somali coast, the French were restricted to equatorial Africa.

Bantus, Boers, and British in South Africa Nowhere in Africa did the European presence grow more rapidly than in the south. During the eighteenth century, Dutch settlers from the Cape Colony began to migrate eastward into territory inhabited by local Khoisan- and Bantu- speaking peoples, the latter of whom had recently entered the area from the north. Inter- necine warfare among the Bantus had largely depopulated the region, facilitating occupation of the land by the Boers, the Afrikaans-speaking farmers descended from the original Dutch set- tlers in the seventeenth century. But in the early nineteenth century, a Bantu people called the Zulus, under the talented ruler Shaka, counterattacked, setting off a series of wars between the Europeans and the Zulus. Eventu- ally, Shaka was overthrown, and the Boers con- tinued their advance northeastward during the so-called Great Trek of the mid-1830s (see Map 2.4). By 1865, the total European population of the area had risen to nearly 200,000 people.

The Boers’ eastward migration was pro- voked in part by the British seizure of the Cape from the Dutch during the Napoleonic wars. The British government was generally more

sympathetic to the rights of the local African population than were the Afrikaners, many of whom saw white supe- riority as ordained by God and fled from British rule to control their own destiny. Eventually, the Boers formed their own independent republics, the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (usually known as Trans- vaal). Much of the African population in these areas was confined to reserves.

THE BOER WAR The discovery of gold and diamonds in the Transvaal complicated the situation. Clashes between the Afrikaner population and foreign (mainly British) min- ers and developers led to an attempt by Cecil Rhodes, prime minister of the Cape Colony and a prominent entrepreneur in the area, to subvert the Transvaal and bring it under British rule. In 1899, the so-called Boer War broke out between Britain and the Transvaal, which was backed by the Orange Free State. Guerrilla resistance

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Who were the Boers, and why did they migrate eastward?

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42 CHAPTER 2 The High Tide of Imperialism: Africa and Asia in an Era of Western Dominance

by the Boers was fierce, but the vastly superior forces of the British were able to prevail by 1902. To compensate the defeated Afrikaner population for the loss of inde- pendence, the British government agreed that only whites would vote in the now essentially self-governing colony. The Boers were placated, but the brutalities committed during the war (the British introduced an institution later to be known as the concentration camp) created bitterness on both sides that continued to fester for decades.

Colonialism in Africa In general, Western economic interests were more limited in Africa than elsewhere. As a result, most colonial govern- ments settled down to govern their new territories with the least effort and expense possible. In many cases, they pursued a form of indirect rule reminiscent of the British approach to the princely states in the Indian peninsula.

BRITISH RULE IN NIGERIA Nigeria offers a typical exam- ple of British-style indirect rule. British officials operated at the central level, but local authority was assigned to Nigerian chiefs, with British district officers serving as intermediaries with the central administration. The local authorities were expected to maintain law and order and to collect taxes from the indigenous population. A dual legal system was instituted that applied African laws to Africans and European laws to foreigners.

One advantage of such an administrative system was that it did not severely disrupt local customs and institu- tions. At the same time, it was misleading because all major decisions were made by the British administrators while the African authorities served primarily as the means of enforcing the decisions. Moreover, indirect rule served to perpetuate the autocratic system that often existed prior to colonial takeover since there was a natural tendency to view the local aristocracy as the African equivalent of the traditional British ruling class. Such a policy provided few opportunities for ambitious and tal- ented young Africans from outside the traditional elite and thus sowed the seeds for class tensions after the resto- ration of independence in the twentieth century.

THE BRITISH IN EAST AFRICA The situation was some- what different in Kenya, which had a relatively large Eu- ropean population attracted by the temperate climate in the central highlands. The local government had encour- aged Europeans to migrate to the area as a means of pro- moting economic development and encouraging financial self-sufficiency. To attract them, fertile farmlands in the central highlands were reserved for European settlement while, as in South Africa, specified reserve lands were set aside for Africans. The presence of a privileged European

minority had an impact on Kenya’s political development. The European settlers actively sought self-government and dominion status similar to that granted to such for- mer British possessions as Canada and Australia. The Brit- ish government, however, was not willing to run the risk of provoking racial tensions with the African majority and agreed only to establish separate government organs for the European and African populations.

SOUTH AFRICA The situation in South Africa, of course, was unique, not only because of the high percentage of Eu- ropean settlers but also because of the division between English-speaking and Afrikaner elements within the Euro- pean population. In 1910, the British agreed to the creation of the independent Union of South Africa, which combined the old Cape Colony and Natal with the two Boer republics. The new union adopted a representative government, but only for the European population. The African reserves of Basutoland (now Lesotho), Bechuanaland (now Botswana), and Swaziland were subordinated directly to the crown. The union was now free to manage its own domestic affairs and possessed considerable autonomy in foreign relations. Remaining areas south of the Zambezi River, eventually di- vided into the territories of Northern and Southern Rhode- sia, were also placed under British rule. British immigration into Southern Rhodesia was extensive, and in 1922, after a popular referendum, it became a crown colony.

DIRECT RULE Most other European nations governed their African possessions through a form of direct rule. The prototype was the French system, which reflected the cen- tralized administrative system introduced in France by Na- poleon. As in the British colonies, at the top of the pyramid was a French official, usually known as a governor-general, who was appointed from Paris and governed with the aid of a bureaucracy in the capital city. At the provincial level, French commissioners were assigned to deal with local administrators, but the latter were required to be conver- sant in French and could be transferred to a new position to meet the needs of the central government.

After World War I, European colonial policy in Africa entered a new and more formal phase. Colonial governments paid more attention to improving social services, including education, medicine, sanitation, and communications. More Africans were now serving in colonial administrations, though relatively few were in positions of responsibility. On the other hand, race consciousness probably increased during this period. Segregated clubs, schools, and churches were established as more European officials brought their wives with them and began to raise families in the colonies.

More directly affected by the colonial presence than the small African elite were ordinary Africans, who were

Empire Building in Africa 43

subjected to countless indignities reminiscent of Western practices in Asia. While the institution of slavery was dis- couraged in much of the continent, African workers were

routinely exposed to unbelievably harsh conditions as they were put to use as manual laborers to promote the cause of imperialism.

The most flagrant example was in the Belgian Congo. Conditions on the plantations there were so abysmal that an international outcry eventually led to the formation of a commission under British consul Roger Casement to investigate. The commission’s report, issued in 1904, helped to bring about reforms (see the box on p. 29).

WOMEN IN COLONIAL AFRICA Colonial rule had a mixed impact on the rights and status of women in Africa. Sexual relationships changed profoundly during the colo- nial era, sometimes in ways that could justly be described as beneficial. Colonial governments attempted to put an end to forced marriage, bodily mutilation such as clitori- dectomy, and polygyny. Missionaries introduced women to Western education and encouraged them to organize to defend their interests.

But the colonial system had some unfavorable conse- quences as well. African women had traditionally bene- fited from the prestige of matrilineal systems and were empowered by their traditional role as the primary agri- cultural producers in their community. Under colonial- ism, European settlers not only took the best land for themselves but also, in introducing new agricultural techniques, tended to deal exclusively with males, encouraging the latter to develop lucrative cash crops, while women were restricted to traditional farming methods. Whereas African men applied chemical fertil- izer to the fields, women continued to use manure. While men began to use bicycles, and eventually trucks, to transport goods, women still carried their goods on their heads, a practice that continues today. In British colonies, Victorian attitudes of female subordination led to restrictions on women’s freedom, and positions in government that they had formerly held were now closed to them.

CONCLUSION B Y T H E E A R L Y T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y , virtually all of Africa and a good part of South and Southeast Asia were under some form of colonial rule. With the advent of the Age of Imperialism, a global economy was finally estab- lished, and the domination of Western civilization over those of Africa and Asia appeared to be complete.

Defenders of colonialism argue that the system was a necessary if sometimes painful stage in the evolution of human societies. Although its immediate consequences were

admittedly sometimes unfortunate, Western imperialism was ultimately beneficial to colonial powers and subjects alike because it created the conditions for global economic development and the universal application of democratic institutions. Critics, however, charge that the Western colonial powers were driven by an insatiable lust for profits. They dismiss the Western civilizing mission as a fig leaf to cover naked greed and reject the notion that imperial- ism played a salutary role in hastening the adjustment of

Legacy of Shame. By the mid-nineteenth century, most European nations had prohibited the trade in African slaves, but slavery continued to exist in Africa well into the next century. In the Belgian Congo, the mistreatment of conscript laborers led to a popular outcry and the formation of a commission to look into the situation and recommend reforms. Shown here are two manacled members of a chain gang in the Belgian Congo. The photograph was taken in 1904.

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44 CHAPTER 2 The High Tide of Imperialism: Africa and Asia in an Era of Western Dominance

traditional societies to the demands of industrial civilization. Rather, it locked them in to what many social scientists today describe as a “dependency relationship” with their colonial masters. “Why is Africa (or for that matter Latin America and much of Asia) so poor?” asked one Western cri- tique of imperialism. “The answer is very brief: we have made it poor.”5

Between these two irreconcilable views, where does the truth lie? It is difficult to provide a simple answer to this question, as the colonial record varied from country to country. In some cases, the colonial experience was prob- ably beneficial in introducing Western technology, values, and democratic institutions into traditional societies. As its defenders are quick to point out, colonialism often laid the foundation for preindustrial societies to play an active and rewarding role in the global economic marketplace.

Still, the critics have a point. Although colonialism did introduce the peoples of Asia and Africa to new tech- nology and the expanding economic marketplace, it was unnecessarily brutal in its application and all too often failed to realize the exalted claims and objectives of its promoters. Existing economic networks—often potentially valuable as a foundation for later economic development—were ruthlessly swept aside in the interests of providing markets for Western manufactured goods. Potential sources of local industrialization were nipped in the bud to avoid competition for factories in Amsterdam, London, Pittsburgh, or Manchester. Training in Western democratic ideals and practices was ignored out of fear that the recipients might use them as weapons against the ruling authorities.

The fundamental weakness of colonialism, then, was that it was ultimately based on the self-interests of the citi- zens of the colonial powers. When those interests collided with the needs of the colonial peoples, the former always triumphed. However sincerely the David Livingstones, Albert Sarrauts, and William McKinleys of the world were convinced of the rightness of their civilizing mission, the ultimate result was to deprive the colonial peoples of the right to make their own choices about their destiny.

In general, the peoples of Latin America were able to avoid some of the worst consequences of the era of West- ern imperialism by virtue of having won their indepen- dence from colonial control during the nineteenth century. As we saw in Chapter 1, however, some imperialist nations continued to exert influence over regional economies through their dominant position in local export markets. When those interests were threatened, as occurred fre- quently in Central America and the Caribbean, imperialist governments—and especially the United States—were not shy about employing military force to protect them. Even- tually, this form of “informal empire” would come to be known as neocolonialism, provoking sharp criticism from commentators in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

In one area of Asia, the spreading tide of imperialism did not result in the establishment of formal Western co- lonial control. In East Asia, the traditional societies of China and Japan were buffeted by the winds of Western expansionism during the nineteenth century but success- fully resisted foreign conquest. In the next chapter, we will see how they managed this and how they fared in their encounter with the West.

TIMELINE

1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900

Africa Slave trade declared illegal in Great Britain (1807)

French seize Algeria (1830)

Asia

Completion of Suez Canal (1869)

Berlin Conference on Africa (1884)

Stamford Raffles founds Singapore (1819)

French attack Vietnam (1858)

Spanish-American War (1898)

French and British agree to neutralize Thailand (1896)

Boer War (1899–1902)

First textile mill opened in India (1856)

Conclusion 45

CHAPTER NOTES

1. J. G. Lockhart and C. M. Woodehouse, Rhodes: The Colossus of Southern Africa (New York, 1953), pp. 69–70.

2. The quotations are from Henri Brunschwig, French Colonialism, 1871–1914 (London, 1961), p. 80.

3. Quoted in Louis Roubaud, Vietnam: La Trag�edie Indochinoise (Paris, 1926), p. 80.

4. Quoted in T. Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (New York, 1991), p. 13.

5. Quoted in Tony Smith, The Pattern of Imperialism: The United States, Great Britain and the Late-Industrializing World Since 1815 (Cambridge, 1981), p. 81.

46 CHAPTER 2 The High Tide of Imperialism: Africa and Asia in an Era of Western Dominance

C H A P T E R

Shadows over the Pacific: East Asia Under Challenge

I N A U G U S T 1 7 9 3 , a British diplomatic mission led by Lord Macartney arrived at the North Chinese port of Dagu and embarked on the road to Beijing. His caravan, which included six hundred cases filled with presents for the emperor, bore flags and banners provided by the Chinese that proclaimed in Chinese characters “Ambassador bearing tribute from the country of England.” Upon his arrival in the capital, Macartney refused his hosts’ demand that he perform the kowtow, a traditional symbol of submission to the emperor. Eventually, the dispute over protocol was resolved with a compromise: Macartney agreed to bend on one knee, a courtesy that he displayed to his own sovereign.

In other respects, however, the mission was a failure, for China rejected the British request for an increase in trade between the two countries, and Macartney left Beijing in October with nothing to show for his efforts. Not until half a century later would the ruling Qing dynasty—at the point of a gun—agree to the British demand for an expansion of commercial ties.

Historians have often viewed the failure of the Macartney mission as a reflection of the disdain of Chinese rulers toward their counterparts in other countries and their serene confidence in the superiority of Chinese civilization in a world inhabited by barbarians. If that was the case, the Chinese emperor Qianlong’s confidence was misplaced, for in the decades immediately following the abortive Macartney mission to Beijing, China faced a growing challenge not only from the escalating power and ambitions of the West but

also from its own growing internal weaknesses. Backed by European guns, European merchants and missionaries pressed insistently for the right to carry out their activities in China and the neighboring islands of Japan. Despite their initial reluctance, the Chinese and Japanese governments were eventually forced to open their doors to the foreigners, whose presence and threat to the local way of life escalated rapidly during the final years of the nineteenth century.

C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G

Q How did China and Japan each respond toWestern pressures in the nineteenth century, and what implications did their different responses have for each nation’s history?

China at Its Apex In 1800, the Qing or Manchu dynasty (1644–1911) appeared to be at the height of its power. The Manchus, a seminomadic people whose original homeland was north of the Great Wall, had invaded North China in the mid- seventeenth century and conquered the tottering Ming dynasty in 1644. Under the rule of two great emperors, Kangxi (1661–1722) and Qianlong (1736–1795), China had then experienced a long period of peace and prosperity. Its borders were secure, and its culture and intellectual

The Macartney mission to China, 1793

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achievements were the envy of the world. Its rulers, hid- den behind the walls of the Forbidden City in Beijing, had every reason to describe their patrimony as the Central Kingdom, China’s historical name for itself. But a little over a century later, humiliated and harassed by the black ships and big guns of the Western powers, the Qing dynasty, the last in a series that had endured for more than two thousand years, collapsed in the dust (see Map 3.1).

Changeless China? Historians once assumed that the primary reason for the rapid decline and fall of the Manchu dynasty was the intense pressure applied to a proud but somewhat com- placent traditional society by the modern West. There is indeed some truth in that allegation. On the surface, China had long appeared to be an unchanging society

patterned after the Confucian vision of a Golden Age in the remote past. This, in fact, was the image presented by China’s rulers, who referred constantly to tradition as a model for imperial institutions and cultural values. That tradition was based firmly on Confucianism, a set of ideas that were identified with the ancient philosopher Confucius (551–479 B.C.E.), who emphasized such qual- ities as obedience, hard work, rule by merit, and the subordination of the individual to the interests of the community. Such principles, which had emerged out of the conditions of a continental society based on agricul- ture as the primary source of national wealth, had formed the basis for Chinese political and social institu- tions and values since the rise of the Han dynasty in the late third century B.C.E.

When European ships first appeared off the coast of China in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they brought with them dangerous new ideas and values that

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Where are China’s tributary states on the map? How had their status changed by 1911?

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48 CHAPTER 3 Shadows over the Pacific: East Asia Under Challenge

were strikingly at variance with those of imperial China. China’s rulers soon came to recognize the nature of the threat represented by European Christian missionaries and merchants and attempted to expel the former while restricting the latter to a limited presence in the southern coastal city of Canton. For the next two centuries, China was, at least in intent, an essentially closed society.

It was the hope of influential figures at the imperial court in Beijing that by expelling the barbarians, they could protect Chinese civilization from the virus of for- eign ideas. Their effort to freeze time was futile, however, for in reality, Chinese society was already beginning to change under their feet—and changing rather rapidly. Although few observers may have been aware of it at the time, by the beginning of the Manchu era in the seven- teenth century, many traditional precepts were becoming increasingly irrelevant in a society that was becoming ever more complex.

CHANGES IN RURAL AREAS Nowhere was change more evident than in the economic sector. During the early modern period, China was still a predominantly agri- cultural society, as it had been throughout recorded history. Nearly 85 percent of the people were farmers. In the south, the main crop was rice; in the north, it was wheat or dry crops. But even though China had few urban centers, the population was beginning to increase rapidly. Thanks to a long era of peace and stability, the introduction of new crops from the Americas, and the cul- tivation of new, fast-ripening strains of rice, the Chinese population doubled between the time of the early Qing and the end of the eighteenth century. And it continued to grow during the nineteenth century, reaching the unprecedented level of 400 million by 1900.

Of course, this population increase meant much greater pressure on the land, smaller farms, and an ever- thinner margin of safety in the event of climatic disaster. The imperial court had attempted to deal with the prob- lem by various means—most notably by preventing the concentration of land in the hands of wealthy land- owners—but by the end of the eighteenth century, almost all the land that could be irrigated was already under culti- vation, and the problems of rural hunger and landlessness became increasingly serious. Not surprisingly, economic hardship quickly translated into rural unrest.

SEEDS OF INDUSTRIALIZATION Another change that took place during the Qing dynasty was the steady growth of manufacturing and commerce. Trade and manufactur- ing had existed in China since early times, but they had been limited by a number of factors, including social pre- judice, official restrictions, and state monopolies on

mining and on the production of such commodities as alcohol and salt. Now, taking advantage of the long era of peace and prosperity under the Qing, merchants and manufacturers began to expand their operations beyond their immediate provinces. Trade in silk, metal and wood products, porcelain, cotton goods, and cash crops such as tea and tobacco developed rapidly, and commercial net- works began to operate on a regional and sometimes even a national basis.

With the growth of trade came an expansion of commercial contacts and guild organizations nationwide. Merchants began organizing guilds in cities and market towns throughout the country to provide legal protection, an opportunity to do business, and food and lodging for merchants from particular provinces. Foreign trade also expanded, as Chinese merchants, mainly from the coastal provinces of the south, established extensive contacts with countries in Southeast Asia. In many instances, the con- tacts in Southeast Asia were themselves ethnic Chinese who had settled in the area during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Some historians have suggested that this rise in indus- trial and commercial activity would, under other circum- stances, have led to an indigenous industrial revolution and the emergence of a capitalist society such as that taking shape in Europe. The significance of these changes should not be exaggerated, however, for there were some key differences between China and western Europe that would have impeded the emergence of capitalism in China. In the first place, although industrial production in China was on the rise, it was still based almost entirely on traditional methods of production. China had no uni- form system of weights and measures, and the banking system was still primitive by European standards. The use of paper money, invented centuries earlier, was still rela- tively limited. There were few paved roads, and the Grand Canal, long the most efficient means of carrying goods between the north and the south, was silting up. As a result, merchants had to rely more and more on the coastal route, where they faced increasing competition from foreign shipping.

There were other, more deep-seated differences as well. The bourgeois class in China was not as independent as its European counterpart. Reflecting an ancient prefer- ence for agriculture over manufacturing and trade, the state levied heavy taxes on manufacturing and commerce while seeking to keep agricultural taxes low. Such atti- tudes were still shared by key groups in the population. Although much money could be made in commerce, most merchants who accumulated wealth used it to buy their way into the ranks of the landed gentry. The most that can really be said, then, is that during the Qing

China at Its Apex 49

dynasty, China was beginning to undergo major economic and social changes that might have led, in due time, to the emergence of an industrialized society.

Traditional China in Decline When Western pressure on the Manchu Empire began to increase during the early nineteenth century, it served to exacerbate the existing strains in Chinese society. By 1800, the trade relationship that restricted Western merchants to a small commercial outlet at Canton was no longer acceptable to the British, who were increas- ingly concerned about the trade imbalance resulting from the growing appetite for Chinese tea in Britain. Their solution was opium. A product more addictive than tea, opium was grown in northeastern India under British East India Company sponsorship and then shipped directly to the Chinese market. Soon demand for the product in South China became insatiable, despite an official prohibition on its use. Bullion now flowed out of the Chinese imperial treasury into the pockets of British merchants and officials.

Opium and Rebellion When the Qing attempted to prohibit the opium trade, the British declared war. The Opium War, as it was called, lasted three years (1839–1842) and graphically demon- strated the superiority of British firepower and military tactics. China sued for peace and, in the Treaty of Nanjing, agreed to open five coastal ports to British trade, limit tar- iffs on imported British goods, grant extraterritorial rights to British citizens in China, and pay a substantial indemnity to cover the British costs of the war. Beijing also agreed to cede the island of Hong Kong (dismissed by a senior British official as a “barren rock”) to Great Britain. Nothing was said in the treaty about the opium trade.

Although the Opium War is now considered the beginning of modern Chinese history, it is unlikely that many Chinese at the time would have seen it that way. This was not the first time that a ruling dynasty had been forced to make concessions to foreigners, and the opening of five coastal ports to the British hardly constituted a seri- ous threat to the security of the empire. Although a few concerned Chinese argued that the court should learn more about European civilization to find the secret of the

The Opium War. The Opium War, waged between China and Great Britain between 1839 and 1842, was China’s first conflict with a European power. Lacking modern military technology, the Chinese suffered a humiliating defeat. In this painting, heavily armed British steamships destroy unwieldy Chinese junks along the Chinese coast. China’s humiliation at sea was a legacy of its rulers’ lack of interest in maritime matters since the middle of the fifteenth century, when Chinese junks were among the most advanced sailing ships in the world.

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British success, others contended that China had nothing to learn from the barbarians and that borrowing foreign ways would undercut the purity of Confucian civilization.

The Taiping Rebellion The Manchus attempted to deal with the problem in the traditional way of playing the foreigners off against each other. Concessions granted to the British were offered to other Western nations, including the United States, and soon thriving foreign concession areas were operating in treaty ports along the southern Chinese coast from Canton in the south to Shanghai, a bustling new port on a tributary of the Yangtze, in the center.

In the meantime, the Qing court’s failure to deal with pressing internal economic problems led to a major peasant revolt that shook the foundations of the empire. On the sur- face, the so-called Taiping Rebellion owed something to the Western incursion; the leader of the uprising, Hong Xiu- quan, a failed candidate for the civil service examination, was a Christian convert who viewed himself as a younger brother of Jesus Christ and hoped to establish what he referred to as a “Heavenly Kingdom of Supreme Peace” in China. With their ranks swelled by impoverished peas- ants and other discontented elements throughout the southern provinces, the rebels swept northward, seizing the Yangtze River port of Nanjing in March 1853. The revolt continued for ten more years but gradually lost momentum, and in 1864, the Qing, though weakened, retook Nanjing and destroyed the rem- nants of the rebel force. The rebellion had cost the lives of millions of Chinese.

One reason for the dynasty’s failure to deal effectively with internal unrest was its continuing difficulties with the Western imperialists. In 1856, the Brit- ish and the French, smarting from trade restrictions and limitations on their missionary activities, launched a series of attacks and seized the capital of Beijing in 1860. In the ensuing Treaty of Tianjin, the Qing agreed to humiliating new concessions: legalization of the opium trade, the open- ing of additional ports to foreign trade, and cession of the peninsula of Kowloon (opposite the island of Hong Kong) to the British.

Efforts at Reform By the late 1870s, the old dynasty was on the verge of col- lapse. In fending off the Taiping Rebellion, the Manchus

had been compelled to rely for support on armed forces under regional command. After quelling the revolt, many of these regional commanders refused to disband their units and, with the support of the local gentry, continued to collect local taxes for their own use. The dreaded pattern of imperial breakdown, so familiar in Chinese history, was beginning to appear once again.

In their weakened state, the Qing rulers finally began to listen to the appeals of reform-minded offi- cials for a new policy called self-strengthening, in which Western technology would be adopted while Confucian principles and institutions were maintained intact. This policy, popularly known by its slogan “East for essence, West for practical use,” remained the guid- ing standard for Chinese foreign and domestic policy for decades. Some people even called for reforms in education and in China’s hallowed political institutions. Pointing to the power and prosperity of Great Britain, the journalist Wang Tao (1828–1897) remarked, “The real strength of England . . . lies in the fact that there is

a sympathetic understanding between the governing and the governed, a close relationship between the ruler and the peo- ple. . . . My observation is that the daily domestic political life of England actually embodies the traditional ideals of our ancient Golden Age”1 (see the box on p. 52). Such democratic ideas were too radical for most moderate reformers, however. One of the leading court offi- cials of the day, Zhang Zhidong, countered:

The doctrine of people’s rights will bring us not a single benefit but a hundred evils. Are we going to establish a parliament? . . . Even supposing the confused and clamorous people are assembled in one house, for every one of them who is clear-sighted, there will be a hundred others whose vision is beclouded; they will converse at random and talk as if in a dream—what use will it be?2

For the time being, Zhang Zhidong’s arguments won the day. During the last quarter of the century, the Manchus attempted to modernize their military estab- lishment and build up an industrial base without disturbing the essential elements of traditional Chinese civilization. Railroads, weapons arsenals, and shipyards were built, but the value system remained essentially unchanged.

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The Climax of Imperialism in China In the end, the results spoke for themselves. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the European penetration of China, both political and military, intensi- fied. Rapacious imperialists began to bite off territory at the outer edges of the Qing Empire. The Gobi Desert north of the Great Wall, Chinese Central Asia (known in Chinese as Xinjiang), and Tibet, all inhabited by non- Chinese peoples and never fully assimilated into the Chinese Empire, were now gradually removed totally from Beijing’s control. In the north and northwest, the

main beneficiary was Russia, which took advantage of the dynasty’s weakness to force the cession of territories north of the Amur River in Siberia. In Tibet, competition between Russia and Great Britain prevented either power from seizing the territory outright but at the same time enabled Tibetan authorities to revive local auto- nomy never recognized by the Chinese. On the southern borders of the empire, British and French advances in mainland Southeast Asia removed Burma and Vietnam from their traditional vassal relationship with the Manchu court.

An Appeal for Change in China After the humiliating defeat at the hands of the British in the Opium War, a few Chinese intellectuals began to argue that China must change its ways if it was to survive. One of these reformist thinkers was the journalist and author Wang Tao. After a trip to Europe in the late 1860s, Wang returned to China convinced of the technological superiority of the West and the need for his country to adopt reforms that would enable it to compete effectively in a changing world. He had only limited success in persuading his contemporaries of the need for dramatic change. Many Chinese were undoubtedly reluctant to believe his claim that China was not the Middle Kingdom or “all under Heaven” but only one nation among many in a rapidly changing world.

Wang Tao on Reform I know that within a hundred years China will adopt all Western methods and excel in them. For though both are vessels, a sailboat differs in speed from a steamship; though both are vehicles, a horse-drawn carriage cannot cover the same distance as a locomotive train. Among weapons, the power of the bow and arrow, sword and spear, cannot be compared with that of firearms; and of firearms, the old types do not have the same effect as the new. Although it be the same piece of work, there is a difference in the ease with which it can be done by machine and by human labor. When new methods do not exist, people will not think of changes; but when there are new instruments, to copy them is certainly possible. Even if the Westerners should give no guidance, the Chinese must surely exert themselves to the utmost of their ingenuity and resources on these things.

Alas! People all understand the past, but they are ignorant of the future. Only scholars whose thoughts run

deep and far can grasp the trends. As the mind of Heaven changes above, so do human affairs below. Heaven opens the minds of the Westerners and bestows upon them intelligence and wisdom. Their techniques and skills develop without bound. They sail eastward and gather in China. This constitutes an unprecedented situation in history, and a tremendous change in the world. The foreign nations come from afar with their superior techniques, contemptuous of us in our deficiencies. They show off their prowess and indulge in insults and oppression; they also fight among themselves. Under these circumstances, how can we not think of making changes? . . .

If China does not make any change at this time, how can she be on a par with the great nations of Europe, and compare with them in power and strength? Nevertheless, the path of reform is beset with difficulties. What the Western countries have today are regarded as of no worth by those who arrogantly refuse to pay attention. Their argument is that we should use our own laws to govern the empire, for that is the Way of our sages. They do not know that the Way of the sages is valued only because it can make proper accommodations according to the times. If Confucius lived today, we may be certain that he would not cling to antiquity and oppose making changes. . . .

What arguments did Wang Tao use in his efforts to persuade readers to accept his point of view? Would Confucius have found Wang Tao’s arguments persuasive? Why or why not?

SOURCE: Excerpt from Sources of Chinese Tradition by William Theodore de Bary. Copyright ª 1960 by Columbia University Press, New York.

52 CHAPTER 3 Shadows over the Pacific: East Asia Under Challenge

Even more ominous developments were taking place in the Chinese heartland, where European economic penetration led to the creation of so-called spheres of influence dominated by diverse foreign powers. Although the imperial court retained theoretical sovereignty throughout the country, in practice its political, economic, and administrative influence beyond the region of the capital was increasingly circumscribed.

The breakup of the Manchu dynasty accelerated dur- ing the last five years of the nineteenth century. In 1894, the Qing went to war with Japan over Japanese incursions into the Korean peninsula, which threatened China’s long-held suzerainty over the area (see “Join- ing the Imperialist Club” later in this chapter). To the surprise of many observers, the Chinese were roundly defeated, confirming to some critics the devastating failure of the policy of self-strengthening by halfway measures.

More humiliation came in 1897, when Germany, a new entrant in the race for spoils in East Asia, used the pretext of the murder of two German missionaries by Chinese rioters to demand the cession of territories in the Shandong peninsula. The imperial court’s approval of this demand set off a scramble for territory by other interested powers. Russia now demanded the Liaodong peninsula with its ice-free harbor at Port Arthur, and Great Britain obtained a hundred-year lease on the New Territories, adjacent to Hong Kong, as well as a coaling station in northern China.

The latest scramble for territory had taken place at a time of internal crisis in China. In the spring of 1898, an outspoken advocate of reform, the progressive Con- fucian scholar Kang Youwei, won the support of the young emperor Guangxu for a comprehensive reform program patterned after recent changes initiated in Japan. Without change, Kang argued, China would perish. During the next several weeks, the emperor issued edicts calling for major political, administrative, and educational reforms. Not surprisingly, Kang’s ideas for reform were opposed by many conservatives, who saw little advantage to copying the West. Most impor- tant, the new program was opposed by the emperor’s aunt, the Empress Dowager Cixi, the real source of power at court. Cixi had begun her political career as a concubine to an earlier emperor. After his death, she became a dominant force at court and in 1878 placed her infant nephew, the future emperor Guangxu, on the throne. For two decades, she ruled in his name as regent. Cixi interpreted Guangxu’s action as a British- supported effort to reduce her influence at court. With the aid of conservatives in the army, she arrested and executed several of the reformers and had the emperor

incarcerated in the palace. Kang Youwei managed to flee abroad. With Cixi’s palace coup, the so-called One Hundred Days of reform came to an end.

OPENING THE DOOR TO CHINA During the next two years, foreign pressure on the dynasty intensified (see Map 3.2 on p. 54). With encouragement from the British, who hoped to avert a total collapse of the Manchu Empire, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay presented the other imperialist powers with a proposal to ensure equal economic access to the China market for all nations. Hay also suggested that all powers join together to guarantee the territorial and administrative integrity of the Chinese

The Empress Dowager Cixi. Portraits of ruling figures have traditionally been designed to inspire admiration or devotion and thus tend to emphasize the majestic or charismatic quality of the subject. After the disastrous Boxer Rebellion of 1900, however, the Empress Dowager Cixi sought to improve her image in the Western world and turned to the modern medium of photography as a means of doing so. In this photograph, taken in 1903, she appeared in an elaborate costume in a traditional Chinese setting, but her casual stance was apparently intended to soften her image among foreign observers.

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Empire. When none of the other governments flatly opposed the idea, Hay issued a second note declaring that all major nations with economic interests in China had agreed to an “Open Door” policy in China.

Though probably motivated more by a U.S. desire for open markets than by a benevolent wish to protect China, the Open Door Notes did have the practical effect of reducing the imperialist hysteria over access to the China market. That hysteria—the product of decades of mythol- ogizing among Western commercial interests about the “400 million” Chinese customers—had accelerated at the end of the century as fears of China’s imminent collapse increased. The “gentlemen’s agreement” about the Open Door (it was not a treaty but merely a pious and non- binding expression of intent) served to diminish fears in Britain, France, Germany, and Russia that other powers would take advantage of China’s weakness to dominate the China market.

THE BOXER REBELLION In the long run, then, the Open Door was a positive step that brought a measure of sanity to the impe- rialist meddling in East Asia. Unfortunately, it came too late to stop the domestic explosion known as the Boxer Rebellion. The Boxers (literally, “righteous and harmonious fists”), so called because of the physical exercises they performed, were members of a secret society operating pri- marily in rural areas in North China. Provoked by a damaging drought and high levels of un- employment caused in part by foreign economic activity (the introduction of railroads and steamships, for example, under- cut the livelihood of boat work- ers who traditionally carried merchandise on the rivers and canals), the Boxers attacked for- eign residents and besieged the foreign legation quarter in Bei- jing until the foreigners were rescued by an international expe- ditionary force in the late summer of 1900. As punishment, the foreign troops destroyed a number of temples in the capital suburbs, and the Chinese govern- ment was compelled to pay a

heavy indemnity to the foreign governments involved in suppressing the uprising.

The Collapse of the Old Order During the next few years, the old dynasty tried desper- ately to reform itself. The empress dowager, who had long resisted change, now embraced a number of reforms in education, administration, and the legal system. The venerable civil service examination system, based on knowledge of the Confucian classics, was replaced by a new educational system patterned after the Western model. In 1905, a commission was formed to study consti- tutional changes, and over the next few years, legislative assemblies were established at the provincial level. Elections for a national assembly were held in 1910.

Such moves helped shore up the dynasty temporarily, but history shows that the most dangerous period for an

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MAP 3.2 Foreign Possessions and Spheres of Influence About 1900. At the end of the nineteenth century, China was being carved up like a melon by foreign imperialist powers.

Which of the areas marked on the map were removed from Chinese control during the nineteenth century?

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54 CHAPTER 3 Shadows over the Pacific: East Asia Under Challenge

authoritarian system is when it begins to reform itself, because change breeds instability and performance rarely matches rising expectations. Such was the case in China. The emerging new provincial elite, composed of mer- chants, professionals, and reform-minded gentry, soon became impatient with the slow pace of political change and were disillusioned to find that the new assemblies were intended to be primarily advisory rather than legislative. The government also alienated influential elements by financing railway development projects through lucrative contracts to foreign firms rather than by turning to local investors. The reforms also had little meaning for peasants, artisans, miners, and transportation workers, whose living conditions were being eroded by rising taxes and official venality. Rising rural unrest, as yet poorly organized and often centered on secret societies such as the Boxers, was an ominous sign of deep-seated resentment to which the dynasty would not, or could not, respond.

THE RISE OF SUN YAT-SEN To China’s reformist elite, such signs of social unrest were a threat to be avoided; to its tiny revolutionary movement, they were a harbinger of promise. The first physical manifestations of future rev- olution appeared during the last decade of the nineteenth century with the formation of the Revive China Society by the young radical Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925). Born to a peasant family in a village south of Canton, Sun was edu- cated in Hawaii and returned to China to practice medi- cine. Soon he turned his full attention to the ills of Chinese society, leading bands of radicals in small-scale insurrections to attract attention.

At first, Sun’s efforts yielded few positive results other than creating a symbol of resistance and the new century’s first revolutionary martyrs. But at a convention in Tokyo in 1905, Sun managed to unite radical groups from across China in the so-called Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui). The new organization’s program was based on Sun’s Three People’s Principles: nationalism (meaning primarily the destruction of Manchu rule over China), democracy, and “people’s livelihood,” which was a program to improve social and economic conditions (see the box on p. 56). Although the new organization was small and relatively inexperienced, it benefited from rising popular discontent with the failure of Manchu reforms to improve conditions in China.

THE 1911 REVOLUTION In October 1911, followers of Sun Yat-sen launched an uprising in the industrial center of Wuhan, in central China. With Sun traveling in the United States, the insurrection lacked leadership, but the decrepit government’s inability to react quickly encouraged political forces at the provincial level to take

measures into their own hands. The dynasty was now in a state of virtual collapse: the dowager empress had died in 1908, one day after her nephew Guangxu; the throne was now occupied by the infant Puyi, the son of Guangxu’s younger brother. Sun’s party, however, had neither the military strength nor the political base neces- sary to seize the initiative and was forced to turn to a representative of the old order, General Yuan Shikai (1859–1916). A prominent figure in military circles since the beginning of the century, Yuan had been placed in charge of the imperial forces sent to suppress the rebel- lion, but now he abandoned the Manchus and acted on his own behalf. In negotiations with representatives of Sun Yat-sen’s party (Sun himself had arrived in China in January 1912), he agreed to serve as president of a new Chinese republic. The old dynasty and the age-old system it had attempted to preserve were no more.

Propagandists for Sun Yat-sen’s party have often por- trayed the events of 1911 as a glorious revolution that brought two thousand years of imperial tradition to an end. But a true revolution does not just destroy an old order; it also brings new political and social forces into power and creates new institutions and values that pro- vide a new framework for a changing society. In this sense, the 1911 revolution did not live up to its name. Sun and his followers were unable to consolidate their gains. The Revolutionary Alliance found the bulk of its support in an emerging urban middle class and set forth a pro- gram based generally on Western liberal democratic prin- ciples. That class and that program had provided the foundation for the capitalist democratic revolutions in western Europe and North America in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the bourgeois class in China was too small to form the basis for a new post-Confucian political order. The vast majority of the Chinese people still lived on the land. Sun had hoped to win their support with a land reform program that relied on fiscal incentives to persuade landlords to sell excess lands to their tenants, but few peasants had participated in the 1911 revolution. In effect, then, the events of 1911 were less a revolution than a collapse of the old order. Undermined by imperial- ism and its own internal weaknesses, the old dynasty had come to an abrupt end before new political and social forces were ready to fill the vacuum.

What China had experienced was part of a historical process that was bringing down traditional empires across the globe, both in regions threatened by Western im- perialism and in Europe itself, where tsarist Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire all came to an end within a few years of the collapse of the Qing (see Chapters 4 and 5). The circumstances of their demise were not all the same, but all four regimes bore

Traditional China in Decline 55

responsibility for their common fate because they had failed to meet the challenges posed by the times. All had responded to the forces of industrialization and popular participation in the political process with hesitation and reluctance, and their attempts at reform were too little and too late. All paid the supreme price for their folly.

Chinese Society in Transition The growing Western presence in China during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had provided the imperial government with an opportunity to benefit from the situation. The results, however, were meager.

Program for a New China In 1905, Sun Yat-sen united a number of anti-Manchu groups into a single patriotic organization called the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui). The new organization was eventually renamed the Guomindang, or Nationalist Party. This excerpt is from the organization’s manifesto, published in 1905 in Tokyo. Note that Sun believed that the Chinese people were not ready for democracy and required a period of tutelage to prepare them for constitutional political government. This was a formula that would be adopted by many other political leaders in Asia and Africa after World War II.

Sun Yat-sen, Manifesto for the Tongmenghui By order of the Military Government, . . . the Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese National Army proclaims the purposes and platform of the Military Government to the people of the nation:

Therefore we proclaim to the world in utmost sincerity the outline of the present revolution and the fundamental plan for the future administration of the nation.

1. Drive out the Tartars: The Manchus of today were originally the eastern barbarians beyond the Great Wall. They frequently caused border troubles during the Ming dynasty; then when China was in a dis- turbed state they came inside Shanhaikuan [the east- ern terminus of the Great Wall], conquered China, and enslaved our Chinese people. . . . The extreme cruelties and tyrannies of the Manchu government have now reached their limit. With the righteous army poised against them, we will overthrow that government, and restore our sovereign rights.

2. Restore China: China is the China of the Chinese. The government of China should be in the hands of the Chinese. After driving out the Tartars we must restore our national state. . . .

3. Establish the Republic: Now our revolution is based on equality, in order to establish a republican govern- ment. All our people are equal and all enjoy political rights. . . .

4. Equalize land ownership: The good fortune of civiliza- tion is to be shared equally by all the people of the nation. We should improve our social and economic organization, and assess the value of all the land in the country. Its present price shall be received by the owner, but all increases in value resulting from reform and social improvements after the revolution shall belong to the state, to be shared by all the people, in order to create a socialist state, where each family within the empire can be well supported, each person satisfied, and no one fail to secure employment. . . .

The above four points will be carried out in three steps in due order. The first period is government by military law. When the righteous army has arisen, various places will join the cause. . . . Evils like the oppression of the government, the greed and graft of officials, . . . the cruelty of tortures and penalties, the tyranny of tax collections, shall all be exterminated together with the Manchu rule. Evils in social customs, such as the keeping of slaves, the cruelty of foot binding, the spread of the poison of opium, should also all be prohibited. . . .

The second period is that of government by a provisional constitution. When military law is lifted in each hsien [district], the Military Government shall return the right of the self-government to the local people. . . .

The third period will be government under the constitution. Six years after the provisional constitution has been enforced, a constitution shall be made. The military and administrative powers of the Military Government shall be annulled; the people shall elect the president, and elect the members of parliament to organize the parliament.

What are Sun Yat-sen’s key proposals for the modernization of Chinese society? Why can he be described as a revolutionary rather than a reformer?

SOURCE: From Sources of Chinese Tradition by Wm. Theodore de Bary. Copyright ª 1964 Columbia University Press. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

56 CHAPTER 3 Shadows over the Pacific: East Asia Under Challenge

Although foreign concession areas in the coastal cities pro- vided a conduit for the importation of Western technol- ogy and modern manufacturing methods, the Chinese borrowed less than they might have. Foreign manufactur- ing enterprises could not legally operate in China until the last decade of the nineteenth century, and their methods had little influence beyond the concession areas. Chinese efforts to imitate Western methods, notably in shipbuild- ing and weapons manufacture, were dominated by the government and often suffered from mismanagement.

Equally serious problems persisted in the countryside. The rapid increase in population had led to smaller plots and growing numbers of tenant farmers. Whether per capita consumption of food was on the decline is not clear from the available evidence, but apparently rice as a staple of the diet was increasingly being replaced by less nutri- tious foods, many of which depleted the soil, already under pressure from the dramatic increase in population. Some farmers benefited from switching to commercial agriculture to supply the markets of the growing coastal cities. The shift entailed a sizable investment, however, and many farmers went so deeply into debt that they eventually lost their land. At the same time, the traditional patron-client relationship was frayed as landlords moved to the cities to take advantage of the glittering urban lifestyle introduced by the West.

The Impact of Western Imperialism The advent of the imperialist era in the second half of the nineteenth century thus came in a society already facing serious problems. Whether the Western intrusion was beneficial or harmful is debated to this day. The Western presence undoubtedly accelerated the development of the Chinese economy in some ways: the introduction of mod- ern means of production, transport, and communications; the expansion of an export market; and the steady integra- tion of the Chinese market into the nineteenth-century global economy. To many Westerners at the time, it was self-evident that such changes would ultimately benefit the Chinese people. Critics retorted that Western imperi- alism actually hindered the process of structural change in preindustrial societies because the imperialist powers thwarted the rise of local industrial and commercial sec- tors in order to maintain colonies and semicolonies as a market for Western manufactured goods and a source of cheap labor and materials. If the West had not intervened, some argued, China would have found its own road to becoming an advanced industrial society.

Whatever the truth of these conjectures, the hesitant efforts of the Qing to cope with these challenges suggest that the most important obstacle to reform was at the top:

Qing officials often seemed overwhelmed by the com- bination of external pressure and internal strife. At a time when other traditional societies, such as Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan, were making vigorous attempts to modernize their economies, the Manchu court, along with much of the elite class, still exhibited an alarming degree of complacency.

Daily Life in Qing China At the beginning of the nineteenth century, daily life for most Chinese was not substantially different from what it had been in earlier centuries. Most were farmers, living in millions of villages in rice fields and on hillsides through- out the countryside. Their lives were governed by the harvest cycle, village custom, and family ritual. Their roles in society were firmly fixed by the time-honored principles of Confucian social ethics. Male children, at least the more fortunate ones, were educated in the Con- fucian classics, while females remained in the home or in the fields. All children were expected to obey their parents, and wives to submit to their husbands.

A visitor to China a hundred years later would have seen a very different society, although still recognizably Chinese. Change was most striking in the coastal cities, where the educated and affluent had been visibly affected by the growing Western cultural presence. Confucian social institutions and behavioral norms were declining rapidly in influence, while those of Europe and North America were on the ascendant. Change was much less noticeable in the countryside, but even there, the custom- ary bonds had been dangerously frayed by the rapidly changing times.

Some of the change can be traced to the educational system. During the nineteenth century, the importance of a Confucian education steadily declined because up to half of the degree holders had purchased their degrees. After 1906, when the government abolished the civil service examinations, a Confucian education ceased to be the key to a successful career, and Western-style education became more desirable. The old dynasty attempted to modernize by establishing an educational system on the Western model with universal education at the elemen- tary level. Such plans had some effect in the cities, where public schools, missionary schools, and other private insti- tutions educated a new generation of Chinese with little knowledge of or respect for the past.

Changing Roles for Women The status of women was also in transition. During the mid-Qing era, women were still expected to remain in the

Chinese Society in Transition 57

home. Their status as useless sex objects was painfully symbolized by the practice of foot binding, a custom that had probably originated among court entertainers in the eighth century and later spread to the common people. By the mid-nineteenth century, more than half of all adult women probably had bound feet.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, signs of change began to appear. Women began to seek employment in factories—notably in the cotton mills and in the silk industry, established in Shanghai in the 1890s. Some women were active in dissident activities, such as the Taiping Rebellion and the Boxer movement, and a few fought beside men in the 1911 revolution. Qiu Jin, a well-known female revolutionary, wrote a manifesto call- ing for women’s liberation and then organized a revolt against the Manchu government, only to be captured and executed at the age of thirty-two in 1907.

By the end of the century, educational opportunities for women appeared for the first time. Christian mis- sionaries began to open girls’ schools, mainly in the foreign concession areas. Although only a relatively small number of women were educated in these schools, they had a significant impact on Chinese soci- ety as progressive intellectuals began to argue that ignorant women produced ignorant children. In 1905, the court announced its intention to open public schools for girls, but few such schools ever material- ized. The government also began to take steps to dis- courage the practice of foot binding, initially with only minimal success.

Traditional Japan and the End of Isolation While Chinese rulers were coping with the dual prob- lems of external threat and internal instability, similar developments were taking place in Japan. An agri- cultural society like its powerful neighbor, Japan had borrowed extensively from Chinese civilization for more than a millennium; its political institutions, religious beliefs, and cultural achievements all bore the clear imprint of the Chinese model. Neverthe- less, throughout the centuries, the Japanese were able to retain not only their political independence but also their cultural uniqueness and had created a distinct civilization.

One reason for the historical differences between China and Japan is that China is a large continental country and Japan a small island nation. Proud of their own considerable cultural achievements and their dominant position throughout the region, the Chinese

have traditionally been reluctant to dilute the purity of their culture with foreign innovations. Often subject to invasion by nomadic peoples from the north, the Chinese viewed culture rather than race as a symbol of their sense of iden- tity. By contrast, the island character of Japan probably had the effect of strengthening the Japanese sense of eth- nic and cultural distinctiveness. Although the Japanese self-image of ethnic homogeneity may not be entirely jus- tified, it enabled them to import ideas from abroad with- out the risk of destroying the uniqueness of their own culture.

As a result, although the Japanese borrowed liberally from China over the centuries, they turned Chinese ideas and institutions to their own uses. In contrast to China, where a centralized political system was viewed as crucial to protect the vast country from foreign conquest or

Women with Bound Feet. To provide the best possible marriage for their daughters, upper-class families began to perform foot binding during the Song dynasty. Eventually, the practice spread to all social classes in China. Although small feet were supposed to denote a woman of leisure, most Chinese women with bound feet were in the labor force, working mainly in textiles and handicrafts to supplement the family income.

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internal fractionalization, a decentralized political system reminiscent of the feudal system in medieval Europe held sway in Japan under the hegemony of a powerful military leader, or shogun, who ruled with varying degrees of effectiveness in the name of the hereditary emperor. This system lasted until the early seventeenth century, when a strong shogunate called the Tokugawa rose to power after a protracted civil war. The Tokugawa managed to revitalize the traditional system in a some- what more centralized form that enabled it to survive for another 250 years.

A “Closed Country” One of the many factors contributing to the rise of the Tokugawa was the impending collapse of the old system. Another was contact with the West, which had begun with the arrival of Portuguese ships in Japanese ports in the mid-sixteenth century. Japan initially opened its doors eagerly to European trade and missionary activity, but later Japanese elites became concerned about the corrosive effects of Western ideas and practices and attempted to evict the foreigners. For the next two centuries, the Tokugawa adopted a policy of “closed country” (to use the contemporary Japanese phrase) to keep out foreign ideas and protect Japanese values and institutions. In spite of such efforts, however, Japanese society was changing from within, and by the early nineteenth century, it was quite different from what it had been two centuries earlier. Traditional institutions and the aristocratic feudal system were under increasing strain, not only from the emergence of a new merchant class but also from the centralizing tendencies of the powerful shogunate.

Some historians have noted strong parallels between Tokugawa Japan and early modern Europe, which devel- oped centralized empires and a strong merchant class at the same time. Certainly, there were signs that the shogunate system was becoming less effective. Factional- ism and corruption plagued the central bureaucracy. Feudal lords in the countryside (known as daimyo, or “great names”) reacted to increasing economic pressures by intensifying their exactions from the peasants who farmed their manorial holdings and by engaging in manu- facturing and commercial pursuits, such as the sale of textiles, forestry products, and sake (Japanese rice wine). As peasants were whipsawed by rising manorial exactions and a series of poor harvests caused by bad weather, rural unrest swept the countryside.

Japan, then, was ripe for change. Some historians maintain that the country was poised to experience an

industrial revolution under the stimulus of internal condi- tions. As in China, the resumption of contacts with the West in the middle of the nineteenth century rendered the question somewhat academic. To the Western powers, the continued isolation of Japanese society was an affront and a challenge. Driven by growing rivalry among them- selves and convinced by their own propaganda and the ideology of world capitalism that the expansion of trade on a global basis would benefit all nations, Western nations began to approach Japan in the hope of opening up the country to foreign economic interests.

The Opening of Japan The first to succeed was the United States. American ships following the northern route across the Pacific needed a fueling station before completing their long journey to China and other ports in the area. The efforts to pry the Japanese out of their cloistered existence in the 1830s and 1840s failed, but the Americans persisted. In the summer of 1853, an American fleet of four war- ships under Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrived in Edo Bay (now Tokyo Bay) with a letter from President Millard Fillmore addressed to the shogun. A few months later, Japan agreed to the Treaty of Kanagawa, provid- ing for the opening of two ports and the establish- ment of a U.S. consulate on Japanese soil. In 1858, U.S. Consul Townsend Harris signed a more elaborate com- mercial treaty calling for the opening of several ports to U.S. trade and residence, an exchange of ministers, and extraterritorial privileges for U.S. residents in Japan. The Japanese soon signed similar treaties with several European nations.

The decision to open relations with the Western bar- barians was highly unpopular in some quarters, particu- larly in regions distant from the shogunate headquarters in Edo. Resistance was especially strong in two of the key daimyo territories in the south, Satsuma and Choshu, both of which had strong military traditions. In 1863, the “Sat-Cho” alliance forced the hapless shogun to promise to bring relations with the West to an end, but the rebel- lious groups soon disclosed their own weakness. When Choshu troops fired on Western ships in the Strait of Shimonoseki, the Westerners fired back and destroyed the Choshu fortifications. The incident convinced the rebellious samurai (“retainers,” the traditional warrior class) of the need to strengthen their own military and intensified their unwillingness to give in to the West. Having strengthened their influence at the imperial court in Kyoto, they demanded the resignation of the shogun and the restoration of the power of the emperor.

Traditional Japan and the End of Isolation 59

In January 1868, rebel armies attacked the shogun’s palace in Kyoto and proclaimed the restored authority of the emperor. After a few weeks, resistance collapsed, and the venerable shogunate system was brought to an end.

Rich Country, Strong Army Although the victory of the Sat-Cho faction over the shogun- ate appeared on the surface to be a triumph of tradition over change, the new leaders soon realized that Japan must modernize to survive and embarked on a policy of compre- hensive reform that would lay the foundations of a modern industrial nation within a generation. The symbol of the new era was the young emperor himself, who had taken the reign name Meiji (“enlightened rule”) on ascending the throne after the death of his father in 1867. Although the post-Tokugawa period was termed a “restoration,” the Meiji ruler was controlled by the new leadership, just as the shogun had controlled his predecessors. In tacit recogni- tion of the real source of political power, the new capital was located at Edo, which was renamed Tokyo (“Eastern Capital”), and the imperial court was moved to the shogun’s palace in the center of the city.

The Transformation of Japanese Politics Once in power, the new leaders launched a comprehensive reform of Japanese political, social, economic, and cultural institutions and values. They moved first to abolish the remnants of the old order and strengthen their executive power. To undercut the power of the daimyo, hereditary feudal privileges were abolished in 1871, and the great lords lost title to their lands. As compensation, they were named governors of the territories formerly under their control. The samurai received a lump-sum payment to replace their traditional stipends but were forbidden to wear the sword, the symbol of their hereditary status.

The abolition of the legal underpinnings of the Toku- gawa system permitted the Meiji modernizers to embark on the creation of a modern political system based on the Western model. In the Charter Oath of 1868, the new lead- ers promised to create a new deliberative assembly within the framework of continued imperial rule. Although senior positions in the new government were given to the daimyo, the key posts were dominated by modernizing samurai, known as the genro, from the Sat-Cho clique.

During the next two decades, the Meiji government undertook a systematic study of Western political sys- tems. A constitutional commission under Prince Ito Hirobumi traveled to several Western countries, including Great Britain, Germany, Russia, and the United States, to

study their political institutions. As the process evolved, a number of factions appeared, each representing different ideas. The most prominent were the Liberals, who favored political reform on the Western liberal democratic model, and the Progressives, who called for a division of power between the legislative and executive branches, with a slight nod to the latter. There was also an imperial party that advocated the retention of supreme authority in the hands of the emperor.

THE MEIJI CONSTITUTION During the 1870s and 1880s, these factions competed for preeminence. In the end, the Progressives emerged victorious. The Meiji constitution, adopted in 1890, vested authority in the executive branch, although the imperialist faction was pacified by the state- ment that the constitution was the gift of the emperor. Members of the cabinet were to be handpicked by the Meiji oligarchs. The upper house of parliament was to be appointed and have equal legislative powers with the lower house, called the Diet, whose members would be elected. The core ideology of the state, called the kokutai (national polity), embodied (although in very imprecise form) the concept of the uniqueness of the Japanese system based on the supreme authority of the emperor.

The result was a system that was democratic in form but despotic in practice, modern in external appearance but still recognizably traditional in that power remained in the hands of a ruling oligarchy. The system permitted the traditional ruling class to retain its influence and economic power while acquiescing in the emergence of a new set of institutions and values.

Meiji Economics With the end of the daimyo domains, the government needed to establish a new system of land ownership that would transform the mass of the rural population from indentured serfs into citizens. To do so, it enacted a land reform program that redefined the domain lands as the pri- vate property of the tillers while compensating the previous owner with government bonds. One reason for the new policy was that the government needed operating reve- nues. At the time, public funds came mainly from customs duties, which were limited by agreement with the foreign powers to 5 percent of the value of the product. To rem- edy the problem, the Meiji leaders added a new agriculture tax, which was set at an annual rate of 3 percent of the esti- mated value of the land. The new tax proved to be a lucra- tive and dependable source of income for the government, but it was quite onerous for the farmers, who had pre- viously paid a fixed percentage of their harvest to the land- owner. As a result, in bad years, many peasants were

60 CHAPTER 3 Shadows over the Pacific: East Asia Under Challenge

unable to pay their taxes and were forced to sell their lands to wealthy neighbors. Eventually, the government reduced the tax to 2.5 percent of the land value. Still, by the end of the century, about 40 percent of all farmers were tenants.

LAUNCHING THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION With its budget needs secured, the government turned to the pro- motion of industry. A small but growing industrial econ- omy had already existed under the Tokugawa. In its early stages, manufacturing in Japan had been the exclusive responsibility of an artisan caste, who often worked for the local daimyo. Eventually, these artisans began to expand their activities, hiring workers and borrowing capi- tal from merchants. By the end of the seventeenth cen- tury, manufacturing centers had developed in Japan’s growing cities, such as Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka. According to one historian, by 1700, Japan already had four cities with a population over 100,000 and was one of the most urbanized societies in the world.

Japan’s industrial sector received a massive stimulus from the Meiji Restoration. The government provided fi- nancial subsidies to needy industries, imported foreign advisers, improved transport and communications, and established a universal system of education emphasizing applied science. In contrast to China, Japan was able to achieve results with minimum reliance on foreign capital. Although the first railroad—built in 1872—was underwrit- ten by a loan from Great Britain, future projects were all financed locally. Foreign currency holdings came largely from tea and silk, which were exported in significant quan- tities during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

During the late Meiji era, Japan’s industrial sector began to grow. Besides tea and silk, other key industries were weaponry, shipbuilding, and sake. From the start, the distinctive feature of the Meiji model was the intimate relationship between government and private business in terms of operations and regulations. Once an individual enterprise or industry was on its feet (or sometimes, when it had ceased to make a profit), it was turned over entirely to private ownership, although the government often con- tinued to play some role even after its direct involvement in management was terminated.

Also noteworthy is the effect that the Meiji reforms had on rural areas. As we have seen, the new land tax pro- vided the government with funds to subsidize the indus- trial sector, but it imposed severe hardship on the rural population, many of whom abandoned their farms and fled to the cities in search of jobs. This influx of people in turn benefited Japanese industry by providing an abun- dant source of cheap labor. As in early modern Europe, the industrial revolution in Japan was built on the strong backs of the long-suffering peasantry.

Building a Modern Social Structure The Meiji Restoration also transformed several other feudal institutions. A key focus of their attention was the army. The Sat-Cho reformers had been struck by the weakness of the Japanese armed forces in clashes with the Western powers and embarked on a major program to create a modern mili- tary force that could compete in a Darwinist world in which only the fittest would survive. The old feudal army based on the traditional warrior class was abolished, and an imperial army based on universal conscription was formed in 1871. The army also played an important role in Japanese society, becoming a means of upward mobility for many rural males.

EDUCATION Education also underwent major changes. The Meiji leaders recognized the need for universal education, including instruction in modern technology. Af- ter a few years of experimenting, they adopted the Ameri- can model of a three-tiered system culminating in a series of universities and specialized institutes. In the meantime, they sent bright students to study abroad and brought foreign specialists to Japan to teach in the new schools. Much of the content of the new system was inspired by Western models. Yet its ethical foundations, as embodied in the Imperial Rescript on Education promulgated in 1890, had a distinctly Confucian orientation, emphasizing such values as filial piety and loyalty to the emperor.

THE ROLE OF WOMEN The Meiji reforms also had an impact on the role of women in Japan. In the traditional era, women were constrained by the “three obediences” imposed on them: child to father, wife to husband, and widow to son. Husbands could easily obtain a divorce, but wives could not (supposedly, a husband could divorce his spouse if she drank too much tea or talked too much). Marriages were arranged, and the average age of marriage for females was sixteen years. Females did not share inheritance rights with males, and few received any education outside the family.

By the end of the nineteenth century, women were beginning to play a crucial role in their nation’s effort to modernize. Urged by their parents to augment the family income as well as by the government to fulfill their patriotic duty, young girls were sent en masse to work in the textile mills. From 1894 to 1912, women made up 60 percent of the Japanese labor force. Thanks to them, by 1914, Japan was the world’s leading exporter of silk and dominated cotton manufacturing. If it had not been for the export revenues earned from textile exports, Japan might not have been able to develop its heavy industry and military prowess without an infusion of foreign capital.

Japanese women received few rewards, however, for their contribution to the nation. In 1900, new regulations prohibited women from joining political organizations or

Rich Country, Strong Army 61

attending public meetings. Beginning in 1905, a group of independent-minded women petitioned the Japanese par- liament to rescind this restriction, but it was not repealed until 1922.

Joining the Imperialist Club Japan’s rapid advance was viewed with proprietary pride and admiration by sympathetic observers around the world. Unfortunately, the Japanese did not just imitate the domestic policies of their Western mentors; they also emulated the latter’s aggressive approach to foreign affairs. That they adopted this course is perhaps not sur- prising. In their own minds, the Japanese were particularly vulnerable in the world economic arena. Their territory was small, lacking in resources, and densely populated, and they had no natural outlet for expansion. To obser- vant Japanese, the lessons of history were clear. Western nations had amassed wealth and power not only because of their democratic systems and high level of education but also because of their colonies, which provided them with sources of raw materials, cheap labor, and markets for their manufactured products.

Traditionally, Japan had not been an expansionist coun- try. The Japanese had generally been satisfied to remain on their home islands and had even deliberately isolated themselves from their neighbors during the Tokugawa era. Perhaps the most notable exception was a short-lived attempt at the end of the sixteenth century to extend Japanese control over the Korean peninsula.

The Japanese began their program of territorial expan- sion (see Map 3.3) close to home. In 1874, they claimed compensation from China for fifty-four sailors from the Ryukyu Islands who had been killed by the local popula- tion on the island of Taiwan and sent a Japanese fleet to Taiwan to punish the perpetrators. When the Qing dynasty evaded responsibility for the incident while agree- ing to pay an indemnity to Japan to cover the cost of the expedition, it weakened its claim to ownership of the island of Taiwan. Japan was then able to claim suzerainty over the Ryukyu Islands, long tributary to the Chinese Empire. Two years later, Japanese naval pressure forced the opening of Korean ports to Japanese commerce.

During the 1880s, as the Meiji leaders began to modernize their military forces along Western lines, Sino- Japanese rivalry over Korea intensified. In 1894, China and Japan intervened on opposite sides of an internal rebellion in Korea. When hostilities broke out between the two powers, Japanese ships destroyed the Chinese fleet and seized the Manchurian city of Port Arthur (see the box on p. 63). In the Treaty of Shimonoseki, the Manchus were forced to recognize the independence of

Korea and to cede Taiwan and the Liaodong peninsula, with its strategic naval base at Port Arthur, to Japan.

Shortly thereafter, under pressure from the European powers, the Japanese returned the Liaodong peninsula to China, but in the early twentieth century, they returned to the offensive. Rivalry with Russia over influence in Korea led to increasingly strained relations between the two countries. In 1904, Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russian naval base at Port Arthur, which Russia had taken from China in 1898. The Japanese armed forces were weaker, but Russia faced difficult logistical problems along its new Trans-Siberian Railway and severe political instability at home. In 1905, after Japanese warships sank almost the entire Russian fleet off the coast of Korea, the Russians agreed to a humiliating peace, ceding the strate- gically located Liaodong peninsula back to Japan, along with southern Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands. Russia also agreed to abandon its political and economic influence in Korea and southern Manchuria, which now came increasingly under Japanese control. The Japanese victory stunned the world, including the colonial peoples of Southeast Asia, who now began to realize that Europeans were not necessarily invincible.

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MAP 3.3 Japanese Overseas Expansion During the Meiji Era. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Japan ventured beyond its home islands and became an imperialist power. The extent of Japanese colonial expansion through World War I is shown here.

Which parts of the Chinese Empire came under Japanese influence?

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62 CHAPTER 3 Shadows over the Pacific: East Asia Under Challenge

During the next few years, the Japanese consolidated their position in northeastern Asia, annexing Korea in 1908 as an integral part of Japan. When the Koreans pro- tested the seizure, Japanese reprisals resulted in thousands of deaths. The United States was the first nation to recog- nize the annexation in return for Tokyo’s declaration of respect for U.S. authority in the Philippines. In 1908, the

two countries reached an agreement in which the United States recognized Japanese interests in the region in return for Japanese acceptance of the principles of the Open Door. But mutual suspicion between the two countries was growing, sparked in part by U.S. efforts to restrict immigration from all Asian countries. President Theodore Roosevelt, who mediated the Russo-Japanese War, had

OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS

Two Views of the World

During the nineteenth century, China’s hierarchical way of looking at the outside world came under severe challenge, not only from European countries avid for new territories in Asia but also from the rising power of Japan, which accepted the Western view that a colonial empire was the key to national greatness. Japan’s first objective was Korea, long a dependency of China, and in 1894, the competition between China and Japan in the peninsula led to war. The following declarations of war by the rulers of the two countries are revealing. Note the Chinese use of the derogatory term Wojen (“dwarf people”) in referring to the Japanese.

Declaration of War Against China Korea is an independent state. She was first introduced into the family of nations by the advice and guidance of Japan. It has, however, been China’s habit to designate Korea as her dependency, and both openly and secretly to interfere with her domestic affairs. At the time of the recent insurrection in Korea, China dispatched troops thither, alleging that her purpose was to afford a succor to her dependent state. We, in virtue of the treaty concluded with Korea in 1882, and looking to possible emergencies, caused a military force to be sent to that country.

Wishing to procure for Korea freedom from the calamity of perpetual disturbance, and thereby to maintain the peace of the East in general, Japan invited China’s cooperation for the accomplishment of the object. But China, advancing various pretexts, declined Japan’s proposal. . . . Such conduct on the part of China is not only a direct injury to the rights and interests of this Empire, but also a menace to the permanent peace and tranquillity of the Orient. . . . In this situation, . . . we find it impossible to avoid a formal declaration of war against China.

Declaration of War Against Japan Korea has been our tributary for the past two hundred odd years. She has given us tribute all this time, which is a

matter known to the world. For the past dozen years or so Korea has been troubled by repeated insurrections and we, in sympathy with our small tributary, have as repeatedly sent succor to her aid. . . . This year another rebellion was begun in Korea, and the King repeatedly asked again for aid from us to put down the rebellion. We then ordered Li Hung-chang to send troops to Korea; and they having barely reached Yashan the rebels immediately scattered. But the Wojen, without any cause whatever, suddenly sent their troops to Korea, and entered Seoul, the capital of Korea, reinforcing them constantly until they have exceeded ten thousand men. In the meantime the Japanese forced the Korean king to change his system of government, showing a disposition every way of bullying the Koreans. . . .

As Japan has violated the treaties and not observed international laws, and is now running rampant with her false and treacherous actions commencing hostilities herself, and laying herself open to condemnation by the various powers at large, we therefore desire to make it known to the world that we have always followed the paths of philanthropy and perfect justice throughout the whole complications, while the Wojen, on the other hand, have broken all the laws of nations and treaties which it passes our patience to bear with. Hence we commanded Li Hung-chang to give strict orders to our various armies to hasten with all speed to root the Wojen out of their lairs.

Compare the worldviews of China and Japan at the end of the nineteenth century, as expressed in these declarations. Which point of view do you find more persuasive?

SOURCE: From H.F. McNair, Modern Chinese History pp. 530–534, quoted in Franz Schurmann and Orville Schell, eds., The China Reader: Imperial China (New York: Vintage, 1967), pp. 251–259.

Rich Country, Strong Army 63

aroused the anger of many Japanese by turning down a Japanese demand for reparations from Russia. In turn, some Americans began to fear the “yellow peril,” mani- fested by Japanese expansion in East Asia.

Japanese Culture in Transition The wave of Western technology and ideas that entered Japan in the second half of the nineteenth century greatly altered the shape of traditional Japanese culture. Litera- ture in particular was affected as European models eclipsed the repetitive and frivolous tales of the Tokugawa era. Dazzled by this “new” literature, Japanese authors began translating and imitating the imported models. Experimenting with Western verse, Japanese poets were at first influenced primarily by the British but eventually adopted such styles as Symbolism, Dadaism, and Surreal- ism, although some traditional poetry was still composed.

As the Japanese invited technicians, engineers, architects, and artists from Europe and the United States to teach their “modern” skills to a generation of eager students, the Meiji era became a time of massive consumption of Western artistic techniques and styles. Japanese architects and artists created huge buildings of steel and reinforced concrete adorned with Greek columns and cupolas, oil paintings reflecting the European concern with depth perception and

shading, and bronze sculptures of secular subjects. Euro- pean influence even affected the familiar Japanese tech- nique of woodblock printing, as in the print of the Ginza, which uses a traditional technique to depict Tokyo’s most modern thoroughfare complete with streetcar and electric lights (see the illustration below).

Cultural exchange also went the other way as Japanese arts and crafts, porcelains, textiles, fans, folding screens, and woodblock prints became the vogue in Europe and North America. Japanese art influenced Western painters such as Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas, and James Whis- tler, who experimented with flatter compositional per- spectives and unusual poses. Japanese gardens, with their exquisite attention to the positioning of rocks and falling water, became especially popular.

After the initial period of mass absorption of Western art, a national reaction occurred at the end of the nine- teenth century as many artists returned to pre-Meiji tech- niques. In 1889, the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (today the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music) was founded to promote traditional Japanese art. Over the next several decades, Japanese art underwent a dynamic resurgence, reflecting the nation’s emergence as a pros- perous and powerful state. While some artists attempted to synthesize Japanese and foreign techniques, others returned to past artistic traditions for inspiration.

The Ginza in Downtown Tokyo. This 1877 woodblock print shows the Ginza, a major commercial thoroughfare in downtown Tokyo, with modern brick buildings and a horse-drawn streetcar. The centerpiece and focus of public attention is a new electric streetlight. In combining traditional form with modern content, this print symbolizes the unique ability of the Japanese to borrow ideas from abroad while preserving much of the essence of their traditional culture.

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64 CHAPTER 3 Shadows over the Pacific: East Asia Under Challenge

CONCLUSION T H E M E I J I R E S T O R A T I O N was one of the great success stories of modern times. Not only did the Meiji leaders put Japan firmly on the path to economic and political develop- ment, but they also managed to remove the unequal treaty provisions that had been imposed at mid-century. Japanese achievements are especially impressive when compared with the difficulties experienced by China, which was not only unable to effect significant changes in its traditional society but had not even reached a consensus on the need for doing so. Japan’s achievements more closely resemble those of Europe, but whereas the West needed a century and a half to achieve a significant level of industrial devel- opment, the Japanese achieved it in forty years.

The differences between the Japanese and Chinese responses to the West have sparked considerable debate among students of comparative history. Some have argued that Japan’s success was partly due to good fortune; lacking abundant natural resources, it was exposed to less pressure from the West than many of its neighbors. That argument, however, is not very persuasive, since it does not explain why nations under considerably less pressure, such as Laos and Nepal, did not advance even more quickly.

One possible explanation has already been suggested: Japan’s unique geographic position in Asia. China, a conti-

nental nation with a heterogeneous ethnic composition, was distinguished from its neighbors by its Confucian cul- ture. By contrast, Japan was an island nation, ethnically and linguistically homogeneous, that had never been con- quered. Unlike the Chinese, the Japanese had little to fear from cultural change in terms of its effect on their national identity. If Confucian culture, with all its accoutrements, was what defined the Chinese gentleman, his Japanese counterpart, in the familiar image, could discard his sword and kimono and don a modern military uniform or a West- ern business suit and still feel comfortable in both worlds.

Whatever the case, the Meiji Restoration was possible because aristocratic and capitalist elements managed to work together in a common effort to achieve national wealth and power. The nature of the Japanese value sys- tem, with its emphasis on practicality and military achieve- ment, may also have contributed. Finally, the Meiji benefited from the fact that the pace of urbanization and commercial and industrial development had already begun to quicken under the Tokugawa. Japan, it has been said, was ripe for change, and nothing could have been more suitable as an antidote for the collapsing old system than the Western emphasis on wealth and power. It was a classic example of challenge and response.

TIMELINE

1830 1850 1870 1890 1910

China Manchus suppress Taiping Rebellion (1864)

Japan

Sun Yat-sen’s forces overthrow Manchu dynasty (1911)

Opium War (1839–1842)

Abolition of feudalism in Japan (1871)

Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895)

Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905)

One Hundred Days reform (1898)

Collapse of Tokugawa shogunate (1868)

Meiji constitution adopted (1890)

Commodore Perry in Tokyo Bay (1853)

CHAPTER NOTES

1. Quoted in Ssu-yu Teng and John K. Fairbank, eds., China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839–1923 (New York, 1970), p. 140.

2. Ibid., p. 167.

Conclusion 65

P A R T REFLECTIONSI THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY witnessed two major developments: the Industrial Revolution and European domination of the world. The first was clearly the more important, for it created the conditions for the latter. It was, of course, the major industrial powers—Great Brit- ain, France, and later Germany and the United States— that took the lead in building large colonial empires that spanned the globe.

EXPLAINING THE WINNERS AND LOSERS Why some societies were able to master the challenge of industriali- zation and others were not has been a matter of consider- able scholarly debate. Some observers have found the answer in the cultural characteristics of individual soci- eties, such as the Protestant work ethic in parts of Europe or the tradition of social discipline and class hierarchy in Japan. According to historian David Landes, cultural dif- ferences are the key reason the Industrial Revolution took place first in Europe rather than elsewhere in the world.

While admitting that other fac- tors, such as climate and the presence of natural resources, played a role in the process, what is most important, he maintains in his provocative book The Wealth and Poverty of

Nations, are “work, thrift, honesty, patience, and tenacity,” all characteristics that are present to a greater or lesser degree in European civilization. Other societies were entangled in a “web of tradition” composed of political authoritarianism, religious prejudice, and a suspicion of material wealth. Thus, they failed to overcome obstacles to rapid economic development. Only Japan, with its own tradition of hard work and self-sacrifice, succeeded in emulating the European experience.

Other observers argue that more practical considera- tions may have played a crucial role in determining the winners and losers in the race to achieve economic wealth and power. Historian Kenneth Pomeranz, in The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy, maintains that access to crucial raw mate- rials like coal and water power, along with the capital and experience accumulated during the early stages of European expansion in the early modern era, may have provided the initial impetus for the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. The importance of the early modern era

was also emphasized by the sociologist Andre Gunder Frank, who argued that the Industrial Revolution was less important as the driving force of the modern age than the age of exploration and expansion in the sixteenth and sev- enteenth centuries—a period marked by Western military conquest and degradation of many non-Western peoples.

It is clear that neither side possesses a monopoly of truth in this debate. Although culture clearly matters, other factors, such as climate, geography, the quality of political leadership, and what has been called “social capital” (such as the strength of the civil society), are also important. On the other hand, the argument that imperi- alism is the main culprit cannot explain why some previ- ously colonial societies have succeeded in mounting the ladder of economic success so much more successfully than others. What is increasingly evident is that there is no single answer, or solution, to the question.

THE LEGACY OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Whatever the ultimate causes, the advent of the industrial age had a number of lasting consequences for the world at large. On the one hand, the material wealth of those nations that successfully passed through the process increased signifi- cantly. In many cases, the creation of advanced industrial societies strengthened democratic institu- tions and led to a higher standard of living for the majority of the population. The spread of technology and trade outside of Europe created the basis for a new international economic order based on the global exchange of goods.

On the other hand, as we have seen, not all the conse- quences of the Industrial Revolution were beneficial. In the industrializing societies themselves, rapid economic change often led to resentment over the vast disparities in the distribution of wealth and a sense of rootlessness and alienation among much of the population. Some societies were able to manage these problems with a degree of suc- cess, but others experienced a breakdown of social values and the rise of widespread political instability. Industriali- zation in Europe also had destabilizing consequences for the global scene as rising economic competition among the industrial powers contributed to heightened tensions in the world.

P A R T I REFLECTIONS

Even along the periphery of Europe where the Indus- trial Revolution had not yet had much of an impact, old empires found it increasingly difficult to respond to new problems. The Ottoman Empire appeared helpless to curb unrest in the Balkans. In Imperial Russia, internal tensions became too much for the traditional landholding elites to handle, leading to significant political and social unrest in the first decade of the twentieth century. In Austria-Hun- gary, deep-seated ethnic and class antagonisms remained under the surface but reached a point where they might eventually threaten the survival of that multinational state.

IMPERIALISM: INDUSTRIALIZATION’S “EVIL TWIN”?

In the meantime, the Industrial Revolution was creating the technological means by which the West would achieve domination of much of the rest of the world. Europeans had begun to explore the world in the fifteenth century, but even as late as 1870, they had not yet com- pletely penetrated North America, South America, and Australia. In Asia and Africa, with a few notable excep- tions, the Western presence was limited to trading posts. Between 1870 and 1914, Western civilization expanded into the rest of the Americas and Australia, while most of Africa and Asia were divided into European colonies or spheres of influence. Two major factors explain this re- markable expansion: the need by Europe’s industrializing economies for raw materials and new markets for their products outside the continent and the strengthening of the imperialist powers made possible by the West’s tech- nological advances.

Beginning in the 1880s, European states began an intense scramble for overseas territory. This “new imperi- alism,” as some have called it, led Europeans to carve up

Asia and Africa. Imperialism was not really a new phenomenon. Since the Crusades of the Middle Ages and the overseas expansion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when Europeans established colonies in North and South America and trading posts around Africa and the Indian Ocean, Europeans had shown a marked proclivity for the domination of less technologically ori-

ented, non-European peoples. Nevertheless, the imperial- ism of the late nineteenth century was different from that of earlier periods. First, it was more rapid and resulted in

greater and deeper penetrations into non-European soci- eties. Second, it was directed primarily toward Africa and Asia, two regions that had been largely ignored until then.

The new imperialism had a dramatic effect on Africa and Asia as Western powers competed for control of these two continents. Like the debate over the Industrial Revolution, the debate among historians over the conse- quences of the imperialist era has been marked by sharp disagreements, as opposing sides have drawn starkly con- trasting portraits of its ultimate effects on the colonized societies. This divergence of views has occurred in part because colonialism had different consequences in various parts of the world. Also, some observers have focused on the immediate impact, whereas others have emphasized the long-term effects of colonial rule. Critics have argued that under imperialism, millions of people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America were uprooted from their traditional environments and exposed to a new life marked by poverty and degradation. Defenders point out that whatever its faults, the era of colonial rule introduced traditional soci- eties around the world to the technology, institutions, and values that characterize the advanced nations of the modern world. This too is an argument that will never end.

THE EAST ASIAN DIFFERENCE It is important to keep in mind that a few countries managed to evade total dom- ination by the imperialist powers. The new nations in Latin America managed to retain their independence at the end of the nineteenth century, although many of them remained highly vulnerable to political manipulation and penetration by U.S. or European economic interests. In East Asia, China and Japan were able to maintain at least the semblance of national independence during the height of the Western onslaught. For China, once the most advanced country in the world, survival was very much in doubt for many decades as the waves of Western political, military, and economic influence lapped at the edges of the Chinese Empire and the imperialist powers appeared on the verge of dividing up the Chinese heartland into separate spheres of influence. Only Japan responded with vigor and effectiveness, launching a comprehensive reform program that by the end of the century had trans- formed the island nation into an industrial power in its own right.

What explains the ability of the two major societies in East Asia to avoid total domination by the Western

powers? In the case of China, the answer may lie in the sheer size of that continental empire and the fact that ri- valry among the covetous industrial nations prevented any single power from placing the nation within its own orbit. Japan, however, stands out as the one true excep-

tion. By its own efforts, it not only fended off the Western challenge, but by the end of the century threatened to become an emerging member of the imperialists club. As the new century dawned, the industrialized nations’ stran- glehold on the world appeared virtually complete.

P A R TP A R T II

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 Li

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C H A P T E R

War and Revolution: World War I and Its Aftermath

N E G O T I A T I O N S A M O N G T H E great powers had been going on for weeks. Anguished messages had been exchanged between Berlin, Vienna, and Saint Petersburg as the crowned heads of three empires—William II of Germany, Francis Joseph of Austria, and Nicholas II of Russia—alternated between threats and appeals as they sought to avoid the outbreak of all-out war in Europe. Their efforts were in vain: on August 1, 1914, Germany declared war on Russia. Three days later, France and Great Britain had entered the fray. In London, British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey remarked sorrowfully to an acquaintance: “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”1 As it turned out, his comment was all too prescient. A century of peace and progress was about to come to an end in four years of bloody conflict on the battlefields of Europe. The continent would take more than a generation to recover from the slaughter.

C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G

Q For years, historians have debated theunderlying reasons for the outbreak of World War I. Based on the information available to you, what do you think caused the war?

The Coming of War The new century had dawned on a much brighter note. To some contemporaries, the magnificent promise offered by recent scientific advances and the flowering of the Industrial Revolution appeared about to be fulfilled. Few expressed this mood of optimism better than the renowned British historian Arnold Toynbee. In a retro- spective look at the opening of a tumultuous century written many years later, Toynbee remarked:

[We had expected] that life throughout the world would become more rational, more humane, and more democratic and that, slowly, but surely, political democracy would pro- duce greater social justice. We had also expected that the progress of science and technology would make mankind richer, and that this increasing wealth would gradually spread from a minority to a majority. We had expected that all this would happen peacefully. In fact we thought that mankind’s course was set for an earthly paradise.2

Such bright hopes for the future of humankind were sadly misplaced. In the summer of 1914, simmering rivalries between the major imperialist powers erupted into full- scale war. By the time it ended, Europe had suffered extensive physical destruction and the deaths of millions. Several venerable empires across the continent were in a state of collapse, and the rising power of nationalism appeared unstoppable. The Great War, as it came to be called, was an eerie prelude to a tumultuous century marked by widespread violence and dramatic change.

The excitement of war

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Rising Tensions in Europe Between 1871 and 1914, Europeans experienced a long period of peace as the great powers sought to maintain a fragile balance of power in an effort to avert the reemergence of the destructive forces unleashed during the Napoleonic era. But rivalries among the major world powers continued, and even intensified, leading to a series of crises that might have erupted into a general war. Some of these crises, as we have seen in Chapters 2 and 3, took place outside Europe, as the imperialist nations scuffled for advantage in the race for new colonial territories. But the main focus of European statesmen remained on Europe itself, where the emergence of Germany as the most powerful state on the Continent threatened to upset the fragile balance of power that had been established at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Fearful of a possible anti-German alliance between France and Rus- sia, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck signed a defensive treaty with Austria in 1879. Three years later, the alliance was enlarged to include Italy, which was angry with the French over conflicting colonial ambitions in North Africa. The so-called Triple Alliance of 1882 committed the three powers to support the existing political and social order while maintaining a defensive alliance against France.

While Bismarck was chancellor, German policy had been essentially cautious, as he sought to prevent rival powers from conspiring against Berlin. But in 1890 Em- peror William II dismissed the “iron chancellor” from office and embarked on a more aggressive foreign policy dedicated to provid- ing Germany with its rightful “place in the sun.” As Bismarck had feared, France and Russia responded by concluding a military alliance in 1894. By 1907, a loose confederation of Great Britain, France, and Russia—known as the Triple Entente—stood opposed to the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. Europe was divided into two opposing camps that became more and more inflexible and unwilling to compro- mise. The stage was set for war.

Crisis in the Balkans, 1908–1913 The dispute that led to world war began in the Balkans, where the decline of Ottoman power had turned the region into a tinderbox of ethnic and religious tensions. In 1908, Austria decided to annex its two protectorates of Bosnia and Herzegovina to prevent them from being seized by neighboring Serbia, whose leaders had visions of creating a large kingdom that would include most of the southern Slavic-speaking peoples. When Russia backed its prot�eg�e Serbia, Germany announced its support of Austria. The standoff ended when Russia backed down, but tensions within the Balkans had intensified, leading in 1912 and 1913 to a brief and inconclusive struggle for ter- ritory among the newly independent states in the region (see Map 4.1). In the meantime, Great Britain and France drew closer to Saint Petersburg.

Ebro R.

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MAP 4.1 Europe in 1914. By 1914, two alliances dominated Europe: the Triple Entente of Britain, France, and Russia and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. Russia sought to bolster fellow Slavs in Serbia, whereas Austria-Hungary was intent on increasing its power in the Balkans and thwarting Serbia’s ambitions. Thus, the Balkans became the flash point for World War I.

Which nonaligned nations were positioned between the two alliances?

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The Coming of War 71

The Outbreak of War By now Austrian officials in Vienna had become con- vinced that Serbia was a mortal threat to their empire and must be crushed. When Archduke Francis Ferdinand (the heir to the Austrian throne) and his wife, Sophia, were assassinated on June 28, 1914, in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo by a Serbian terrorist organization, the Austrian government issued an ultimatum to Serbia. The demands were so extreme that Serbia felt it had little choice but to reject them in order to preserve its sovereignty. Austria then declared war on Serbia on July 28. Still smarting from its humiliation in the Bosnian crisis of 1908, Russia was determined to support Serbia’s cause. On July 28, Tsar Nicholas II ordered a partial mobilization of the Russian army against Austria (see the box on p. 73). The Russian general staff informed the tsar that their mobiliza- tion plans were based on a war against both Germany and Austria simultaneously. They could not execute a partial mobilization without creating chaos in the army. Con- sequently, the Russian government ordered a full mobi- lization on July 29, knowing that the Germans would consider this an act of war against them. Germany responded by demanding that the Russians halt their mobilization within twelve hours. When the Russians ignored the ultimatum, Germany declared war on Russia on August 1.

The World at War Before 1914, many political leaders had become convinced that war entailed so many political and economic risks that it was not worth fighting. Others believed that “rational” diplomats could control any situation and pre- vent the outbreak of war. At the beginning of August 1914, both of these illusions were shattered, but the new illusions that replaced them soon proved to be equally foolish.

Illusions and Stalemate, 1914–1915 Europeans went to war in 1914 with remarkable enthusi- asm. Government propaganda had been successful in stirring up national antagonisms before the war. Now, in August 1914, the urgent pleas of governments for defense against aggressors fell on receptive ears in every belligerent nation. Most people seemed genuinely con- vinced that their nation’s cause was just. A new set of illusions also fed the enthusiasm for war. In August 1914, almost everyone believed that because of the risk of damage to the regional economy, the war would be over in a few weeks. People were reminded that the major battles in European wars since 1815 had in fact ended in

a matter of weeks. Both the soldiers who exuberantly boarded the trains for the war front in August 1914 and the jubilant citizens who bombarded them with flowers as they departed believed that the warriors would be home by Christmas.

German hopes for a quick end to the war rested on a military gamble. The so-called Schlieffen Plan (named after its creator, Alfred von Schlieffen, the German Chief of Staff from 1891 to 1905) had called for the German army to proceed through Belgium into northern France with a vast encircling movement that would sweep around Paris and surround most of the French army. But the high command had not heeded Schlieffen’s advice to place sufficient numbers of troops on the western salient near the English Channel to guarantee success, and the German advance was halted only 20 miles from Paris at the First Battle of the Marne (September 6–10). The war quickly turned into a stalemate as neither the Germans nor the French could dislodge the other from the trenches they had begun to dig for shelter. Two lines of trenches soon extended from the English Channel to the frontiers of Switzerland (see Map 4.2). The Western Front had become bogged down in trench warfare that kept both sides immobilized in virtually the same positions for four years.

THE WAR IN THE EAST German strategists had counted on achieving a rapid victory on the Western Front before launching their offensive against Russia. But the unex- pected success of the French changed the equation. At the beginning of the war, the Russian army moved into east- ern Germany but was decisively defeated at the Battles of Tannenberg on August 30 and the Masurian Lakes on September 15. The Russians were no longer a threat to German territory. The Austrians, Germany’s allies, fared less well initially. After they were defeated by the Russians in Galicia and thrown out of Serbia as well, the Germans came to their aid. A German-Austrian army defeated and routed the poorly equipped Russian army in Galicia and pushed the Russians back 300 miles into their own territory. Russian casualties stood at 2.5 million killed, captured, or wounded; the Russians had almost been knocked out of the war. Buoyed by their success, the Germans and Austrians, joined by the Bulgarians in September 1915, attacked and eliminated Serbia from the war.

The Great Slaughter, 1916–1917 The successes in the east enabled the Germans to move back to the offensive in the west. The early trenches dug in 1914 had by now become elaborate systems of defense. Both lines of trenches were protected by barbed-wire

72 CHAPTER 4 War and Revolution: World War I and Its Aftermath

OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS

“You Have to Bear the Responsibility for War or Peace”

After Austria declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914, Russian support of Serbia and German support of Austria threatened to escalate the conflict in the Balkans into a wider war. As we can see in these last-minute telegrams between the Russians and Germans (known as the “Willy-Nicky letters”), the rigidity of the military war plans on both sides made it difficult to avoid a confrontation once the process got under way.

Communications Between Berlin and Saint Petersburg on the Eve of World War I

Emperor William II to Tsar Nicholas II,

July 28, 10:45 P.M.

I have heard with the greatest anxiety of the impression which is caused by the action of Austria-Hungary against Servia [Serbia]. The inscrupulous agitation which has been going on for years in Servia has led to the revolting crime of which Archduke Franz Ferdinand has become a victim. . . . Doubtless You will agree with me that both of us, You as well as I, and all other sovereigns, have a common interest to insist that all those who are responsible for this horrible murder shall suffer their deserved punishment. . . .

Your most sincere and devoted friend and cousin (Signed) WILHELM

Tsar Nicholas II to Emperor William II,

July 29, 1 P.M.

I am glad that you are back in Germany. In this serious moment I ask You earnestly to help me. An ignominious war has been declared against a weak country and in Russia the indignation which I fully share is tremendous. I fear that very soon I shall be unable to resist the pressure exercised upon me and that I shall be forced to take measures which will lead to war. To prevent a calamity as a European war would be, I urge You in the name of our old friendship to do all in Your power to restrain Your ally from going too far.

(Signed) NICOLAS

Emperor William II to Tsar Nicholas II,

July 29, 6:30 P.M.

I have received Your telegram and I share Your desire for the conservation of peace. However: I cannot—as I told You in my first telegram—consider the action of Austria-Hungary as an “ignominious war.” Austria-Hungary knows from experience that the promises of Servia as long as they are merely on paper are entirely unreliable. . . . I believe that a direct understanding is possible and desirable between Your

Government and Vienna, an understanding which—as I have already telegraphed You—my Government endeavors to aid with all possible effort. Naturally military measures by Russia, which might be construed as a menace by Austria-Hungary, would accelerate a calamity which both of us desire to avoid and would undermine my position as mediator which—upon Your appeal to my friendship and aid—I willingly accepted.

(Signed) WILHELM

Emperor William II to Tsar Nicholas II,

July 30, 1 A.M.

My Ambassador has instructions to direct the attention of Your Government to the dangers and serious consequences of a mobilization. I have told You the same in my last telegram. Austria-Hungary has mobilized only against Servia, and only a part of her army. If Russia, as seems to be the case, according to Your advice and that of Your Government, mobilizes against Austria-Hungary, the part of the mediator with which You have entrusted me in such friendly manner and which I have accepted upon Your express desire, is threatened if not made impossible. The entire weight of decision now rests upon Your shoulders; You have to bear the responsibility for war or peace.

(Signed) WILHELM

German Chancellor to German Ambassador

at Saint Petersburg, July 31, URGENT

In spite of negotiations still pending and although we have up to this hour made no preparations for mobilization, Russia has mobilized her entire army and navy, hence also against us. On account of these Russian measures, we have been forced, for the safety of the country, to proclaim the threatening state of war, which does not yet imply mobilization. Mobilization, however, is bound to follow if Russia does not stop every measure of war against us and against Austria-Hungary within 12 hours, and notifies us definitely to this effect. Please to communicate this at once to M. Sazonoff and wire hour of communication.

Based on these telegrams, what was the chief issue that led to the outbreak of war? Was Emperor William II correct when he told Tsar Nicholas II that the latter would “have to bear the responsibility for war or peace”?

SOURCE: The Western World: From 1700, Vol. II, by W. E. Adams, R. B. Barlow, G. R. Kleinfeld, and R. D. Smith (Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1968), pp. 421–442.

The World at War 73

entanglements 3 to 5 feet high and 30 yards wide, concrete machine-gun nests, and mortar batteries, supported far- ther back by heavy artillery. Troops lived in holes in the ground, separated from the enemy by a no-man’s land.

The unexpected development of trench warfare baffled military leaders who had been trained to fight wars of movement and maneuver. Taking advantage of the recent American invention of the Caterpillar tractor, the British introduced tanks on the Western Front in 1915, but their effectiveness in breaking through enemy defenses was not demonstrated. The only plan generals could devise was to attempt a breakthrough by throwing masses of men

against enemy lines that had first been battered by artil- lery barrages. Periodically, the high command on either side would order an offensive that would begin with an artillery barrage to flatten the enemy’s barbed wire and leave the enemy in a state of shock. After “softening up” the enemy in this fashion, a mass of soldiers would climb out of their trenches with fixed bayonets and hope to work their way toward the opposing trenches. The attacks rarely worked, as the machine gun put hordes of men advancing unprotected across open fields at a severe disad- vantage. In 1916 and 1917, millions of young men were sacrificed in the search for the elusive breakthrough. In

NETHERLANDS

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Eastern Front: Western Front:

Farthest German advance, September 1914

German offensive, March–July 1918

Winter, 1914–1915

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MAP 4.2 World War I, 1914–1918. This map shows how greatly the Western and Eastern Fronts of World War I differed. After initial German gains in the west, the war became bogged down in trench warfare, with little change in the battle lines throughout the war. The Eastern Front was marked by considerable mobility, with battle lines shifting by hundreds of miles.

How do you explain the difference in the two fronts?

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74 CHAPTER 4 War and Revolution: World War I and Its Aftermath

ten months at Verdun in 1916, 700,000 men lost their lives over a few miles of terrain.

Warfare in the trenches of the Western Front produced unimaginable horrors. Battlefields were hellish landscapes of barbed wire, shell holes, mud, and injured and dying men (see the box on p. 76). The introduction of poison gas in 1915 produced new forms of injuries, but the first aerial battles were a rare sideshow and gave no hint of the hor- rors to come with air warfare in the future.

Soldiers in the trenches also lived with the persistent presence of death. Since combat went on for months, sol- diers had to carry on in the midst of countless dead bodies and the remains of men dismembered by artillery bar- rages. Many soldiers remembered the stench of decom- posing bodies and the swarms of rats that grew fat in the trenches. At one point, battlefield conditions became so bad that units of the French army erupted in open mutiny. The high command responded by carrying out widespread executions of suspected ringleaders.

The Widening of the War As the war settled into a long, grueling struggle that con- sumed almost the entire continent, its tentacles began to

stretch into other parts of the world as well. Faced with high casualties on the battlefield, the major imperialist countries began to recruit troops from their colonies to serve on the front lines. Punjabis and Gurkhas from India, Zouaves from North Africa, Cossacks from Central Asia, and infantry units from Australia and New Zealand fought side by side with their European counterparts. Thousands of others, mainly from Africa and French Indochina, served in factories to replace workers who had been drafted into military service.

The Middle East, in particular, became an important front in the war. The German war planners had hoped that the Ottoman Empire, as an influential force in the Middle East, could be persuaded to conduct a holy war that would eliminate British and French influence throughout the region, especially in the oil-rich Arabian peninsula. The Turks, always suspicious of the Russians, did agree to enter the war on the German side, causing the British to launch a disastrous attack at Gallipolli, south of Constantinople, in 1915. But Berlin had miscalculated. In 1917, the dashing but eccentric British adventurer T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935), popularly known as Lawrence of Arabia, incited Arab princes to revolt against their Otto- man overlords (see the Film & History feature on p. 78). In 1918, British forces from Egypt destroyed the rest of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East. For these cam- paigns, the British mobilized forces from India, Australia, and New Zealand. The Allies (Britain, France, Russia, and their allies) also took advantage of Germany’s preoccupa- tions in Europe and lack of naval strength to seize Ger- man colonies in Africa. Japan seized a number of German- held islands in the Pacific, and Australia took over Ger- man New Guinea (for further discussion of these events, see Chapter 5).

THE YANKS ARE COMING Most important to the Allied cause was the entry of the United States into the war. At first, the United States tried to remain neutral, but that became more difficult as the war dragged on. The naval conflict between Germany and Great Britain was the im- mediate reason for U.S. concern. Britain took advantage of its superior naval power to impose a naval blockade on Germany. The latter retaliated with a counterblock- ade enforced by unrestricted submarine warfare. Strong U.S. protests over the German sinking of passenger liners—especially the British ship Lusitania on May 7, 1915, when more than one hundred Americans lost their lives—forced the German government to suspend unre- stricted submarine warfare to avoid further antagonizing the Americans.

In January 1917, however, German naval officers con- vinced Emperor William II that the renewed use of

The Horrors of War. The slaughter of millions of men in the trenches of World War I created unimaginable horrors for the participants. For the sake of survival, many soldiers learned to harden themselves against the stench of decomposing bodies and the sight of bodies horribly dismembered by artillery barrages.

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OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS

The Excitement and the Reality of War

The incredible outpouring of patriotic enthusiasm that greeted the declaration of war at the beginning of August 1914 in many European countries demonstrated the power that nationalistic feeling had attained at the beginning of the twentieth century. Many Europeans seemingly believed that the war had given them a higher purpose, a renewed dedication to the greatness of their nation. That sense of enthusiasm was captured by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig in his book The World of Yesterday.

The reality of war was entirely different. Soldiers who had left for the front in August 1914 in the belief that they would be home by Christmas found themselves shivering and dying in the vast networks of trenches along the battlefront. Few expressed the horror of trench warfare as well as the German writer Erich Maria Remarque in his famous novel All Quiet on the Western Front, first published in a German newspaper in 1928.

Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday The next morning I was in Austria. In every station placards had been put up announcing general mobilization. The trains were filled with fresh recruits, banners were flying, music sounded, and in Vienna I found the entire city in a tumult. . . . There were parades in the street, flags, ribbons, and music burst forth everywhere, young recruits were marching triumphantly, their faces lighting up at the cheering. . . .

And to be truthful, I must acknowledge that there was a majestic, rapturous, and even seductive something in this first outbreak of the people from which one could escape only with difficulty. And in spite of all my hatred and aversion for war, I should not like to have missed the memory of those days. As never before, thousands and hundreds of thousands felt what they should have felt in peace time, that they belonged together.

What did the great mass know of war in 1914, after nearly half a century of peace? They did not know war, they had hardly given it a thought. It had become legendary, and distance had made it seem romantic and heroic. They still saw it in the perspective of their school readers and of paintings in museums; brilliant cavalry attacks in glittering uniforms, the fatal shot always straight through the heart, the entire campaign a resounding march of victory—“We’ll be home at Christmas,” the recruits shouted laughingly to their mothers in August of 1914. . . .

A rapid excursion into the romantic, a wild, manly adventure—that is how the war of 1914 was painted in the imagination of the simple man, and the younger people were honestly afraid that they might miss this most wonderful and exciting experience of their lives; that is why they hurried and thronged to the colors, and that is why they shouted and sang in the trains that carried them to the slaughter; wildly and feverishly the red wave of blood coursed through the veins of the entire nation.

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front We wake up in the middle of the night. The earth booms. Heavy fire is falling on us. We crouch into corners. . . . Every man is aware of the heavy shells tearing down the parapet, rooting up the embankment and demolishing the upper layers of concrete. . . . Already by morning a few of the recruits are green and vomiting. . . .

No one would believe that in this howling waste there could still be men, but steel helmets now appear on all sides out of the trench, and fifty yards from us a machine- gun is already in position and barking.

[Finally the attack begins.] The wire-entanglements are torn to pieces. Yet they

offer some obstacle. We see the storm-troops coming. . . . We recognize the distorted faces, the smooth helmets: they are French. They have already suffered heavily when they reach the remnants of the barbed wire entanglements.

I see one of them, his face upturned, fall into a wire cradle. His body collapses, his hands remain suspended as though he were praying. Then his body drops clear away and only his hands with the stumps of his arms, shot off, now hang in the wire.

According to Stefan Zweig, why did so many Europeans welcome the outbreak of war in 1914? Why had they so badly underestimated the cost?

SOURCES: From The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, translated by Helmut Ripperger. Translation copyright 1943 by the Viking Press, Inc. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. Im Westen nichts Neues, copyright 1928 by Ullstein A. G.; copyright renewed ª 1956 by Erich Maria Remarque. All Quiet on the Western Front, copyright 1929, 1930 by Little, Brown and Company. Copyright renewed ª 1957, 1958 by Erich Maria Remarque. All Rights Reserved.

76 CHAPTER 4 War and Revolution: World War I and Its Aftermath

unrestricted submarine warfare could starve the British into submission within five months. To create a distrac- tion in case the administration of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson should decide to enter the war on the Allied side, German Foreign Minister Alfred von Zimmerman secretly encouraged the Mexican government to launch a military attack to recover territories lost to the United States in the American Southwest.

The resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, combined with outrage over the Zimmerman telegram (which had been decoded by the British and provided to U.S. diplomats in London), finally brought the United States into the war on April 6, 1917. Although American troops did not arrive in Europe in large numbers until 1918, the U.S. entry into the war gave the Allies a badly needed psychological boost. The year 1917 was not a good year for them. Allied offensives on the Western Front were disastrously defeated. Then, in November 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia (see “Revolution in Russia” later in this chapter) led to Russia’s withdrawal from the war, leaving Germany free to concentrate entirely on the Western Front.

The Home Front: The Impact of Total War Because most of the participants had expected the war to be short, they had given little thought to economic prob- lems and long-term wartime needs. Governments had to respond quickly, however, when the war machines failed to achieve their knockout blows and made ever-greater demands for men and mat�eriel. The extension of govern- ment power was a logical outgrowth of these needs. Most European countries had already devised some system of mass conscription or military draft. It was now carried to unprecedented heights as countries mobilized tens of millions of young men for that elusive breakthrough to victory.

Throughout Europe, wartime governments also expanded their powers over their economies. Free market capitalistic systems were temporarily shelved as govern- ments experimented with price, wage, and rent controls; the rationing of food supplies and mat�eriel; the regulation of imports and exports; and the nationalization of transpor- tation systems and industries. Some governments even moved toward compulsory employment. In effect, to mobi- lize the entire resources of the nation for the war effort, European countries had moved toward planned economies directed by government agencies.

WOMEN IN WORLD WAR I The war also created new roles for women. Because so many men went off to fight

at the front, women were called on to take over jobs and responsibilities that had not been available to them before. Overall, the number of women employed in Britain who held new jobs or replaced men rose by 1,345,000. Their occupations included chimney sweeps, truck drivers, farm laborers, and factory workers in heavy industry. By 1918, some 38 percent of the workers in the Krupp armaments factories in Germany were women.

While male workers expressed concern that the employment of females at lower wages would depress their own wages, women began to demand equal pay legislation. A law passed by the French government in July 1915 established a minimum wage for women home- workers in textiles, an industry that had grown dramati- cally thanks to the demand for military uniforms. Later in 1917, the government decreed that men and women should receive equal rates for piecework. Despite the noticeable increase in women’s wages that resulted from government regulations, women’s industrial wages still were not equal to men’s wages by the end of the war.

MORALE PROBLEMS As the Great War dragged on and both casualties and privations worsened, internal dissatis- faction replaced the patriotic enthusiasm that had marked the early stages of the conflict. By 1916, there were numerous signs that civilian morale was beginning to crack under the pressure of total war. War governments, however, fought back against the growing opposition to the war, as even parliamentary regimes resorted to an expansion of police powers to stifle internal dissent. At the very beginning of the war, the British Parliament passed the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), which allowed the public authorities to arrest dissenters as trai- tors. The act was later extended to authorize public offi- cials to censor newspapers by deleting objectionable material and even to suspend newspaper publication. In France, government authorities had initially been lenient about public opposition to the war, but by 1917, they began to fear that open opposition to the war might weaken the French will to fight. When Georges Clemen- ceau (1841–1929) became premier near the end of 1917, the lenient French policies came to an end, and basic civil liberties were suppressed for the duration of the war. When a former premier publicly advocated a negotiated peace, Clemenceau’s government had him sentenced to prison for two years for treason.

The Last Year of the War For Germany, the withdrawal of the Russians from the war in March 1918 offered renewed hope for a favorable

The World at War 77

end to the conflict. Erich von Ludendorff (1865–1937), who guided German military operations, persuaded civil- ian leaders to make one final gamble—a grand offensive in the west to break the military stalemate. The German

attack was launched in March and lasted into July, but an Allied counterattack, supported by the arrival of 140,000 fresh American troops, defeated the Germans at the Sec- ond Battle of the Marne on July 18. Ludendorff’s gamble

FILM & HISTORY

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) The conflict in the Middle East produced one of the great romantic heroes of World War I. T. E. Lawrence, a British army officer popularly known as Lawrence of Arabia, organized Arab tribesmen and led them in battle against the Ottoman Turks, who had become allies of the Central Powers (Germany and its allies). Although the military significance of Lawrence’s exploits was limited, their long-term implications for the region were enormous. During the peace negotiations that followed the German surrender in November 1918, most Ottoman possessions in the Middle East were replaced by British and French mandates, while the Arabian peninsula embarked on the road to independence under the tribal chieftain Ibn Saud. The political implications of that settlement are still important today.

The movie Lawrence of Arabia (1962), directed by the great British filmmaker David Lean, won seven Oscars and made an instant star of actor Peter O’Toole, who played the eccentric Lawrence with mesmerizing perfection. The photography and the acting are both superb, and Lean’s deft portrayal of the behavior and motives of all participants makes the lengthy film (more than three hours) essential viewing for those interested in comprehending the complex roots of the current situation in the Middle East.

British objectives, as voiced by the British general Viscount Edmund Allenby (played by the veteran actor Jack Hawkins), were unabashedly military in nature—use Arab unrest in the region as a means of taking the Ottomans out of the war. Arab leaders such as Prince Faisal—languidly played by the

consummate actor Alec Guinness—openly sought their independence from Turkish rule, but initially appeared hopelessly divided. It was Major Lawrence who provided the spark and the determination to knit together a coalition of Arab forces capable of winning crucial victories in the final year of the war. Faisal himself would eventually be chosen by the British to become the king of the artificial state of Iraq.

Lawrence himself remains an enigma—in the movie as in real life. Combining a fervent idealism about the Arab cause with an overweening sense of self- promotion, he played to the end an ambiguous role in the geopolitics of the Middle East. Disenchanted with the postwar peace settlement, he eventually removed himself from the public eye and died in a motorcycle accident in 1935. n

T. E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole in white) at the head of the Arab tribes.

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had failed. With the arrival of 2 million more American troops on the Continent, Allied forces began to advance steadily toward Germany.

On September 29, 1918, General Ludendorff informed German leaders that the war was lost and demanded that the government sue for peace. When German officials dis- covered that the Allies were unwilling to make peace with the wartime leadership, reforms were instituted to create a liberal government. But these constitutional reforms came too late for the exhausted and restive German peo- ple. On November 3, naval units in Kiel mutinied, and within days, councils of workers and soldiers were form- ing throughout northern Germany and taking over civil- ian and military administrations. William II, bowing to public pressure, abdicated on November 9, and the Social- ists under Friedrich Ebert (1871–1925) announced the establishment of a republic. Two days later, on November 11, 1918, the new German government agreed to an armi- stice. The war was over.

The final tally of casualties from the war was appalling. Nearly 10 million soldiers were dead, including 5 million on the Allied side and 3.5 million from the Central Powers. Civilian deaths were nearly as high. France, which had borne much of the burden of the war, suffered nearly 2 million deaths, including one out of every four males between eighteen and thirty years of age.

Seeking Eternal Peace In January 1919, the delegations of twenty-seven victori- ous Allied nations gathered at the palace of Versailles near Paris to conclude a final settlement of the Great War. Some delegates hoped that this conference would avoid the mistakes made at Vienna in 1815 by aristocrats who rearranged the map of Europe to meet the selfish desires of the great powers. As Harold Nicolson, one of the Brit- ish delegates, remarked: “We were journeying to Paris not merely to liquidate the war, but to found a New Order in Europe. We were preparing not Peace only, but Eternal Peace. There was about us the halo of some divine mission. . . . For we were bent on doing great, permanent and noble things.”3

The Vision of Woodrow Wilson National expectations, however, made Nicolson’s quest for “eternal peace” a difficult one. Over the years, the rea- sons for fighting World War I had been transformed from selfish national interests to idealistic principles. No one expressed the latter better than Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924). The American president outlined to the U.S. Congress “Fourteen Points” that he believed justified the

enormous military struggle then being waged. Later, Wil- son spelled out additional steps for a truly just and lasting peace. Wilson’s proposals included “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at” instead of secret diplomacy; the reduction of national armaments to a “point consistent with domestic safety”; and the self-determination of peo- ples so that “all well-defined national aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction.” Wilson characterized World War I as a people’s war waged against “absolutism and militarism,” two scourges of liberty that could be eliminated only by creating democratic governments and a “general association of nations” that would guarantee “political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.” As the spokesman for a new world order based on democracy and international cooperation, Wilson was enthusiastically cheered by many Europeans when he arrived in Europe for the peace conference.

Wilson soon found, however, that other states at the conference were guided by considerably more prag- matic motives. The secret treaties and agreements that had been made before and during the war could not be totally ignored, even if they conflicted with Wilson’s principle of self-determination. National interests also complicated the deliberations of the conference. David Lloyd George (1863–1945), prime minister of Great Britain, had won a decisive electoral victory in December 1918 on a platform of making the Germans pay for this dreadful war.

France’s approach to peace was determined primar- ily by considerations of national security. To Georges Clemenceau, the feisty French premier who had led his country to victory, the French people had borne the brunt of German aggression and deserved security against any possible future attack. Clemenceau wanted a demilitarized Germany, vast reparations to pay for the costs of the war, and a separate Rhineland as a buffer state between France and Germany—demands that Wilson viewed as vindictive and contrary to the principle of national self- determination. The Europeans, he once complained to a colleague, just want to “divide the swag.”4

Although twenty-seven nations were represented at the Paris Peace Conference, the most important deci- sions were made by Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George. Italy was considered one of the so-called Big Four powers but played a much less important role than the other three countries. Germany was not invited to attend, and Russia could not because it was embroiled in civil war.

FORMING THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS In view of the many conflicting demands at Versailles, it was inevi- table that the Big Three would quarrel. Wilson was

Seeking Eternal Peace 79

determined to create a League of Nations to prevent future wars. Clemenceau and Lloyd George were equally determined to punish Germany. In the end, only compromise made it possible to achieve a peace settle- ment. On January 25, 1919, the conference adopted the principle of the League of Nations (the details of its structure were left for later sessions); Wilson willingly agreed to make compromises on territorial arrange- ments to guarantee the League’s establishment, believ- ing that a functioning League could later rectify bad arrangements. Clemenceau also compromised to obtain some guarantees for French security. He renounced France’s desire for a separate Rhineland and instead accepted a defensive alliance with Great Britain and the United States, both of which pledged to help France if it was attacked by Germany.

The Peace Settlement The final peace settlement at Paris consisted of five sepa- rate treaties with the defeated nations—Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey. The Treaty of Versailles with Germany, signed on June 28, 1919, was by far the most important one. The Germans considered it a harsh peace and were particularly unhappy with Article 231, the so-called war guilt clause, which declared Germany (and Austria) responsible for starting the war and ordered Ger- many to pay reparations for all the damage to which the Allied governments and their people had been subjected as a result of the war “imposed upon them by the aggres- sion of Germany and her allies.”

The military and territorial provisions of the treaty also rankled the Germans. Germany was required to lower its army to 100,000 men, reduce its navy, and eliminate its air force. German territorial losses included the return of Alsace and Lorraine to France and sections of Prussia to the new Polish state. German territory west and as far as 30 miles east of the Rhine was established as a demilita- rized zone and stripped of all armaments or fortifications to serve as a barrier to any future German military moves westward against France. Outraged by the “dictated peace,” the new German government complained but accepted the treaty.

The separate peace treaties made with the other Cen- tral Powers extensively redrew the map of eastern Europe (see Map 4.3). Many of these changes merely ratified what the war had already accomplished. Both Germany and Russia lost considerable territory in eastern Europe; the Austro-Hungarian Empire disappeared altogether. New nation-states emerged from the remnants of these three empires: Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Czecho- slovakia, Austria, and Hungary. Territorial rearrangements

were also made in the Balkans. Romania acquired addi- tional lands from Russia, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Serbia formed the nucleus of a new South Slav state, called Yugoslavia, which combined Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The Ottoman Empire was also broken up, remaking the map of the Middle East (see Chapter 5).

Although the Paris Peace Conference was supposedly guided by the principle of self-determination, the mixtures of peoples in eastern Europe made it impossible to draw boundaries along neat ethnic lines. Compromises had to be made, sometimes to satisfy the national interest of the victors. France, for example, had lost Russia as its major ally on Germany’s eastern border and wanted to strengthen Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania as much as possible so that those states could serve as barriers against Germany and Communist Russia. As a result of such compromises, virtually every eastern European state was left with national minorities that could lead to future conflicts: Germans in Poland; Hun- garians, Poles, and Germans in Czechoslovakia; and the combination of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Albanians in Yugoslavia all became sources of later con- flict. Moreover, the new map of eastern Europe was based on the temporary collapse of power in both Germany and Russia. As neither country accepted the new eastern fron- tiers, it seemed only a matter of time before both would seek to make changes. In retrospect, the fear expressed by U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing that the principle of self-determination aroused hopes that “can never be realized” seems all too justified.

Revolution in Russia One of the more important consequences of the Great War was the impact that it had on Imperial Russia. In the summer of 1914, Tsar Nicholas II had almost appeared to welcome the prospect of a European war. Such a conflict, he hoped, would unite his subjects at a time when his empire was passing through a period of rapid social change and political unrest. The imperial government had survived the popular demonstrations that erupted during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, although the tsar had been forced to grant a series of reforms in a desperate effort to forestall the collapse of the traditional system (see Chapter 1).

As it turned out, the onset of war served not to revive the Russian monarchy, but rather—as is so often the case with decrepit empires undergoing dramatic change—to undermine its already fragile foundations. World War I halted the trajectory of Russia’s economic growth and set the stage for the final collapse of the old order. After stir- ring victories in the early stages of the war, news from

80 CHAPTER 4 War and Revolution: World War I and Its Aftermath

the battlefield turned increasingly grim as poorly armed Russian soldiers were slaughtered by the modern armies of the German emperor. Between 1914 and 1916, 2 mil- lion Russian soldiers were killed, and another 4 to 6 mil- lion were wounded or captured. The conscription of peasants from the countryside caused food prices to rise and led to periodic bread shortages in the major cities. Workers grew increasingly restive at the wartime sched- ule of long hours with low pay and joined army deserters in angry marches through the capital of Saint Petersburg (now for patriotic reasons renamed Petrograd).

It was a classic scenario for revolution—discontent in the big cities fueled by mutinous troops streaming home from the battlefield and a rising level of lawlessness in rural areas as angry peasants seized land and burned the

manor houses of the wealthy. Even the urban middle class, always a bellwether on the political scene, grew impatient with the economic crisis and the bad news from the front and began to question the competence of the tsar and his advisers. In March 1917 (late February accord- ing to the old style Julian calendar still in use in Russia), government troops fired at demonstrators in the streets of the capital and killed several. An angry mob marched to the Duma, where restive delegates demanded the resigna- tion of the tsar’s cabinet.

The March Revolution Nicholas II, whose character combined the fatal qualities of stupidity and stubbornness, had never wanted to share

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MAP 4.3 Territorial Changes in Europe and the Middle East After World War I. The victorious Allies met in Paris to determine the shape and nature of postwar Europe. At the urging of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, many nationalist aspirations of former imperial subjects were realized with the creation of several new countries from the prewar territory of Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire.

What new countries emerged in Europe and the Middle East?

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the supreme power he had inherited. After a brief period of hesitation, he abdicated, leaving a vacuum that was quickly seized by leading elements in the Duma, who formed a provisional government to steer Russia through the crisis. On the left, reformist and radical political par- ties—including the Social Revolutionaries (the legal suc- cessors of the outlawed terrorist organization Narodnaya Volya) and the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), the only orthodox Marxist party active in Rus- sia—cooperated in creating a shadow government called the Saint Petersburg Soviet. It supported the provisional government in pursuing the war but attempted to compel it to grant economic and social reforms that would benefit the masses.

The March 1917 uprising had brought about the col- lapse of the monarchy but showed little promise of solv- ing the deeper problems that had led Russia to the brink of civil war. As the crisis continued, radical members of the RSDLP began to hope that a social revolution was at hand.

Marxism had first appeared in Russia in the 1880s. Early Marxists, aware of the primitive conditions in their country, asked Karl Marx himself for advice. The Russian proletariat was oppressed—indeed, brutalized—but small in numbers and unsophisticated. Could agrarian Russia make the transition to socialism without an intervening stage of capitalism? Marx, who always showed more tacti- cal flexibility than the rigid determinism of his system sug- gested, replied that Russia might be able to avoid the capitalist stage by building on the communal traditions of the Russian village, known as the mir.

But as Russian Marxism evolved, its leaders turned more toward Marxist orthodoxy. Founding member George Plekhanov saw signs in the early stages of its industrial revolution that Russia would follow the classic pattern. In 1898, the RSDLP held its first congress.

LENIN AND THE BOLSHEVIKS During the last decade of the nineteenth century, a new force entered the Rus- sian Marxist movement in the figure of Vladimir Ulyanov, later to be known as Lenin (1870–1924). Initially radical- ized by the execution of his older brother for terrorism in 1886, he became a revolutionary and a member of Plekha- nov’s RSDLP. Like Plekhanov, Lenin believed in the revo- lution, but he was a man in a hurry. Whereas Plekhanov sought to prepare patiently for revolution by education and mass work, Lenin wanted to build up the party rap- idly as a vanguard instrument to galvanize the masses and spur the workers to revolt. In a pamphlet titled What Is to Be Done? he proposed the transformation of the RSDLP into a compact and highly disciplined group of

professional revolutionaries that would not merely ride the crest of the revolutionary wave but would unleash the storm clouds of revolt.

At the Second National Congress of the RSDLP, held in 1903 in Brussels and London, Lenin’s ideas were sup- ported by a majority of the delegates (thus, the term Bolsheviks, or “majorityites,” for his followers). His vic- tory was short-lived, however, and for the next decade, Lenin was a brooding figure living in exile on the fringe of the Russian revolutionary movement, which was now dominated by the Mensheviks (“minorityites”), who opposed Lenin’s single-minded pursuit of violent revolu- tion. Scoffing at his more cautious rivals, Lenin declared that revolution was “a tough business” and could not be waged “wearing white gloves and with clean hands.”5

From his residence in exile in Switzerland, Lenin heard the news of the collapse of the tsarist monarchy and decided to return to Russia. The German government secretly provided him and his followers with a sealed rail- road car to travel through Germany, undoubtedly in the hope that his presence would promote instability in Rus- sia. On his arrival in Petrograd in April 1917, Lenin laid out a program for the RSDLP: all power to the soviets (locally elected government councils), an end to the war, and the distribution of land to poor peasants. But Lenin’s April Theses (see the box on p. 83) were too radical even for his fellow Bolsheviks, who continued to cooperate with the provisional government while attempting to push it to the left. His onetime mentor Plekhanov remarked that Lenin’s plans for a general uprising were “delirious.”

The Bolshevik Revolution During the summer, the crisis worsened, and in July, riots by workers and soldiers in the capital led the provi- sional government to outlaw the Bolsheviks and call for Lenin’s arrest. The “July Days,” raising the threat of dis- order and class war, aroused the fears of conservatives and split the fragile political consensus within the provi- sional government. In September, General Lavr Korni- lov, commander in chief of Russian imperial forces, launched a coup d’�etat to seize power from Alexander Kerensky, now the dominant figure in the provisional government. The revolt was put down with the help of so-called Red Guard units, formed by the Bolsheviks within army regiments in the capital area (these troops would later be regarded as the first units of the Red Army), but Lenin now sensed the weakness of the provi- sional government and persuaded his colleagues to pre- pare for revolt. On the night of November 7 (October 25

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old style), forces under the command of Lenin’s lieuten- ant, Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), seized key installations in the capital area, while other units loyal to the Bolsheviks, including mutinous sailors from the battleship Aurora sta- tioned nearby on the Neva River, stormed the Winter Palace, where supporters of the provisional government were quickly overwhelmed. Alexander Kerensky was forced to flee from Russia in disguise.

The following morning, at a national congress of dele- gates from soviet organizations throughout the country, the Bolsheviks declared a new socialist order. Moderate elements from the Menshevik faction and the Social Revo- lutionary Party protested the illegality of the Bolshevik action and left the conference hall in anger. They were

derided by Trotsky, who proclaimed that they were rele- gated “to the dustbin of history.”

With the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, Lenin was now in command. His power was tenuous and extended only from the capital to a few of the larger cities, such as Moscow and Kiev, that had waged their own insurrections. There were, in fact, few Bolsheviks in rural areas, where most peasants supported the moderate leftist Social Revolutionaries. On the fringes of the Rus- sian Empire, restive minorities prepared to take advantage of the anarchy to seize their own independence, while supporters of the monarchy began raising armies to destroy the “Red menace” in Petrograd. Lenin was in power, but for how long?

All Power to the Soviets! On his return to Petrograd in April 1917, the revolutionary Marxist Vladimir Lenin issued a series of proposals designed to overthrow the provisional government and bring his Bolshevik Party to power in Russia. At the time his April Theses were delivered, his ideas appeared to be too radical, even for his closest followers. But the Bolsheviks’ simple slogan of “Peace, Land, and Bread” soon began to gain traction on the streets of the capital. By the end of the year, Lenin’s compelling vision had been realized, and the world would never be the same again.

Lenin’s April Theses, 1917 1. The specific feature of the present situation in Russia

is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution—which, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organization of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie—to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants. . . .

This peculiar situation demands of us an ability to adapt ourselves to the special conditions of Party work among unprecedentedly large masses of prole- tarians who have just awakened to political life. . . .

2. No support for the Provisional Government: the utter falsity of all the promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the renunciation of annexations. Exposure in place of the impermissible, illusion-breeding “demand” that this government of capitalists should cease to be an imperialist government.

The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influ- ence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, system- atic and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the prac- tical needs of the masses.

As long as we are in the minority we carry on the work of criticizing and exposing errors and at the same time we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers’ Depu- ties, so that the people may overcome their mistakes by experience.

Nationalization of all lands in the country, the land to be disposed of by the local Soviets of Agricultural Laborers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. The organization of separate Soviets of Deputies of Poor Peasants. The setting up of a model farm on each of the large estates (ranging in size from 100 to 300 dessiatines [about 270 to 810 acres], according to local and other conditions, and to the decisions of the local bodies) under the control of the Soviets of Agricultural Laborers’ Deputies and for the public account.

What were the key provisions of Lenin’s April Theses? To what degree were they carried out?

SOURCE: V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, 4th ed. (Moscow: Progress, 1964), Vol. XXIV, pp. 21–24.

Revolution in Russia 83

THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION IN RETROSPECT The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 has been the subject of vigorous debate by scholars and students of world affairs. Could it have been avoided if the provisional govern- ment had provided more effective leadership, or was it in- evitable? Did Lenin stifle Russia’s halting progress toward a Western-style capitalist democracy, or was the Bolshevik victory preordained by the autocratic conditions and lack of democratic traditions in Imperial Russia? Such questions have no simple answers, but some hypotheses are possible. The weakness of the moderate government created by the March revolution was probably predictable, given the polit- ical inexperience of the urban middle class and the deep divisions within the ruling coalition over issues of peace and war. At the same time, it seems highly unlikely that the Bolsheviks would have possessed the self-confidence to act without the presence of their leader, Vladimir Lenin, who almost single-handedly employed his strength of will to urge his colleagues to make their bid for power. The November revolution in Russia is often cited as a cardinal example of the role that a single individual can sometimes have on the course of history. Without Lenin, it would probably have been left to the army to intervene in an effort to maintain law and order, as would happen so often elsewhere during the turbulent twentieth century.

In any event, the Bolshevik Revolution was a momen- tous development for Russia and for the entire world. Not only did it present Western capitalist societies with a brazen new challenge to their global supremacy, but it also demonstrated that Lenin’s concept of revolution, car- ried through at the will of a determined minority of revo- lutionary activists “in the interests of the masses,” could succeed in a society going through the difficult early stages of the Industrial Revolution. It was a repudiation of orthodox “late Marxism” and a return to Marx’s pre-1848 vision of a multiclass revolt leading rapidly from a capital- ist to a proletarian takeover (see Chapter 1). It was, in short, a lesson that would not be ignored by radical intel- lectuals throughout the world, as we shall see in the chapter to follow.

The Civil War The Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd (soon to be renamed Leningrad after Lenin’s death in 1924) was only the first, and not necessarily the most difficult, stage in the Russian Revolution. Although the Bolshevik slogan of “Peace, Land, and Bread” had considerable appeal among workers, petty merchants, and soldiers in the vicinity of the capital and other major cities, the party—only 50,000 strong in November—had little representation in the rural areas, where the majority of the peasants supported the moderate leftist Social Revolutionary Party. On the fringes of the Russian Empire, ethnic minority groups took advantage of the confusion in Petrograd to launch move- ments to restore their own independence or achieve a position of autonomy within the Russian state. In the meantime, supporters of the deposed Romanov dynasty and other political opponents of the Bolsheviks, known as White Russians, attempted to mobilize support to drive the Bolsheviks out of the capital and reverse the verdict of “Red October.” And beyond all that, the war with Germany continued.

Lenin was aware of these problems and hoped that a wave of socialist revolutions in the economically advanced countries of central and western Europe would bring the world war to an end and usher in a new age of peace, socialism, and growing economic prosperity. In the mean- time, his first priority was to consolidate the rule of the working class and its party vanguard (now to be renamed the Communist Party) in Russia. The first step was to set up a new order in Petrograd to replace the provisional government that had been created after the March Revo- lution. For lack of a better alternative, outlying areas were simply informed of the change in government—a “revolution by telegraph,” as Leon Trotsky termed it. Then Lenin moved to create new organs of proletarian

Lenin Addresses a Crowd. Vladimir Lenin was the driving force behind the success of the Bolsheviks in seizing power in Russia and creating the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Here Lenin is seen addressing a rally in Moscow in 1917.

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power, setting up the Council of People’s Commissars (the word “commissar,” Lenin remarked “smells of revo- lution”) to serve as a provisional government. Lenin was unwilling to share power with moderate leftists who had resisted the Bolshevik coup in November, and he created security forces (popularly called the Cheka, or “extraordinary commission”), which imprisoned and bru- tally executed opponents of the new regime. In January 1918, the Constituent Assembly, which had been elected on the basis of plans established by the previous govern- ment, convened in Petrograd. Composed primarily of delegates from the Social Revolutionary Party and other parties opposed to the Bolsheviks, it showed itself critical of the new regime and was immediately abolished.

Lenin was determined to prevent the Romanov family from becoming a rallying cry for opponents of the new Bolshevik regime. In the spring of 1918, the former tsar and his family were placed under guard in Ekaterinburg, a small mining town in the Ural Mountains. On the night of July 16, the entire family was murdered on Lenin’s order. The bodies were dropped into a nearby mine shaft. For decades, rumors persisted that one of Nicholas II’s daugh- ters, Anastasia, had survived execution.

In foreign affairs, Lenin’s first major decision was to seek peace with Germany in order to permit the new gov- ernment to focus its efforts on the growing threat posed by White Russian forces within the country. In March 1918, a peace settlement with Germany was reached at Brest-Litovsk, although at enormous cost. Soviet Russia lost nearly one-fourth of the territory and one-third of the population of the prewar Russian Empire. In retrospect, however, Lenin’s controversial decision to accept a puni- tive peace may have been a stroke of genius, for it gained time for the regime to build up its internal strength and defeat its many adversaries still operating in the territories that once composed the empire of the tsars.

Indeed, the odds for a Bolshevik success must have seemed dim in the immediate aftermath of the seizure of power. Lenin himself initially predicted that defeat was likely in the absence of successful revolutionary outbreaks elsewhere in Europe. Support for the Bolsheviks in Russia was limited, and the regime antagonized farmers by the harsh measures it used to obtain provisions for its troops. Although Leon Trotsky showed traces of genius in organ- izing the Red Army, he was forced to station trusted lieutenants as “political commissars” in army units to guarantee the loyalty of his commanders.

In the end, Lenin’s gamble that the Russian people were desperate enough to embrace radical change paid off. The White Russian forces were larger than those of the Red Army, and they were supported by armed contingents sent by Great Britain, France, and the United States to assist in

the extinction of the “Red menace.” Nevertheless, they were also rent by factionalism and hindered by a tendency to fight “red terror” with “white terror” and to return con- quered land to the original landowners, thereby driving many peasants to support the Soviet regime. By 1920, the civil war was over, and Soviet power was secure.

The Failure of the Peace In the years following the end of World War I, many peo- ple hoped that the world was about to enter a new era of international peace, economic growth, and political de- mocracy. In all of these areas, the optimistic hopes of the 1920s failed to be realized.

The Search for Security The peace settlement at the end of World War I had tried to fulfill the nineteenth-century dream of national- ism by creating new boundaries and new states out of the now-defunct empires in central and eastern Europe. From the outset, however, the settlement had left many unhappy. Conflicts over disputed border regions between Germany and Poland, Poland and Lithuania, Poland and Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary, and Italy and Yugoslavia poisoned mutual relations in eastern Europe for years. Many Germans viewed the peace of Versailles as a dictated peace and vowed to seek its revision.

To its supporters, the League of Nations was the place to resolve such problems. The League, however, proved ineffectual in maintaining the peace. One of the reasons for its weakness was the lack of adequate provi- sions for enforcement. Because many nations were reluc- tant to compromise their own national security, the League could use only economic sanctions to halt ag- gression. The French attempt to strengthen the League’s effectiveness as an instrument of collective security by creating a peacekeeping force was rejected by nations that feared giving up any of their sovereignty to a larger international body.

Another reason that the League failed to achieve its promise was that the United States, where many were dis- illusioned by the disputes at Versailles, failed to join the new organization. The U.S. Senate also rejected President Wilson’s proposal for a defensive alliance with Great Britain and France.

FRANCE GOES IT ALONE The weakness of the League of Nations and the failure of both the United States and Great Britain to honor their promise of a defensive military alliance with France led the latter to insist on a strict enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles. This tough policy

The Failure of the Peace 85

toward Germany began with the issue of reparations—the payments that the Germans were supposed to make to compensate for the “damage done to the civilian popula- tion of the Allied and Associated Powers and to their prop- erty,” as the treaty asserted. In April 1921, the Allied Reparations Commission settled on a sum of 132 billion marks ($33 billion) for German reparations, payable in an- nual installments of 2.5 billion (gold) marks. Allied threats to occupy the Ruhr valley, Germany’s chief industrial and mining center, induced the new German republic to accept the reparations settlement and to make its first payment in 1921. By the following year, however, facing rising infla- tion, domestic turmoil, and lack of revenues because of low tax rates, the German government announced that it was unable to pay more. Outraged by what they consid- ered to be Germany’s violation of one aspect of the peace settlement, the French government sent troops to occupy the Ruhr valley. If the Germans would not pay reparations, the French would collect reparations in kind by operating and using the Ruhr mines and factories.

French occupation of the Ruhr seriously undermined the fragile German economy. The German government adopted a policy of passive resistance to French occupa- tion that was largely financed by printing more paper money, thus intensifying the inflationary pressures that had already begun at the end of the war. The German mark became worthless. Economic disaster fueled political upheavals as Communists staged uprisings in October and nationalist elements under the leadership of an as yet little known army veteran by the name of Adolf Hitler attempted to seize power in Munich in 1923. The follow- ing year, a new conference of experts was convened to reassess the reparations problem.

SOLVING THE REPARATIONS PROBLEM The formation of liberal-socialist governments in both Great Britain and France opened the door to conciliatory approaches to Ger- many and the reparations problem. At the same time, a new German government led by Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) ended the policy of passive resistance and committed Germany to carry out the provisions of the Versailles Treaty while seeking a new settlement of the reparations question.

In August 1924, an international commission produced a new plan for reparations. Named the Dawes Plan after the American banker who chaired the commission, it reduced reparations and stabilized Germany’s payments on the basis of its ability to pay. The Dawes Plan also granted an initial $200 million loan for Germany’s recov- ery, which opened the door to heavy American invest- ments in Europe that helped create a new era of European prosperity between 1924 and 1929.

THE SPIRIT OF LOCARNO A new approach to European diplomacy accompanied the new economic stability. A spirit of international cooperation was fostered by the for- eign ministers of Germany and France, Gustav Strese- mann and Aristide Briand (1862–1932), who concluded the Treaty of Locarno in 1925. This treaty guaranteed Germany’s new western borders with France and Bel- gium. Although Germany’s new eastern borders with Poland were conspicuously absent from the agreement, the Locarno pact was viewed by many as the beginning of a new era of European peace. On the day after the pact was concluded, the headline in the New York Times read “France and Germany Ban War Forever,” and the London Times declared “Peace at Last.”6

Germany’s entry into the League of Nations in March 1926 soon reinforced the atmosphere of conciliation engendered at Locarno. Two years later, similar attitudes prevailed in the Kellogg-Briand Pact, drafted by U.S. Sec- retary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French Foreign Minis- ter Briand. Sixty-three nations signed this accord, in which they pledged “to renounce war as an instrument of national policy.” Nothing was said, however, about what would be done if anyone violated the treaty.

The spirit of Locarno was based on little real sub- stance. Germany lacked the military power to alter its western borders even if it wanted to. Pious promises to renounce war without mechanisms to enforce them were virtually worthless. And the issue of disarmament soon proved that paper promises could not bring nations to cut back on their weapons. The League of Nations Covenant had recommended the “reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety.” Numerous disarmament conferences, however, failed to achieve anything substantial as states proved unwilling to trust their security to anyone but their own military forces. By the time the World Disarmament Conference finally met in Geneva in 1932, the issue was already dead.

A Return to Normalcy? According to Woodrow Wilson, World War I had been fought to make the world “safe for democracy.” During the decade that followed the signing of the Treaty of Ver- sailles, there seemed to be some justification for his opti- mism. Several major European states, as well as a number of the new countries established in eastern Europe, had functioning political democracies. A number of nations, including the United States, broadened the right to vote to include women, and the individual liberties of citizens were strengthened in other ways as well. Even Germany appeared to share in the shift toward political pluralism, as a new republic based in the city of Weimar took steps

86 CHAPTER 4 War and Revolution: World War I and Its Aftermath

to establish democratic political institutions under the able leadership of moderate statesmen like Friedrich Ebert (1871–1925) and Gustav Stresemann.

But the “return to normalcy,” as Woodrow Wilson’s successor, President Warren Harding (1865–1923), called it, was based on fragile economic foundations, as recovery from the four years of bitter conflict was slow and halting. France was only partially successful in reconstructing areas in the northern parts of the country that had been devastated by the Great War. Great Britain went through its own period of painful adjustment. The country had lost many of its markets for industrial products, especially to the United States and Japan. The postwar decline of such staple industries as coal, steel, and textiles led to a rise in unemployment, which reached the 2 million mark by 1922. An economic recovery began in the next few years but proved to be superficial, and unemployment remained at the 10 percent level throughout the decade. Coal miners were especially affected by the decline of the antiquated and inefficient British coal mines, which suf- fered from a global glut of coal.

The United States continued its gradual emergence as an industrial powerhouse—marked by the rapid develop- ment of the motor car industry under the leadership of Henry Ford. But the benefits of economic expansion were uneven, and rural areas generally did not share in the sur- face prosperity that had begun to appear in the larger industrialized cities. In the meantime, labor organizations fought with only limited success to improve the working conditions and wages of their constituents in the face of legal hurdles and stiff resistance by corporate interests.

None of the larger Western democracies, however, faced greater challenges than Germany, where the Wei- mar Republic, burdened by heavy war reparations, encountered serious economic difficulties from the start. The runaway inflation of 1922 and 1923 mentioned ear- lier had grave social effects, as widows, orphans, the el- derly, army officers, civil servants, and others who lived on fixed incomes all watched their monthly stipends become worthless or their lifetime savings disappear. Ominously, these continuing economic difficulties inex- orably pushed the middle class, which still lacked experi- ence in using its political influence to achieve its objectives, toward the young German Communist Party or to rightist parties that were equally hostile to the republic.

The Great Depression During the first few years after the end of World War I, there had been some tantalizing signs that Europe was on the path of recovery from the consequences of that

devastating conflict. But that illusion was burst in 1929, with the onset of the Great Depression.

CAUSES Two factors played a major role in the coming of the Great Depression: a downturn in European econo- mies and an international financial crisis created by the collapse of the American stock market in 1929. Already in the mid-1920s, global prices for agricultural goods were beginning to decline rapidly as a result of the overproduc- tion of basic commodities, such as wheat. In 1925, states in central and eastern Europe began to impose tariffs to close their markets to other countries’ goods. Meanwhile, an increase in the use of oil and hydroelectricity led to a slump in the coal industry.

Much of the European prosperity in the mid-1920s was built on U.S. bank loans to Germany, but in 1928 and 1929, American investors began to pull money out of Germany to invest in the booming New York stock market. When that market crashed in October 1929, pan- icky American investors withdrew even more of their funds from Germany and other European markets. The withdrawal of funds seriously weakened the banks of Germany and other central European states. The Credit- Anstalt, Vienna’s most prestigious bank, collapsed on May 31, 1931. By that time, trade was slowing down, industrialists were cutting back production, and unem- ployment was increasing as the ripple effects of interna- tional bank failures had a devastating impact on domestic economies.

REPERCUSSIONS Economic downturns were by no means a new phenomenon in the rise of Western capital- ism, but the Great Depression was exceptionally severe and had immediate repercussions. In the United States, great fortunes were lost overnight, and, with consumer demand dropping, industrial production fell dramatically, throwing millions out of work. President Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) signed legislation imposing high tariffs on imported goods. In Great Britain, the Labour Party failed to resolve the crisis and fell from power in 1931. A new government dominated by the Conservatives took office and sought to lift the country out of the depression by using the traditional policies of balanced budgets and pro- tective tariffs.

France did not suffer from the effects of the Great Depression as soon as other countries because it was a protected market and a majority of French industrial plants were small enterprises. Consequently, France did not begin to face the crisis until 1931, but then it quickly led to political repercussions. During a nineteen-month period in 1932–1933, six different cabinets were formed as France faced political chaos.

The Failure of the Peace 87

The European nation that suffered the most damage from the depression was probably Germany. Unemploy- ment increased to more than 4 million by the end of 1930. For many Germans, who had already suffered through difficult times in the early 1920s, the democratic experiment represented by the Weimar Republic had become a nightmare. Some reacted by turning to Marxism because Karl Marx had long predicted that capitalism would destroy itself through overproduction. As in several other European countries, communism took on a new popularity, especially with workers and intellectuals. But in Germany, the real beneficiary of the Great Depression was Adolf Hitler, whose Nazi Party came to power in 1933 (see Chapter 6).

The first reaction of all major Western governments faced with the depression was to adopt the traditional pol- icy of tight money and balanced budgets. But as the Great Depression worsened, the Cambridge University econo- mist John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) took issue with the traditional view that depressions should be left to work themselves out through the self-regulatory mecha- nisms of a free economy. Keynes argued that unemploy- ment stemmed not from overproduction but from a decline in consumer demand, which could be increased by public works, financed if necessary through deficit spending to stimulate production. Such policies, however, could be accomplished only by government intervention in the economy, a measure that most political leaders were unwilling to undertake.

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT AND THE NEW DEAL After Germany no Western nation was more affected by the Great Depression than the United States. The full force of the depression had struck the United States by 1932. In that year, industrial production fell to 50 percent of what it had been in 1929. By 1933, there were 15 million unem- ployed. Under these circumstances, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) was able to win a landslide victory in the presidential election of 1932. A pragmatist who was willing to adopt unorthodox measures to deal with a crisis situation, FDR (as he was popularly known) pursued a Keynesian policy of active government inter- vention in the economy that came to be known as the New Deal.

Initially, the New Deal attempted to restore prosperity by creating the National Recovery Administration (NRA), which required government, labor, and industrial leaders to work out regulations for each industry. Declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935, the NRA was soon superseded by other efforts collectively known as the Second New Deal. Its programs included the Works Progress Administration (WPA), established in

1935, which employed between 2 and 3 million people building bridges, roads, post offices, airports, and other public works. The Roosevelt administration was also re- sponsible for new social legislation that launched the American welfare state. In 1935, the Social Security Act created a system of old-age pensions and unemploy- ment insurance. At the same time, the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 encouraged the rapid growth of labor unions.

The New Deal undoubtedly provided some social reform measures and may even have averted social revo- lution in the United States. But it did not immediately solve the unemployment problems created by the Great

Brother, Can You Spare a Job? The Great Depression devastated the world economy and led to a dramatic rise in unemployment throughout the industrialized world. In the United States, manufacturing centers like Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit were especially hard hit as consumer demand for appliances and automobiles plummeted throughout the decade of the 1930s. In this poignant photograph taken in 1930, an unemployed worker in Detroit pleads for a job at the height of the depression. Unfortunately, full recovery would not come until many years later.

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Depression. In May 1937, during what was considered a period of recovery, American unemployment still stood at 7 million; a recession the following year, triggered in part by a decline in public spending, increased that number to 11 million. Only World War II and the subsequent growth of armaments industries brought American work- ers back to full employment.

Building Socialism in Soviet Russia In Russia, Bolshevik leaders had their own plans for the future. With their victory over the White Russians in 1920, Lenin and his colleagues could turn for the first time to the challenging task of building the first socialist society in a world dominated by their capitalist enemies. In his writings, Karl Marx had said little about the nature of the final communist utopia or how to get there. He had spo- ken briefly of a transitional phase, variously known as “raw communism” or “socialism,” that would precede the final stage of communism. During this phase, the Com- munist Party would establish a “dictatorship of the proletariat” to rid society of the capitalist oppressors, set up the institutions of the new order, and indoctrinate the population in the communist ethic. In recognition of the fact that traces of “bourgeois thinking” would remain among the population, profit incentives would be used to encourage productivity (in Marxist terminology, payment would be on the basis of “work” rather than solely on “need”), but major industries would be nationalized and private landholdings eliminated. After seizing power in 1917, however, the Bolsheviks were too preoccupied with survival to give much attention to the future nature of Soviet society. War communism—involving the govern- ment seizure of major industries, utilities, and sources of raw materials and the requisition of grain from private farmers—was, by Lenin’s own admission, just a makeshift policy to permit the regime to mobilize resources for the civil war.

THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY In 1920, it was time to adopt a more coherent approach. The realities were sobering. Soviet Russia was not an advanced capitalist society in the Marxist image, blessed with modern tech- nology and an impoverished and politically aware underclass imbued with the desire to advance to social- ism. It was poor and primarily agrarian, and its small but growing industrial sector had been ravaged by years of war. Under the circumstances, Lenin called for cau- tion. He won his party’s approval for a moderate pro- gram of social and economic development known as the New Economic Policy, or NEP. The program was based on a combination of capitalist and socialist

techniques designed to increase production through the use of profit incentives while at the same time promot- ing the concept of socialist ownership and maintaining firm party control over the political system and the overall direction of the economy. The “commanding heights” of the Soviet economy (heavy industry, bank- ing, utilities, and foreign trade) remained in the hands of the state, while private industry and commerce were allowed to operate at the lower levels. The forced requi- sition of grain, which had caused serious unrest among the peasantry, was replaced by a tax, and land remained firmly in private hands. The theoretical justification for the program was that Soviet Russia now needed to go through its own “capitalist stage” (albeit under the con- trol of the party) before beginning the difficult transition to socialism.

As an economic strategy, the NEP succeeded bril- liantly. During the early and mid-1920s, the Soviet econ- omy recovered rapidly from the ravages of war and civil war. A more lax hand over the affairs of state allowed a modest degree of free expression of opinion within the ranks of the party and in Soviet society at large. Under the surface, however, trouble loomed. Lenin had been increasingly disabled by a bullet lodged in his neck from an attempted assassination, and he began to lose his grip over a fractious party. Even before his death in 1924, potential successors had begun to scuffle for precedence in the struggle to assume his position as party leader, the most influential position in the state. The main candi- dates were Leon Trotsky and a rising young figure from the state of Georgia, Joseph Djugashvili, better known by his revolutionary name, Stalin (1879–1953). Lenin had misgivings about all the candidates hoping to succeed him and suggested that a collective leadership would best represent the interests of the party and the revolu- tion. After his death in 1924, however, factional struggle among the leading figures in the party intensified. Although in some respects it was a pure power struggle, it did have policy ramifications as party factions argued about the NEP and its impact on the future of the Russian Revolution.

At first, the various factions were relatively evenly balanced, but Stalin proved adept at using his position as general secretary of the party to outmaneuver his rivals. By portraying himself as a centrist opposed to the extreme positions of his “leftist” (too radical in pur- suit of revolutionary goals) or “rightist” (too prone to adopt moderate positions contrary to Marxist principles) rivals, he gradually concentrated power in his own hands.

In the meantime, the relatively moderate policies of the NEP continued to operate as the party and the state

The Failure of the Peace 89

vocally encouraged the Soviet people, in a very un-Marxist manner, to enrich themselves. Capital investment and technological assistance from Western capitalist countries were actively welcomed. An observer at the time might reasonably have concluded that the Marxist vision of a world characterized by class struggle had become a dead letter.

STALIN TAKES OVER Stalin had previously joined with the moderate members of the party to defend the NEP against Trotsky, whose “left opposition” wanted a more rapid advance toward socialism. Trotsky, who had become one of Stalin’s chief critics, was expelled from the party in 1927. Then, in 1928, Stalin reversed course: he now claimed that the NEP had achieved its purpose and called for a rapid advance to socialist forms of ownership. Beginning in 1929, a series of new programs changed the face of Soviet society. Private capitalism in manufacturing and trade was virtually abolished, and state control over the economy was extended. The first of a series of five- year plans was launched to promote rapid “socialist indus- trialization,” and in a massive effort to strengthen the state’s hold over the agricultural economy, all private farmers were herded onto collective farms.

The bitter campaign to collectivize the countryside aroused the antagonism of many peasants and led to a decline in food production and in some areas to mass star- vation. It also further divided the Communist Party and led to a massive purge of party members at all levels who opposed Stalin’s effort to achieve rapid economic growth and the socialization of Russian society. A series of brutal purge trials eliminated thousands of “Old Bolsheviks” (peo- ple who had joined the party before the 1917 Revolution) and resulted in the conviction and death of many of Stalin’s chief rivals. Trotsky, driven into exile, was dispatched by Stalin’s assassin in 1940. Of the delegates who attended the National Congress of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) in 1934, fully 70 percent had been executed by the time of the National Congress in 1939.

THE LEGACY OF STALINISM By the late 1930s, as the last of the great purge trials came to an end, the Russian Revolution had been in existence for more than two decades. It had achieved some successes. Stalin’s policy of forced industrialization had led to rapid growth in the industrial sector, surpassing in many respects what had been achieved in the capitalist years prior to World War I. Between 1918 and 1937, steel production increased from 4 to 18 million tons per year, and hard coal output went from 36 to 128 million tons. New industrial cities sprang up overnight in the Urals and Siberia. The Russian people in general were probably

better clothed, better fed, and better educated than they had ever been before. The cost had been enormous, however. Millions had died by bullet or starvation. Thousands, perhaps millions, languished in Stalin’s con- centration camps. The remainder of the population lived in a society now officially described as socialist, under the watchful eye of a man who had risen almost to the rank of a deity, the great leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin.

The impact of Stalin on Soviet society in one decade had been enormous. If Lenin had brought the party to power and nursed it through the difficult years of the civil war, it was Stalin, above all, who had mapped out the path to economic modernization and socialist transformation. To many foreign critics of the regime, the Stalinist terror and autocracy were an inevitable consequence of the con- cept of the vanguard party and the centralized state built by Lenin. Others traced Stalinism back to Marx. It was he, after all, who had formulated the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which now provided ideological justification for the Stalinist autocracy. Still others found the ultimate cause in Russian political culture, which had been charac- terized by autocracy since the emergence of Russian society from Mongol control in the fifteenth century.

Was Stalinism an inevitable outcome of Marxist-Lenin- ist doctrine and practice? Or as the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev later claimed, were Stalin’s crimes “alien to the nature of socialism” and a departure from the course charted by Lenin before his death? Certainly, Lenin had not envisaged a party dominated by a figure who became even larger than the organization itself and who, in the 1930s, almost destroyed the party. On the other hand, recent evidence shows that Lenin was capable of brutally suppressing perceived enemies of the revolu- tion in a way that is reminiscent in manner, if not in scope, of Stalin’s actions. In a 1922 letter to a colleague, he declared that after the NEP had served its purpose, “we shall return to the terror, and to economic terror.”7

It is also true that the state created by Lenin provided the conditions for a single-minded leader like Stalin to rise to absolute power. The great danger that neither Marx nor Lenin had foreseen had come to pass: the party itself, the vanguard organization leading the way into the uto- pian future, had become corrupted.

The Search for a New Reality in the Arts The mass destruction brought by World War I precipi- tated a general disillusionment with Western civilization on the part of artists and writers throughout Europe.

90 CHAPTER 4 War and Revolution: World War I and Its Aftermath

Avant-garde art, which had sought to discover alternative techniques to portray reality, now gained broader accep- tance as Europeans began to abandon classical traditions in an attempt to come to grips with the anxieties of the new age.

New Schools of Artistic Expression A number of the artistic styles that gained popularity dur- ing the 1920s originated during the war in neutral Switzer- land, where alienated intellectuals congregated at caf�es to decry the insanity of the age and exchange ideas on how to create a new and better world. Among them were the Dadaists, who sought to destroy the past with a ven- geance, proclaiming their right to complete freedom of expression in art.

A flagrant example of Dada’s revolutionary approach to art was the decision by French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) to enter a porcelain urinal in a 1917 art ex- hibit in New York City. By signing it and giving it a title, Duchamp proclaimed that he had transformed the urinal into a work of art. Duchamp’s Ready- Mades (as such art would henceforth be la- beled) declared that whatever the artist proclaimed to be art was art. Duchamp’s liberating concept served to open the floodgates of the art world, obliging the entire twentieth century to swim in this free-flowing, exuberant, exploratory, and often frightening torrent.

PROBING THE SUBCONSCIOUS While Dadaism flourished in Germany during the Weimar era, a school of Surrealism was established in Paris to liberate the total human experience from the restraints of the rational world. By using the subcon- scious, Surrealists hoped to resurrect the whole personality and reveal a submerged and illusive reality. Normally unrelated objects and people were juxtaposed in dreamlike and frequently violent paintings that were intended to shock the viewer into approaching reality from a totally fresh perspective. Most famous of the Surrealists was the Spaniard Salvador Dal�ı (1904–1989), who subverted the sense of reality in his painting by using near- photographic detail in presenting a fantastic and irrational world.

Yet another modernist movement born on the eve of World War I was Abstract,

or Nonobjective, painting. As one of its founders, Swiss artist Paul Klee (1879–1940), observed, “the more fearful this world becomes, . . . the more art becomes abstract.”8

Two of the movement’s principal founders, Wassily Kan- dinsky (1866–1944) and Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), were followers of Theosophy, a religion that promised the tri- umph of the spirit in a new millennium. Since they viewed matter as an obstacle to salvation, the art of the new age would totally abandon all reference to the mate- rial world. Only abstraction, in the form of colorful forms and geometric shapes floating in space, could express the bliss and spiritual beauty of this terrestrial paradise.

A MUSICAL REVOLUTION Just as artists began to ex- periment with revolutionary ways to represent reality in painting, musicians searched for new revolutionary sounds. Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874– 1951) rejected the traditional tonal system based on the harmonic triad that had dominated Western music since the Renaissance. To free the Western ear from traditional harmonic progression, Schoenberg substituted a radically new “atonal” system in which each piece established its

Black Lines No. 189, 1913 (oil on canvas), Wassily Kandinsky. Abstract painting was a renunciation of the material world and a glorification of the spiritual realm. Deeming it no longer necessary to represent objects and people, artists chose to express their emotions solely through color and abstract form. In this painting by Kandinsky, we rejoice in the springlike swirling splashes of color of the artist’s abstract world.

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The Search for a New Reality in the Arts 91

own individual set of relationships and structure. In 1923, he devised a twelve-tone system in which he placed the twelve pitches of the chromatic scale found on the piano in a set sequence for a musical composition. The ordering of these twelve tones was to be repeated throughout the piece, for all instrumental parts, constituting its melody and harmony. Even today, such atonal music seems inac- cessible and incomprehensible to the uninitiated. Yet Schoenberg, perhaps more than any other modern com- poser, influenced the development of twentieth-century music.

MODERNISM IN ARCHITECTURE Other fields of artistic creativity, including sculpture, ballet, and architecture, also reflected these new directions. In Germany, a group of imaginative architects called the Bauhaus School cre- ated what is widely known as the international school, which soon became the dominant school of modern archi- tecture. Led by the famous German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1881–1969), the internationalists pro- moted a new functional and unadorned style (Mies was widely known for observing that “less is more”) character- ized by high-rise towers of steel and glass that were repro- duced endlessly all around the world during the second half of the century.

For many postwar architects, the past was the enemy of the future. In 1925, the famous French architect Le Corbusier (1877–1965) advocated razing much of the old city of Paris, to be replaced by modern towers of glass. In his plan, which called for neat apartment complexes sepa- rated by immaculate areas of grass, there was no room

for people, pets, or nature. Fortunately, the plan was rejected by municipal authorities.

Culture for the Masses During the postwar era, writers followed artists and archi- tects in rejecting traditional forms in order to explore the subconscious. In his novel Ulysses, published in 1922, Irish author James Joyce (1882–1941) invented the “stream of consciousness” technique to portray the lives of ordinary people through the use of inner monologue. Joyce’s tech- nique exerted a powerful influence on literature for the remainder of the century. Some American writers, such as Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945), and Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951), reflected the rising influence of mass journalism in a new style designed to “tell it like it is.” Such writers sought to report the “whole truth” in an effort to attain the authenticity of modern photography.

For much of the Western world, however, the best way to find (or escape) reality was through mass enter- tainment. The 1930s represented the heyday of the Holly- wood studio system, which in the single year of 1937 turned out nearly six hundred feature films. Supplement- ing the movies were cheap paperbacks and radio, which brought sports, soap operas, and popular music to the mass of the population. The radio was a great social lev- eler, speaking to all classes with the same voice. Such new technological wonders offered diversion even to the poor while helping to define the twentieth century as the era of the common people.

CONCLUSION W O R L D W A R I S H A T T E R E D the image of a progressive and rational society in early-twentieth-century Europe. The widespread destruction and the deaths of millions of people undermined the Enlightenment belief in human progress. New propaganda techniques had manipulated entire populations into sustaining their involvement in a meaningless slaughter.

Who was responsible for the carnage? To the victori- ous Allied leaders, it was their defeated former adver- saries, on whom they imposed harsh terms at the Paris Peace Conference at the end of the war. In later years, some historians placed the primary blame on Russia for its decision to order full military mobilization in response to events taking place in the Balkans.

Perhaps, however, the real culprit was the system itself. The system of nation-states that began to emerge in

Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century had led not to cooperation, as many liberals had hoped, but to competition. Governments that exercised restraint to avoid war wound up being publicly humiliated; those that went to the brink of war to maintain their national inter- ests were often praised for having preserved national honor. As British historian John Keegan has noted, for European statesmen in the early twentieth century, “the fear of not meeting a challenge was greater than the fear of war.” In either case, by 1914, the major European states had come to believe that their allies were important and that their security depended on supporting those allies, even when they took foolish risks.

To make matters worse, the very industrial and tech- nological innovations that had brought the prospect of increased material prosperity for millions had also led to

92 CHAPTER 4 War and Revolution: World War I and Its Aftermath

the manufacture of new weapons of mass destruction such as the long-range artillery, tanks, poison gas, and air- planes that would make war a more terrible prospect for those involved, whether military or civilian. If war did come, it would be highly destructive.

The victorious world leaders who gathered at Ver- sailles hoped to forge a peace settlement that would say good-bye to all that. But as it turned out, the turmoil wrought by World War I seemed to open the door to even greater insecurity. Revolutions in Russia and the

Middle East dismembered old empires and created new states that gave rise to unexpected problems. Expectations that Europe and the world would return to normalcy were soon dashed by the failure to achieve a lasting peace, economic collapse, and the rise of authoritarian govern- ments that not only restricted individual freedoms but sought even greater control over the lives of their sub- jects, manipulating and guiding their people to achieve the goals of their totalitarian regimes. In the next chapter, we will examine these events in greater detail.

TIMELINE

1915 1920 1925 1930

Europe Battle of Verdun (1916)

Paris Peace Conference (1919)

Russia

United States United States enters the war (1917)

Dawes Plan (1924)

The New Deal (1930s)

Treaty of Locarno (1925)

Great Depression begins (1929)

Bolshevik Revolution (1917)

Civil war in Russia (1918–1920)

Germany enters League of Nations (1926)

Assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand (1914)

Stalin establishes dictatorship in Russia (1928–1929)

Lenin's New Economic Policy (1921)

CHAPTER NOTES

1. Cited in Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York, 1962), p. 146.

2. Arnold Toynbee, Surviving the Future (New York, 1971), pp. 106–107. 3. Harold Nicolson, Peacemaking, 1919 (Boston and New York, 1933),

pp. 31–32. 4. Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World

(New York, 2001), p. 103.

5. Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography (New York, 1994), p. 22.

6. Quoted in Robert Paxton, Europe in the Twentieth Century, 2nd ed. (San Diego, 1985), p. 237.

7. Volkogonov, Lenin, p. 3. 8. Quoted in Nikos Stangos, Concepts of Modern Art: From Fauvism to

Postmodernism, 3rd ed. (London, 1994), p. 44.

Conclusion 93

C H A P T E R

5 Nationalism, Revolution, and Dictatorship: Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America from 1919 to 1939

O N C H R I S T M A S D A Y I N 1 9 2 0 , a young Asian man in an ill-fitting rented suit stood up nervously to address the several hundred delegates of the French Socialist Party (FSP) who had gathered in the French city of Tours. The speaker called himself Nguyen Ai Quoc, or Nguyen the Patriot, and was a Vietnamese subject of the French colony of Indochina.

The delegates had assembled to decide whether the FSP would follow the path of violent revolution recommended by the new Bolshevik regime in Soviet Russia. Among those voting in favor of the proposal was Nguyen Ai Quoc, who had decided that only the path of Karl Marx and Lenin could lead to national independence for his compatriots. Later he would become the founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party and become known to the world by the pseudonym Ho Chi Minh.

The meeting in Tours was held at a time when resistance to colonial rule was on the rise, and the decision that Nguyen Ai Quoc faced of whether to opt for violent revolution was one that would be faced by colonial peoples throughout the world. As Europeans devastated their own civilization on the battlefields of Europe, the subject peoples of their vast colonial empires were quick to recognize the opportunity to shake free of foreign domination. In those areas, movements for national independence began to take shape. Some were inspired by the nationalist and liberal movements of the West, while others looked to the new Marxist model provided by the victory of the Communists in Soviet Russia, who soon worked to spread their revolutionary vision to African and Asian societies. In the

Middle East, World War I ended the rule of the Ottoman Empire and led to the creation of new states, many of which were placed under Western domination.

The societies of Latin America were no longer under direct colonial rule and thus, for the most part, did not face the same types of challenges as their counterparts in Asia and Africa. Nevertheless, in some cases the economies of the Latin American countries were virtually controlled by foreign interests. A similar situation prevailed in China and Japan, which had managed with some difficulty to retain a degree of political independence, despite severe pressure from the West. But the political flux and economic disruption that characterized much of the world during the two decades following World War I had affected Latin America, China, and Japan as well, leading many in these regions to heed the siren call of fascist dictatorship or social revolution. For all the peoples of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, the end of the Great War had not created a world safe for democracy, as Woodrow Wilson had hoped, but an age of great peril and uncertainty.

C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G

Q How did the societies discussed in this chapterdeal with the political, economic, and social challenges that they faced after World War I, and how did these challenges differ from one region to another?

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The Spread of Nationalism in Asia and Africa Although the West had emerged from World War I rela- tively intact, its political and social foundations and its self-confidence had been severely undermined by the experience. Within Europe, doubts about the future via- bility of Western civilization were widespread, especially among the intellectual elite. These doubts were quick to reach the attention of perceptive observers elsewhere and contributed to a rising tide of unrest against Western political domination throughout the colonial and semi- colonial world. That unrest took a variety of forms but was most notably displayed in increasing worker activism, rural protest, and a rising sense of national fervor among anticolonialist intellectuals. In Japan and Latin America, where independent states sought to evade the Western onslaught, the discontent fostered by the war and later by the Great Depression led to a loss of confidence in demo- cratic institutions and the rise of political dictatorships.

As we have seen (see Chapter 1), nationalism refers to a state of mind rising out of an awareness of being part of a community that possesses common institutions, tradi- tions, language, and customs. Unfortunately, even today few nations in the world meet such criteria. Most modern states contain a variety of ethnic, religious, and linguistic communities, each with its own sense of cultural and national identity. How does nationalism differ from tribal, religious, linguistic, or other forms of affiliation? Should every group that resists assimilation into a larger cultural unity be called nationalist?

Such questions complicate the study of nationalism and make agreement on a definition elusive. They create a particular dilemma in discussing Asia and Africa, where most societies are deeply divided by ethnic, linguistic, and religious differences and the very concept of nationalism is a foreign phenomenon imported from the West. Prior to the colonial era, most traditional societies in such regions were unified on the basis of religious beliefs, com- munity loyalties, or devotion to hereditary monarchies. Individuals in some countries identified themselves as members of a particular national group, while others viewed themselves as subjects of a king, members of a caste, or adherents of a particular religion.

The advent of European colonialism brought the con- sciousness of modern nationhood to many societies out- side the West. The creation of colonies with defined borders and a powerful central government weakened local ties and reoriented individuals’ sense of political identity. The introduction of Western ideas of citizenship and representative government engendered a new sense

of participation in the affairs of government. At the same time, the appearance of a new elite class based not on hereditary privilege or religious sanction but on alleged racial or cultural superiority aroused a shared sense of resentment among the subject peoples who felt a com- mon commitment to the creation of an independent society. By the first quarter of the twentieth century, polit- ical movements dedicated to the overthrow of colonial rule had arisen throughout much of the non-Western world.

Nationalist movements in Asia and Africa, then, were a product of colonialism and, in a sense, a reaction to it. But a sense of nationhood does not emerge full-blown in a society. It begins among a few members of the educated elite (most commonly among articulate professionals such as lawyers, teachers, journalists, and doctors) and spreads gradually to the mass of the population. Only then has a true sense of nationhood been created.

Traditional Resistance: A Precursor to Nationalism If we view the concept of nationalism as a process by which people in a given society gradually become aware of themselves as members of a particular nation, with its own culture and aspirations, then it is reasonable to seek the beginnings of modern nationalism in Asia and Africa in the initial resistance by the indigenous peoples to the colonial conquest itself. Although essentially motivated by the desire to defend traditional institutions, such move- ments reflected an early awareness of nationhood in that they sought to protect the homeland from the invader. Thus, traditional resistance to colonial conquest may logi- cally be viewed as the first stage in the development of modern nationalism.

Such resistance took various forms. For the most part, it was led by the existing ruling class. In the Ashanti kingdom in West Africa and in Burma and Vietnam in Southeast Asia, the resistance to Western domination was initially directed by the imperial courts. In some cases, however, traditionalist elements continued to oppose for- eign conquest even after resistance had collapsed at the center. In Japan, conservative elites opposed the decision of the Tokugawa shogunate in Tokyo to accommodate the Western presence and launched an abortive move- ment to defeat the foreigners and restore Japan to its pre- vious policy of isolation (see Chapter 3). In India, Tipu Sultan resisted the British in the Deccan plateau region of central India after the collapse of the Mughal dynasty. Similarly, after the decrepit monarchy in Vietnam had bowed to French pressure and agreed to the concession of

The Spread of Nationalism in Asia and Africa 95

territory in the south and the establishment of a French protectorate over the remainder of the country, a number of civilian and military officials set up an organization called Can Vuong (literally, “Save the King”) and contin- ued their resistance without imperial sanction.

THE SEPOY REBELLION Sometimes traditional resist- ance had a religious basis, as in the Sudan, where a revolt against the growing British presence in the Nile River val- ley had strong Islamic overtones, although it was initially provoked by Turkish misrule in Egypt. More significant was the famous Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 in India. The sepoys (derived from the Turkish word for “horseman” or “soldier”) were Indian troops hired by the East India Company to protect British interests in the region. Unrest within Indian units of the colonial army had been com- mon since early in the century, when it had been sparked by economic issues, religious sensitivities, or nascent anti- colonial sentiment. Such attitudes intensified in the mid- 1850s when the British instituted a new policy of shipping Indian troops abroad—a practice that exposed Hindus to pollution by foreign cultures. In 1857, tension erupted when the British adopted the new Enfield rifle for use by sepoy infantrymen. The new weapon was a muzzleloader that used paper cartridges covered with animal fat and lard; the cartridge had to be bitten off, but doing so vio- lated strictures against high-caste Hindus’ eating animal products and Muslim prohibitions against eating pork. Protests among sepoy units in northern India turned into a full-scale rebellion, supported by uprisings in rural dis- tricts in various parts of the country. But the revolt lacked clear goals, and rivalries between Hindus and Muslims and discord among leaders within each community pre- vented coordination of operations. Although Indian troops often fought bravely and outnumbered the British by 240,000 to 40,000, they were poorly organized, and the British forces (supplemented in many cases by sepoy troops) suppressed the rebellion.

Still, the revolt frightened the British and led to a num- ber of major reforms. The proportion of Indian troops in the army was reduced, and precedence was given to eth- nic groups likely to be loyal to the British, such as the Sikhs of Punjab and the Gurkhas, an upland people from Nepal in the Himalaya Mountains. To avoid religious con- flicts, ethnic groups were spread throughout the service rather than assigned to special units. The British also decided to suppress the final remnants of the hapless Mughal dynasty, which had supported the rebellion, and place the governance of India directly under the British Crown.

As noted earlier, such forms of resistance cannot prop- erly be called nationalist because they were essentially

attempts to protect or restore traditional society and its institutions and were not motivated by the desire to cre- ate a nation in the modern sense of the word. In any event, such movements rarely met with success. Peasants armed with pikes and spears were no match for Western armies possessing the most terrifying weapons then known to human society, including the Gatling gun, the first rapid-fire weapon and the precursor of the modern machine gun.

Modern Nationalism The first stage of resistance to the West in Asia and Africa must have confirmed many Westerners’ conviction that colonial peoples lacked both the strength and the know-how to create modern states and govern their own destinies.

In fact, however, the process was just beginning. The next phase began to take shape at the beginning of the twentieth century and was the product of the convergence of several factors. The most vocal sources of anticolonial- ist sentiment were found in a new class of Westernized intellectuals in the urban centers created by colonial rule. In many cases, this new urban middle class, composed of merchants, petty functionaries, clerks, students, and pro- fessionals, had been educated in Western-style schools. A few had spent time in the West. In either case, they were the first generation of Asians and Africans to possess more than a rudimentary understanding of the institutions and values of the modern West.

THE PARADOX OF NATIONALISM The results were paradoxical. On the one hand, this new class admired Western culture and sometimes harbored a deep sense of contempt for traditional ways (see the box on p. 97). On the other hand, many strongly resented the gap between ideal and reality, theory and practice, in colonial policy. Although Western political thought exalted democracy, equality, and individual freedom, these values were gener- ally not applied in the colonies. Democratic institutions were primitive or nonexistent, and colonial subjects usu- ally had access to only the most menial positions in the colonial bureaucracy.

Equally important, the economic prosperity of the West was only imperfectly reflected in the colonies. Normally, middle-class Asians did not suffer in the same manner as impoverished peasants or menial workers in coal mines or on sugar or rubber plantations, but they, too, had complaints. They usually qualified only for menial jobs in the government or business. Even when employed, their salaries were normally lower than those of Europeans in similar occupations. The superiority of

96 CHAPTER 5 Nationalism, Revolution, and Dictatorship

the Europeans was expressed in a variety of ways, includ- ing “whites only” clubs and the use of the familiar form of the language (normally used by adults to children) when addressing members of the local population.

Out of this mixture of hopes and resentments emerged the first stirrings of modern nationalism in Asia and Africa. During the first quarter of the twentieth century, in colo- nial and semicolonial societies across the entire arc of Asia from the Suez Canal to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, educated indigenous peoples began to organize political parties and movements seeking reforms or the end of foreign rule and the restoration of independence.

At first, many of the leaders of these movements did not focus clearly on the idea of nationhood but tried to

defend the economic interests or religious beliefs of the indigenous population. In Burma, for example, the first expression of modern nationalism came from students at the University of Rangoon, who formed an organization to protest against official persecution of the Buddhist reli- gion and British failure to observe local customs in Bud- dhist temples, such not removing their footwear. Calling themselves Thakin (a polite term in the Burmese language meaning “lord” or “master,” thereby emphasizing their demand for the right to rule themselves), the students began by protesting against British arrogance and lack of respect for local religious traditions. Eventually, however, they began to focus specifically on the issue of national independence.

The Dilemma of the Intellectual Sutan Sjahrir (1909–1966) was a prominent leader of the Indonesian nationalist movement who briefly served as prime minister of the Republic of Indonesia in the 1950s. Like many Western-educated Asian intellectuals, he was tortured by the realization that by education and outlook he was closer to his colonial masters—in his case, the Dutch—than to his own people. He wrote the following passage in a letter to his wife in 1935 and later included it in his book Out of Exile.

Sutan Sjahrir, Out of Exile Am I perhaps estranged from my people? . . . Why are the things that contain beauty for them and arouse their gentler emotions only senseless and displeasing for me? In reality, the spiritual gap between my people and me is certainly no greater than that between an intellectual in Holland . . . and the undeveloped people of Holland. . . . The difference is rather . . . that the intellectual in Holland does not feel this gap because there is a portion—even a fairly large portion—of his own people on approximately the same intellectual level as himself. . . .

This is what we lack here. Not only is the number of intellectuals in this country smaller in proportion to the total population—in fact, very much smaller—but in addition, the few who are here do not constitute any single entity in spiritual outlook, or in any spiritual life or single culture whatsoever. . . . It is for them so much more difficult than for the intellectuals in Holland. In Holland they build—both consciously and unconsciously—on what is already there. . . . Even if they oppose it, they do so as a method of application or as a starting point.

In our country this is not the case. Here there has been no spiritual or cultural life, and no intellectual progress for centuries. There are the much-praised Eastern art forms but what are these except bare rudiments from a feudal culture that cannot possibly provide a dynamic fulcrum for people of the twentieth century? . . . Our spiritual needs are needs of the twentieth century; our problems and our views are of the twentieth century. Our inclination is no longer toward the mystical, but toward reality, clarity, and objectivity. . . .

We intellectuals here are much closer to Europe or America than we are to the Borobudur or Mahabharata or to the primitive Islamic culture of Java and Sumatra. . . .

So, it seems, the problem stands in principle. It is seldom put forth by us in this light, and instead most of us search unconsciously for a synthesis that will leave us internally tranquil. We want to have both Western science and Eastern philosophy, the Eastern “spirit,” in the culture. But what is this Eastern spirit? It is, they say, the sense of the higher, of spirituality, of the eternal and religious, as opposed to the materialism of the West. I have heard this countless times, but it has never convinced me.

Why did Sutan Sjahrir feel estranged from his own culture? What was his answer to the challenges faced by his country in coming to terms with the modern world?

SOURCE: From The World of Southeast Asia: Selected Historical Readings, Harry J. Benda and John A. Larkin, eds. Copyright ª 1967 by Harper & Row, Publishers.

The Spread of Nationalism in Asia and Africa 97

A similar movement arose in the Dutch East Indies, where the first quasi-political organization dedicated to the creation of a modern Indonesia, the Sarekat Islam (Islamic Association), began as a self-help society among Muslim merchants to fight against domination of the local economy by Chinese interests. Eventually, activist ele- ments began to realize that the source of the problem was not the Chinese merchants but the colonial presence, and in the 1920s, Sarekat Islam was transformed into a new organization—the Nationalist Party of Indonesia (PNI)— that focused on the issue of national independence. Like the Thakins in Burma, this party would eventually lead the country to independence after World War II.

INDEPENDENCE OR MODERNIZATION? THE NATIONALIST

QUANDARY Building a new nation, however, requires more than a shared sense of grievances against the foreign invader. By what means was independence to be achieved? Should independence or modernization be the first priority? What kind of political and economic system should be adopted once colonial rule had been overthrown? What national or cultural concept should be adopted as the symbol of the new nation, and which institutions and values should be preserved from the past?

Questions such as these triggered lively and sometimes acrimonious debates among patriotic elements throughout the colonial world. If national independence was the de- sired end, how could it be achieved? Could the Westerners be persuaded to leave by nonviolent measures, or would force be required? If the West- ern presence could be beneficial by introducing much-needed reforms in traditional societies, then a gradualist approach made sense. On the other hand, if the colonial regime was viewed as an impediment to social and political change, then the first priority, in the minds of many, was to bring it to an end.

Another problem was how to adopt modern Western ideas and institutions while preserving the essential values that defined the indigenous culture. One of the reasons for using traditional values was to provide ideological symbols that the common people could understand. If the desired end was national independence, then the new political parties needed to enlist the mass of the popula- tion in the common struggle. But how could peasants, plantation workers, fishermen, and shepherds be made to understand complicated and unfamiliar concepts like

democracy, industrialization, and nationhood? The prob- lem was often one of communication, for most urban intellectuals had little in common with the teeming popu- lation in the countryside. As the Indonesian intellectual Sutan Sjahrir lamented, many Westernized intellectuals had more in common with their colonial rulers than with the local population in the rural villages (see the box on p. 97).

Gandhi and the Indian National Congress Nowhere in the colonial world were these issues debated more vigorously than in India. Before the Sepoy Rebel- lion, Indian consciousness had focused primarily on the question of religious identity. But in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a stronger sense of national conscious- ness began to arise, provoked by the conservative policies and racial arrogance of the British colonial authorities.

The first Indian nationalists were almost invariably upper class and educated. Many of them were from urban areas such as Bombay (now Mumbai), Madras (Chennai),

and Calcutta (Kolkata). Some were trained in law and were members of the civil service. At first, many tended to prefer reform to revolu- tion and believed that India needed modernization before it could han- dle the problems of independence. An exponent of this view was Gopal Gokhale (1866–1915), a moderate nationalist who hoped that he could convince the British to bring about needed reforms in Indian society. Gokhale and other like-minded re- formists did have some effect. In the 1880s, the government launched a series of reforms introducing a

measure of self-government for the first time. All too often, however, such efforts were sabotaged by local British officials.

THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS The slow pace of reform convinced many Indian nationalists that relying on British benevolence was futile. In 1885, a small group of Indians met in Bombay to form the Indian National Congress (INC). They hoped to speak for all India, but most were high-caste English-trained Hindus. Like their reformist predecessors, members of the INC did not demand immediate independence and accepted the need for reforms to end traditional abuses like child marriage and sati (see Chapter 2). At the same time, they called for

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an Indian share in the governing process and more spend- ing on economic development and less on military cam- paigns along the frontier.

The British responded with a few concessions, such as accepting the principle of elective Indian participation on government councils, but in general, change was gla- cially slow. As impatient members of the INC became disillusioned, radical leaders such as Balwantrao Tilak (1856–1920) openly criticized the British while defending traditional customs like child marriage to solicit support from conservative elements within the local population. Tilak’s activities split the INC between moderates and radicals, and he and his followers formed the New Party, which called for the use of terrorism and violence to achieve national independence. Tilak was eventually convicted of sedition.

The INC also had difficulty reconciling religious differ- ences within its ranks. The stated goal of the INC was to seek self-determination for all Indians regardless of class or religious affiliation, but many of its leaders were Hindu and inevitably reflected Hindu concerns. By the first de- cade of the twentieth century, Muslims began to call for the creation of a separate Muslim League to represent the interests of the millions of Muslims in Indian society.

INDIA’S “GREAT SOUL,” MOHANDAS GANDHI In 1915, the return of a young Hindu lawyer from South Africa transformed the movement and galvanized India’s struggle for independence and identity. Mohandas Gandhi was born in 1869 in Gujarat, in western India, the son of a government minister. In the late nineteenth century, he studied in London and became a lawyer. In 1893, he went to South Africa to work in a law firm serving Indian �emigr�es working as laborers there. He soon became aware of the racial prejudice and exploitation experienced by Indians living in the territory and tried to organize them to protest their living conditions.

NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE On his return to India, Gandhi immediately became active in the independence movement. Using his experience in South Africa, he set up a movement based on nonviolent resistance (the Indian term was satyagraha, “hold fast to the truth”) to try to force the British to improve the lot of the poor and grant independence to India. Gandhi was particularly con- cerned about the plight of the millions of “untouchables” (the lowest social class in traditional India), whom he called harijans, or “children of God.” When the British attempted to suppress dissent, he called on his followers to refuse to obey British regulations. He began to manu- facture his own clothes (dressing in a simple dhoti made of coarse homespun cotton) and adopted the spinning wheel

as a symbol of Indian resistance to imports of British textiles.

Gandhi, now increasingly known as India’s “Great Soul” (Mahatma), organized mass protests to achieve his aims, but in 1919, they got out of hand and led to British reprisals. British troops killed hundreds of unarmed pro- testers in the enclosed square in the city of Amritsar in northwestern India. When the protests spread, Gandhi was horrified at the violence and briefly retreated from active politics. Nevertheless, he was arrested for his role in the protests and spent several years in prison.

Gandhi combined his anticolonial activities with an appeal to the spiritual instincts of all Indians (see the Film & History feature on p. 100). Though born and raised a Hindu, he possessed a universalist approach to the idea of God that transcended individual religion, although it was shaped by the historical themes of Hindu religious belief. At a speech given in London in September 1931, he expressed his view of the nature of God as “an indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything . . . , an unseen power which makes itself felt and yet defies all proof.”

In 1921, the British passed the Government of India Act to expand the role of Indians in the governing process and transform the heretofore advisory Legislative Council into a bicameral parliament, two-thirds of whose members would be elected. Similar bodies were created at the pro- vincial level. In a stroke, 5 million Indians were enfran- chised. But such reforms were no longer enough for many members of the INC, who wanted to follow the new INC leader, Motilal Nehru, in pushing aggressively for full independence. The British exacerbated the situation by increasing the salt tax and prohibiting the Indian people from manufacturing or harvesting their own salt. In 1930, Gandhi, now released from prison, resumed his policy of civil disobedience by openly joining several dozen sup- porters in a 240-mile walk to the sea, where he picked up a lump of salt and urged Indians to ignore the law. Gandhi and many other members of the INC were arrested.

NEW LEADERS, NEW PROBLEMS In the 1930s, a new figure entered the movement in the person of Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), son of the INC leader Motilal Nehru. Educated in the law in Great Britain and a brahmin (mem- ber of the highest social class) by birth, Nehru personified the new Anglo-Indian politician: secular, rational, upper class, and intellectual. In fact, he appeared to be every- thing that Gandhi was not. With his emergence, the inde- pendence movement embarked on dual paths: religious and secular, Indian and Western, traditional and modern. The dichotomous character of the INC leadership may well have strengthened the movement by bringing to- gether the two primary impulses behind the desire for

The Spread of Nationalism in Asia and Africa 99

independence: elite nationalism and the primal force of Indian traditionalism. But it portended trouble for the nation’s new leadership in defining India’s future path in the contemporary world. In the meantime, Muslim dis- content with Hindu dominance over the INC was increas- ing. In 1940, the Muslim League called for the creation of a separate Muslim state in the northwest, to be known as Pakistan (“Land of the Pure”). As communal strife between Hindus and Muslims increased, many Indians

came to realize with sorrow (and some British colonialists with satisfaction) that British rule was all that stood between peace and civil war.

Nationalist Ferment in the Middle East In the Middle East, as in Europe, World War I hastened the collapse of old empires. The Ottoman Empire, which

FILM & HISTORY

Gandhi (1982) To many of his contemporaries, Mohandas Gandhi—the Mahatma, or “great soul”—was the conscience of India. Son of a senior Indian official from the state of Gujarat, he trained as a lawyer at University College in London. Gandhi first dealt with racial discrimination when he sought to provide legal assistance to Indian laborers living under the apartheid regime in South Africa. On his return to India in 1915, he rapidly emerged as a fierce critic of British colonial rule over his country. His message of satyagraha—embodying the idea of a steadfast but nonviolent resistance to the injustice and inhumanity inherent in the colonial enterprise—inspired millions of his compatriots in their long struggle for national independence. It also earned the admiration and praise of sympathetic observers around the world. His death by assassination at the hands of a Hindu fanatic in 1948 shocked the world.

Time, however, has somewhat dimmed his message. Gandhi’s vision of a future India was symbolized by the spinning wheel—he rejected the industrial age and material pursuits in favor of the simple pleasures of the traditional Indian village. Since achieving independence, however, India has followed the path of national wealth and power laid out by Gandhi’s friend and colleague Jawaharlal Nehru. Gandhi’s appeal for religious tolerance and mutual respect at home rapidly gave way to a bloody conflict between Hindus and Muslims that still persists today. On the global stage, his vision of world peace and brotherly love has been similarly ignored, first during the

Cold War and more recently by the “clash of civilizations” between Western countries and the forces of militant Islam.

It was at least partly in an effort to revive and perpetuate the message of the Mahatma that British filmmaker Richard Attenborough directed the film Gandhi. Epic in its length and scope, the film seeks to present a faithful rendition of the life of its subject, from his introduction to apartheid in South Africa at the turn of the century to his tragic death after World War II. Actor Ben Kingsley, son of an Indian father and an English mother, plays the title role with intensity and conviction. The film was widely praised and earned eight Academy Awards, including one for Kingsley as Best Actor. n

Jawaharlal Nehru (Roshan Seth), Mahatma Gandhi (Ben Kingsley), and Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Alyque Padamsee) confer before the partition of India into Hindu and Muslim states.

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had dominated the eastern Mediterranean since the sei- zure of Constantinople in 1453, had been growing steadily weaker since the end of the eighteenth century, troubled by rising governmental corruption, a decline in the effec- tiveness of the sultans, and the loss of considerable terri- tory in the Balkans and southwestern Russia. In North Africa, Ottoman authority, tenuous at best, had disinte- grated in the nineteenth century, enabling the French to seize Algeria and Tunisia and the British to establish a protectorate over the Nile River valley.

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE IN TRANSITION Reformist elements in Istanbul (as Constantinople was officially renamed in 1930), to be sure, had tried to resist the decline. The first efforts had taken place in the eighteenth century, when Westernizing forces, concerned at the shrinkage of the empire, had tried to modernize the army. One energetic sultan, Selim III (r. 1789–1807), tried to establish a “new order” that would streamline both the civilian and military bureaucracies, but conservative elements in the emperor’s private guard, alarmed at the potential loss of their power, revolted and brought the experiment to an end. Further efforts during the first half of the nineteenth century were somewhat more successful and resulted in a series of bureau- cratic, military, and educational reforms. New roads were built, the power of local landlords was reduced, and an Imperial Rescript issued in 1856 granted equal rights to all subjects of the empire, whatever their religious preference. In the 1870s, a new generation of reformers seized power in Istanbul and pushed through a constitution aimed at forming a legislative assembly that would represent all the peo- ples in the state. But the sultan they placed on the throne, Abdul- hamid (r. 1876–1909), suspended the new charter and attempted to rule by traditional authoritarian means.

THE “YOUNG TURKS” By the end of the nineteenth cen- tury, the defunct 1876 constitution had become a symbol of change for reformist elements, now grouped together under the common name Young Turks. In 1908, Young Turk elements forced the sultan to restore the constitu- tion, and he was removed from power the following year.

But the Young Turks had appeared at a moment of extreme fragility for the empire. Internal rebellions,

combined with Austrian annexations of Ottoman territories in the Balkans, undermined support for the new govern- ment and provoked the army to step in. With most minor- ities from the old empire now removed from Turkish authority, many ethnic Turks began to embrace a new con- cept of a Turkish state based on all residents of Turkish nationality.

The final blow to the old empire came in World War I, when the Ottoman government allied with Germany in the hope of driving the British from Egypt and restoring Ottoman rule over the Nile valley. In response, the British declared an official protectorate over Egypt and, aided by the efforts of T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), sought to undermine Ottoman rule in the Arabian peninsula by encouraging Arab nationalists there. In 1916, the local gov- ernor of Mecca, encouraged by the British, declared Arabia independent from Ottoman rule, while British troops, advancing from Egypt, seized Palestine. In October 1918, having suffered more than 300,000 casualties during the war, the Ottoman Empire negotiated an armistice with the Allied Powers.

During the next two years, Allied diplomats wrestled with how to deal with the remnants of the defeated

Ottoman Empire. In 1916, the Brit- ish and the French had reached a secret agreement to divide up the non-Turkish areas of the empire between themselves. This did not sit well with Woodrow Wilson, who opposed the outright annexa- tion of colonial territories by the victorious Allies. Ultimately, the latter agreed to establish these terri- tories as mandates under the new League of Nations. Mesopotamia and Palestine were assigned to the British, while Syria was given to the French. The Arabian peninsula was dealt with separately, and eventually received its independence as the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932

(see “The Rise of Arab Nationalism” later in the chapter). Other aspects of the Treaty of Sevres, signed in 1920,

were even more controversial. Western portions of the Anatolian peninsula were to be occupied by the Greeks in preparation for a future plebiscite to determine the future of the area. Armenia—where the local Christian popula- tion had been brutally mistreated by the Turks—was to receive its independence. A proposal for an independent Kurdistan (the Kurds were a non-Arab Muslim people liv- ing in mountainous areas throughout the region) was left unresolved.

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MUSTAFA KEMAL AND THE MODERNIZATION OF

TURKEY The impending collapse of the Ottoman Empire energized key elements in Turkey under the lead- ership of war hero Colonel Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938), who had commanded Turkish forces in their heroic defense of the Dardanelles against a British invasion dur- ing World War I. Now he resigned from the army and convoked a national congress that called for the creation of an elected government and the preservation of the remaining territories of the old empire in a new republic of Turkey. Establishing the new capital at Ankara, Kemal’s forces drove the Greeks from the Anatolian peninsula and seized Kurdish lands to the east, thus bringing an end to the dream of an independent Kurdistan. The Allies agreed to sign a new Treaty of Lausanne, incorporating these changes. Armenian leaders, still bitter at their mistreat- ment at the hands of the Turks, decided to join the Soviet Union. In 1923, the last of the Ottoman sultans fled the

country, which was now declared a Turkish republic. The Ottoman Empire had finally come to an end.

During the next few years, President Mustafa Kemal (now popularly known as Atat€urk, or “Father Turk”) attempted to transform Turkey into a modern secular republic. The trappings of a democratic system were put in place, centered on the elected Grand National Assem- bly, but the president was relatively intolerant of opposi- tion and harshly suppressed critics of his rule. Turkish nationalism was emphasized, and the Turkish language, now written in the Roman alphabet, was shorn of many of its Arabic elements. Popular education was empha- sized, old aristocratic titles like pasha and bey were abol- ished, and all Turkish citizens were given family names in the European style.

Atat€urk also took steps to modernize the economy, overseeing the establishment of a light industrial sector pro- ducing textiles, glass, paper, and cement and instituting a

Hagia Sophia. Nothing more vividly symbolizes the secular character of Kemal Atat€urk’s Turkish republic than Istanbul’s most historic building—the Hagia Sophia. Built as a Christian church at the order of the Byzantine emperor Justinian in the sixth century, Hagia Sophia (“Holy Wisdom” in Greek), became a mosque after the seizure of the city by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. In the 1930s, however, it was transformed into a museum. Today the ecumenical character of the building is readily visible to the eye of the visitor, as Christian mosaics vie with massive gold and black placards in the Arabic script listing the names of Allah, Muhammad, and the early Muslim caliphs.

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five-year plan on the Soviet model to provide for state direction over the economy. Atat€urk was no admirer of Soviet communism, however, and the Turkish economy can be better described as a form of state capitalism. He also encouraged the modernization of the agricultural sector through the establishment of training institutions and model farms, but such reforms had relatively little effect on the nation’s predominantly conservative rural population.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of Atat€urk’s reform program was his attempt to limit the power of the Islamic religion and transform Turkey into a secular state. The caliphate (according to which the Ottoman sultan was recognized as the temporal leader of the global Islamic community) was formally abolished in 1924, and the Shari’a (Islamic law) was replaced by a revised version of the Swiss law code (see the box on p. 104). The fez (the brimless cap worn by Turkish Muslims) was abolished as a form of headdress, and women were discouraged from wearing the traditional Islamic veil. Women received the right to vote in 1934 and were legally guaranteed equal rights with men in all aspects of marriage and inheritance. Education and the professions were now open to both men and women, and some women even began to take part in politics. All citizens were given the right to convert to another religion at will.

The legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atat€urk was enormous. Although not all of his reforms were widely accepted in practice, especially by devout Muslims, most of the changes that he introduced were retained after his death in 1938. In virtually every respect, the Turkish republic was the product of his determined efforts to create a mod- ern nation, a Turkish version of the “revolution from above” in Meiji Japan.

MODERNIZATION IN IRAN In the meantime, a similar process was under way in Persia. Under the Qajar dynasty (1794–1925), the country had not been very suc- cessful in resisting Russian advances in the Caucasus or a growing European presence farther south. To secure themselves from foreign influence, the Qajars moved the capital from Tabriz to Tehran, in a mountainous area just south of the Caspian Sea. During the mid-nineteenth century, one modernizing shah attempted to introduce political and economic reforms but faced resistance from tribal and religious forces. The majority of Persians were Shi’ites, one of the two main branches of Islam (as opposed to Sunni Muslims, who predominated in most of the Muslim world). Both Sunnis and Shi’ites adhered to the fundamental principles of Islam, including the “Five Pillars of Islam”: belief in Allah and Muhammad

as his prophet; prayer five times a day and public prayer on Friday at midday to worship Allah; observation of the holy month of Ramadan, including fasting from dawn to sunset; making a pilgrimage, if possible, to Mecca at least once in one’s lifetime; and giving alms (zakat) to the poor and unfortunate. The Shi’ites, how- ever, had broken with the mainstream Sunni form of Islam over leadership issues not long after the death of Muhammad and adopted a more strict interpretation of the Muslim faith.

Eventually, the growing foreign presence led to the rise of an indigenous nationalist movement. Its efforts were largely directed against Russian advances in the northwest and growing European influence in the small modern industrial sector, the profits from which left the country or disappeared into the hands of the dynasty’s rul- ing elite. Supported actively by Shi’ite religious leaders, opposition to the regime rose steadily among both peas- ants and merchants in the cities, and in 1906, popular pres- sures forced the reigning shah to grant a constitution on the Western model.

As in the Ottoman Empire and Qing China, however, the modernizers had moved before their power base was secure. With the support of the Russians and the British, the shah was able to retain control, and the two foreign powers began to divide the country into separate spheres of influence. One reason for the growing foreign presence in Persia was the discovery of oil reserves in the southern part of the country in 1908. Within a few years, oil exports increased rapidly, with the bulk of the profits going into the pockets of British investors.

In 1921, a Persian army officer by the name of Reza Khan (1878–1944) led a mutiny that seized power in Teh- ran. The new ruler had originally intended to establish a republic, but resistance from traditional forces impeded his efforts, and in 1925, the new Pahlavi dynasty, with Reza Khan as shah, replaced the now defunct Qajar dynasty. During the next few years, Reza Khan attempted to follow the example of Mustafa Kemal Atat€urk in Turkey, introducing a number of reforms to strengthen the central government, modernize the civilian and military bureaucracy, and establish a modern economic infrastructure.

Unlike Atat€urk, Reza Khan did not attempt to destroy the power of Islamic beliefs, but he did encourage the establishment of a Western-style educational system and forbade women to wear the veil in public. To strengthen the sense of nationalism and reduce the power of Islam, he restored the country’s ancient name, Iran, in 1935 and attempted to popularize the symbols and beliefs of pre- Islamic times. Like his Qajar predecessors, however, Reza

The Spread of Nationalism in Asia and Africa 103

OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS

Islam in the Modern World: Two Views

As part of his plan to transform Turkey into a modern society, Mustafa Kemal Atat€urk sought to free his country from what he considered to be outdated practices imposed by traditional beliefs. The first selection is from a speech in which he proposed bringing an end to the caliphate, which had been in the hands of Ottoman sultans since the formation of the empire. But not all Muslims wished to move in the direction of a more secular society. Mohammed Iqbal, a well-known Muslim poet in colonial India, was a prominent advocate of the creation of a separate state for Muslims in South Asia. The second selection is from an address he presented to the All-India Muslim League in December 1930, explaining the rationale for his proposal.

Atat€urk, Speech to the Assembly (October 1924) The sovereign entitled Caliph was to maintain justice among the three hundred million Muslims on the terrestrial globe, to safeguard the rights of these peoples, to prevent any event that could encroach upon order and security, and confront every attack which the Muslims would be called upon to encounter from the side of other nations. It was to be part of his attributes to preserve by all means the welfare and spiritual development of Islam. . . .

If the Caliph and Caliphate, as they maintained, were to be invested with a dignity embracing the whole of Islam, ought they not to have realized in all justice that a crushing burden would be imposed on Turkey, on her existence; her entire resources and all her forces would be placed at the disposal of the Caliph? . . .

For centuries our nation was guided under the influence of these erroneous ideas. But what has been the result of it? Everywhere they have lost millions of men. “Do you know,” I asked, “how many sons of Anatolia have perished in the scorching deserts of the Yemen? Do you know the losses we have suffered in holding Syria and Egypt and in maintaining our position in Africa? And do you see what has come out of it? Do you know?

“Those who favor the idea of placing the means at the disposal of the Caliph to brave the whole world and the power to administer the affairs of the whole of Islam must not appeal to the population of Anatolia alone but to the great Muslim agglomerations which are eight or ten times as rich in men.

“New Turkey, the people of New Turkey, have no reason to think of anything else but their own existence and their own welfare. She has nothing more to give away to others.”

Mohammed Iqbal, Speech to the All-India Muslim League (1930) It cannot be denied that Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity . . . has been the chief formative factor in the life history of the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups and finally transform them into a well-defined people. Indeed it is no exaggeration to say that India is perhaps the only country in the world where Islam, as a people-building force, has worked at its best. In India, as elsewhere, the structure of Islam as a society is almost entirely due to the working of Islam as a culture inspired by a specific ethical ideal. . . .

Communalism in its higher aspect, then, is indispensable to the formation of a harmonious whole in a country like India. The units of Indian society are not territorial as in European countries. India is a continent of human groups belonging to different religions. Their behavior is not at all determined by a common race consciousness. Even the Hindus do not form a homogeneous group. The principle of European democracy cannot be applied to India without recognizing the fact of communal groups. The Muslim demand for the creation of a Muslim India within India is, therefore, perfectly justified. . . .

I therefore demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim State in the best interests of India and Islam. For India it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power; for Islam an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilize its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and with the spirit of modern times.

Why did Mustafa Kemal believe that the caliphate no longer met the needs of the Turkish people? Why did Mohammed Iqbal believe that a separate state for Muslims in India would be required? How did he attempt to persuade non-Muslims that this would be to their benefit as well?

SOURCES: From Atat€urk’s Speech to the Assembly, pp. 432–433. A speech delivered by Ghazi Mustafa Kemal, President of the Turkish Republic, October 1924; Mohammed Iqbal, Speech to the All-India Muslim League, 1930.

104 CHAPTER 5 Nationalism, Revolution, and Dictatorship

Khan was hindered by strong foreign influence. When the Soviet Union and Great Britain decided to send troops into the country during World War II, he resigned in pro- test and died three years later.

NATION BUILDING IN IRAQ One consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire was the emergence of a new political entity along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, once the heartland of ancient empires. Lacking defensible borders and sharply divided along ethnic and religious lines—a Shi’ite majority in rural areas was balanced by a vocal Sunni minority in the cities and a largely Kurdish population in the northern mountains— the region had been under Ottoman rule since the seven- teenth century. With the advent of World War I, the lowland area from Baghdad southward to the Persian Gulf was occupied by British forces, who hoped to pro- tect oil-producing regions in neighboring Iran from a German takeover.

In 1920, the country was placed under British control as the mandate of Iraq under the League of Nations. Civil unrest and growing anti-Western sentiment rapidly dis- pelled any possible plans for the emergence of an inde- pendent government, and in 1921, after the suppression of resistance forces, the country became a monarchy under the titular authority of King Faisal, a resistance leader during World War I and a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. Faisal relied for support primarily on the politically more sophisticated urban Sunni popula- tion, although they represented less than a quarter of the population. The discovery of oil near Kirkuk in 1927 increased the value of the area to the British, who granted formal independence to the country in 1932, although British advisers retained a strong influence over the fragile government.

THE RISE OF ARAB NATIONALISM As we have seen, the Arab uprising during World War I helped bring about the demise of the Ottoman Empire. Actually, unrest against Ottoman rule had existed in the Arabian peninsula since the eighteenth century, when the Wah- habi revolt attempted to expel the outside influences and cleanse Islam of corrupt practices that had developed in past centuries. The revolt was eventually suppressed, but the influence of the Wahhabi movement persisted, revi- talized in part by resistance to the centralizing and mod- ernizing efforts of reformist elements in the nineteenth century.

World War I offered an opportunity for the Arabs to throw off the shackles of Ottoman rule—but what would replace them? The Arabs were not a nation but an idea, a loose collection of peoples who often did not see eye to

eye on what constituted their community. Disagreement over what it means to be an Arab has plagued generations of political leaders who have sought unsuccessfully to knit together the disparate peoples of the region into a single Arab nation.

When the Arab leaders in Mecca declared their inde- pendence from Ottoman rule in 1916, they had hoped for British support, but they were sorely disappointed when the British and French assumed control of much of the area as mandates of the League of Nations. To add salt to the wound, the French created a new state of Lebanon along the coastal regions of their mandate of Syria so that the Christian peoples there could be under a Christian administration.

In the early 1920s, a leader of the Wahhabi movement, Ibn Saud (1880–1953), united Arab tribes in the northern part of the Arabian peninsula and drove out the remnants of Ottoman rule. Ibn Saud was a descendant of the family that had led the Wahhabi revolt in the eighteenth century. Devout and gifted, he won broad support among Arab tribal peoples and established the kingdom of Saudi Arabia throughout much of the peninsula in 1932.

At first, his new kingdom, consisting essentially of the vast wastes of central Arabia, was desperately poor. Its financial resources were limited to the income from Muslim pilgrims visiting the holy sites in Mecca and Medina. But during the 1930s, American companies began to explore for oil, and in 1938, Standard Oil made a successful strike at Dahran, on the Persian Gulf. Soon an Arabian-American oil conglomerate, popularly called Aramco, was established, and the isolated kingdom was suddenly inundated by Western oilmen and untold wealth.

THE ISSUE OF PALESTINE The land of Palestine—once the home of the Jews but now inhabited primarily by Muslim Arabs and a few thousand Christians—became a separate mandate and immediately became a thorny problem for the British. In 1897, the Austrian-born jour- nalist Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) had convened an inter- national conference in Basel, Switzerland, which led to the creation of the World Zionist Organization (WZO). Its aim was to create a homeland for the Jewish people— long dispersed widely throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East—in Palestine, which was then under Ottoman rule.

Over the next decade, Jewish immigration into Pales- tine increased with WZO support. By the outbreak of World War I, about 85,000 Jews lived in Palestine, repre- senting about 15 percent of the total population. In 1917, responding to appeals from the British chemist Chaim Weizmann, British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour

The Spread of Nationalism in Asia and Africa 105

issued a declaration saying Palestine was to be a national home for the Jews. The Balfour Declaration, which was later confirmed by the League of Nations, was ambiguous on the legal status of the territory and promised that the decision would not undermine the rights of the non- Jewish peoples currently living in the area. But Arab nationalists were incensed. How could a national home for the Jewish people be established in a territory where the majority of the population was Muslim?

After World War I, more Jewish settlers began to arrive in Palestine in response to the promises made in the Balfour Declaration. As tensions between the new arrivals and existing Muslim residents began to escalate, the British tried to restrict Jewish immigration into the territory while Arab voices rejected the concept of a sepa- rate state. In a bid to relieve Arab sensitivities, Great Brit- ain created the separate emirate of Trans-Jordan out of the eastern portion of Palestine. After World War II, it would become the independent kingdom of Jordan. The stage was set for the conflicts that would take place in the region after World War II.

THE BRITISH IN EGYPT Great Britain had maintained a loose protectorate over Egypt since the middle of the nineteenth century, although the area remained nominally under Ottoman rule. London formalized its protectorate in 1914 to protect the Suez Canal and the Nile River val- ley from possible seizure by the Central Powers. After the war, however, nationalist elements became restive and formed the Wafd Party, a secular organization dedicated to the creation of an independent Egypt based on the prin- ciples of representative government. The Wafd received the support of many middle-class Egyptians who, like Kemal Atat€urk in Turkey, hoped to meld Islamic practices with the secular tradition of the modern West. This mod- ernist form of Islam did not have broad appeal outside the cosmopolitan centers, however, and in 1928 the Muslim cleric Hasan al-Bana organized the Muslim Brotherhood, which demanded strict adherence to the traditional teach- ings of the Prophet, as set forth in the Qur’an. The Broth- erhood rejected Western ways and sought to create a new Egypt based firmly on the precepts of the Shari’a. By the 1930s, the organization had as many as a million members.

Nationalism and Revolution Before the Russian Revolution, to most observers in Asia, “Westernization” meant the capitalist democratic civilization of western Europe and the United States, not the doctrine of social revolution developed by Karl Marx.

Until 1917, Marxism was regarded as a utopian idea rather than a concrete system of government. Moreover, Marxism appeared to have little relevance to conditions in Asia. Marxist doctrine, after all, declared that a com- munist society could arise only from the ashes of an advanced capitalism that had already passed through the stage of industrial revolution. From the perspective of Marxist historical analysis, most societies in Asia were still at the feudal stage of development; they lacked the economic conditions and political awareness to achieve a socialist revolution that would bring the working class to power. Finally, the Marxist view of nationalism and reli- gion had little appeal to many patriotic intellectuals in the non-Western world. Marx believed that nationhood and religion were essentially false ideas that diverted the attention of the oppressed masses from the critical issues of class struggle and, in his phrase, the exploitation of one person by another. Instead, Marx stressed the impor- tance of an “internationalist” outlook based on class con- sciousness and the eventual creation of a classless society with no artificial divisions based on culture, nation, or religion.

LENIN AND THE EAST The situation began to change after the Russian Revolution in 1917. The rise to power of Lenin’s Bolsheviks demonstrated that a revolutionary party espousing Marxist principles could overturn a cor- rupt, outdated system and launch a new experiment dedicated to ending human inequality and achieving a paradise on earth. In 1920, Lenin proposed a new revolu- tionary strategy designed to relate Marxist doctrine and practice to non-Western societies. His reasons were not entirely altruistic. Soviet Russia, surrounded by capitalist powers, desperately needed allies in its struggle to sur- vive in a hostile world. To Lenin, the anticolonial move- ments emerging in North Africa, Asia, and the Middle East after World War I were natural allies of the belea- guered new regime in Moscow. Lenin was convinced that only the ability of the imperialist powers to find markets, raw materials, and sources of capital investment in the non-Western world kept capitalism alive. If the tentacles of capitalist influence in Asia and Africa could be severed, imperialism itself would ultimately weaken and collapse.

Establishing such an alliance was not easy, however. Most nationalist leaders in colonial countries belonged to the urban middle class, and many abhorred the idea of a comprehensive revolution to create a totally egalitarian society. In addition, others still adhered to traditional reli- gious beliefs and were opposed to the atheistic principles of classical Marxism.

106 CHAPTER 5 Nationalism, Revolution, and Dictatorship

Since it was unrealistic to expect bourgeois support for social revolution, Lenin sought a compromise by which Communist parties could be organized among the working classes in the preindustrial societies of Asia and Africa. These parties would then forge informal alliances with existing middle-class nationalist parties to struggle against the remnants of the traditional ruling class and Western imperialism. Such an alliance, of course, could not be permanent because many bourgeois nationalists in Asia and Africa would reject an egalitarian, classless society. Once the imperialists had been overthrown, therefore, the Communist parties would turn against their erstwhile nationalist partners to seize power on their own and carry out the socialist revolution. Lenin thus proposed a two-stage revolution: an initial “national democratic” stage followed by a “proletarian socialist” stage.

Lenin’s strategy became a major element in Soviet for- eign policy in the 1920s. Soviet agents fanned out across the world to carry Marxism beyond the boundaries of industrial Europe. The primary instrument of this effort was the Communist International, or Comintern for short. Formed in 1919 at Lenin’s prodding, the Comintern was a worldwide organization of Communist parties dedi- cated to the advancement of world revolution. At its head- quarters in Moscow, agents from around the world were trained in the precepts of world communism and then sent back to their own countries to form Marxist parties and promote the cause of social revolution. By the end of the 1920s, almost every colonial or semicolonial society in Asia had a party based on Marxist principles. The Soviets had less success in the Middle East, where Marxist ideology appealed mainly to minorities such as Jews and Armenians in the cities, or in sub-Saharan Africa, where Soviet strategists in any case felt that conditions were not sufficiently advanced for the creation of Communist organizations.

THE APPEAL OF COMMUNISM According to Marxist doctrine, the rank and file of Communist parties should be urban workers alienated from capitalist society by inhumane working conditions. In practice, many of the leading elements even in European Communist parties tended to be intellectuals or members of the lower mid- dle class (in Marxist parlance, the “petty bourgeoisie”). That phenomenon was even more apparent in the non- Western world. Some were probably drawn into the movement for patriotic reasons and saw Marxist doctrine as a new and more effective means of modernizing their societies and removing the power of exploitative coloni- alism. Others were attracted by the utopian dream of a

classless society. For those who had lost their faith in traditional religion, communism often served as a new secular ideology, dealing not with the hereafter but with the here and now. All who joined found a stirring mes- sage of release from oppression and a practical strategy for the liberation of their society from colonial rule. The young Ho Chi Minh, later to become the founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party, was quick to see the importance of Lenin’s revolutionary strategy for his own country:

There were political terms difficult to understand in this thesis. But by dint of reading it again and again, finally I could grasp the main part of it. What emotion, enthusi- asm, clear-sightedness, and confidence it instilled in me! I was overjoyed to tears. Though sitting alone in my room, I shouted aloud as if addressing large crowds: “Dear mar- tyrs, compatriots! This is what we need, this is the path to our liberation!”1

Of course, the new doctrine’s appeal was not the same in all non-Western societies. In Confucian societies such as China and Vietnam, where traditional belief systems had been badly discredited by their failure to counter the Western challenge, communism had an immediate impact and rapidly became a major factor in the anticolonial movement. In Buddhist and Muslim societies, where tra- ditional religion remained strong and actually became a cohesive factor within the resistance movement, commu- nism had less success and was forced to adapt to local conditions to survive.

Sometimes, as in Malaya (where the sense of nation- hood was weak) or Thailand (which, alone in Southeast Asia, had not fallen under colonial rule), support for the local Communist Party came from minority groups such as the overseas Chinese community. To maximize their appeal and minimize potential conflict with traditional ideas, Communist parties frequently attempted to adjust Marxist doctrine to indigenous values and institutions. In the Middle East, for example, the Ba’ath Party in Syria adopted a hybrid socialism combining Marxism with Arab nationalism. In Africa, radical intellectuals talked vaguely of a uniquely “African road to socialism.”

The degree to which these parties were successful in establishing alliances with existing nationalist parties also varied from place to place. In some instances, the local Communists were briefly able to establish a cooperative relationship with bourgeois parties in the struggle against Western imperialism. In the Dutch East Indies, the Indo- nesian Communist Party (known as the PKI) allied with the middle-class nationalist group Sarekat Islam but later broke loose in an effort to organize its own mass

The Spread of Nationalism in Asia and Africa 107

movement among the poor peasants. Similar problems were encountered in French Indochina, where Vietnam- ese Communists organized by the Moscow-trained revo- lutionary Ho Chi Minh sought to cooperate with bourgeois nationalist parties against the colonial regime. In 1928, all such efforts were abandoned when the Com- intern, reacting to Chiang Kai-shek’s betrayal of the alli- ance with the Chinese Communist Party (see the next section), declared that Communist parties should restrict their recruiting efforts to the most revolutionary ele- ments in society—notably, the urban intellectuals and the working class. Harassed by colonial authorities and saddled with strategic directions from Moscow that often had little relevance to local conditions, Communist par- ties in most colonial societies had little success in the 1930s and failed to build a secure base of support among the mass of the population.

Revolution in China Overall, revolutionary Marxism had its greatest impact in China, where a group of young radicals, including sev- eral faculty and staff members from the prestigious Bei- jing University, founded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921. The rise of the CCP was a consequence of the failed revolution of 1911. When political forces are too weak or divided to consolidate their power during a period of instability, the military usually steps in to fill the vacuum. In China, Sun Yat-sen and his colleagues had accepted General Yuan Shikai as president of the new Chinese republic in 1911 because they lacked the military force to compete with his control over the army. Moreover, many feared, perhaps rightly, that if the revolt lapsed into chaos, the Western powers would intervene and the last shreds of Chinese sovereignty would be lost. But some had misgivings about Yuan’s intentions. As one remarked in a letter to a friend, “We don’t know whether he will be a George Washington or a Napoleon.”

As it turned out, he was neither. Showing little com- prehension of the new ideas sweeping into China from the West, Yuan ruled in a traditional manner, reviving Confucian rituals and institutions and eventually trying to found a new imperial dynasty. Yuan’s dictatorial inclina- tions led to clashes with Sun’s party, now renamed the Guomindang, or Nationalist Party. When Yuan dissolved the new parliament, the Nationalists launched a rebellion. When it failed, Sun Yat-sen fled to Japan.

Yuan was strong enough to brush off the challenge from the revolutionary forces but not to turn back the clock of history. He died in 1916 (apparently of natural

causes) and was succeeded by one of his military sub- ordinates. For the next several years, China slipped into anarchy as the power of the central government dis- integrated and military warlords seized power in the provinces.

Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy: The New Culture Movement Although the failure of the 1911 revolution was a clear sign that China was not yet ready for dramatic change, discontent with existing conditions continued to rise in various sectors of Chinese society. The most vocal pro- tests came from radical elements who opposed Yuan Shikai’s conservative agenda but were now convinced that political change could not take place until the Chi- nese people were more familiar with trends in the out- side world. Braving the displeasure of Yuan Shikai and his successors, progressive intellectuals at Beijing Uni- versity launched the New Culture Movement, aimed at abolishing the remnants of the old system and introduc- ing Western values and institutions into China. Using the classrooms of China’s most prestigious university as well as the pages of newly established progressive mag- azines and newspapers, they presented the Chinese peo- ple with a heady mix of new ideas, from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and Bertrand Russell to the edu- cational views of the American John Dewey and the feminist plays of Henrik Ibsen. As such ideas flooded into China, they stirred up a new generation of edu- cated Chinese youth, who chanted “Down with Confu- cius and sons” and talked of a new era dominated by “Mr. Sai” (Mr. Science) and “Mr. De” (Mr. Democracy). No one was a greater defender of free thought and speech than the chancellor of Beijing University, Cai Yuanpei:

So far as theoretical ideas are concerned, I follow the prin- ciples of “freedom of thought” and an attitude of broad tolerance in accordance with the practice of universities the world over. . . . Regardless of what school of thought a person may adhere to, so long as that person’s ideas are justified and conform to reason and have not been passed by through the process of natural selection, although there may be controversy, such ideas have a right to be presented.2

The problem was that appeals for American-style de- mocracy and women’s liberation had little relevance to Chinese peasants, most of whom were still illiterate and concerned above all with survival. Consequently, the New Culture Movement did not win widespread support outside the urban areas. It certainly earned the distrust of

108 CHAPTER 5 Nationalism, Revolution, and Dictatorship

conservative military officers, one of whom threatened to lob artillery shells into Beijing University to destroy the poisonous new ideas and their advocates.

Discontent among intellectuals, however, was soon joined by the rising chorus of public protest against Japan’s efforts to expand its influence on the mainland. During the first decade of the twentieth century, Japan had taken advantage of the Qing’s decline to extend its domination over Manchuria and Korea (see Chapter 3). In 1915, the Japanese government insisted that Yuan Shikai accept a series of twenty-one demands that would have given Japan a virtual protectorate over the Chinese government and economy. Yuan was able to fend off the most far-reaching Japanese demands by arousing popular outrage in China, but at the Paris Peace Conference four years later, Japan received Ger- many’s sphere of influence in Shandong Province as a reward for its support of the Allied cause in World War I. On hearing that the Chinese government had accepted the decision, on May 4, 1919, patriotic stu- dents, supported by other sectors of the urban popula- tion, demonstrated in Beijing and other major cities of the country. Although this “May Fourth Movement,” as it came to be called, did not lead to the restoration of Shandong to China, it did alert a substantial part of the politically literate population to the threat to national survival and the incompetence of the warlord govern- ment. A sense of Chinese national identity, long sup- pressed under Manchu rule, was on the rise in the young republic.

By 1920, central authority had almost ceased to exist in China. Two competing political forces now began to emerge from the chaos. One was Sun Yat-sen’s National- ist Party. Driven from the political arena seven years earlier by Yuan Shikai, the party now reestablished itself on the mainland by making an alliance with the warlord ruler of Guangdong Province in South China. From Canton, Sun sought international assistance to carry out his national revolution. The other was the Chinese Communist Party. Following Lenin’s strategy, the CCP sought to link up with the more experienced National- ists. Sun Yat-sen needed the expertise and the diplomatic support that the Soviet Union could provide because his anti-imperialist rhetoric had alienated many Western powers. In 1923, the two parties formed an alliance to oppose the warlords and drive the imperialist powers out of China.

For three years, with the assistance of a Comintern mission in Canton, the two parties submerged their mu- tual suspicions and mobilized and trained a revolutionary army to march north and seize control of China. The so- called Northern Expedition began in the summer of 1926

(see Map 5.1). By the following spring, revolutionary forces were in control of all Chinese territory south of the Yangtze River, including the major river ports of Wuhan and Shanghai. But tensions between the two par- ties now surfaced. Sun Yat-sen had died of cancer in 1925 and was succeeded as head of the Nationalist Party by his military subordinate, Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975). Chiang feigned support for the alliance with the Commu- nists but actually planned to destroy them. In April 1927, he struck against the Communists and their supporters in Shanghai, killing thousands. The CCP responded by encouraging revolts in central China and Canton, but the uprisings were defeated and their leaders were killed or forced into hiding.

Masters and Disciples. When the founders of nationalist movements passed leadership over to their successors, the result was often a change in the strategy and tactics of the organizations. In India, when Jawaharlal Nehru replaced Mahatma Gandhi as leader of the Indian National Congress, the movement adopted a more secular posture. In China, Chiang Kai-shek took Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist Party in a more conservative direction after Sun’s death in 1925. Here Chiang (standing) is shown with Sun Yat-sen.

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Revolution in China 109

The Nanjing Republic In 1928, Chiang Kai-shek founded a new Republic of China at Nanjing, and over the next three years, he man- aged to reunify China by a combination of military opera- tions and inducements (known as “silver bullets”) to various northern warlords to join his movement. One of his key targets was the warlord Zhang Zuolin, who con- trolled Manchuria under the tutelage of Japan. When Zhang allegedly agreed to throw in his lot with the Nationalists, the Japanese had him assassinated by placing a bomb under his train as he was returning to Manchuria in 1928. The Japanese hoped that Zhang Zuolin’s son and successor, Zhang Xueliang, would be more cooperative, but they had miscalculated. Promised a major role in Chiang Kai-shek’s government, Zhang began instead to integrate Manchuria politically and economically into the Nanjing republic.

Chiang Kai-shek saw the Japanese as a serious threat to Chinese national aspirations but considered them less dan- gerous than the Communists. (He once remarked to an American reporter that “the Japanese are a disease of the

skin, but the Communists are a disease of the heart.”) After the Shanghai massacre of April 1927, most of the Communist leaders went into hiding in the city, where they attempted to revive the movement in its traditional base among the urban work- ing class. Shanghai was a rich recruiting ground for the party. A city of millionaires, paupers, prostitutes, gamblers, and adven- turers, it had led one pious Christian mis- sionary to comment, “If God lets Shanghai endure, He owes an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah.”3 Some party members, how- ever, led by the young Communist orga- nizer Mao Zedong (1893–1976), fled to the hilly areas south of the Yangtze River.

Unlike most other CCP leaders, Mao was convinced that the Chinese revolution must be based on the impoverished peas- ants in the countryside, not on workers in the big cities. The son of a prosperous farmer, Mao had helped organize a peas- ant movement in South China during the early 1920s and then served as an agitator in rural villages in his home province of Hunan during the Northern Expedition in the fall of 1926. At that time, he wrote a famous report to the party leadership sug- gesting that the CCP support peasant demands for a land revolution. But his superiors refused, fearing that such radical

policies would destroy the alliance with the Nationalists (see the box on p. 111).

After the spring of 1927, the CCP-Nationalist alliance ceased to exist. Chiang Kai-shek attempted to root the Communists out of their urban base in Shanghai. He suc- ceeded in 1931, when most party leaders were forced to flee Shanghai for Mao’s rural redoubt in the rugged hills of Jiangxi Province. Three years later, using their superior military strength, Chiang’s troops surrounded the Commu- nist base, inducing Mao’s young People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to abandon its guerrilla lair and embark on the famous Long March, an arduous journey of thousands of miles on foot through mountains, marshes, and deserts to the small provincial town of Yan’an 200 miles north of the modern-day city of Xian in the dusty hills of North China. Of the 90,000 who embarked on the journey in October 1934, only 10,000 arrived in Yan’an a year later. Contempo- rary observers must have thought that the Communist threat to the Nanjing regime had been averted forever.

Meanwhile, Chiang Kai-shek was trying to build a new nation. When the Nanjing republic was established in

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Where did Mao establish his new headquarters after the Long March? Why?

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110 CHAPTER 5 Nationalism, Revolution, and Dictatorship

1928, Chiang publicly declared his commitment to Sun Yat-sen’s Three People’s Principles. In a program announced in 1918, Sun had written about the all- important second stage of “political tutelage”:

As a schoolboy must have good teachers and helpful friends, so the Chinese people, being for the first time under republican rule, must have a farsighted revolution- ary government for their training. This calls for the period of political tutelage, which is a necessary transitional stage from monarchy to republicanism. Without this, disorder will be unavoidable.4

In keeping with Sun’s program, Chiang announced a period of political indoctrination to prepare the Chinese people for a final stage of constitutional government. In the meantime, the Nationalists would use their dictatorial power to carry out a land reform program and modernize the urban industrial sector.

But it would take more than paper plans to create a new China. Years of neglect and civil war had severely frayed the political, economic, and social fabric of the nation. There were faint signs of an impending industrial revolution in the major urban centers, but most of the people in the

A Call for Revolt In the fall of 1926, Nationalist and Communist forces moved north from Canton on their Northern Expedition in an effort to defeat the warlords. The young Communist Mao Zedong accompanied revolutionary troops into his home province of Hunan, where he submitted a report to the CCP Central Committee calling for a massive peasant revolt against the ruling order. The report shows his confidence that peasants could play an active role in the Chinese revolution despite the skepticism of many of his colleagues.

Mao Zedong, “The Peasant Movement in Hunan” During my recent visit to Hunan I made a firsthand investigation of conditions. . . . In a very short time, . . . several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, . . . a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back. They will smash all the trammels that bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation. They will sweep all the imperialists, warlords, corrupt officials, local tyrants, and evil gentry into their graves. Every revolutionary party and every revolutionary comrade will be put to the test, to be accepted or rejected as they decide. There are three alternatives. To march at their head and lead them? To trail behind them, gesticulating and criticizing? Or to stand in their way and oppose them? Every Chinese is free to choose, but events will force you to make the choice quickly.

The main targets of attack by the peasants are the local tyrants, the evil gentry and the lawless landlords, but in passing they also hit out against patriarchal ideas and institutions, against the corrupt officials in the cities and against bad practices and customs in the rural areas. . . . As a result, the privileges which the feudal landlords

enjoyed for thousands of years are being shattered to pieces. . . . With the collapse of the power of the landlords, the peasant associations have now become the sole organs of authority, and the popular slogan “All power to the peasant associations” has become a reality.

The peasants’ revolt disturbed the gentry’s sweet dreams. When the news from the countryside reached the cities, it caused immediate uproar among the gentry. . . . From the middle social strata upwards to the Kuomintang [Nationalist] right-wingers, there was not a single person who did not sum up the whole business in the phrase, “It’s terrible!” . . . Even quite progressive people said, “Though terrible, it is inevitable in a revolution.” In short, nobody could altogether deny the word “terrible.” But . . . the fact is that the great peasant masses have risen to fulfill their historic mission. . . . What the peasants are doing is absolutely right; what they are doing is fine! “It’s fine!” is the theory of the peasants and of all other revolutionaries. Every revolutionary comrade should know that the national revolution requires a great change in the countryside. The Revolution of 1911 did not bring about this change, hence its failure. This change is now taking place, and it is an important factor for the completion of the revolution. Every revolutionary comrade must support it, or he will be taking the stand of counterrevolution.

Why did Mao Zedong believe that rural peasants could help bring about a social revolution in China? How does his vision compare with the reality of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia?

SOURCE: From Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung (London: Lawrence and Wishart, Ltd., 1954), vol. 1, pp. 21–23.

Revolution in China 111

countryside, drained by warlord exactions and civil strife, were still grindingly poor and overwhelmingly illiterate. A Westernized middle class had begun to emerge in the cities and formed much of the natural constituency of the Nanjing government. But this new Westernized elite, preoccupied with bourgeois values of individual advancement and mate- rial accumulation, had few links with the peasants in the countryside or the rickshaw drivers “running in this world of suffering,” in the poignant words of a Chinese poet. In an expressive phrase, some critics dismissed Chiang Kai-shek and his chief followers as “banana Chinese”—yellow on the outside, white on the inside.

BLENDING EAST AND WEST Chiang was aware of the difficulty of introducing exotic foreign ideas into a society still culturally conservative. While building a modern industrial sector and rejecting what he considered the excessive individualism and material greed of Western capi- talism, Chiang sought to propagate traditional Confucian values of hard work, obedience, and moral integrity through the officially promoted New Life Movement, spon- sored by his Wellesley-educated wife, Mei-ling Soong.

Unfortunately for Chiang, Confucian ideas—at least in their institutional form—had been widely discredited by

the failure of the traditional system to solve China’s grow- ing problems. Critics also noted that Chiang’s govern- ment did not practice what it preached. Much of the national wealth was in the hands of the so-called four families, composed of senior officials and close subordinates of the ruling elite. Lacking the political sensitivity of Sun Yat- sen and fearing Communist influence, Chiang repressed all opposition and censored free expression, thereby alienating many intellectuals and political moderates.

P R O M O T I N G E C O N O M I C DEVELOPMENT With only a tenuous hold over the vast countryside (the Nanjing re- public had total control over just a handful of provinces in the Yangtze valley), Chiang Kai-shek’s government had lit- tle more success in promoting

economic development. Although mechanization was gradually beginning to replace manual labor in a number of traditional industries (notably in the manufacture of textile goods), about 75 percent of all industrial produc- tion was still craft produced in the mid-1930s. In addition, traditional Chinese exports, such as silk and tea, were hard-hit by the Great Depression. With military expenses consuming about half the national budget, distressingly little was devoted to economic development. During the decade of precarious peace following the Northern Expe- dition, industrial growth averaged only about 1 percent annually.

Whether overall per capita consumption declined dur- ing the early decades of the century is unclear, but there is no doubt that Chinese farmers were often victimized by high taxes imposed by local warlords and the endemic po- litical and social conflict that marked the period. One of Sun Yat-sen’s most prominent proposals had been the redistribution of land to poor peasants in the countryside. A land reform program was enacted in 1930, but it had little effect. Since the urban middle class and the landed gentry were Chiang Kai-shek’s natural political constitu- ency, he shunned programs that would lead to a radical redistribution of wealth.

Mao Zedong on the Long March. In 1934, the Communist leader Mao Zedong led his bedraggled forces on the famous Long March from southern China to a new location at Yan’an, in the hills just south of the Gobi Desert. The epic journey has ever since been celebrated as a symbol of the party’s willingness to sacrifice for the revolutionary cause. In this photograph, Mao sits astride a white horse as he accompanies his followers on the march. Reportedly, he was the only participant allowed to ride a horse en route to Yan’an.

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112 CHAPTER 5 Nationalism, Revolution, and Dictatorship

Social Change in Republican China The transformation of the old order that had commenced at the end of the Qing era continued into the period of the early Chinese republic. By 1915, the assault on the old system and values by educated youth was intense. The main focus of the attack was the Confucian concept of the family—in particular, filial piety and the subordination of women. Young people called for the right to choose their own mates and their own careers. Women began to demand rights and opportunities equal to those enjoyed by men.

More broadly, progressives called for an end to the concept of duty to the community and praised the West- ern individualist ethos. The prime spokesman for such views was the popular writer Lu Xun, whose short stories criticized the Confucian concept of family as a “man- eating” system that degraded humanity. In a famous short story titled “Diary of a Madman,” the protagonist remarks:

I remember when I was four or five years old, sitting in the cool of the hall, my brother told me that if a man’s parents were ill, he should cut off a piece of his flesh and boil it for them if he wanted to be considered a good son. I have only just realized that I have been living all these years in a place where for four thousand years they have been eating human flesh.5

Such criticisms did have some beneficial results. Dur- ing the early republic, the tyranny of the old family sys- tem began to decline, at least in urban areas, under the impact of economic changes and the urgings of the New Culture intellectuals. Women, long consigned to an infe- rior place in the Confucian world order, began to escape their cloistered existence and seek education and employ- ment alongside their male contemporaries. Free choice in marriage and a more relaxed attitude toward sex became commonplace among affluent families in the cities, where the teenage children of Westernized elites aped the cloth- ing, social habits, and musical tastes of their contempo- raries in Europe and the United States.

But as a rule, the new consciousness of individualism and women’s rights that marked the early republican era in the major cities did not penetrate the villages, where traditional attitudes and customs held sway. Arranged marriages continued to be the rule rather than the excep- tion, and concubinage remained common. According to a survey taken in the 1930s, well over two-thirds of the marriages, even among urban couples, had been arranged by their parents; in one rural area, only 3 of 170 villagers interviewed had heard of the idea of “modern marriage.” Even the tradition of binding the feet of female children

continued despite efforts by the Nationalist government to eradicate the practice.6

DOWN WITH CONFUCIUS AND SONS Nowhere was the struggle between traditional and modern more visible than in the field of culture. Beginning with the New Cul- ture era during the early years of the first Chinese repub- lic, radical reformists criticized traditional culture as the symbol and instrument of feudal oppression that must be entirely eradicated to create a new China that could stand on its feet with dignity in the modern world.

For many reformers, that new culture must be based on that of the modern West. During the 1920s and 1930s, Western literature and art became popular in China, espe- cially among the urban middle class. Traditional culture continued to prevail among more conservative elements of the population, and some intellectuals argued for the creation of a new art that would synthesize the best of Chinese and foreign culture. But the most creative artists were interested in imitating foreign trends, whereas tradi- tionalists were more concerned with preservation.

Literature in particular was influenced by foreign ideas as Western genres like the novel and the short story attracted a growing audience. Although most Chinese nov- els written after World War I dealt with Chinese subjects, they reflected the Western tendency toward social realism and often dealt with the new Westernized middle class (Mao Dun’s Midnight, for example, described the changing mores of Shanghai’s urban elites) or the disintegration of the traditional Confucian family. Most of China’s modern authors displayed a clear contempt for the past.

Japan Between the Wars By the beginning of the twentieth century, Japan had made steady progress toward the creation of an advanced society on the Western model. Economic and social reforms launched during the Meiji era led to increasing prosperity and the development of a modern industrial and commercial sector. Although the political system still retained many authoritarian characteristics, optimists had reason to hope that Japan was on the road to becoming a full-fledged democracy.

Experiment in Democracy During the first quarter of the twentieth century, the Japanese political system appeared to evolve significantly toward the Western democratic model. Political parties expanded their popular following and became increasingly competitive, while individual pressure groups such as labor unions began to appear in Japanese society, along with an

Japan Between the Wars 113

independent press and a bill of rights. The influence of the old ruling oligarchy, the genro, had not yet been signifi- cantly challenged, however, nor had that of its ideological foundation, which focused on national wealth and power.

The fragile flower of democratic institutions was able to survive throughout the 1920s. During that period, the military budget was reduced, and a suffrage bill enacted in 1925 granted the vote to all adult Japanese males. Women remained disenfranchised, but women’s associa- tions became increasingly visible during the 1920s, and women were active in the labor movement and in campaigns for various social reforms.

But the era was also marked by growing social turmoil, and two opposing forces within the system were gearing up to challenge the prevailing wisdom. On the left, a Marxist labor movement, which reflected the tensions within the working class and the increasing radicalism among the rural poor, began to take shape in the early 1920s in response to growing economic difficulties. Gov- ernment suppression of labor disturbances led to further radicalization. On the right, ultranationalist groups called for a rejection of Western models of development and a more militant approach to realizing national objectives. In 1919, radical nationalist Kita Ikki called for a military take- over and the establishment of a new system bearing a strong resemblance to what would later be called fascism in Europe (see Chapter 6).

This cultural conflict between old and new, indigenous and foreign, was reflected in literature. The restoration of Japanese self-confidence after the victories over China and Russia launched an age of cultural creativity in the early twentieth century. Fascination with Western literature gave birth to a striking new genre called the “I novel.” Defying traditional Japanese reticence, some authors rev- eled in self-exposure with confessions of their innermost thoughts. Others found release in the “proletarian liter- ature” movement of the early 1920s. Inspired by Soviet lit- erary examples, these authors wanted literature to serve socialist goals and improve the lives of the working class. Finally, some Japanese writers blended Western psychol- ogy with Japanese sensibility in exquisite novels reeking of nostalgia for the old Japan. One well-known example is Junichiro Tanizaki’s Some Prefer Nettles (1929), which deli- cately juxtaposes the positive aspects of traditional and modern Japan. By the early 1930s, however, military censorship increasingly inhibited literary expression.

A Zaibatsu Economy Japan also continued to make impressive progress in eco- nomic development. Spurred by rising domestic demand as well as a continued high rate of government investment in

the economy, the production of raw materials tripled between 1900 and 1930, and industrial production increased more than twelvefold. Much of the increase went into the export market, and Western manufacturers began to com- plain about the rising competition for markets from the Japanese.

As often happens, rapid industrialization was accompa- nied by some hardship and rising social tensions. A charac- teristic of the Meiji model was the concentration of various manufacturing processes within a single enterprise, the zaibatsu, or financial clique. Some of these firms were exist- ing merchant companies that had the capital and the fore- sight to move into new areas of opportunity. Others were formed by enterprising samurai, who used their status and experience in management to good account in a new envi- ronment. Whatever their origins, these firms gradually developed, often with official encouragement, into large conglomerates that controlled a major segment of the Japa- nese industrial sector. According to one source, by 1937, the four largest zaibatsu (Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, and Yasuda) controlled 21 percent of the banking industry, 26 percent of mining, 35 percent of shipbuilding, 38 percent of commercial shipping, and more than 60 percent of paper manufacturing and insurance.

This concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few major industrial combines resulted in the emer- gence of a form of dual economy: on the one hand, a modern industry characterized by up-to-date methods and massive government subsidies, and on the other, a tradi- tional manufacturing sector characterized by conservative methods and small-scale production techniques.

Concentration of wealth also led to growing economic inequalities. As we have seen, economic growth had been achieved at the expense of the peasants, many of whom fled to the cities to escape rural poverty. That labor sur- plus benefited the industrial sector, but the urban proletar- iat was still poorly paid and ill-housed. Rampant inflation in the price of rice led to food riots shortly after World War I. A rapid increase in population (the total population of the Japanese islands increased from an estimated 43 mil- lion in 1900 to 73 million in 1940) led to food shortages and the threat of rising unemployment. Intense competi- tion and the global recession in the early 1920s led to a greater concentration of industry and a perceptible rise in urban radicalism. In the meantime, those left on the farm continued to suffer. As late as the beginning of World War II, an estimated half of all Japanese farmers were tenants.

Shidehara Diplomacy A final problem for Japanese leaders in the post-Meiji era was the familiar capitalist dilemma of finding sources of

114 CHAPTER 5 Nationalism, Revolution, and Dictatorship

raw materials and foreign markets for the nation’s manu- factured goods. Until World War I, Japan had dealt with the problem by seizing territories such as Taiwan, Korea, and southern Manchuria and transforming them into colonies or protectorates of the growing Japanese empire. That policy had succeeded brilliantly, but it had also begun to arouse the concern and, in some cases, the hos- tility of the Western nations. China was also becoming apprehensive; as we have seen, Japanese demands for Shandong Province at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 aroused massive protests in major Chinese cities.

The United States was especially concerned about Japa- nese aggressiveness. Although the United States had been less active than some European states in pursuing colonies in the Pacific, it had a strong interest in keeping the area open for U.S. commercial activities. American anxiety about Tokyo’s twenty-one demands on China in 1915 led to a new agreement with Japan in 1917, which essentially repeated the compromise provisions of the agreement reached nine years earlier.

In 1922, in Washington, D.C., the United States con- vened a major conference of nations with interests in the Pacific to discuss problems of regional security. The Washington Conference led to agreements on several issues, but the major accomplishment was the conclusion of a nine-power treaty recognizing the territorial integrity of China and the Open Door. The other participants induced Japan to accept these provisions by accepting its special position in Manchuria.

During the remainder of the 1920s, Japanese govern- ments attempted to play by the rules laid down at the Washington Conference. Known as Shidehara diplomacy, after the foreign minister (and later prime minister) who attempted to carry it out, this policy sought to use diplo- matic and economic means to realize Japanese interests in Asia. But this approach came under severe pressure as Japanese industrialists began to move into new areas of opportunity, such as heavy industry, chemicals, mining, and the manufacturing of appliances and automobiles. Because such industries desperately needed resources not found in abundance locally, the Japanese government came under increasing pressure to find new sources abroad.

THE RISE OF MILITANT NATIONALISM In the early 1930s, with the onset of the Great Depression and grow- ing tensions in the international arena, nationalist forces rose to dominance in the Japanese government. These elements, a mixture of military officers and ultranational- ist politicians, were convinced that the diplomacy of the 1920s had failed and advocated a more aggressive approach to protecting national interests in a brutal and

competitive world. We shall discuss the factors involved and the impact of these developments on the international scene in the next chapter.

Nationalism and Dictatorship in Latin America Because most of Latin America had won its independence from European control during the nineteenth century, nationalism and political change took different forms in this area in the years following World War I than they did in Asia and the Middle East. But the region was by no means isolated from the trends occurring throughout the rest of the world. National sentiment in opposition to for- eign political and economic influence—and especially U.S. influence—was sometimes intense. And when the Great Depression struck in the late 1920s, the political equation in Latin America was affected in profound ways.

A Changing Economy At the beginning of the twentieth century, the economy of Latin America was based largely on the export of food- stuffs and raw materials. Some countries relied on the export earnings of only one or two products. Argentina, for example, depended heavily on the sale of beef and wheat; Chile, on nitrates and copper; Brazil and the Carib- bean nations, on sugar; and the Central American states, on bananas. Such exports brought large profits to a few, but for the majority of the population, the returns were meager.

During World War I, exports of some products, such as Chilean nitrates (used to produce explosives), increased dramatically. In general, however, the war led to a decline in European investment in Latin America and a rise in the U.S. role in the local economies. The United States had already begun to intervene in Latin American politics in the early years of the twentieth century during its con- struction of the Panama Canal, which dramatically reduced the time and distance needed for ships to pass between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

THE ROLE OF THE YANKEE DOLLAR By the late 1920s, the United States had replaced Great Britain as the fore- most source of foreign investment in Latin America. Unlike the British, however, U.S. investors put their funds directly into production enterprises, causing large seg- ments of the area’s export industry to fall into American hands. A number of Central American states, for example, were popularly labeled “banana republics” because of the power and influence of the U.S.-owned United Fruit

Nationalism and Dictatorship in Latin America 115

Company. American firms also dominated the copper mining industry in Chile and Peru and the oil industry in Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia.

Increasing economic power served to reinforce the tradi- tionally high level of U.S. political influence in Latin Amer- ica, especially in Central America, a region that many Americans considered vital to U.S. national security. Ameri- can troops occupied parts of both Nicaragua and Honduras to put down unrest or protect U.S. interests there. The growing U.S. presence in the region aroused hostility among Latin Americans, who resented their dependent relationship on the United States, which they viewed as an aggressive imperialist power. Some charged that Washing- ton worked, sometimes through U.S. military intervention, to keep ruthless dictators, such as Juan Vicente G�omez of Venezuela and Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, in power to pre- serve U.S. economic influence. In a bid to improve rela- tions with Latin American countries, in 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt promulgated the Good Neighbor policy, which rejected the use of U.S. military force in the region. To underscore his sincerity, Roosevelt ordered the withdrawal of U.S. marines from the island nation of Haiti in 1936. For the first time in thirty years, there were no U.S. occupation troops in Latin America.

Because so many Latin American nations depended for their livelihood on the export of raw materials and food products, the Great Depression of the 1930s was a disaster for the region. In 1930, the value of Latin American exports fell to only half the amount that had been exported in each of the previous five years. Spurred by the decline in foreign revenues, Latin American gov- ernments began to encourage the development of new industries to reduce dependence on imports. In some cases—the steel industry in Chile and Brazil, the oil indus- try in Argentina and Mexico—government investment made up for the absence of local sources of capital.

The Effects of Dependency During the late nineteenth century, most governments in Latin America had been dominated by landed or military elites, who governed by the blatant use of military force. This trend continued during the 1930s as domestic insta- bility caused by the effects of the Great Depression led to the creation of military dictatorships throughout the region, especially in Argentina and Brazil and, to a lesser degree, in Mexico—three countries that together pos- sessed more than half of the land and wealth of Latin America (see Map 5.2).

ARGENTINA By no means were all of Latin America’s problems the product of foreign influence. Some were

self-imposed. In Argentina, autocratic rule by an elite minority had disastrous effects. The government of Argentina, controlled by landowners who had benefited from the export of beef and wheat, was slow to recognize the need to establish a local industrial base. In 1916, Hip�olito Irigoyen (1852–1933), head of the Radical Party, was elected president on a program to improve conditions for the middle and lower classes. Little was achieved, however, as the party became increasingly corrupt and identified with the interests of the large landowners. In 1930, the army overthrew Irigoyen’s government, but its effort to return to the past and suppress the growing influence of labor unions failed, and in 1946, General Juan Per�on—claiming the support of the descamisados (“shirtless ones”)— seized sole power (see Chapter 8).

BRAZIL Brazil followed a similar path. In 1889, the army overthrew the Brazilian monarchy, installed by Portugal decades before, and established a republic. But it was dominated by landed elites, many of whom had grown wealthy through their ownership of coffee plantations. By 1900, three-quarters of the world’s coffee was grown in Brazil. As in Argentina, the ruling oligarchy ignored the importance of establishing an urban industrial base. When the Great Depression ravaged profits from coffee exports, a wealthy rancher, Get�ulio Vargas (1883–1954), seized power and served as president from 1930 to 1945. At first, Vargas sought to appease the workers by instituting an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage, but influenced by the apparent success of fascist regimes in Europe, he ruled by increasingly autocratic means and relied on a police force that used torture to silence his opponents. His industrial policy was successful, however, and by the end of World War II, Brazil had become Latin America’s major industrial power. In 1945, the army, concerned that Vargas was turning increasingly to leftist elements for support, forced him to resign.

MEXICO In the early years of the twentieth century, Mexico was in a state of turbulence. Under the rule of the longtime dictator Porfirio D�ıaz (see Chapter 1), the real wages of the working class had declined. Moreover, 95 percent of the rural population owned no land, and about a thousand families ruled almost all of Mexico. Much of the manufacturing sector, and most of the important export industries, was in the hands of foreign owners.

The first rumblings of discontent appeared among members of the intellectual elite, who in the early years of the century began to agitate for political reforms to introduce representative government. They also favored the adoption of measures to improve the lot of the urban and rural poor. In the meantime, violent protests erupted

116 CHAPTER 5 Nationalism, Revolution, and Dictatorship

in the countryside. In the poverty-stricken state of Chiapas, the rebel leader Emiliano Zapata (1879–1919) aroused landless peasants, who began seizing the hacien- das of wealthy landowners. Eventually, Zapata (later made famous to U.S. audiences by the 1952 film Viva Zapata, starring Marlon Brando) was able to set up a local revolutionary regime under his own leadership. In the state of Chihuahua, farther to the north, the bandit leader Pancho Villa (1878–1923) terrorized the local power

structure and on occasion even crossed the border to launch raids on small towns in the United States.

The growing specter of rural revolt caused great concern among the Mexican power elite, and in 1910 D�ıaz was forced to resign in favor of the reform- ist politician Francisco Madero (1873–1913). The latter sought to carry out a program of political reform, but he was unable to keep pace with the rapid change taking place throughout the country. In 1913, Madero was deposed and assassinated by one of D�ıaz’s military subordinates.

For the next several years, Zapata and Pancho Villa contin- ued to be important political forces in Mexico, publicly advo- cating measures to redress the economic grievances of the poor. But neither had a broad grasp of the challenges facing the country, and power eventually gravitated to a more moderate group of reformists around the Constitu- tionalist Party. The latter were intent on breaking the power of the great landed families and powerful U.S. corporations, but without engaging in radical land reform or the nationalization of property. After a bloody conflict that cost the lives of thousands, the moderates were able to con- solidate power, and in 1917 the party promulgated a new consti- tution that established a strong presidency, initiated land reform policies, established limits on

foreign investment, and set an agenda for social welfare programs. The United States had resisted many of these measures but eventually saw the wisdom of recognizing a government that had successfully avoided the hazards of a vast social revolution, such as had occurred in Russia.

In 1920, the Constitutionalist Party leader Alvaro Obreg�on assumed the presidency and began to carry out a reform program. But real change did not take place until the presidency of General L�azaro C�ardenas (1895–1970) in

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Nationalism and Dictatorship in Latin America 117

1934. C�ardenas won wide popularity among the peasants by ordering the redistribution of 44 million acres of land controlled by landed elites. He also seized control of the oil industry, which had hitherto been dominated by major U.S. oil companies. Alluding to the Good Neighbor policy, President Roosevelt refused to intervene, and eventually Mexico agreed to compensate the U.S. oil companies for their lost property. It then set up PEMEX, a governmental organization, to run the oil industry. By now, the revolu- tion was democratic in name only, as the ruling political party, known as the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), controlled the levers of power throughout society. Every six years, for more than half a century, PRI presiden- tial candidates automatically succeeded each other in office.

Latin American Culture The first half of the twentieth century witnessed a dramatic increase in literary activity in Latin America, a result in part of its ambivalent relationship with Europe and the United States. Many authors, while experimenting with imported modernist styles, felt compelled to proclaim their region’s

unique identity through the adoption of Latin American themes and social issues. In The Underdogs (1915), for exam- ple, Mariano Azuela (1873–1952) presented a sympathetic but not uncritical portrait of the Mexican Revolution as his country entered an era of unsettling change.

In their determination to express Latin America’s dis- tinctive characteristics, some writers focused on the prom- ise of the region’s vast virgin lands and the diversity of its peoples. In Don Segundo Sombra, published in 1926, Ricardo Guiraldes (1886–1927) celebrated the life of the ideal gaucho (cowboy), defining Argentina’s hope and strength through the enlightened management of its fer- tile earth. Likewise, in Dona Barbara, R�omulo Gallegos (1884–1969) wrote in a similar vein about his native Vene- zuela. Other authors pursued the theme of solitude and detachment, a product of the region’s physical separation from the rest of the world.

Latin American artists followed their literary counter- parts in joining the Modernist movement in Europe, yet they too were eager to promote the emergence of a new regional and national essence. In Mexico, where the gov- ernment provided financial support for painting murals on

Struggle for the Banner. Like Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974) decorated public buildings with large murals that celebrated the Mexican Revolution and the workers’ and peasants’ struggle for freedom. Beginning in the 1930s, Siqueiros expressed sympathy for the exploited and downtrodden peoples of Mexico in dramatic frescoes such as this one. He painted similar murals in Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil and was once expelled from the United States, where his political art and views were considered too radical.

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118 CHAPTER 5 Nationalism, Revolution, and Dictatorship

public buildings, the artist Diego Rivera (1886–1957) began to produce a monumental style of mural art that served two purposes: to illustrate the national past by portraying Aztec legends and folk customs and to popularize a political

message in favor of realizing the social goals of the Mexican Revolution. His wife, Frida Kahlo (1907–1954), incorpo- rated Surrealist whimsy in her own paintings, many of which were portraits of herself and her family.

CONCLUSION T H E T U R M O I L B R O U G H T A B O U T by World War I not only resulted in the destruction of several of the major Western empires and a redrawing of the map of Europe but also opened the door to political and social upheavals elsewhere in the world. In the Middle East, the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire led to the creation of the secular republic of Turkey and several other new states carved out of the carcass of the old empire.

Other parts of Asia also witnessed the rise of move- ments for national independence. In India, Gandhi and his campaign of civil disobedience played a crucial role in his country’s bid to be free of British rule. China waged its own dramatic struggle to establish a modern nation as two dynamic political organizations—the Nationalists and the Communists—competed for legitimacy as the rightful heirs of the old order. Japan continued to follow its own path to modernization, which, although successful from an economic point of view, took a menacing turn during the 1930s.

The nations of Latin America faced their own eco- nomic problems because of their dependence on exports. Increasing U.S. investments in Latin America contributed to growing hostility against the powerful neighbor to the north. The Great Depression forced the region to begin developing new industries, but it also led to the rise of authoritarian governments, some of them modeled after the fascist regimes of Italy and Germany.

By demolishing the remnants of their old civilization on the battlefields of World War I, Europeans had inadver- tently encouraged the subject peoples of their vast colonial empires to begin their own movements for national indepen- dence. The process was by no means completed in the two decades following the Treaty of Versailles, but the bonds of imperial rule had been severely strained. Once Europeans began to weaken themselves in the even more destructive conflict of World War II, the hopes of colonial peoples for national independence and freedom could at last be realized. It is to that devastating world conflict that we now turn.

TIMELINE

1920 1925 1930 1935 1940

Middle East

Asia

Latin America

Reza Khan seizes power in Iran (1921)

Formation of Chinese Communist Party (1921)

Northern Expedition in China (1926–1928)

Era of Shidehara diplomacy in Japan

(1924–1927)

Gandhi’s march to the sea (1930)

Formation of the Comintern (1919)

Long March (1934–1935)

Good Neighbor policy (1933)

Vargas comes to power in Brazil (1930)

Military seizes power in Argentina (1930)

New constitution in Mexico (1917)

Creation of Nanjing republic (1928)

Atatürk establishes Republic of Turkey (1923)

Balfour Declaration on Palestine (1917)

Ibn Saud establishes Saudi Arabia (1932)

Iraq receives independence (1932)

Assassination of Zhang Zuolin (1928)

Conclusion 119

CHAPTER NOTES

1. Quoted in M. Gettleman, ed., Vietnam: History, Documents, and Opinion on a Major World Crisis (New York, 1965), p. 32.

2. Ts’ai Yuan-p’ei, “Ta Lin Ch’in-nan Han,” in Ts’ai Yuan-p’ei Hsien- sheng Ch’uan-chi [Collected Works of Mr. Ts’ai Yuan-p’ei] (Taipei, 1968), pp. 1057–1058.

3. Quoted in Nicholas Rowland Clifford, Spoilt Children of Empire: Westerners in Shanghai and the Chinese Revolution of the 1920s (Hanover, N.H., 1991), p. 16.

4. Quoted in William Theodore de Bary et al., eds., Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York, 1963), p. 783.

5. Lu Xun, “Diary of a Madman,” in Selected Works of Lu Hsun (Beijing, 1957), vol. 1, p. 20.

6. On my first trip into mainland China in the 1970s, it was still not unusual to see older Chinese women with bound feet, especially in rural areas.

120 CHAPTER 5 Nationalism, Revolution, and Dictatorship

C H A P T E R

The Crisis Deepens: The Outbreak of World War II

A F T E R T H E E N D of World War I, many Germans were unwilling to accept that their nation’s armed forces had been vanquished on the battlefield, giving rise to the widespread belief that defeat had come about as the result of a “stab in the back” by traitorous elements within the German population. To some, there was no secret as to who those treasonous elements were: they were to be found in the country’s Jewish population. Jews were prominent in many professions, including law, medicine, and education, and were active in the financial and banking sector as well. Widely envied and resented, they were ripe targets for attack by revenge-seeking revanchist groups within the country.

In the early 1930s, the nationalist firebrand Adolf Hitler took advantage of these sentiments to seize power in a country wracked by the Great Depression. In a relatively short period of time, Hitler, at the head of his National Socialist (Nazi) Party, installed himself as the dictator of what was termed the Third Reich. He soon embarked on a path to cleanse the country of its internal enemies and make Germany once again the dominant force in Europe. The ensuing conflict, which eventually spread worldwide, repeated the horrors of the previous “war to end all wars” and resulted in an even more decisive defeat for German forces on the battlefield. When World War II came to an end in 1945, there could be no further cries of a “stab in the back.” Germany had been decisively defeated and its capital of Berlin lay in ruins.

C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G

Q What was the relationship between WorldWar I and World War II, and how did the ways in which the wars were fought differ?

Adolf Hitler, founder of the Third Reich

D or

is C.

Ba ke

The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes On February 3, 1933, only four days after he had been appointed chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler (1889– 1945) met secretly with Germany’s leading generals. He revealed to them his desire to remove the “cancer of democracy,” create a new authoritarian leadership, and forge a new domestic unity. His foreign policy objectives were equally striking. Since Germany’s living space was too small for its people, Hitler said, Germany must rearm and prepare for “the conquest of new living space in the east and its ruthless Germanization.”

The rise of Adolf Hitler to supreme power in Germany was not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern that had spread throughout Europe and other parts of the world in the wake of the Great Depression. The apparent triumph of liberal democracy in 1919 had proven to be extremely short-lived. Italy had installed a fascist regime in the 1920s, and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin was a repressive dictatorial state. A host of other European states, and Latin American countries as well, adopted authoritarian systems, while a militarist regime in Japan moved that country

121

down the path to war. By 1939, only two major states in Europe, France and Great Britain, remained democratic.

Dictatorships, of course, were hardly a new phenom- enon as a means of governing human societies, but the type of political system that emerged after World War I did exhibit some ominous new characteristics. The mod- ern totalitarian state, whether of the right (as in Ger- many) or of the left (as in the Soviet Union), transcended the ideal of passive obedience expected in a traditional dic- tatorship or authoritarian monarchy. It required the active loyalty and commitment of all its citizens to the regime and its goals. Individual freedom was to be subordinated to the collective will of the masses, represented by a single leader and a single party. Modern technology also gave totalitarian states the ability to use unprecedented police powers and communication techniques to impose their wishes on their subjects.

What explains the emergence of this frightening new form of government at a time when the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution had offered such bright hopes for the improvement of the human condition? According to the philosopher Hannah Arendt, in her re- nowned study, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), the totalitarian state was a direct product of the modern age. At a time when traditional sources of identity, such as reli- gion and the local community, were in decline, alienated intellectuals found fertile ground for their radical ideas among rootless peoples deprived of their communal instincts and their traditional faiths by the corrosive effects of the Industrial Age. The Great Depression, which threw millions into poverty and sowed doubts about the viability of the capitalist system, made many observers even more vulnerable to prescriptions calling for a remaking of the human condition.

The Birth of Fascism In the early 1920s, in the wake of economic turmoil, polit- ical disorder, and the general insecurity and fear stem- ming from World War I, Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) burst upon the Italian scene with the first fascist move- ment in Europe. Mussolini began his political career as a socialist but was expelled from the Socialist Party after supporting Italy’s entry into World War I, a position con- trary to the socialist principle of ardent neutrality in impe- rialist wars. In 1919, he established a new political group, the Fascio di Combattimento, or League of Combat. It received little attention in the parliamentary elections of 1919, but subsequently when worker strikes and a general climate of class violence broke out, alarmed conservatives turned to the Fascists, who formed armed squads to attack socialist offices and newspapers. On October 29, 1922,

after Mussolini and the Fascists threatened to march on Rome if they were not given power, King Victor Emman- uel III (r. 1900–1946) capitulated and made Mussolini prime minister of Italy.

By 1926, Mussolini had established the institutional framework for his Fascist dictatorship. Press laws gave the government the right to suspend any publication that fostered disrespect for the Catholic Church, the monarchy, or the state. The prime minister was made “head of gov- ernment” with the power to legislate by decree. A police law empowered the police to arrest and confine anybody for both nonpolitical and political crimes without due pro- cess of law. In 1926, all anti-Fascist parties were outlawed. By the end of 1926, Mussolini ruled Italy as Il Duce, the leader.

Mussolini’s regime attempted to mold Italians into a single-minded community by developing Fascist organiza- tions. By 1939, about two-thirds of the population between the ages of eight and eighteen had been enrolled in some kind of Fascist youth group. Activities for these groups included Saturday afternoon marching drills and calisthenics, seaside and mountain summer camps, and youth contests. Beginning in the 1930s, all young men were given some kind of premilitary exercises to develop discipline and provide training for war.

The Fascists also sought to reinforce traditional social attitudes, as is evident in their policies toward women. The Fascists portrayed the family as the pillar of the state and women as the foundation of the family. “Woman into the home” became the Fascist slogan. Women were to be homemakers and baby producers, “their natural and funda- mental mission in life,” according to Mussolini, who viewed population growth as an indicator of national strength. The Fascist attitude toward women also reflected a practical con- sideration: working women would compete with males for jobs in the depression economy of the 1930s. Eliminating women from the market reduced male unemployment.

Hitler and Nazi Germany As Mussolini began to lay the foundations of his Fascist state in Italy, a young admirer was harboring similar dreams in Germany. Born on April 20, 1889, Adolf Hitler was the son of an Austrian customs official. He did poorly in secondary school and eventually made his way to Vienna to become an artist. Through careful observation of the political scene, Hitler became an avid German nationalist who learned from his experience in mass poli- tics in Austria how political parties could use propaganda and terror effectively. But it was only after World War I, during which he served as a soldier on the Western Front, that Hitler became actively involved in politics. By then, he had become convinced that the German defeat had

122 CHAPTER 6 The Crisis Deepens: The Outbreak of World War II

been caused by the Jews, for whom he now developed a fervent hatred.

THE ROOTS OF ANTI-SEMITISM Anti-semitism, of course, was not new to European civilization. Since the Middle Ages, Jews had been portrayed as the murderers of Christ and were often subjected to mob violence and official persecution. Their rights were restricted, and they were physically separated from Christians in separate urban sectors known as ghettos. By the nineteenth cen- tury, however, as a result of the ideals of the Enlighten- ment and the French Revolution, Jews were increasingly granted legal equality in many European countries. Many Jews left the ghettos to which they had been restricted and become assimilated into the surrounding Christian population. Some entered what had previously been the closed world of politics and the professions. Many Jews became successful as bankers, lawyers, scientists, scholars, journalists, and stage performers. Nowhere in Europe did Jews play a more active role in society than in Germany.

All too often, however, their achievements provoked envy and distrust. During the last two decades of the nine- teenth century, German conservatives began to found parties that used dislike of Jews to win the votes of tradi- tional lower-middle-class groups who felt threatened by changing times. Such parties also played on the rising sen- timent of racism in German society. Spurred on by the widespread popularity of social Darwinism, rabid German nationalists promoted the concept of the Volk (nation, peo- ple, or race) as an underlying idea in German history since the medieval era. Portraying the German people as the successors of the pure “Aryan” race, the true and original creators of Western culture, nationalist groups called for Germany to take the lead in a desperate struggle to save European civilization from the destructive assaults of such allegedly lower races as Jews, blacks, Slavs, and Asians.

HITLER’S RISE TO POWER, 1919–1933 At the end of World War I, Hitler joined the obscure German Workers’ Party and transformed it into a new organization called the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), or Nazi for short. Hitler worked assiduously to develop the party into a mass political movement with flags, party badges, uniforms, its own newspaper, and its own police force or party militia known as the SA—the Sturmabteilung, or Storm Troops. The SA added an element of force and terror to the growing Nazi movement. Hitler’s own orator- ical skills as well as his populist message were largely re- sponsible for attracting an increasing number of followers.

In November 1923, Hitler staged an armed uprising against the government in Munich, but the so-called Beer Hall Putsch was quickly crushed, and Hitler was

sentenced to prison. During his brief stay in jail, he wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle), an autobiographical account of his movement and its underlying ideology. Virulent German nationalism, anti-Semitism, and anticommunism were linked together by a social Darwinian theory of struggle that stressed the right of superior nations to Lebensraum (“living space”) through expansion and the right of superior individuals to secure authoritarian leader- ship over the masses.

After Hitler’s release from prison, the Nazi Party rapidly expanded to all parts of Germany, increasing from 27,000 members in 1925 to 178,000 by the end of 1929. By 1932, the Nazi Party had 800,000 members and had become the largest party in the Reichstag, the German parliament. No doubt, Germany’s economic difficulties were a crucial fac- tor in the Nazis’ rise to power. Unemployment had risen dramatically, from 4.35 million in 1931 to 6 million by the winter of 1932. The economic and psychological impact of the Great Depression made extremist parties more attrac- tive. Hitler’s appeal to national pride, national honor, and traditional militarism struck chords of emotion in his listen- ers, and the raw energy projected by his Nazi Party con- trasted sharply with the apparent ineptitude emanating from its democratic rivals. As the conservative elites of Germany came to see Hitler as the man who could save Germany from a Communist takeover, President Paul von Hindenburg agreed to allow Hitler to become chancellor on January 30, 1933, and form a new government.

Within two months, Hitler had convinced Hindenburg to issue a decree suspending all basic rights for the full du- ration of the emergency—declared after a mysterious fire destroyed the Reichstag building in downtown Berlin— thus enabling the Nazis to arrest and imprison anyone without redress. When the Reichstag empowered the gov- ernment to dispense with constitutional forms for four years while it issued laws that dealt with the country’s problems, Hitler became a dictator appointed by the par- liamentary body itself. The final step came on August 2, 1934, when Hindenburg died. The office of Reich presi- dent was abolished, and Hitler became sole ruler of Ger- many. Public officials and soldiers were all required to take a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler as the “F€uhrer (leader) of the German Reich and people.”

THE NAZI STATE, 1933–1939 Having smashed the Wei- mar Republic, Hitler now turned to his larger objective, the creation of a totalitarian state that would dominate Europe and possibly the world for generations to come. Mass demonstrations and spectacles were employed to integrate the German nation into a collective fellowship and to mobilize it as an instrument for Hitler’s policies. In the economic sphere, the Nazis pursued the use of public

The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes 123

works projects and “pump-priming” grants to private con- struction firms to foster employment and end the depres- sion. But there is little doubt that rearmament contributed far more to solving the unemployment problem. Unem- ployment, which had stood at 6 million in 1932, dropped to 2.6 million in 1934 and fell below 500,000 in 1937. Although Hitler himself had little interest in either eco- nomics or administration, his prestige undoubtedly bene- fited enormously from spontaneous efforts undertaken throughout the country by his followers.

For its enemies, the Nazi totalitarian state had its instru- ments of terror and repression. Especially important was the SS (Schutzstaffel, or “protection echelon”). Originally created as Hitler’s personal bodyguard, the SS, under the direction of Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945), came to con- trol all of the regular and secret police forces. Other institu- tions, including the Catholic and Protestant churches,

primary and secondary schools, and universities, were also brought under the control of the state. Nazi professional organizations and leagues were formed for civil servants, teachers, women, farmers, doctors, and lawyers; youth organizations—the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) and its female counterpart, the Bund Deutscher M€adel (League of German Maidens)—were given special attention.

The Nazi attitude toward women was largely deter- mined by ideological considerations. To the Nazis, the dif- ferences between men and women were quite natural. Men were warriors and political leaders, while women were des- tined to be wives and mothers. Certain professions, includ- ing university teaching, medicine, and law, were considered inappropriate for women. Instead, women were encour- aged to pursue professional occupations that had direct practical application, such as social work and nursing.

A key goal of the Nazi regime was to resolve “the Jew- ish question.” In September 1935, the Nazis announced new racial laws at the annual party rally in Nuremberg. These laws excluded Jews from German citizenship and forbade marriages and extramarital relations between Jews and German citizens. A more violent phase of anti-Jewish activity was initiated on November 9–10, 1938, the infa- mous Kristallnacht, or night of shattered glass. The assassi- nation of a German diplomat in Paris became the excuse for a Nazi-led destructive rampage against the Jews; syna- gogues were burned, 7,000 Jewish businesses were destroyed, and at least one hundred Jews were killed. Moreover, 20,000 Jewish males were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Jews were now barred from all public buildings and prohibited from owning, managing, or working in any retail store. Hitler would soon turn to more gruesome measures.

The Spread of Authoritarianism in Europe Nowhere had the map of Europe been more drastically altered by World War I than in eastern Europe. The new states of Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia adopted parliamentary systems, and the preexisting king- doms of Romania and Bulgaria gained new parliamentary constitutions in 1920. Greece became a republic in 1924. Hungary’s government was parliamentary in form but controlled by its landed aristocrats. Thus, at the beginning of the 1920s, the future of political democracy seemed promising. Yet almost everywhere in eastern Europe, par- liamentary governments soon gave way to authoritarian regimes.

Several factors helped create this situation. Eastern European states had little tradition of liberalism or parlia- mentary politics and no substantial middle class to support

The F€uhrer Makes History! A common characteristic of modern totalitarian movements is their effort to mold all citizens from their earliest years into obedient servants of the state. In Nazi Germany, the vehicle responsible for training young minds was the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth). In this photograph, Adolf Hitler inspects members of the organization at a ceremony held sometime during the 1930s. On graduation, each member took an oath: “I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to the savior of our country, Adolf Hitler. I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God.”

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them. Then, too, these states were predominantly rural and agrarian. Many of the peasants were largely illiterate, and much of the land was still dominated by large land- owners who feared the growth of agrarian peasant parties with their schemes for land redistribution. Ethnic conflicts also threatened to tear these countries apart. Fearful of land reform, Communist agrarian upheaval, and ethnic conflict, powerful landowners, the churches, and even some members of the small middle class looked to author- itarian governments to maintain the old system. Only Czechoslovakia, with its substantial middle class, liberal tradition, and strong industrial base, maintained its politi- cal democracy.

In Spain, democracy also failed to survive. Fearful of the rising influence of left-wing elements in the government, in July 1936 Spanish military forces led by General Francisco Franco (1892–1975) launched a brutal and bloody civil war that lasted three years. Foreign intervention complicated the situation. Franco’s forces were aided by arms, money, and men from Italy and Germany, and the government was assisted by 40,000 foreign volunteers and trucks, planes, tanks, and military advisers from the Soviet Union. After Franco’s forces captured Madrid on March 28, 1939, the Spanish Civil War finally came to an end. General Franco soon established a dictatorship that favored large landowners, businessmen, and the Catholic clergy.

The Rise of Militarism in Japan The rise of militant forces in Japan resulted not from a sei- zure of power by a new political party but from the grow- ing influence of nationalist elements at the top of the political hierarchy. During the 1920s, a multiparty system based on democratic practices appeared to be emerging. Two relatively moderate political parties, the Minseito and the Seiyukai, dominated the Diet and took turns pro- viding executive leadership in the cabinet. Radical ele- ments existed at each end of the political spectrum, but neither militant nationalists nor violent revolutionaries appeared to present a threat to the stability of the system.

In fact, the political system was probably weaker than it seemed at the time. Both of the major parties were deeply dependent on campaign contributions from power- ful corporations (the zaibatsu), and conservative forces connected to the military or the old landed aristocracy were still highly influential behind the scenes. As in the Weimar Republic in Germany during the same period, the actual power base of moderate political forces was weak, and politicians unwittingly undermined the fragility of the system by engaging in bitter attacks on each other.

Political tensions in Japan increased in 1928 when Chiang Kai-shek’s forces seized Shanghai and several

provinces in central China. In the next few years, Chiang engaged in negotiations with the remaining warlords north of the Yangtze River and made clear his intention to integrate the region, including the three provinces in Manchuria, into the new Nanjing republic. This plan rep- resented a direct threat to military strategists in Japan, who viewed resource-rich Manchuria as the key to their country’s expansion onto the Chinese mainland. When Zhang Xueliang, son and successor of the Japanese puppet Zhang Zuolin (see Chapter 5), resisted Japanese threats and decided to integrate Manchuria into the Nanjing republic, the Japanese were shocked. “You forget,” Zhang told one Japanese official, “that I am Chinese.”1 Appeals from Tokyo to Washington for a U.S. effort to restrain Chiang Kai-shek were rebuffed. Militant nationalists, out- raged at Japan’s loss of influence in Manchuria, began to argue that the Shidehara policy of peaceful cooperation with other nations in maintaining the existing interna- tional economic order had been a failure.

THE MUKDEN INCIDENT In September 1931, acting on the pretext that Chinese troops had attacked a Japanese railway near the northern Chinese city of Mukden, Japanese military units stationed in the area seized con- trol throughout Manchuria. Although Japanese military authorities in Manchuria announced that China had pro- voked the action, the “Mukden incident,” as it was called, had actually been carried out by Japanese saboteurs. Even- tually, worldwide protests against the Japanese action led the League of Nations to send an investigative commis- sion to Manchuria. When the commission issued a report condemning the seizure, Japan angrily withdrew from the League. Over the next several years, the Japanese con- solidated their hold on Manchuria, renaming it Manchu- kuo and placing it under the titular authority of former Chinese emperor and now Japanese puppet, Pu Yi.

Although no one knew it at the time, the Mukden inci- dent would later be singled out by some observers as the opening shot of World War II. The failure of the League of Nations to take decisive action sent a strong signal to Japan and other potentially aggressive states that they might pursue their objectives without the risk of united opposition by the major world powers. Despite its agoniz- ing efforts to build a system of peace and stability that would prevent future wars, the League had failed to resolve the challenges of the postwar era.

DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS Civilian officials in Tokyo had been horrified by the unilateral actions undertaken by ultranational Japanese military elements in Manchuria, but were cowed into silence. Despite doubts about the wisdom of the Mukden incident, the cabinet was too

The Rise of Dictatorial Regimes 125

divided to disavow it, and military officers in Manchuria increasingly acted on their own initiative.

During the early 1930s, civilian cabinets were also struggling to cope with the economic challenges pre- sented by the Great Depression. Already suffering from the decline of its business interests on the mainland, Japan began to feel the impact of the Great Depression after 1929 when the United States and major European nations raised their tariffs against Japanese imports in a desperate effort to protect local businesses and jobs. The value of Japanese exports dropped by 50 percent from 1929 to 1931, and wages dropped nearly as much. Hardest hit were the farmers as the prices of rice and other staple food crops plummeted. By abandoning the gold standard, Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was able to lower the price of Japanese goods on the world market, and exports climbed back to earlier levels. But the political parties were no longer able to stem the growing influence of militant nationalist elements.

In May 1932, Inukai Tsuyoshi was assassinated by right-wing extremists. He was succeeded by a moderate, Admiral Saito Makoto, but ultranationalist patriotic soci- eties began to terrorize opponents, assassinating business- men and public figures identified with the policy of conciliation toward the outside world. Some, like the pub- licist Kita Ikki, were convinced that the parliamentary sys- tem had been corrupted by materialism and Western values and should be replaced by a system that would return to traditional Japanese values and imperial author- ity. His message “Asia for the Asians” had not won wide- spread support during the relatively prosperous 1920s but increased in popularity after the Great Depression, which convinced many Japanese that capitalism was unsuitable for Japan.

During the mid-1930s, the influence of the military and extreme nationalists over the government steadily in- creased. Minorities and left-wing elements were perse- cuted, and moderates were intimidated into silence. Terrorists put on trial for their part in assassination attempts portrayed themselves as selfless patriots and received light sentences. Japan continued to hold national elections, and moderate candidates continued to receive substantial popular support, but the cabinets were domi- nated by the military or advocates of Japanese expansion- ism. In February 1936, junior officers in the army led a coup in the capital city of Tokyo, briefly occupying the Diet building and other key government installations and assassinating several members of the cabinet. The ringleaders were quickly tried and convicted of treason, but widespread sympathy for the defendants further strengthened the influence of the military in the halls of power.

The Path to War in Europe When Hitler became chancellor on January 30, 1933, Ger- many’s situation in Europe seemed weak. The Versailles Treaty had created a demilitarized zone on Germany’s western border that would allow the French to move into the heavily industrialized parts of Germany in the event of war. To Germany’s east, smaller states such as Poland and Czechoslovakia had defensive treaties with France. The Versailles Treaty had also limited Germany’s army to 100,000 troops with no air force and only a small navy.

Posing as a man of peace in his public speeches, Hitler insisted that Germany wished only to revise the unfair provisions of Versailles by peaceful means and to take its rightful place among the European states. On March 9, 1935, he announced the creation of a new air force and, one week later, the introduction of a military draft that would expand Germany’s army (the Wehrmacht) from 100,000 to 550,000 troops. France, Great Britain, and Italy condemned Germany’s unilateral repudiation of the Versailles Treaty but took no concrete action.

On March 7, 1936, buoyed by his conviction that the Western democracies had no intention of using force to maintain the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler sent German troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. Under the treaty, the French had the right to use force against any violation of the demilitarized Rhineland. But France would not act without British support, and the British viewed the occupa- tion of German territory by German troops as a reasonable action by a dissatisfied power. The London Times, reflecting the war-weariness that had gripped much of the European public since the end of the Great War, noted that the Germans were only “going into their own back garden.”

Meanwhile, Hitler gained new allies. In October 1935, Mussolini committed Fascist Italy to imperial expansion by invading Ethiopia. Angered by French and British opposi- tion to his invasion, Mussolini welcomed Hitler’s support and began to draw closer to the German dictator he had once called a buffoon. The joint intervention of Germany and Italy on behalf of General Franco in the Spanish Civil War in 1936 also drew the two nations closer together. In October 1936, Mussolini and Hitler concluded an agree- ment that recognized their common political and economic interests. One month later, Germany and Japan concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact and agreed to maintain a common front against communism.

Stalin Seeks a United Front From behind the walls of the Kremlin in Moscow, Joseph Stalin undoubtedly observed the effects of the Great Depression with a measure of satisfaction. During the

126 CHAPTER 6 The Crisis Deepens: The Outbreak of World War II

early 1920s, once it became clear that the capitalist states in Europe had managed to survive without socialist revolutions, Stalin decided to improve relations with the outside world as a means of obtaining capital and techno- logical assistance in promoting economic growth in the Soviet Union. But Lenin had predicted that after a brief period of stability in Europe, a new crisis brought on by overproduction and intense competition was likely to occur in the capitalist world. That, he added, would mark the beginning of the next wave of revolution. In the meantime, he declared, “We will give the capitalists the shovels with which to bury themselves.”

To Stalin, the onset of the Great Depression was a sig- nal that the next era of turbulence in the capitalist world was at hand, and during the early 1930s, Soviet foreign policy returned to the themes of class struggle and social revolution. When the influence of the Nazi Party reached significant levels in the early 1930s, Stalin viewed it as a pathological form of capitalism and ordered the Commu- nist Party in Germany not to support the fragile Weimar Republic. Hitler would quickly fall, he reasoned, leading to a Communist takeover.

By 1935, Stalin had become uneasily aware that Hitler was not only securely in power in Berlin but also repre- sented a serious threat to the Soviet Union. That summer, at a meeting of the Communist International held in Moscow, Soviet officials announced a shift in policy. The Soviet Union would now seek to form united fronts with capitalist democratic nations in Europe against the common danger of Nazism and fascism. Communist parties in capitalist countries and in colonial areas were instructed to cooperate with “peace-loving democratic forces” in forming coalition governments called Popular Fronts.

In most capitalist countries, Stalin’s move was greeted with sus- picion, but in France, a coalition of leftist parties—Communists, Socialists, and Radicals—fearful that rightists intended to seize power, formed a Popular Front government in June 1936. The new government succeeded in launching a program for work- ers. It included the right of col- lective bargaining, a forty-hour workweek, two-week paid vaca- tions, and minimum wages. But

such policies failed to bring an end to the depression, and although it survived until 1938, the Front was for all intents and purposes dead before then. Moscow signed a defensive treaty with France and reached an agreement with three non-Communist states in eastern Europe (Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia), but talks with Great Britain achieved little result. The Soviet Union, rebuffed by London and disappointed by Paris, feared that it might be forced to face Hitler alone.

Decision at Munich By the end of 1936, the Treaty of Versailles had been vir- tually scrapped, and Germany had erased much of the stigma of defeat. Hitler, whose foreign policy successes had earned him much public acclaim, was convinced that neither the French nor the British could effectively oppose his plans and decided in 1938 to annex Austria, where pro-German sentiment was strong. By threatening Austria with invasion, Hitler coerced the Austrian chancel- lor into putting Austrian Nazis in charge of the government. The new government promptly invited German troops to enter Austria and assist in maintaining law and order. One day later, on March 13, 1938, Austria formally became a part of Germany.

The annexation of Austria without objections from other European nations put Germany in position for Hit-

ler’s next objective—the destruc- tion of Czechoslovakia. Although Czechoslovakia was quite prepared to defend itself and was supported by pacts with France and the Soviet Union, Hitler believed that its allies would not use force to defend it against a German attack.

His gamble succeeded. On Sep- tember 15, 1938, Hitler demanded the cession to Germany of the Sudetenland (an area in western Czechoslovakia that was inhabited largely by ethnic Germans) and expressed his willingness to risk “world war” if he was refused. Instead of objecting, the British, French, Germans, and Italians—at a hastily arranged conference at Munich—reached an agreement that essentially met all of Hitler’s demands. German troops were allowed to occupy the Sudetenland as the Czechs, abandoned by their Western allies as well as by the

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Soviet Union, stood by helplessly. The Munich Conference was the high point of Western appeasement of Hitler. Brit- ish Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned to En- gland from Munich boasting that the agreement meant “peace in our time.” Hitler had promised Chamberlain that he had made his last demand (see the box above).

In fact, Munich confirmed Hitler’s perception that the Western democracies were weak and would not fight. He

was increasingly convinced of his own infallibility and had by no means been satisfied at Munich. In March 1939, Hit- ler occupied the Czech lands (Bohemia and Moravia), and with his encouragement, the Slovaks, who had always resented the condescending attitude of the more sophisti- cated Czechs, declared their independence of the Czechs and set up the German puppet state of Slovakia. On the evening of March 15, 1939, Hitler triumphantly declared

OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS

The Munich Conference

At the Munich Conference, the leaders of France and Great Britain capitulated to Hitler’s demands on Czechoslovakia. When British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain defended his actions at Munich as necessary for peace, another British statesman, Winston Churchill, characterized the settlement at Munich as “a disaster of the first magnitude.” After World War II, political figures in western Europe and the United States would cite the example of appeasement at Munich to encourage vigorous resistance to expansionism by the Soviet Union.

Winston Churchill, Speech to the House of Commons (October 5, 1938) I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, and that France has suffered even more than we have. . . . The utmost my right honorable Friend the Prime Minister . . . has been able to gain for Czechoslovakia and in the matters which were in dispute has been that the German dictator, instead of snatching his victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course. . . . And I will say this, that I believe the Czechs, left to themselves and told they were going to get no help from the Western Powers, would have been able to make better terms than they have got. . . .

We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that. . . .

And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

Neville Chamberlain, Speech to the House of Commons (October 6, 1938) That is my answer to those who say that we should have told Germany weeks ago that, if her army crossed the border of Czechoslovakia, we should be at war with her. We had no treaty obligations and no legal obligations to Czechoslovakia. . . . When we were convinced, as we became convinced, that nothing any longer would keep the Sudetenland within the Czechoslovakian State, we urged the Czech Government as strongly as we could to agree to the cession of territory, and to agree promptly. . . . It was a hard decision for anyone who loved his country to take, but to accuse us of having by that advice betrayed the Czechoslovakian State is simply preposterous. What we did was save her from annihilation and give her a chance of new life as a new State, which involves the loss of territory and fortifications, but may perhaps enable her to enjoy in the future and develop a national existence under a neutrality and security comparable to that which we see in Switzerland today. Therefore, I think the Government deserves the approval of this House for their conduct of affairs in this recent crisis, which has saved Czechoslovakia from destruction and Europe from Armageddon.

What were the opposing views of Churchill and Chamberlain on how to respond to Hitler’s demands at Munich? Do these arguments have any wider relevance for other world crises?

SOURCES: Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1938), vol. 339, pp. 361–369; Neville Chamberlain, In Search of Peace (New York: Putnam, 1939), pp. 215, 217.

128 CHAPTER 6 The Crisis Deepens: The Outbreak of World War II

in Prague that he would be known as the greatest German of them all.

The Western states were now alarmed by the Nazi threat. Hitler’s naked aggression had made it clear that his promises were utterly worthless. When he began to demand the return to Germany of Danzig (a primarily German city that had been made a free city by the Treaty of Versailles to serve as a seaport for Poland), Britain recog- nized the danger and offered to protect Poland in the event of war. Both France and Britain realized that they needed Soviet help to contain Nazi aggression and began political and military negotiations with Stalin. Their distrust of Soviet communism, however, made an alliance unlikely.

Meanwhile, Hitler pressed on in the belief that Britain and France would not go to war over Poland. To preclude an alliance between the western European states and the Soviet Union, which would create the danger of a two-front war, Hitler, ever the opportunist, approached Stalin, who had given up hope of any alliance with Britain and France. The announcement on August 23, 1939, of the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact shocked the world. The treaty with the Soviet Union gave Hitler the freedom he sought, and on September 1, German forces invaded Poland. A secret protocol divided up the nation of Poland between the two signatories. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Europe was again at war.

The Path to War in Asia In the years immediately following the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in the fall of 1931, Japanese military forces began to expand gradually into North China. Using the tactics of military intimidation and diplomatic bullying rather than all-out attack, Japanese military authorities began to carve out a new “sphere of influence” south of the Great Wall.

Not everyone in Tokyo agreed with this aggressive pol- icy—the young Emperor Hiro- hito, who had succeeded to the throne in 1926, was initially ner- vous about possible international repercussions—but right-wing ter- rorists assassinated some of its key critics and intimidated others into silence. The United States refused to recognize the Japanese takeover of Manchuria, which Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson declared an act of “inter- national outlawry,” but was un- willing to threaten the use of

force. Instead, the Americans sought to avoid confrontation in the hope of encouraging moderate forces in Japanese society. As one senior U.S. diplomat with long experience in Asia warned in a memorandum to the president:

Utter defeat of Japan would be no blessing to the Far East or to the world. It would merely create a new set of stresses, and substitute for Japan the USSR—as the succes- sor to Imperial Russia—as a contestant (and at least an equally unscrupulous and dangerous one) for the mastery of the East. Nobody except perhaps Russia would gain from our victory in such a war.2

For the moment, the prime victim of Japanese aggres- sion was China. Nevertheless, Chiang Kai-shek attempted to avoid a confrontation with Japan so that he could deal with what he considered the greater threat from the Com- munists. When clashes between Chinese and Japanese troops broke out, he sought to appease the Japanese by granting them the authority to administer areas in North China. But, as the Japanese moved steadily southward, popular protests in Chinese cities against Japanese aggres- sion intensified. In December 1936, Chiang was briefly kidnapped by military forces commanded by General Zhang Xueliang, who compelled him to end his military efforts against the Communists in Yan’an and form a new united front against the Japanese. After Chinese and Japanese forces clashed at Marco Polo Bridge, south of Beijing, in July 1937, China refused to apologize, and hostilities spread.

A Monroe Doctrine for Asia Japan had not planned to declare war on China, but neither side would compromise, and the 1937 incident eventually turned into a major conflict. The Japanese advanced up the Yangtze valley and seized the Chinese capital of Nanjing,

raping and killing thousands of innocent civilians in the process. The full enormity of the horren- dous slaughter, which continued for several weeks, only emerged many years after the end of the war. The “Nanjing incident” aroused a deep-seated anger against Japan among the Chinese people that continues to affect relations between the two countries to this day.

But Chiang Kai-shek refused to capitulate and moved his govern- ment upriver to Hankou. When the Japanese seized that city, he

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moved further upriver to Chungking, in remote Sichuan Province. Japanese strategists had hoped to force Chiang to join a Japanese-dominated New Order in East Asia, comprising Japan, Manchuria, and China. Now they established a puppet regime in Nanjing that would coop- erate with Japan in driving Western influence out of East Asia. Tokyo hoped eventually to seize resource-rich Soviet Siberia and to create a new Monroe Doctrine for Asia, under which Japan would guide its Asian neighbors on the path to development and prosperity. After all, who better to instruct Asian societies on mod- ernization than the one Asian country that had already achieved it?

Tokyo’s “Southern Strategy” During the late 1930s, Japan began to cooperate with Nazi Germany on a plan to launch a joint attack on the Soviet Union and divide up its resources between them. But when Germany surprised Tokyo by signing the nonag- gression pact with the Soviets in August 1939, Japanese strategists were compelled to reevaluate their long-term objectives. Japan was not strong enough to defeat the Soviet Union alone, as a small but bitter border war along the Siberian frontier near Manchukuo had amply demonstrated. So the Japanese began to shift their gaze

southward to the vast resour- ces of Southeast Asia—the oil of the Dutch East Indies, the rubber and tin of Malaya, and the rice of Burma and Indochina.

A move southward, of course, would risk war with the European colonial powers and the United States. Japan’s attack on China in the summer of 1937 had already aroused strong criticism abroad, partic- ularly in Washington, where President Franklin D. Roose- velt threatened to “quarantine” the aggressors after Japanese military units bombed a U.S. naval ship operating in China. The public’s fear of involve- ment forced the president to draw back, but when Japan demanded the right to occupy airfields and exploit economic resources in French Indochina in the summer of 1940, the

United States warned the Japanese that it would impose economic sanctions unless Japan withdrew from the area and returned to its borders of 1931.

Tokyo viewed the U.S. threat of retaliation as an ob- stacle to its long-term objectives. Japan badly needed liq- uid fuel and scrap iron from the United States. If they were cut off, Japan would have to find them elsewhere. The Japanese were thus caught in a vise. To obtain guar- anteed access to the natural resources needed to fuel the Japanese military machine, Japan must risk being cut off from its current source of the raw materials that would be needed in the event of a conflict. After much debate, the Japanese decided to launch a surprise attack on U.S. and European colonies in Southeast Asia in the hope of a quick victory that would cement Japanese dominance in the region.

The World at War On September 1, 1939, German forces suddenly attacked Poland. Using the tactics of blitzkrieg, or “lightning war,” hundreds of tanks, supported by airplanes, broke quickly through Polish lines and encircled the bewildered Polish troops, whose courageous cavalry units were no match for the mechanized forces of their adversary. Conven- tional infantry units then moved in to hold the newly

A Japanese Victory in China. After consolidating its authority over Manchuria, Japan began to expand into northern China. Direct hostilities between Japanese and Chinese forces began in 1937. This photograph shows victorious Japanese forces in January 1938 riding under the arched Chungshan Gate in Nanjing after they had conquered the Chinese capital city. By 1939, Japan had conquered most of eastern China.

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conquered territory. Within four weeks, Poland had sur- rendered. On September 28, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union officially divided Poland between them. To Hitler’s surprise, France and Britain declared war on Germany but took no action during a period of watchful waiting (dubbed the “phony war”).

The War in Europe Although France had joined with Great Britain in declar- ing war on Germany after the latter’s attack on Poland, the French were ill prepared for the challenge. The polit- ical class was badly divided over both domestic and foreign policy (many conservatives openly preferred Nazi Germany over the left-leaning Socialists), and the country’s military leaders had failed to appreciate the effectiveness of the new mechanized warfare. France therefore took little action when Germany launched a blitzkrieg against Denmark and Norway on April 9, 1940. One month later, the Germans attacked the Neth- erlands, Belgium, and France. German tank divisions broke through the weak French defensive positions in the Ardennes forest and raced across northern France, splitting the Allied armies and trapping French troops and the entire British army on the beaches of Dunkirk. Only by heroic efforts, and the German military com- manders’ crucial failure to exploit their advantage, did the British succeed in a gigantic evacuation of 330,000 Allied (mostly British) troops. The French capitulated on June 22. German armies occupied about three-fifths of France while the French hero of World War I, Marshal Philippe Petain (1856–1951), established a puppet regime (known as Vichy France) over the remainder. Germany was now in control of western and central Europe (see Map 6.1). Britain had still not been defeated, but it was reeling, and a new wartime cabinet under Prime Minis- ter Winston Churchill debated whether to seek a negoti- ated peace settlement. Churchill, who doubted that Hitler could be trusted, was opposed.

THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN Encouraged by his stunning victories on the Continent, Hitler turned his attention to the invasion of Great Britain, an operation known as Sea- lion. An amphibious invasion of Britain could succeed only if Germany gained control of the air. In early August 1940, the Luftwaffe (German air force) launched a major offensive against British air and naval bases, harbors, com- munication centers, and war industries. The British fought back doggedly, supported by an effective radar system that gave them early warning of German attacks. Never- theless, the British air force suffered critical losses and was probably saved by Hitler’s change in strategy. In

September, in retaliation for a British air attack on Berlin, Hitler ordered a shift from military targets to massive bombing of cities to break British morale. The British rebuilt their air strength quickly and were soon inflicting major losses on Luftwaffe bombers. By the end of Septem- ber, Germany had lost the Battle of Britain, and the inva- sion of the British Isles had to be abandoned.

The successful outcome of the Battle of Britain pro- vided an enormous boost to British morale in a time of great peril. But behind the scenes, another development was unfolding that would eventually deal a more grievous blow to German prospects for victory. One of the most important weapons in the Allied arsenal was the ability to break the codes produced by the German code machine, known as Enigma. The product of code breakers from several countries, the Ultra project, as it eventually was called, had been initiated a decade earlier but only began to provide consistent access to German plans and actions by the summer of 1940. Eventually, it became an impor- tant, if not crucial, factor in several major Allied victories in World War II.

Thwarted in the west by the failure of Operation Sealion, Nazi leaders now pursued a new strategy, which called for Italian troops to capture Egypt and the Suez Canal, thereby closing the Mediterranean to Brit- ish ships and shutting off Britain’s supply of oil. This strategy failed when the British routed the Italian army. Although Hitler then sent German troops to the North African theater of war, his primary concern lay else- where; he had already reached the decision to fulfill his longtime obsession with the acquisition of territory in the east. In Mein Kampf, Hitler had declared that future German expansion must lie in the vast plains of southern Russia.

THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN Hitler was now convinced that Britain was remaining in the war only because it expected Soviet support. If the Soviet Union were smashed, Britain’s last hope would be eliminated. More- over, the German general staff was convinced that the Soviet Union, whose military leadership had been deci- mated by Stalin’s purge trials, could be defeated quickly and decisively. The invasion of the Soviet Union was scheduled for spring 1941 but was delayed because of problems in the Balkans. Mussolini’s disastrous invasion of Greece in October 1940 had exposed Italian forces to attack from British air bases in that country. To secure their Balkan flank, German troops seized both Yugoslavia and Greece in April 1941. Berlin had already obtained the political cooperation of Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. Now reassured, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, in the belief that the Soviets

The World at War 131

could still be decisively defeated before winter set in. It was a fateful miscalculation.

The massive attack stretched out along an 1,800-mile front. German troops, supported by powerful armored units, advanced rapidly, capturing 2 million Russian sol- diers. By November, one German army group had swept through Ukraine, and a second was besieging Leningrad; a third approached within 25 miles of Moscow, the Rus- sian capital. An early winter and unexpected Soviet

resistance, however, brought a halt to the German advance. For the first time in the war, German armies had been stopped. A counterattack in December 1941 by Soviet army units newly supplied with U.S. weapons came as an ominous ending to the year for the Germans. Alarmed by the rapidity of the German advances in Europe, the Roosevelt administration had begun to pro- vide military assistance (known as Lend-Lease) to the Soviet Union via shipments sent around northern

Corsica

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Murmansk

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Allied offensives, 1942–1945

Soviet annexations, 1939–1940

World War II: Europe and Africa

MAP 6.1 World War II in Europe and North Africa. With its fast and effective military, Germany quickly overwhelmed much of western Europe. Hitler had overestimated his country’s capabilities, however, and underestimated those of his foes. By late 1942, his invasion of the Soviet Union was failing, and the United States had become a major factor in the war. The Allies successfully invaded Italy in 1943 and France in 1944.

Which countries were neutral, and how did geography help make their neutrality an option?

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Scandinavia to the Soviet port of Murmansk. “We knew we were in trouble,” one German war veteran remarked to me many years later, “when we became aware that many Russian soldiers were armed with American rifles.”

The New Order in Europe By the fall of 1941, the Nazi empire stretched across conti- nental Europe from the English Channel in the west to the outskirts of Moscow in the east. The conquered terri- tories were organized in two different ways. Some areas, such as western Poland, were annexed and transformed into German provinces. Most of occupied Europe, how- ever, was administered indirectly by German officials with the assistance of collaborationist regimes.

Racial considerations played an important role in how conquered peoples were treated. German civil administra- tions were established in Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands because the Nazis considered their peoples to be Aryan, or racially akin to the Germans, and hence wor- thy of more lenient treatment. Latin peoples, such as the occupied French, were given military administrations. But all the occupied territories were exploited for material goods and manpower for Germany’s labor needs.

Because the conquered lands in the east contained the living space for German expansion and were popu- lated in Nazi eyes by racially inferior Slavic peoples, Nazi administration there was considerably more ruthless. One million Poles were uprooted and dumped in southern Poland. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans (de- scendants of Germans who had migrated years earlier from Germany to different parts of southern and eastern Europe) were encouraged to colonize designated areas in Poland. Hitler’s grand vision called for a colossal project of social engineering after the war, in which Poles, Ukrainians, and Russians would become slave labor while German peasants settled on the abandoned lands and Germanized them.

Labor shortages in Germany led to a policy of ruthless mobilization of foreign labor. After the invasion of the Soviet Union, the 4 million Russian prisoners of war cap- tured by the Germans, along with more than 2 million workers conscripted in France, became a major source of manpower. By the summer of 1944, 7 million foreign workers had been shipped to Germany, where they con- stituted 20 percent of Germany’s labor force. Another 7 million were supplying forced labor in their own coun- tries on farms, in industries, and even in military camps.

THE HOLOCAUST No aspect of the Nazi New Order was more tragic than the deliberate attempt to extermi- nate the Jewish people of Europe. Until 1939, Nazi policy

focused on promoting the “emigration” of German Jews from Germany. Once the war began in September 1939, the so-called Jewish problem took on new dimensions. Evetually, Nazi leaders settled on what was called the Final Solution to the Jewish problem—the annihilation of the Jewish people. Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942), head of the SS’s Security Service, was given administrative responsibility to carry it out. After the defeat of Poland, Heydrich ordered his special strike forces—the Einsatz- gruppen—to round up all Polish Jews and concentrate them in ghettos established in a number of Polish cities.

After the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Einsatzgruppen were transformed into mobile killing units. These death squads followed the regular army’s advance into the Soviet Union. Their job was to round up Jews in the villages and execute and bury them in mass graves, often giant pits dug by the victims themselves before they were shot. Even this approach to solving the Jewish problem was soon perceived as inadequate. Instead, the Nazis opted for the systematic annihilation of the European Jewish population in specially built death camps. Jews from occupied countries were rounded up, packed like cattle into freight trains, and shipped to Poland, where six extermination centers were built for this purpose. The largest and most famous was Auschwitz- Birkenau. Zyklon B (the commercial name for hydrogen cyanide) was selected as the most effective gas for quickly killing large numbers of people in gas chambers designed to look like shower rooms to facilitate the cooperation of the victims.

By the spring of 1942, the death camps were in opera- tion. Although initial priority was given to the elimination of the ghettos in Poland, Jews were soon also being shipped from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands and eventually from Greece and Hungary. Despite desperate military needs, the Final Solution had priority in using railroad cars to transport Jews to the death camps.

By the end of the war, the Germans had killed between 5 and 6 million Jews, more than 3 million of them in the death camps. Virtually 90 percent of the Jewish populations of Poland, the Baltic countries, and Germany were exterminated. Overall, the Holocaust was responsible for the death of nearly two of every three European Jews.

The Nazis were also responsible for the death by shooting, starvation, or overwork of at least another 9 to 10 million people. Because the Nazis considered the Gyp- sies (like the Jews) an alien race, they were systematically rounded up for extermination. Civic leaders in many Slavic countries were also arrested and executed. The Nazis also singled out homosexuals for persecution, and thousands lost their lives in concentration camps.

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War Spreads in Asia On December 7, 1941, Japanese carrier-based aircraft attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawai- ian Islands. The same day, other units launched assaults on the Philippines and began advancing toward the British col- ony of Malaya. Shortly thereafter, Japanese forces seized the British island of Singapore, invaded the Dutch East Indies, and occupied a number of islands in the Pacific Ocean. In some cases, as on the Bataan peninsula and the island of Corregidor in the Philippines, resistance was fierce, but by the spring of 1942, almost all of Southeast Asia and much of the western Pacific had fallen into Japa- nese hands. Placing the entire region under Japanese tute- lage, Japan announced its intention to liberate Southeast Asia from Western rule. For the moment, however, Tokyo needed the resources of the region for its war machine and placed its conquests under its rule on a wartime footing.

Japanese leaders had hoped that their strike at Ameri- can bases would destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet and per- suade the Roosevelt administration to accept Japanese domination of the Pacific. The American people, in the eyes of Japanese leaders, had been made soft by material indulgence. But the Japanese had miscalculated. Although the administration’s apparent failure to anticipate the scope and direction of the Japanese attack has aroused legitimate criticism, the attack on Pearl Harbor galvanized American opinion and won broad support for Roosevelt’s war pol- icy. The United States now joined with European nations and the embattled peoples of Nationalist China in a com- bined effort to defeat Japan’s plan to achieve hegemony in the Pacific.

U.S. STRATEGY IN THE PACIFIC On December 11, 1941, four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Germany committed a major error by declaring war on the United States. Confronted with the reality of a two- front war, President Roosevelt decided that because of the overwhelming superiority of the Wehrmacht in Europe, the war effort in that theater should receive priority over the conflict with Japan in the Pacific. Accordingly, U.S. war strategists drafted plans to make maximum use of their new ally in China. An experienced U.S. military commander, Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell, was appointed as Roosevelt’s special adviser to Chiang Kai-shek. His objective was to train Chinese Nationalist forces in preparation for an Allied advance through main- land China toward the Japanese islands. By the fall of 1942, Allied forces were beginning to gather for offensive operations into South China from Burma, while U.S. cargo planes continued to fly “over the hump” through the Himalaya Mountains to supply the Chinese govern- ment in Chungking with desperately needed war supplies.

In the meantime, the tide of battle began to turn in the Pacific. In the Battle of the Coral Sea in early May 1942, U.S. naval forces stopped the Japanese advance in the Dutch East Indies and temporarily relieved Australia of the threat of invasion. On June 4, American carrier planes destroyed all four of the attacking Japanese aircraft car- riers near Midway Island and established U.S. naval supe- riority in the Pacific, even though almost all of the American planes were shot down in the encounter. The ability of U.S. intelligence operatives to break the Japanese military code by using an offshoot of the Ultra project, code-named “Magic,” played a significant role in the vic- tory. Farther to the south, U.S. troops under the com- mand of General Douglas MacArthur launched their own campaign (dubbed “island hopping”) by invading the Japanese-held island of New Guinea, at the eastern end of the Dutch East Indies. After a series of bitter engagements

The Holocaust: An Image from Buchenwald. When Allied troops began to occupy Nazi concentration camps in Germany, Austria, and Poland at the end of World War II, they were stunned by the horrific scenes of inhumanity that they observed there: ovens still filled with the charred remains of prisoners, piles of bodies rotting in uncovered graves, and emaciated survivors who greeted the troops with vacant eyes and frequently died within hours or days of their liberation. Some of the most poignant images were deceptively simple, though frightening in their connotations—piles of shoes, eyeglasses, and even children’s toys, all left by the victims of the Nazi terror. Shown here are thousands of wedding rings found in a cave near the camp at Buchenwald.

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134 CHAPTER 6 The Crisis Deepens: The Outbreak of World War II

in the Solomon Islands from August to November 1942, Japanese fortunes in the area began to fade (see Map 6.2).

The New Order in Asia Once their military takeover was completed, Japanese pol- icy in the occupied areas of Asia became essentially defen- sive, as Japan hoped to use its new possessions to meet its burgeoning needs for raw materials, such as tin, oil, and rubber, as well as an outlet for Japanese manufactured goods. To provide an organizational structure for a new Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, a Ministry for Great

East Asia, staffed by civilians, was established in Tokyo in October 1942 to handle relations between Japan and the conquered territories (see the box on p. 136).

ASIA FOR THE ASIANS? The Japanese conquest of Southeast Asia had been accomplished under the slogan “Asia for the Asians,” and many Japanese sincerely believed that their government was liberating the peoples of southern Asia from European colonial rule. Japanese officials in the occupied territories made contact with na- tionalist elements and promised that independent govern- ments would be established under Japanese tutelage. Such

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World War II: Asia and the Pacific

MAP 6.2 World War II in Asia and the Pacific. In 1937, Japan invaded northern China, beginning its effort to create the “Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” Further expansion led the United States to end iron and oil sales to Japan. Deciding that war with the United States was inevitable, Japan engineered a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

Why was control of the islands in the western Pacific of great importance both to the Japanese and to the Allies?

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The World at War 135

governments were eventually set up in Burma, the Dutch East Indies, Vietnam, the Philippines, and even India.

In fact, however, real power rested with the Japanese military authorities in each territory, and the local

Japanese military command was directly subordinated to the Army General Staff in Tokyo. The economic resour- ces of the colonies were exploited for the benefit of the Japanese war machine, while local peoples were recruited

Japan’s Plan for Asia The Japanese objective in World War II was to create a vast Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere to provide Japan with needed raw materials and a market for its exports. The following passage is from a secret document produced by a high-level government committee in January 1942.

Draft Plan for the Establishment of the Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere The Plan. The Japanese empire is a manifestation of morality and its special characteristic is the propagation of the Imperial Way. It is necessary to foster the increased power of the empire, to cause East Asia to return to its original form of independence and co-prosperity by shaking off the yoke of Europe and America, and to let its countries and peoples develop their respective abilities in peaceful cooperation and secure livelihood.

The Form of East Asiatic Independence and Co-Prosperity. The states, their citizens, and resources, comprised in those areas pertaining to the Pacific, Central Asia, and the Indian Oceans formed into one general union are to be established as an autonomous zone of peaceful living and common prosperity on behalf of the peoples of the nations of East Asia. The area including Japan, Manchuria, North China, lower Yangtze River, and the Russian Maritime Province, forms the nucleus of the East Asiatic Union. The Japanese empire possesses a duty as the leader of the East Asiatic Union.

The above purpose presupposes the inevitable emancipation or independence of Eastern Siberia, China, Indo-China, the South Seas, Australia, and India. . . .

Outline of East Asiatic Administration. It is intended that the unification of Japan, Manchoukuo, and China in neighborly friendship be realized by the settlement of the Sino-Japanese problems through the crushing of hostile influences in the Chinese interior, and through the construction of a new China. . . . Aggressive American and British influences in East Asia shall be driven out of the area of Indo-China and the South Seas, and this area should be brought into our defense sphere. The war with Britain and America shall be prosecuted for that purpose. . . .

Chapter 3: Political Construction

Basic Plan. The realization of the great ideal of constructing Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity requires not only the complete prosecution of the current Greater East Asia War but also presupposes another great war in the future. . . .

The following are the basic principles for the political construction of East Asia. . . .

The desires of the peoples in the sphere for their independence shall be respected, and endeavors shall be made for their fulfillment, but proper and suitable forms of government shall be decided for them in consideration of military and economic requirements and of the historical, political, and cultural elements peculiar to each area.

It must also be noted that the independence of various peoples of East Asia should be based on the idea of constructing East Asia as “independent countries existing within the New Order of East Asia” and that this conception differs from an independence based on the idea of liberalism and national self-determination. . . .

Western individualism and materialism shall be rejected, and a moral worldview, the basic principle of whose morality shall be the Imperial Way, shall be established. The ultimate object to be achieved is not exploitation but co-prosperity and mutual help, not competitive conflict but mutual assistance and mild peace, not a formal view of equality but a view of order based on righteous classification, not an idea of rights but an idea of service, and not several worldviews but one unified worldview.

What were Japan’s proposals for a Japanese-led Asia? What distinction did the government committee that drafted this document draw between “Western individualism and materialism” and the “Imperial Way”? Based on this document, were individualism and materialism a part of the Imperial Way?

SOURCE: From Sources of Japanese Tradition by Wm. Theodore de Bary. Copyright ª 1958 by Columbia University Press. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

136 CHAPTER 6 The Crisis Deepens: The Outbreak of World War II

to serve in local military units or conscripted to work on public works projects. In some cases, the people living in the occupied areas were subjected to severe hardships. In Indochina, for example, forced requisitions of rice by the local Japanese authorities for shipment abroad created a food shortage that caused the starvation of more than a million Vietnamese in 1944 and 1945.

The Japanese planned to implant a new moral and social order as well as a new political and economic order in the occupied areas. Occupation policy stressed tradi- tional values such as obedience, community spirit, filial pi- ety, and discipline that reflected the prevailing political and cultural bias in Japan, while supposedly Western val- ues such as materialism, liberalism, and individualism were strongly discouraged.

At first, many Asian nationalists took Japanese prom- ises at face value and agreed to cooperate with their new masters. In Burma, an independent government was established in 1943 and subsequently declared war on the Allies. But as the exploitative nature of Japanese occupa- tion policies became increasingly clear, sentiment turned against the new order. Japanese officials sometimes unwit- tingly provoked resentment by their arrogance and con- tempt for local customs. In the Dutch East Indies, for example, Indonesians were required to bow in the direc- tion of Tokyo and recognize the divinity of the Japanese emperor, practices that were repugnant to Muslims. In Burma, Buddhist pagodas were sometimes used as mili- tary latrines. A generation later, many male Vietnamese still expressed anger at the memory of being severely punished by Japanese officials for urinating in public.

Like German soldiers in occupied Europe, Japanese military forces often had little respect for the lives of their subject peoples and viewed the Geneva Convention gov- erning the treatment of prisoners of war as little more than a fabrication of the Western countries to tie the hands of their adversaries. In their conquest of northern and central China, the Japanese freely used poison gas and biological weapons, leading to the deaths of thousands of Chinese citizens. The Japanese occupation of the one- time Chinese capital of Nanjing, described earlier, was especially brutal.

Japanese soldiers were also savage in their treatment of Koreans. Almost 800,000 Koreans were sent overseas, most of them as forced laborers, to Japan. Tens of thou- sands of Korean women were forced to be “comfort women” (prostitutes) for Japanese troops. The Japanese also made extensive use of both prisoners of war and local peoples on construction projects for their war effort. In building the Burma-Thailand railway in 1943, for example, the Japanese used 61,000 Australian, British, and Dutch prisoners of war and almost 300,000 workers from Burma,

Malaya, Thailand, and the Dutch East Indies. An inad- equate diet and appalling work conditions in an unhealthy climate led to the deaths of 12,000 Allied prisoners of war and 90,000 local workers by the time the railway was completed. The conditions were later graphically por- trayed in the award-winning movie, The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Such Japanese behavior created a dilemma for many nationalists, who had no desire to see the return of the co- lonial powers. Some turned against the Japanese, and others lapsed into inactivity. Indonesian patriots tried to have it both ways, feigning support for Japan while attempting to sabotage the Japanese administration. In Indochina, Ho Chi Minh’s Indochinese Communist Party established contacts with American military units in South China and agreed to provide information on Japanese troop movements and rescue downed American fliers in the area. In Malaya, where Japanese treatment of ethnic Chinese residents was especially harsh, many joined a guerrilla movement against the occupying forces. By the end of the war, little support remained in the region for the erstwhile “liberators.”

The Turning Point of the War, 1942–1943 The entry of the United States into the war created a coa- lition, called the Grand Alliance, that ultimately defeated the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan). Neverthe- less, the three major Allies—Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union—had to overcome mutual distrust before they could operate as an effective alliance. Pres- ident Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill had already agreed on a set of war aims—calling for the self- determination of all peoples—in a meeting held off the coast of Newfoundland in August 1941. But this accord, known as the Atlantic Charter, had not been cleared with Moscow. In a bid to allay Stalin’s suspicion of U.S. inten- tions, President Roosevelt declared that the defeat of Germany should be the first priority of the alliance. The United States, through its Lend-Lease program, also sent large amounts of military aid, including $50 billion worth of trucks, planes, and other arms, to the Soviet Union. In 1943, the Allies agreed to fight until the unconditional surrender of the Axis Powers. This had the effect of making it nearly impossible for Hitler to divide his foes.

Victory, however, was only in the distant future for the Allied leaders at the beginning of 1942. As Japanese forces advanced into Southeast Asia and the Pacific after crippling the American naval fleet at Pearl Harbor, Axis forces continued the war in Europe against Britain and the Soviet Union. Reinforcements in North Africa enabled

The World at War 137

the Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel to break through the British defenses in Egypt and advance toward Alexandria. In the spring of 1942, a renewed German of- fensive in the Soviet Union led to the capture of the entire Crimean peninsula, causing Hitler to boast that in two years, German divisions would be on the border of India.

THE BATTLE OF STALINGRAD By that fall, however, the war had begun to turn against the Germans. In North Africa, British forces stopped Rommel’s troops at El Ala- mein in the summer of 1942 and then forced them back across the desert. In November, U.S. forces landed in French North Africa and forced the German and Italian troops to surrender in May 1943. Allied war strategists drew up plans for an invasion of Italy, on the “soft under- belly” of Europe. But the true turning point of the war undoubtedly occurred on the Eastern Front, where the German armed forces suffered 80 percent of their casual- ties during the entire war. After capturing the Crimea, Hitler’s generals wanted him to concentrate on the Cauca- sus and its oil fields, but Hitler decided that Stalingrad, a major industrial center on the Volga, should be taken as well. Accordingly, German forces advancing in the south- ern Soviet Union were divided. After three months of bitter fighting, German troops occupied the city of

Stalingrad, but Soviet troops in the area, using a strategy of encirclement, now counterattacked. Besieged from all sides, the Germans were forced to surrender on February 2, 1943. The entire German Sixth Army of 300,000 men was lost, with the survivors sent off to prison camps. Soviet casualties were estimated at nearly one million, more than the United States lost in the entire war. By spring, long before Allied troops landed on the European continent, even Hitler knew that the Germans would not defeat the Soviet Union. The Wehrmacht was now in full retreat all across the Eastern Front.

ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY Although the Battle of Sta- lingrad was probably the most important single battle in the war, an equally significant development was taking place across the Atlantic, where the growing industrial might of the United States was gradually being trans- formed from peaceful to wartime uses. By 1943, the United States had become the arsenal of the Allied Powers, producing the military equipment they needed. At the height of war production in 1943, the nation was constructing six ships a day and $6 billion worth of war- related goods a month. The output of American factories was dispatched not only to the U.S. forces overseas, but to Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and other Allies as

well. Much of the industrial labor was done by American women, who, despite some public opposition, willingly took jobs in factories to replace husbands and broth- ers who had gone off to war. In addition, more than one million African Americans migrated from the rural South to the industrial cities of the North and West to find jobs in industry.

The Last Years of the War By the beginning of 1943, the tide of battle had begun to turn against the Axis. On July 10, the Allies crossed the Mediterranean and car- ried the war to Italy. After taking Sicily, Allied troops began the invasion of main- land Italy in September.

The Battle of Stalingrad. The Battle of Stalingrad was a major turning point on the Eastern Front. The Germans suffered a total defeat and the loss of the entire Sixth Army. This photograph shows thousands of captured soldiers being marched across frozen Soviet soil to prison camps. The soldiers in white fur hats are Romanian. Fewer than 6,000 captured soldiers survived to go home; the remainder—almost 85,000 prisoners—died in captivity.

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Following the ouster and arrest of Mussolini, a new Italian government offered to surrender to Allied forces. But the Germans, in a daring raid, liberated Mussolini and set him up as the head of a puppet German state in northern Italy while German troops occupied much of Italy. The new defensive lines established by the Germans in the hills south of Rome were so effective that the Allied advance up the Italian peninsula was slow and marked by heavy casualties. Rome finally fell on June 4, 1944. By that time, the Italian war had assumed a secondary role as the Allies opened their long-awaited second front in western Europe. In the meantime, Allied war planners had stepped up their bombing raids on German cities, damaging the Nazi industrial capacity but killing thousands of civilians in the process.

OPERATION OVERLORD Since the autumn of 1943, under considerable pressure from Stalin, the Allies had been planning a cross-channel invasion of France (known as Operation Overlord) from Great Britain. Under the direction of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969), five assault divisions landed on the Nor- mandy beaches on June 6, 1944, in history’s greatest naval invasion. An initially indecisive German response, due in part to effective Allied disinformation activities, enabled the Allied forces to establish a beachhead, although casual- ties were heavy. Within three months, they had landed 2 million men and a half-million vehicles that pushed inland and broke through the German defensive lines. Among them were French troops loyal to the French military commander Charles de Gaulle. After the puppet Vichy government was established in the summer of 1940, Colonel de Gaulle had fled the country and founded a Free French movement dedicated to cooperating with the Allies to overturn Nazi domination of the European continent.

After the breakout, Allied troops moved inland, liberat- ing Paris by the end of August. By March 1945, they had crossed the Rhine and advanced into Germany. The Allied advance northward through Belgium encountered greater resistance, as German troops launched a desperate coun- terattack known as the Battle of the Bulge. The operation introduced a new generation of “King Tiger” tanks more powerful than anything the Allied forces could array against them. The Allies weathered the German attack, however, and in late April, they finally linked up with Soviet units at the Elbe River.

ADVANCE IN THE EAST The Soviets had come a long way since the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943. In the summer of 1943, Hitler had gambled on taking the offensive by

making use of the first generation of “King Tiger” tanks. At the Battle of Kursk (July 5–12), the greatest engage- ment of World War II, involving competing forces num- bering more than 3.5 million men, the Soviets soundly defeated the German forces. Soviet forces, now supplied with their own “T-34” heavy tanks, began a relentless advance westward. The Soviets reoccupied Ukraine by the end of 1943; lifted the siege of Leningrad, where more than one million people, the vast majority of them civilians, had died; and moved into the Baltic states by the beginning of 1944. Advancing along a northern front, Soviet troops occupied Warsaw in January 1945 and entered Berlin in April. Meanwhile, Soviet troops along a southern front swept through Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.

In January 1945, Hitler moved into a bunker 55 feet under Berlin to direct the final stages of the war. He com- mitted suicide on April 30, two days after Mussolini was shot by partisan Italian forces. On May 7, German commanders surrendered. The war in Europe was over.

The Peace Settlement in Europe In November 1943, Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, the leaders of the Grand Alliance, met at Tehran (the capital of Iran) to decide the future course of the war. Their major strategic decision involved approval for an American-British invasion of the Continent through France, which Stalin had demanded; it was scheduled for the spring of 1944. The acceptance of this plan had important consequences. It meant that Soviet and British-American forces would meet in defeated Ger- many along a north-south dividing line and that eastern Europe would most likely be liberated by Soviet forces. The Allies also agreed to a partition of postwar Germany until denazification could take place. Roosevelt privately assured Stalin that Soviet borders in Europe would be moved westward to compensate for the loss of territo- ries belonging to the old Russian Empire after World War I. Poland would receive lands in eastern Germany to make up for territory lost in the east to the Soviet Union.

The Yalta Agreement In February 1945, the three Allied leaders met once again at Yalta, on the Crimean peninsula of the Soviet Union. Since the defeat of Germany was by now a foregone con- clusion, much of the attention focused on the war in the

The Peace Settlement in Europe 139

Pacific. At Tehran, Roosevelt had sought Soviet military help against Japan, and Stalin had assured him that Soviet forces would be in a position to enter the Pacific war three months after the close of the conflict in Europe. At Yalta, FDR reopened the subject. Development of the atomic bomb was not yet assured, and U.S. military plan- ners feared the possibility of heavy casualties in amphibi- ous assaults on the Japanese home islands. Roosevelt therefore agreed to Stalin’s price for military assistance against Japan: possession of Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands, as well as two warm-water ports and railroad rights in Manchuria.

The creation of a new United Nations to replace the now discredited League of Nations was a major U.S. con- cern at Yalta. Roosevelt hoped to ensure the participation of the Big Three powers in a postwar international organi- zation before difficult issues divided them into hostile camps. After a number of compromises, both Churchill and Stalin accepted Roosevelt’s plans for the United Nations organization and set the first meeting for San Francisco in April 1945.

The issues of Germany and eastern Europe were treated less decisively and with considerable acrimony. The Big Three reaffirmed that Germany must surrender unconditionally and created four occupation zones. Ger- man reparations were set at $20 billion. A compromise was also worked out in regard to Poland. Stalin agreed to free elections in the future to determine a new govern- ment. But the issue of free elections in eastern Europe would ultimately cause a serious rift between the Soviets and the Americans and also become a source of political controversy in the United States. The Allied leaders agreed on an ambiguous statement that interim govern- ments “broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population” would be formed in advance of the scheduling of free elections “responsive to the will of the people.”3 It would soon be clear that Moscow and Wash- ington interpreted the provisions in different ways, a real- ity that would eventually lead to harsh criticism of Roosevelt’s performance at Yalta from his opponents in the United States. For his part, FDR was determined to avoid the poisonous feelings left by the Treaty of Ver- sailles after World War I and hoped to win Stalin’s confi- dence as a means of maintaining the Grand Alliance at the close of the war.

Confrontation at Potsdam Even before the next conference at Potsdam, Germany, took place in July 1945, Western relations with the Soviets had begun to deteriorate rapidly. The Grand Alliance had been one of necessity in which ideological incompatibility

had been subordinated to the pragmatic concerns of the war. The Allied Powers’ only common aim was the defeat of Nazism. Once this aim had been all but accomplished, the many differences that antagonized East-West relations came to the surface.

The Potsdam Conference of July 1945, the last Allied conference of World War II, consequently began under a cloud of mistrust. Roosevelt had died on April 12 and had been succeeded as president by Harry Truman. Dur- ing the conference, Truman received word that the atomic bomb had been successfully tested. Some histori- ans have argued that this knowledge stiffened Truman’s resolve against the Soviets. Whatever the reasons, there was a new coldness in the relations between the Soviets and the Americans. At Potsdam, Truman demanded free elections throughout eastern Europe. After a bitterly fought and devastating war, however, Stalin sought abso- lute military security, which in his view could be ensured only by the presence of Communist states in eastern Europe. Free elections might result in governments hos- tile to the Soviet Union. By the middle of 1945, only an invasion by Western forces could undo developments in eastern Europe, and in the immediate aftermath of the world’s most destructive conflict, few people favored such a policy. But the stage was set for a new confronta- tion, this time between the two major victors of World War II.

The War in the Pacific Ends During the spring and early summer of 1945, the war in Asia continued, although with a significant change in approach. Allied war planners had initially hoped to focus their main effort on an advance through China with the aid of Chinese Nationalist forces trained and equipped by the United States. But Roosevelt became disappointed with Chiang Kai-shek’s failure to take the offensive against Japanese forces in China and eventually approved a new strategy to strike toward the Japanese home islands directly across the Pacific. This “island-hopping” approach took an increasing toll on enemy resources, especially at sea and in the air (see the Film & History feature on p. 141). Meanwhile, new U.S. long-range B-29 bombers unleashed a wave of destruction on all major cities in the Japanese homeland. One massive firebombing raid on Tokyo in March 1945 killed more than 80,000 Japanese and caused such an enormous updraft that a U.S. aviator in one of the last B-29s to fly over the city was thrown into the air and broke his arm.

ENTERING THE NUCLEAR AGE As Allied forces drew inexorably closer to the main Japanese islands in the

140 CHAPTER 6 The Crisis Deepens: The Outbreak of World War II

summer of 1945, President Harry Truman had an excru- ciatingly difficult decision to make. Should he use atomic weapons (at the time, only two bombs were available, and their effectiveness had not been demonstrated) to bring the war to an end without the necessity of an

Allied invasion of the Japanese homeland? The invasion of the island of Okinawa in April had resulted in thou- sands of casualties on both sides, with many Japanese troops committing suicide rather than surrendering to enemy forces.

FILM & HISTORY

Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) In February 1945, U.S. forces launched an attack on Iwo Jima, a 5-mile-long volcanic island, located about 650 miles southeast of Tokyo. With its three airstrips, Iwo Jima was an important element in the ring of defenses protecting Japan, and the Allies intended to use it as an air base from which to bomb the main Japanese islands.

The Battle of Iwo Jima is the subject of two films directed by Clint Eastwood and released in 2006: Flag of Our Fathers presented the battle from the American viewpoint, and Letters from Iwo Jima presented the Japanese perspective. The second film won numerous awards, including a nomination for Best Picture. Letters from Iwo Jima is a realistic portrayal of the Japanese defense of the island. The plot focuses on two characters: the fictional Private Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), an ordinary soldier whose desire is to return home to his wife and daughter, and Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), the actual commander of the Japanese forces on Iwo Jima. Kuribayashi is accurately portrayed as a man who shared the hardships of his men and had gained firsthand experience of the United States while spending three years there as a military attach�e . Kuribayashi was largely responsible for the Japanese strategy of letting the U.S. Marines land on the beaches of Iwo Jima before attacking them with flanking fire from forces that were well protected in pillboxes and the miles of caves that permeated the island. The strategy proved very effective. The Japanese force of 22,000 men took a devastating toll on the Americans: out of the landing force of 110,000 men, 6,800 were killed and more than 17,000

were wounded. The assault that the U.S. military had expected to last only fourteen days dragged on instead for thirty-six.

The film also realistically portrays the code of bushido that motivated the Japanese forces. Based on an ideal of loyalty and service, the code emphasized the obligation to honor and defend emperor, country, and family, and to sacrifice one’s life if one failed in this sacred mission. Before committing suicide, Captain Tanida (Takumi Bando) says to his men, “Men, we are honorable soldiers of the emperor. Don’t ever forget that. The only way left for us is to die with honor.” But the film also presents another, more human view of the Japanese soldiers that differs from the stereotype found in many American movies about World War II. For the most part, the Japanese and American soldiers are portrayed as being much the same: as men who were willing to kill and die, but who would prefer to simply go home and be with their families. n

General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe) prepares for the U.S. invasion of Iwo Jima.

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The Peace Settlement in Europe 141

After an intense debate within the administration, Tru- man approved the use of America’s new superweapon. The first bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on August 6. Truman then called on Japan to surrender or expect a “rain of ruin from the air.” When the Japanese did not respond, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later. The destruction in Hiroshima was incred- ible. Of 76,000 buildings near the center of the explosion, 70,000 were flattened, and 140,000 of the city’s 400,000 inhabitants died by the end of 1945. By the end of 1950, another 50,000 had perished from the effects of radiation. The dropping of the first atomic bomb introduced the world to the nuclear age.

The nuclear attack on Japan, combined with the news that Soviet forces had launched an attack on Japanese-held areas in Manchuria, did have its intended effect, however.

Japan surrendered unconditionally on August 14. World War II was finally over.

In the years following the end of the war, Truman’s decision to approve the use of nuclear weapons to compel Japan to surrender was harshly criticized, not only for causing thousands of civilian casualties but also for intro- ducing a frightening new weapon that could threaten the survival of the human race. Some have even charged that Truman’s real purpose in ordering the nuclear strikes was to intimidate the Soviet Union. Defenders of the decision argue that the human costs of invading the Japanese home islands would have been infinitely higher had the bombs not been dropped and that the Soviet Union would have had ample time to consolidate its control over Manchuria and command a larger role in the postwar occupation of Japan.

CONCLUSION W O R L D W A R I I W A S T H E M O S T D E V A S T A T I N G total war in human history. Germany, Italy, and Japan had been utterly defeated. Tens of millions of people—soldiers and civilians—had been killed in only six years. Although accurate figures are impossible to come by, Soviet losses alone during the war have been estimated as high as 50 million.4 In Asia and Europe, cities had been reduced to rubble, and millions of people faced starvation as once fertile lands stood neglected or wasted. Untold millions of people had become refugees.

What were the underlying causes of the war? One direct cause was the effort by two rising capitalist powers, Germany and Japan, to make up for their rela- tively late arrival on the scene by carving out their own global empires. Key elements in both countries had resented the agreements reached after the end of World War I that divided the world in a manner favor- able to their rivals and hoped to overturn them at the earliest opportunity. Equally important, neither Ger- many nor Japan possessed a strong tradition of political pluralism; to the contrary, in both countries, the legacy of a feudal past marked by a strong military tradition still wielded great influence over the political system and the mind-set of the entire population. It is no

surprise that under the impact of the Great Depression, the effects of which were severe in both countries, frag- ile democratic institutions were soon overwhelmed by militant forces determined to enhance national wealth and power.

Why did the Axis Powers lose the war? The standard answer, of course, is that the Allied countries occupied the moral high ground in the conflict, and that conclusion is certainly not to be dismissed. But other more prosaic factors may have played a role as well. The ability of Allied intelligence agencies to break the German and Japanese code systems, enabling the Allies to anticipate the moves of their adversary on several occasions, was certainly a significant advantage. Equally important, Axis military leaders made a number of crucial strategic mis- judgments, some of which have been noted in this chap- ter. Hitler’s confidence in his own strategic genius, in particular, led him badly astray on several occasions. In the last analysis, however, the tendency of both German and Japanese leaders to underestimate the enormous capacity of the United States and the Soviet Union to har- ness their industrial and human resources in the war effort was perhaps their greatest mistake. They would pay dearly for their complacency.

142 CHAPTER 6 The Crisis Deepens: The Outbreak of World War II

TIMELINE

1925 1930 1935 1940 1945

Europe Mussolini creates Fascist dictatorship in Italy (1926)

Hitler comes to power in Germany (1933)

Japan

Fall of France (1940)

Battle of Stalingrad (1943)

Yalta Conference (1945)

Japan attacks Pearl Harbor (1941)

The Holocaust (1940–1945)

Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (1945)

Japan seizes Manchuria (1931)

Sino-Japanese War begins (1937)

CHAPTER NOTES

1. Cited in Jonathon Fenby, Chiang Kai-shek: China’s Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost (New York, 2003), p. 180.

2. John Van Antwerp MacMurray, quoted in Arthur Waldron, How the Peace Was Lost: The 1935 Memorandum: “Developments Affecting American Policy in the Far East” (Stanford, Calif., 1992), p. 5.

3. Cited in Ruhl Bartlett, The Record of American Diplomacy (New York, 1952), p. 665.

4. Cited in B. Schwarz, “A Job for Rewrite: Stalin’s War,” New York Times, February 2, 2004.

Timeline 143

P A R T REFLECTIONSII BY 1945, THE ERA OF GLOBAL HEGEMONY by the European imperialist nations was over. As World War I was followed by the Bolshevik Revolution, the Great Depression, the rise of Adolf Hitler, and the destructive- ness of World War II, it appeared that the nations at the heart of traditional Western civilization would no longer serve as the main arbiters of world affairs. Instead, two new superpowers from outside the heartland of Europe— the United States and the Soviet Union—took their place. With the decline of the Old World, a new era of global relationships was about to begin.

THE TWO FACES OF NATIONALISM What were the underlying causes of the astounding spectacle of self- destruction that engaged the European powers in two bloody internecine conflicts within a period of less than a quarter of a century? One factor was the rise of national- ism. The spirit of nationalism had originally been praised by many Europeans as a positive development in the strug- gle to create peaceful and unified nation-states throughout the Continent. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, however, it had instead become a divisive force,

loud and chauvinistic in tone, that created bitter disputes within a number of countries—especially in eastern Europe—and contributed to the growing rivalry among nations that eventually led to two world wars.

In fact, as many of its early ad- vocates blissfully ignored, national-

ism was also inherently divisive in its political ramifications. Most European countries consisted of a patchwork of vari- ous ethnic, linguistic, and religious communities, a product of centuries of migrations, wars, and dynastic alliances. How could a system of stable nation-states, each based on a single national community, ever emerge from such a bewil- dering amalgam of cultures and peoples? The peace treaties signed after the Great War replaced one set of territorial boundaries with another, but hardly resolved the underly- ing problem—the unending competition for resources and living space within the confines of a crowded continent. World War II was the tragic result.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF WARFARE Another factor that contributed to the violence of the early twentieth

century was the Industrial Revo- lution. Technology transformed the nature of war itself. New weapons of mass destruction cre- ated the potential for a new kind of warfare that reached beyond the battlefield into the very heart- land of the enemy’s territory, while the concept of nationalism transformed war from the sport of kings to a matter of national honor and commitment. This trend was amply demon- strated in the two world wars of the twentieth century. Each was a product of antagonisms that had been unleashed by economic competition and growing national consciousness. Each resulted in a level of destruction that severely damaged the material foundations and eroded the popular spirit of the participants, the victors as well as the vanquished.

In the end, then, industrial power and the driving force of nationalism, the very factors that had created the condi- tions for European global dominance, contained the seeds for the decline of that dominance. These seeds germinated during the 1930s, when the Great Depression sharpened international competition and mutual antagonisms, and then sprouted in the ensuing conflict, which embraced the entire globe. By the time World War II came to an end, the once-powerful countries of Europe were exhausted, leaving the door ajar not only for the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union to global dominance but also for the collapse of the European colonial empires.

IMPERIALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS If in Europe the dominant motif of the opening decades of the twentieth century had been the intense rivalry among the leading states over primacy in global affairs, in the rest of the world it was undoubtedly the challenge of dealing with the consequences of that struggle. By the early years of the century, a handful of European powers, increasingly challenged by Japan and the United States, had achieved political mastery over virtually the entire remainder of the world. While the overall effect of imperialism on the subject

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peoples is still open to debate, it seems clear that for much of the population in colonial or semicolonial areas, impe- rialist domination was rarely beneficial and often destruc- tive. Although a limited number of merchants, large landowners, and traditional hereditary elites undoubtedly prospered under the umbrella of the expanding imperialist economic order, the majority of people, urban and rural alike, suffered considerable hardship as a result of the poli- cies adopted by their foreign rulers. The effects of the Industrial Revolution on the poor had been felt in Europe, too, but there the pain was eased somewhat by the fact that the industrial era had laid the foundations for future technological advances and material abundance. In the co- lonial territories, the importation of modern technology was limited, while most of the profits from manufacturing and commerce fled abroad. For too many, the “white man’s burden” was shifted to the shoulders of the colonial peoples.

In response, the latter paradoxically turned to another European import, the spirit of nationalism. Some Euro- pean historians have argued that nationalism was an artifi- cial flower in much of the non-Western world, where allegiance was more often directed to the local commu- nity, the kinship group, or a religious faith. Even if that contention is justified—and the examples of Japan, Viet- nam, and Thailand certainly appear exceptions to the rule—the concept of nationalism served a useful role in many countries in Asia and Africa. There it provided colo- nial peoples with a sense of common purpose that later proved vital in knitting together diverse elements to oppose colonial regimes and create the conditions for future independent states. At first, such movements had relatively little success, but they began to gather momen- tum in the second quarter of the twentieth century, when

full-fledged nationalist movements began to appear throughout the colonial world to lead their people in the struggle for independence.

Beyond the question of national independence, of course, was the problem of adopting new institutions and values appropriate to the needs of a changing world. Western notions of representative government and indi- vidual freedom had their advocates in colonial areas well before the end of the nineteenth century. Countless Asians and Africans were exposed to such ideas in schools set up by the colonial regime or in the course of travel to Europe or the United States. Many of the nationalist par- ties founded in colonial territories espoused democratic principles and attempted to apply them when they took power after the restoration of independence.

As time went on, however, alternative ideas began to achieve popularity, especially during the late 1920s and 1930s when new ideologies such as communism and fas- cism began to take hold in a world ripped apart by the Great Depression. Even in Europe and the United States, confidence in the viability of democratic institutions was seriously undermined by the economic crisis that lasted until the outbreak of World War II.

For the time being, of course, the question was moot. Except in Latin America, where independent states attempted with varying degrees of success to grapple with foreign influence over their national economies, the impe- rialist powers showed no inclination to grant freedom to their subject peoples. Not until the end of World War II, when the era of European hegemony had clearly come to an end in the ashes of a devastated continent, would the colonial peoples begin to grasp the opportunity to take charge of their own destiny. In Part III, we will begin to address these issues.

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East and West in the Grip of the Cold War

O U R M E E T I N G H E R E I N T H E C R I M E A has reaffirmed our common determination to maintain and strengthen in the peace to come that unity of purpose and of action which has made victory possible and certain for the United Nations in this war. We believe that this is a sacred obligation which our Governments owe to our peoples and to all the peoples of the world.1

With these ringing words, drafted at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marshal Joseph Stalin, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill affirmed their common hope that their Grand Alliance, which had brought them victory in World War II, could be sustained in the postwar era. Only through the continuing and growing cooperation and understanding among the three victorious allies, the statement asserted, could a secure and lasting peace be realized that, in the words of the Atlantic Charter, would “afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.”

Roosevelt hoped that the decisions reached at Yalta would provide the basis for a stable peace in the postwar era. Allied occupation forces—American, British, and French in the west and Soviet in the east—were to bring about the end of Axis administration and organize free elections that would lead to democratic governments throughout Europe. To foster an attitude of mutual trust and end the suspicions that had marked relations between the capitalist world and the Soviet Union prior to World War II, Roosevelt tried to reassure Stalin that Moscow’s legitimate territorial aspirations

and genuine security needs would be adequately met in a durable peace settlement.

It was not to be. Within months after the German surrender, the mutual trust among the victorious allies—if it had ever existed—rapidly disintegrated, and the dream of a stable peace was replaced by the specter of a nuclear holocaust. As the Cold War conflict between Moscow and Washington intensified, Europe was divided into two armed camps, and the two superpowers, glaring at each other across a deep ideological divide, held the survival of the entire world in their hands.

C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G

Q How have historians answered the question ofwhether the United States or the Soviet Union bears the primary responsibility for the Cold War, and what evidence can be presented on each side of the issue?

The victorious Allied leaders at Yalta

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The Collapse of the Grand Alliance The problems started in Europe. At the end of the war, Soviet military forces occupied all of Eastern Europe and the Balkans (except for Greece, Albania, and Yugoslavia), while U.S. and other Allied forces completed their occupa- tion of the western part of the Continent. Roosevelt had

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hoped that free elections administered by “democratic and peace-loving forces” would lead to the creation of demo- cratic governments responsive to the aspirations of the local population. But it soon became clear that Moscow and Washington interpreted the Yalta agreement differ- ently. When Soviet occupation authorities began forming a new Polish government in Warsaw, Stalin refused to accept the Polish government in exile—headquartered in London during the war and consisting primarily of repre- sentatives of the landed aristocracy who harbored a deep distrust of the Soviets—and instead installed a govern- ment composed of Communists who had spent the war in Moscow. Roosevelt complained to Stalin but, preoccupied with other problems, eventually agreed to a compromise whereby two members of the exile government in London were included in the new Communist-dominated regime. A week later, Roosevelt was dead of a cerebral hemorrhage, leaving the challenge to a new U.S. presi- dent, Harry Truman (1884–1972), who lacked experience in foreign affairs.

The Iron Curtain Descends Similar developments took place elsewhere in Eastern Europe as all of the states occupied by Soviet troops became part of Moscow’s sphere of influence. Coalitions of all politi- cal parties (except fascist or right-wing parties) were formed to run the government, but within a year or two, the Com- munist Party in each coalition had assumed the lion’s share of power. The next step was the creation of one-party Com- munist governments. The timetables for these takeovers varied from country to country, but between 1945 and 1947, Communist governments became firmly entrenched in East Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, and Hungary. In Czechoslovakia, with its strong tradition of democratic institutions, the Communists did not achieve their goals until 1948. In the elections of 1946, the Communist Party be- came the largest party but was forced to share control of the government with non-Communist rivals. When it appeared that the latter might win new elections early in 1948, the Communists seized control of the government on February 25. All other parties were dissolved, and the Communist leader Klement Gottwald (1896–1953) became the new presi- dent of Czechoslovakia.

Yugoslavia was a notable ex- ception to the pattern of growing

Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe. The Communist Party there had led the resistance to the Nazis during the war and easily took over power when the war ended. Josip Broz, known as Tito (1892–1980), the leader of the Communist resistance movement, appeared to be a loyal Stalinist. After the war, however, he moved to establish an independent Communist state in Yugoslavia. Stalin had hoped to take control of Yugoslavia, just as he had done in other Eastern European countries. But Tito refused to capitulate to Stalin’s demands and gained the support of the people (and some sympathy in the West) by portray- ing the struggle as one of Yugoslav national freedom. In 1948, Stalin had Yugoslavia formally expelled from the Soviet bloc, and from that point, the country embarked on a neutralist policy in the Cold War. In 1958, the Yugo- slav party congress asserted that Yugoslav Communists did not see themselves as deviating from communism, only from Stalinism. They considered their more decen- tralized economic and political system, in which workers could manage themselves and local communes could exer- cise some political power, closer to the Marxist-Leninist ideal.

To Stalin (who had once boasted, “I will shake my lit- tle finger, and there will be no more Tito”), the creation of pliant pro-Soviet regimes throughout Eastern Europe to serve as a buffer zone against the capitalist West may simply have represented his interpretation of the Yalta peace agreement and a reward for sacrifices suffered during the war. Recent evidence suggests that Stalin did not decide to tighten Communist control over the new Eastern European governments until U.S. actions— notably the promulgation of the Marshall Plan (see “The Marshall Plan” below)—threatened to undermine Soviet authority in the region. If the Soviet leader had

any intention of promoting future Communist revolutions in Western Europe—and there is some indica- tion that he did—such develop- ments would have to await the appearance of a new capitalist crisis a decade or more into the future. As Stalin undoubtedly recalled, Lenin had always maintained that revolu- tions come in waves.

The Truman Doctrine and the Beginnings of Containment In the United States, the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe repre- sented an ominous development

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that threatened Roosevelt’s vision of a durable peace. Pub- lic suspicion of Soviet intentions grew rapidly, especially among the millions of Americans who still had relatives living in Eastern Europe. Winston Churchill was quick to put such fears into words. In a highly publicized speech given to an American audience at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, in March 1946, the former British prime minister declared that an “Iron Curtain” had “descended across the Continent,” dividing Germany and Europe itself into two hostile camps. Stalin responded by branding Churchill’s speech a “call to war with the Soviet Union.” But he need not have worried. Although public opinion in the United States placed increasing pressure on Washing- ton to devise an effective strategy to counter Soviet advan- ces abroad, the American people were in no mood for another war.

The first threat of a U.S.-Soviet confrontation took place in the Middle East. During World War II, British and Soviet troops had been stationed in Iran to prevent Axis occupation of the rich oil fields in that country. Both nations had promised to withdraw their forces after the war, but at the end of 1945, there were ominous signs that Moscow might attempt to use its troops as a bargain- ing chip to annex Iran’s northern territories—known as Azerbaijan—to the Soviet Union. When the government of Iran, with strong U.S. support, threatened to take the issue to the United Nations, the Soviets backed down and removed their forces from that country in the spring of 1946.

A civil war in Greece created another potential arena for confrontation between the superpowers and an oppor- tunity for the Truman administration to take a stand. Communist guerrilla forces supported by Tito, who hoped to create a Balkan federation under Yugoslav domi- nation, had taken up arms against the pro-Western gov- ernment in Athens. Great Britain had initially assumed primary responsibility for promoting postwar reconstruc- tion in the eastern Mediterranean, but in 1947, postwar economic problems caused the British to withdraw from the active role they had been playing in both Greece and Turkey. President Truman, alarmed by British weakness and the possibility of Soviet expansion into the eastern Mediterranean, responded with the Truman Doctrine, which said in essence that the United States would pro- vide financial aid to countries that claimed they were threatened by Communist expansion (see the box on p. 151). If the Soviets were not stopped in Greece, Tru- man declared, then the United States would have to face the spread of communism throughout the free world. As Dean Acheson, the American secretary of state, explained, “Like apples in a barrel infected by disease, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all the East . . . likewise

Africa . . . Italy . . . France. . . . Not since Rome and Carthage has there been such a polarization of power on this earth.”2

The U.S. suspicion that Moscow was actively support- ing the insurgent movement in Greece was inaccurate. Stalin was apparently unhappy that Tito was promoting the conflict, not only because he suspected that the latter was attempting to create his own sphere of influence in the Balkans but also because it risked provoking a direct confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States in an area that was clearly within the American sphere of influence. “The rebellion in Greece,” Stalin declared, “must be crushed.”3 The White House, how- ever, was ignorant of Stalin’s views.

THE MARSHALL PLAN The proclamation of the Truman Doctrine was soon followed in June 1947 by the European Recovery Program, better known as the Marshall Plan. Intended to rebuild prosperity and stability, this program included $13 billion for the economic recovery of war- torn Europe. Underlying the program was the belief that an economic revival would insulate the peoples of Europe from the appeal of international communism.

From the Soviet perspective, the Marshall Plan was nothing less than capitalist imperialism, a thinly veiled attempt to buy the support of the smaller European coun- tries, which in return would be expected to submit to eco- nomic exploitation by the United States. The White House indicated that the Marshall Plan was open to the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite states, but they refused to participate. The Soviets, however, were in no position to compete financially with the United States and could do little to counter the Marshall Plan except to tighten their control in Eastern Europe.

Europe Divided By 1947, the split in Europe between East and West had become a fact of life. At the end of World War II, the Truman administration had favored a quick end to its commitments in Europe, but fears of Soviet aims caused the United States to play an increasingly important role in European affairs. In an article in Foreign Affairs in July 1947, George Kennan, a well-known U.S. diplomat with much knowledge of Soviet affairs, advocated a policy of containment against further aggressive Soviet moves. Kennan favored the “adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy.” After the Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948, containment of the Soviet Union became formal U.S. policy.

150 CHAPTER 7 East and West in the Grip of the Cold War

The fate of Germany had become a source of heated contention between East and West. Aside from denazification and the partitioning of Germany (and Berlin) into four occupied zones, the Allied Powers had agreed on little with regard to the conquered nation. The Soviet Union, hardest hit by the war, took reparations from Germany in the form of booty. By the summer of 1946, nearly six hundred factories in the East German zone had been shipped to the Soviet Union. At the same time, the German Communist Party was reestablished under the control of Walter Ulbricht (1893–1973) and was soon in charge of the political reconstruction of the Soviet zone in eastern Germany.

THE BERLIN BLOCKADE Although the foreign ministers of the four occupying powers (the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France) kept meeting in an attempt to arrive at a final peace treaty with Germany, they grew further and further apart. In response, the Brit- ish, French, and Americans gradually began to merge their zones economically and by February 1948 were mak- ing plans for the formation of a national government. The Soviet Union responded with a blockade of West Berlin

that prevented all traffic from entering the city’s three western zones through Soviet-controlled territory in East Germany. The Soviets hoped to prevent the creation of a separate West German state, which threatened Stalin’s plan to create a reunified Germany that could eventually be placed under Soviet control.

The Western powers faced a dilemma. Direct military confrontation seemed dangerous, and no one wished to risk World War III. Therefore, an attempt to break through the blockade with tanks and trucks was ruled out. The so- lution was the Berlin Airlift: supplies for the city’s inhabi- tants were brought in by plane. At its peak, the airlift flew 13,000 tons of supplies daily into Berlin. The Soviets, who also wanted to avoid war, did not interfere and finally lifted the blockade in May 1949. But the blockade had severely increased tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union and confirmed the separation of Germany into two states. The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) was for- mally created from the three Western zones in September 1949, and a month later, the separate German Democratic Republic (GDR) was established in East Germany. Berlin remained a divided city and the source of much contention between East and West.

The Truman Doctrine By 1947, the battle lines in the Cold War had been clearly drawn. This excerpt is taken from a speech by President Harry Truman to the U.S. Congress in which he justified his request for aid to Greece and Turkey. Truman expressed the urgent need to contain the expansion of communism. Compare this statement with that of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev presented on p. 200.

Truman’s Speech to Congress, March 12, 1947 The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria. I must also state that in a number of other countries there have been similar developments.

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.

One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual

liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.

The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.

I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes. . . . I therefore ask the Congress for assistance to Greece and Turkey in the amount of $400,000,000.

How did President Truman defend his request for aid to Greece and Turkey? What role did this decision play in intensifying the Cold War?

SOURCE: U.S. Congress, Congressional Record, 80th Congress, 1st Session (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947), Vol. 93, p. 1981.

The Collapse of the Grand Alliance 151

NATO AND THE WARSAW PACT The search for secu- rity in the new world of the Cold War also led to the for- mation of military alliances. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed in April 1949 when Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France, Britain, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, and Iceland signed a treaty with the United States and Canada (see Map 7.1). All the powers agreed to provide mutual assistance if any one of them was attacked. A few years later, West Ger- many, Greece, and Turkey joined the alliance.

The Eastern European states soon followed suit. In 1949, they formed the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) for economic cooperation. Then, in 1955, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union organized a formal military alliance, the Warsaw Pact. Once again, Europe was tragically divided into hostile alliance systems.

WHO STARTED THE COLD WAR? There has been con- siderable historical debate over who bears responsibility

for starting the Cold War. In the 1950s, most scholars in the West assumed that the bulk of the blame must fall on the shoulders of Stalin, whose determination to impose Soviet rule on Eastern Europe snuffed out hopes for free- dom and self-determination there and aroused justifiable fears of Communist expansion in the West. During the next decade, however, revisionist historians—influenced in part by their hostility to aggressive U.S. policies in South- east Asia—began to argue that the fault lay primarily in Washington, where Truman and his anti-Communist advis- ers abandoned the precepts of Yalta and sought to encircle the Soviet Union with a tier of pliant U.S. client states. More recently, many historians have adopted a more nuanced view, noting that both the United States and the Soviet Union took some unwise steps that contributed to rising tensions at the end of World War II.

In fact, both nations were working within a framework conditioned by the past. The rivalry between the two superpowers ultimately stemmed from their different his- torical perspectives and their irreconcilable political

A City Divided. In 1948, U.S. planes airlifted supplies into Berlin to break the blockade that Soviet troops had imposed to isolate the city. Shown here is “Checkpoint Charlie” (a crossing point between the Western and Soviet zones of Berlin) just as Soviet roadblocks are about to be removed. The banner at the entrance to the Soviet sector reads, ironically, “The sector of freedom greets the fighters for freedom and right of the Western sectors.”

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152 CHAPTER 7 East and West in the Grip of the Cold War

ambitions. As we have seen, intense competition for polit- ical and military supremacy had long been a regular fea- ture of Western civilization. The United States and the Soviet Union were the heirs of that European tradition of power politics, and it should come as no surprise that two such different systems would seek to extend their way of life to the rest of the world. Because of its need to secure its western border, the Soviet Union was not prepared to give up the advantages it had gained in Eastern Europe

from Germany’s defeat. But neither were Western leaders prepared to accept without protest the establishment of a system of Soviet satellites that not only threatened the security of Western Europe but also deeply offended Western sensibilities because of its blatant disregard of their concept of human rights.

This does not necessarily mean that both sides bear equal responsibility for starting the Cold War. Some revi- sionist historians have claimed that the U.S. doctrine of

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MAP 7.1 The New European Alliance Systems During the Cold War. This map shows postwar Europe as it was divided during the Cold War into two contending power blocs, the NATO alliance and the Warsaw Pact. Major military and naval bases are indicated by symbols on the map.

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The Collapse of the Grand Alliance 153

containment was a provocative action that aroused Stalin’s suspicions and drove him into a position of hostility to- ward the West. This charge lacks credibility. Although it is understandable that the Soviets were concerned that the United States might use its monopoly of nuclear weapons to attempt to intimidate them, information now available from the Soviet archives and other sources makes it increasingly clear that Stalin’s suspicions of the West were rooted in his Marxist-Leninist worldview and long predated Washington’s enunciation of the doctrine of containment. As his foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molo- tov, once remarked, Soviet policy was inherently aggres- sive and would be triggered whenever the opportunity offered. Although Stalin apparently had no master plan to advance Soviet power into Western Europe, he was prob- ably prepared to make every effort to do so once the next revolutionary wave arrived. Western leaders were fully justified in reacting to this possibility by strengthening their own lines of defense. On the other hand, a case can be made that in deciding to respond to the Soviet chal- lenge in a primarily military manner, Western leaders overreacted to the situation and virtually guaranteed that the Cold War would be transformed into an arms race that could conceivably result in a new and uniquely de- structive war. George Kennan, the original architect of the doctrine of containment, had initially proposed a primarily political approach and eventually disavowed the means by which the containment strategy was carried out.

Cold War in Asia The Cold War was somewhat slower to make its appear- ance in Asia. At Yalta, Stalin formally agreed to enter the Pacific war against Japan three months after the close of the conflict with Germany. As a reward for Soviet partici- pation in the struggle against Japan, Roosevelt promised that Moscow would be granted “preeminent interests” in Manchuria (interests reminiscent of those possessed by Imperial Russia prior to its defeat by Japan in 1904–1905) and the establishment of a Soviet naval base at Port Arthur. In return, Stalin promised to sign a treaty of alli- ance with the Republic of China, thus implicitly commit- ting the Soviet Union not to provide the Chinese Communists with support in a possible future civil war. Although many observers would later question Stalin’s sincerity in making such a commitment to the vocally anti-Communist Chiang Kai-shek, in Moscow the decision probably had a logic of its own. Stalin had no particular liking for the independent-minded Mao Zedong (he once derisively labeled the Chinese leader a “radish Commu- nist”—red on the outside and white on the inside) and did

not anticipate a Communist victory in the eventuality of a civil war in China. Only an agreement with Chiang Kai- shek could provide the Soviet Union with a strategically vital economic and political presence in North China.

In the course of events, these agreements soon became a dead letter, and the region was sucked into the vortex of the Cold War by the end of the decade. The root of the problem lay not in the agreement at Yalta, but in the underlying weakness of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime, which threatened to create a political vacuum in East Asia that both Moscow and Washington would be tempted to fill.

The Chinese Civil War As World War II came to an end in the Pacific, relations between the government of Chiang Kai-shek in China and its powerful U.S. ally had become frayed. Although Roosevelt had hoped that China would be the keystone of his plan for peace and stability in Asia after the war, he eventually became disillusioned with the corruption of Chiang’s government and his unwillingness to risk his forces against the Japanese (Chiang hoped to save them for use against the Communists after the war in the Pacific ended), and China became a backwater as the war came to a close. Nevertheless, U.S. military and economic aid to China had been substantial, and at war’s end, the Truman administration still hoped that it could rely on Chiang to support U.S. postwar goals in the region.

While Chiang Kai-shek wrestled with Japanese aggres- sion and problems of postwar reconstruction, the Com- munists were building up their liberated base in North China. An alliance with Chiang in December 1936 had relieved them from the threat of immediate attack from the south, although Chiang was chronically suspicious of the Communists and stationed troops near Xian to prevent them from infiltrating areas under his control.

He had good reason to fear for the future. During the war, the Communists patiently penetrated Japanese lines and built up their strength in North China. To enlarge their political base, they carried out a “mass line” policy designed to win broad popular support by reducing land rents and confiscating the lands of wealthy landlords. By the end of World War II, according to Communist esti- mates, 20 to 30 million Chinese were living under their administration, and their People’s Liberation Army (PLA) included nearly one million troops.

As the war came to an end, world attention began to focus on the prospects for renewed civil strife in China. Members of a U.S. liaison team stationed in Yan’an during the last months of the war were impressed by the per- formance of the Communists, and some recommended that the United States should support them or at least

154 CHAPTER 7 East and West in the Grip of the Cold War

remain neutral in a possible conflict between Communists and Nationalists for control of China. The Truman admin- istration, though skeptical of Chiang’s ability to forge a strong and prosperous country, was increasingly con- cerned about the spread of communism in Europe and tried to find a peaceful solution through the formation of a coalition government of all parties in China.

THE COMMUNIST TRIUMPH The effort failed. By 1946, full-scale war between the Nationalist government, now reinstalled in Nanjing, and the Communists resumed. Ini- tially, most of the fighting took place in Manchuria, where newly arrived Communist units began to surround Nation- alist forces occupying the major cities. Now Chiang Kai- shek’s errors came home to roost. In the countryside, millions of peasants, attracted to the Communists by prom- ises of land and social justice, flocked to serve in Mao Zedong’s PLA. In the cities, middle-class Chinese, normally hostile to communism, were alienated by Chiang’s brutal suppression of all dissent and his government’s inability to slow the ruinous rate of inflation or solve the economic problems it caused. By the end of 1947, almost all of Manchuria was under Communist control.

The Truman administration reacted to the spread of Communist power in China with acute discomfort. Washington had no desire to see a Communist government on the mainland, but it had little confi- dence in Chiang Kai-shek’s ability to realize Roosevelt’s dream of a strong, united, and prosperous China. In December 1945, President Truman sent General George C. Marshall to China in a last-ditch effort to bring about a peaceful settlement, but anti- Communist elements in the Republic of China resisted U.S. pressure to create a coalition government with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). During the next two years, the United States gave limited military support to Chiang’s regime but refused to commit U.S. power to guarantee its survival. The administration’s hands-off policy deeply angered many members of Congress, who charged that the White House was “soft on communism” and called for increased military assistance to the Nationalist government.

With morale dropping in the cities, Chiang’s troops began to defect to the Communists. Sometimes whole divisions, officers as well as ordinary soldiers, changed sides. By 1948, the PLA was advancing

south out of Manchuria and had encircled Beijing. Commu- nist troops took the old imperial capital, crossed the Yang- tze the following spring, and occupied the commercial hub of Shanghai (see Map 7.2). During the next few months, Chiang’s government and 2 million of his followers fled to Taiwan, which the Japanese had returned to Chinese control after World War II.

With the Communist victory in China, Asia became a major theater of the Cold War and an integral element in American politics. In a white paper issued by the State Department in the fall of 1949, the Truman administra- tion placed most of the blame for the debacle on Chiang Kai-shek’s regime. Republicans in Congress, however, dis- agreed, arguing that Roosevelt had betrayed Chiang Kai- shek at Yalta by granting privileges in Manchuria to the Soviet Union. In their view, Soviet troops had hindered the dispatch of Nationalist forces to the area and provided the PLA with weapons to use against their rivals.

In later years, sources in Moscow and Beijing made clear that in actuality the Soviet Union gave little assistance to the CCP in its postwar struggle against the Nanjing regime. In fact, Stalin—likely concerned at the prospect of a

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Where did Chiang Kai-shek’s government retreat to after its defeat?

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Cold War in Asia 155

military confrontation with the United States—advised Mao against undertaking the effort. Although Communist forces undoubtedly received some assistance from Soviet occupa- tion troops in Manchuria, their victory ultimately stemmed from conditions inside China. Nevertheless, the White House was forced to respond to its critics. During the spring of 1950, under pressure from Congress and public opinion to define U.S. interests in Asia, the Truman admin- istration adopted a new national security policy that implied that the United States would take whatever steps were necessary to stem the further expansion of commu- nism in the region. Containment had come to East Asia.

The New China In their new capital at Beijing, China’s Communist leaders hoped that their accession to power in 1949 would bring about an era of peace in the region and permit their new government to concentrate on domestic goals. But the desire for peace was tempered by their determination to

erase a century of humiliation at the hands of imperialist powers and to restore the traditional outer frontiers of the empire. In addition to recovering territories that had been part of the Manchu Empire, such as Manchuria, Taiwan, and Tibet, the Chinese leaders also hoped to restore Chinese influence in former tributary areas such as Korea and Vietnam.

It soon became clear that these two goals were not always compatible. Negotiations between Mao Zedong and Stalin held in Moscow in early 1950 were tense (see “The Sino-Soviet Dispute” below), but led to the signing of a mutual security treaty and Soviet recognition of Chinese sovereignty over Manchuria and Xinjiang (the desolate lands north of Tibet known as Chinese Turkestan because many of the peoples in the area were of Turkish origin), although the Soviets retained a measure of economic influ- ence in both areas. Chinese troops occupied Tibet in 1950 and brought it under Chinese administration for the first time in more than a century. But in Korea and Taiwan, China’s efforts to re-create the imperial buffer zone threat-

ened to provoke new conflicts with foreign powers. The problem of Taiwan was a consequence of the

Cold War. As the civil war in China came to an end, the Truman administration appeared determined to avoid entanglement in China’s internal affairs and indi- cated that it would not seek to prevent a Communist takeover of the island, now occupied by Chiang Kai- shek’s Republic of China. But as tensions between the United States and the new Chinese government esca- lated during the winter of 1949–1950, influential figures in the United States began to argue that Taiwan was crucial to U.S. defense strategy in the Pacific.

The Korean War The outbreak of war in Korea also helped bring the Cold War to East Asia. As we saw in Chapter 3, Korea, long a Chinese tributary, became part of the Japanese empire in 1908 and remained there until 1945. The re- moval of Korea from Japanese control had been one of the stated objectives of the Allies in World War II, and on the eve of the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the Soviet Union and the United States agreed to divide the country into two separate occupation zones at the 38th parallel. They originally planned to hold national elections after the restoration of peace to reunify Korea under an independent government. But as U.S.-Soviet relations deteriorated, two separate gov- ernments emerged in Korea, a Communist one in the north and an anti-Communist one in the south.

Tensions between the two governments ran high along the dividing line, and Kim Il-sung (1912–1994),

A Pledge of Eternal Cooperation. After the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war, in 1950 Chairman Mao Zedong traveled to Moscow, where he negotiated a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union. The poster shown here trumpets the results of the meeting: “Long live and strengthen the unbreakable friendship and cooperation of the Soviet and Chinese peoples!” The two leaders, however, did not get along. Mao reportedly complained to colleagues that obtaining assistance from Stalin was “like taking meat from a tiger’s mouth.”

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156 CHAPTER 7 East and West in the Grip of the Cold War

the Communist leader in the north, asked Moscow to sup- port his plan to unify the peninsula under his control. Sta- lin, however, was still unwilling to confront the United States: “If you should get kicked in the teeth,” he replied, “I shall not lift a finger. You have to ask Mao for all the help.”4

Kim, convinced that the United States lacked the stom- ach for a new war on the Asian mainland, was not deterred, and on June 25, 1950, North Korean troops invaded the south. The Truman administration, increas- ingly concerned about Communist intentions in Asia, immediately ordered U.S. naval and air forces to support South Korea, and the United Nations Security Council (with the Soviet delegate absent to protest the failure of the UN to assign China’s seat to the new government in Beijing) passed a resolution calling on member nations to jointly resist the invasion in line with the security provi- sions in the United Nations Charter. By September, UN forces under the command of U.S. General Douglas MacArthur marched northward across the 38th parallel with the aim of unifying Korea under a single non- Communist government.

President Truman worried that by approaching the Chinese border at the Yalu River, the UN troops—the majority of whom were from the United States—could trigger Chinese intervention, but MacArthur assured him that China would not respond. In November, how- ever, Chinese “volunteer” forces intervened on the side of North Korea and drove the UN troops southward in dis- array. A static defense line was eventually established near the original dividing line at the 38th parallel, although the war continued.

To many Americans, the Chinese intervention in Korea was clear evidence that Beijing intended to pro- mote communism throughout Asia. Immediately after the invasion, Presi- dent Truman dispatched the U.S. Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait to prevent a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Recent evidence does suggest that Mao Zedong argued to his colleagues that they should not fear a confrontation with the United States on the Korean peninsula. But China’s decision to enter the war was probably also motivated by the fear that hostile U.S. forces might be stationed on the Chinese frontier and perhaps even launch an attack across the border. MacArthur intensified such fears by calling publicly for air attacks, possibly including nuclear

weapons, on Manchurian cities in preparation for an attack on Communist China.

Conflict in Indochina A cease-fire agreement brought the hostilities in Korea to an end in July 1953, and China signaled its desire to live in peaceful coexistence with other independent countries in the region. But now a conflict on Beijing’s southern flank began to intensify. The struggle had begun after Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II, when the Indochinese Communist Party led by Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969), at the head of a multiparty nationalist alli- ance called the Vietminh Front, seized power in northern and central Vietnam. After abortive negotiations between Ho’s government and the French over a proposed “free state” of Vietnam under French tutelage, war broke out in December 1946. French forces occupied the cities and the densely populated lowlands, while the Vietminh took refuge in the mountains.

For three years, the Vietminh waged a “people’s war” of national liberation from colonial rule, gradually increas- ing in size and effectiveness. At the time, however, the conflict in Indochina attracted relatively little attention from world leaders. The Truman administration was uneasy about Ho’s long-standing credentials as a Soviet agent but was equally reluctant to anger anticolonialist elements in the region by intervening on behalf of the French. Moscow had even less interest in the issue. Sta- lin—still hoping to see the Communist Party come to power in Paris—ignored Ho’s request for recognition of his movement as the legitimate representative of the national interests of the Vietnamese people.

But what had begun as an anticolonial struggle by the Vietminh Front against the French became entangled in the Cold War af- ter the CCP came to power in China. In early 1950, Beijing began to provide military assistance to the Vietminh to burnish its revolutionary credentials and protect its own borders from hos- tile forces. The Truman administra- tion, increasingly concerned that a revolutionary “red tide” was sweeping through the region, decided to provide financial and technical assistance to the French, while pressuring them to pre- pare for an eventual transition to independent non-Communist govern- ments in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambo- dia. With casualties mounting and the French public tired of fighting the

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Cold War in Asia 157

seemingly endless “dirty war” in Indochina, the French agreed to a peace settlement with the Vietminh at the Geneva Conference in 1954. Vietnam was temporarily divided into a northern Communist half (known as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam or DRV) and a non- Communist southern half based in Saigon (eventually to be known as the Republic of Vietnam). Elections were to be held in two years to cre- ate a unified government. Cambodia and Laos were both declared independent under neutral govern- ments. French forces, which had suf- fered a major defeat at the hands of Vietminh troops at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in the spring of 1954, were withdrawn from all three countries.

China had played an active role in bringing about the agreement and clearly hoped that a settlement would lead to a reduction of tensions in the area, but subsequent efforts to im- prove relations between China and the United States foun- dered on the issue of Taiwan. In the fall of 1954, the United States signed a mutual security treaty with the Republic of China guaranteeing U.S. military support in case of an inva- sion of Taiwan. When Beijing demanded U.S. withdrawal from Taiwan as the price for improved relations, diplomatic talks between the two countries collapsed.

From Confrontation to Coexistence The 1950s opened with the world teetering on the edge of a nuclear holocaust. The Soviet Union had detonated its first nuclear device in 1949, and the two blocs—capital- ist and socialist—viewed each other across an ideological divide that grew increasingly bitter with each passing year. Yet as the decade drew to a close, a measure of san- ity crept into the Cold War, and the leaders of the major world powers began to seek ways to coexist in an increas- ingly unstable world (see Map 7.3).

Khrushchev and the Era of Peaceful Coexistence The first clear sign of change occurred after Stalin’s death in early 1953. His successor, Georgy Malenkov

(1902–1988), hoped to improve rela- tions with the Western powers so that he could reduce defense expenditures and shift government spending to growing consumer needs. During his campaign to replace Malenkov two years later, Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) appealed to powerful pressure groups in the party Politburo (the governing body of the Commu- nist Party of the Soviet Union) by call- ing for higher defense expenditures, but once in power, he resumed his predecessor’s efforts to reduce ten- sions with the West and improve the living standards of the Soviet people.

In an adroit public relations touch, Khrushchev publicized Moscow’s ap- peal for a new policy of peaceful coexistence with the West. In 1955, he surprisingly agreed to negotiate an end to the postwar occupation of Austria by the victorious Allies and allow the creation of a neutral coun- try with strong cultural and economic

ties with the West. He also called for a reduction in defense expenditures and reduced the size of the Soviet armed forces.

At first, Washington was suspicious of Khrushchev’s motives, especially after the Soviet crackdown in Hungary in the fall of 1956 (see Chapter 9), an event that sharply increased Cold War tensions on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

THE BERLIN CRISIS A new crisis over Berlin added to the tension. The Soviets had launched their first intercon- tinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in August 1957, arousing U.S. fears—-fueled by a partisan political debate—of a “missile gap” between the United States and the Soviet Union. Khrushchev attempted to take advantage of the U.S. frenzy over missiles to solve the problem of West Berlin, which had remained an island of prosperity inside the relatively poverty-stricken state of East Germany (the GDR). Many East Germans sought to escape to West Germany by fleeing through West Berlin—a serious blot on the credibility of the GDR and a potential source of instability in East-West relations. In November 1958, Khrushchev announced that unless the West removed its forces from West Berlin within six months, he would turn over control of the access routes to the East Ger- mans. Unwilling to accept an ultimatum that would have abandoned West Berlin to the Communists, President

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Eisenhower and the West stood firm, and Khrushchev eventually backed down.

THE SPIRIT OF CAMP DAVID Despite such periodic cri- ses in East-West relations, there were tantalizing signs that an era of true peaceful coexistence between the two power blocs could be achieved. In the late 1950s, the United States and the Soviet Union initiated a cultural exchange program to enable the peoples of the two blocs to become ac- quainted with each other’s way of life (see the illustration on p. 147). While Leningrad’s Kirov Ballet appeared at the- aters in the United States, Benny Goodman and the film of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story played in Moscow. In 1958, Nikita Khrushchev visited the United States and had a brief but friendly encounter with President Eisenhower at Camp David, the presidential retreat in northern Maryland. Predictions of improved future relations led reporters to laud “the spirit of Camp David.”

Yet Khrushchev could rarely avoid the temptation to gain an advantage over the United States in the competi- tion for influence throughout the world, and this resulted in an unstable relationship that prevented a lasting accom- modation between the two superpowers. West Berlin was an area of persistent tension (a boil on the foot of the United States, Khrushchev derisively termed it), and in January 1961, just as newly elected president John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) took office, Moscow threatened once again to turn over responsibility for the access routes to the East German government.

Moscow also took every opportunity to promote its interests in the Third World, as the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America were now popularly called. Unlike Stalin, Khrushchev viewed the dismantling of colonial regimes in the area as a potential advantage for the Soviet Union and sought especially to exploit anti- American sentiment in Latin America. When neutralist

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MAP 7.3 The Global Cold War. This map shows the location of the major military bases and missile sites maintained by the contending power blocs at the height of the Cold War.

Which continents were the most heavily armed?

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leaders like Nehru in India, Tito in Yugoslavia, and Sukarno in Indonesia founded the Nonaligned Movement in 1955 as a means of providing an alternative to the two major power blocs, Khrushchev openly sought alliances with strategically important neutralist countries like India, Indonesia, Cuba, and Egypt at a time when Washington’s ability to influence events at the United Nations had begun to wane.

In January 1961, just as Kennedy assumed the presi- dency, Khrushchev unnerved the new president at an informal summit meeting in Vienna by declaring that Moscow would provide active support to national libera- tion movements throughout the world. Increasingly, Washington was becoming concerned about Soviet med- dling in such sensitive trouble spots as Southeast Asia, Central Africa, and the Caribbean.

The Cuban Missile Crisis The Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union reached frightening levels during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1959, a left-wing revo- lutionary named Fidel Castro (b. 1926) overthrew the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and established a Soviet- supported totalitarian regime. As tensions increased between the new government in Havana and the United States, the Eisenhower administration broke relations with Cuba and drafted plans to overthrow Castro, who reacted by drawing closer to Moscow.

Soon after taking office in early 1961, Kennedy approved a plan to support an invasion of Cuba by anti- Castro exiles. But the attempt to land in the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba was an utter failure. At Castro’s request, the Soviet Union then decided to place nuclear missiles in Cuba. The Kennedy administration was not prepared to allow nuclear weapons within striking distance of the American mainland, although the United States had placed nuclear weapons in Turkey within easy range of the Soviet Union, a fact that Khrushchev was quick to point out. In October 1962, when U.S. intelligence discov- ered that a Soviet fleet carrying missiles was heading to Cuba, Kennedy decided to dispatch U.S. warships into the Atlantic to prevent the fleet from reaching its destination (see the Film & History feature on p. 161).

This approach to the problem was risky but had the benefit of delaying confrontation and giving the two sides time to find a peaceful solution. After a tense standoff dur- ing which the two countries came frighteningly close to a direct nuclear confrontation (the Soviet missiles already in Cuba, it turned out, were operational), Khrushchev finally sent a conciliatory letter to Kennedy agreeing to turn back the fleet if Kennedy pledged not to invade Cuba. In a

secret concession not revealed until many years later, the president also promised to dismantle U.S. missiles in Tur- key. To the world, however (and to an angry Castro), it appeared that Kennedy had bested Khrushchev. “We were eyeball to eyeball,” noted U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “and they blinked.”

The realization that the world might have been annihi- lated in a matter of days had a profound effect on both sides. A communication hotline between Moscow and Washington was installed in 1963 to expedite rapid com- munication between the two superpowers in time of cri- sis. In the same year, the two powers agreed to ban nuclear tests in the atmosphere, a step that served to lessen the tensions between the two nations.

The Sino-Soviet Dispute Nikita Khrushchev had launched his slogan of peaceful coexistence as a means of improving relations with the capitalist powers; ironically, one result of the campaign was to undermine Moscow’s ties with its close ally China. During Stalin’s lifetime, Beijing had accepted the Soviet Union as the official leader of the socialist camp. After Sta- lin’s death, however, relations began to deteriorate. Part of the reason may have been Mao Zedong’s contention that he, as the most experienced Marxist leader, should now be acknowledged as the most authoritative voice within the socialist community. But another determining factor was that just as Soviet policies were moving toward moderation, China’s were becoming more radical.

Several other issues were involved, including territorial disputes and China’s unhappiness with limited Soviet eco- nomic assistance. But the key sources of disagreement involved ideology and the Cold War. Chinese leaders were convinced that the successes of the Soviet space pro- gram confirmed that the socialists were now technologi- cally superior to the capitalists (the East Wind, trumpeted the Chinese official press, had now triumphed over the West Wind), and they urged Khrushchev to go on the of- fensive to promote world revolution. Specifically, China wanted Soviet assistance in retaking Taiwan from Chiang Kai-shek. But Khrushchev was trying to improve relations with the West and rejected Chinese demands for support against Taiwan (see the box on p. 162).

By the end of the 1950s, the Soviet Union had begun to remove its advisers from China, and in 1961, the dis- pute broke into the open. Increasingly isolated, China voiced its hostility to what Mao described as the “urban industrialized countries” (which included the Soviet Union) and portrayed itself as the leader of the “rural under- developed countries” of Asia, Africa, and Latin America in a global struggle against imperialist oppression. In effect,

160 CHAPTER 7 East and West in the Grip of the Cold War

China had applied Mao’s famous concept of people’s war in an international framework.

The Second Indochina War The Eisenhower administration had opposed the peace settlement at Geneva in 1954, which divided Vietnam temporarily into two separate regroupment zones, specifi- cally because the provision for future national elections opened up the possibility of placing the entire country under Communist rule. But President Eisenhower had been unwilling to introduce U.S. military forces to con- tinue the conflict without the full support of the British

and the French, who preferred to seek a negotiated settle- ment. In the end, Washington promised not to break the provisions of the agreement but refused to commit itself to the results.

During the next several months, the United States began to provide aid to a new government in South Viet- nam. Under the leadership of the anti-Communist politi- cian Ngo Dinh Diem (1901–1963), the Saigon regime began to root out dissidents while refusing to hold the national elections called for by the Geneva Accords. It was widely anticipated, even in Washington, that the Communists would win such elections. In 1959, Ho Chi Minh, despairing of the peaceful unification of the country

FILM & HISTORY

The Missiles of October (1973) Never has the world been closer to nuclear holocaust than in October 1962, when U.S. and Soviet leaders found themselves in a direct confrontation over Nikita Khrushchev’s decision to install Soviet missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles from the coast of the United States. When President John F. Kennedy announced that U.S. warships would intercept Soviet freighters bound for Cuban ports, the two countries teetered on the verge of war. Only after protracted and delicate negotiations was the threat defused. The confrontation sobered leaders on both sides of the Iron Curtain and led to the signing of the first test ban treaty and the opening of a hotline between Moscow and Washington.

The Missiles of October, a made-for-TV film produced in 1973, is a tense political drama that is all the more riveting because it is based on fact. Although it is less well known than the more recent Thirteen Days, released in 2000, it is more persuasive in many ways, and the acting is demonstrably superior. The film stars William Devane as John F. Kennedy and Martin

Sheen as his younger brother Robert. Based in part on Robert Kennedy’s book Thirteen Days (New York, 1969), a personal account of the crisis that was published shortly after his assassination in 1968, the film traces the tense discussions that took place in the White House as the president’s key advisers debated how to respond to the Soviet challenge. President

Kennedy remains cool as he reins in his more bellicose advisers to bring about a compromise solution that successfully avoids the seemingly virtual certainty of a nuclear confrontation with Moscow.

Because the film is based on the recollections of Robert Kennedy, it presents a favorable portrait of his brother’s handling of the crisis, as might be expected, and the somewhat triumphalist attitude at the end of the film is perhaps a bit exaggerated. But Khrushchev’s colleagues in the Kremlin and his Cuban ally, Fidel Castro, viewed the U.S.-Soviet agreement as a humiliation for Moscow that nevertheless set the two global superpowers on the road to a more durable and peaceful relationship. It was one Cold War story that had a happy ending. nJohn Kennedy (William Devane, seated) and Robert

Kennedy (Martin Sheen) confer with advisers.

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under Communist rule, returned to a policy of revolution- ary war in the south. Late in the following year, a broad political organization that was designed to win the sup- port of a wide spectrum of the population was founded in an isolated part of South Vietnam. Known as the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, or NLF, it was under the firm leadership of Communist leaders in North Viet- nam (see the box on p. 163).

By 1963, South Vietnam was on the verge of collapse. Diem’s autocratic methods and inattention to severe eco- nomic inequality had alienated much of the population, and NLF armed forces, popularly known as the Viet Cong (Vietnamese Communists), had expanded their

influence throughout much of the country. In the fall of 1963, with the approval of the Kennedy administra- tion, South Vietnamese military officers overthrew the Diem regime. But factionalism kept the new military leadership from reinvigorating the struggle against the insurgent forces, and by early 1965, the Viet Cong, their ranks now swelled by military units infiltrating from North Vietnam, were on the verge of seizing control of the entire country. In desperation, President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) decided to launch bombing raids on the north and send U.S. combat troops to South Vietnam to prevent a total defeat for the anti-Communist govern- ment in Saigon.

A Plea for Peaceful Coexistence The Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin had contended that war between the socialist and imperialist camps was inevitable because the imperialists would never give up without a fight. That assumption had probably guided the thoughts of Joseph Stalin, who told colleagues shortly after World War II that a new war would break out in fifteen to twenty years. But Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, feared that a new world conflict could result in a nuclear holocaust and contended that the two sides must learn to coexist, although peaceful competition would continue. In this speech given in Beijing in 1959, Khrushchev attempted to persuade the Chinese to accept his views. But Chinese leaders argued that the “imperialist nature” of the United States would never change and warned that they would not accept any peace agreement in which they had no part.

Khrushchev’s Speech to the Chinese, 1959 Comrades! Socialism brings to the people peace—that greatest blessing. The greater the strength of the camp of socialism grows, the greater will be its possibilities for successfully defending the cause of peace on this earth. The forces of socialism are already so great that real possibilities are being created for excluding war as a means of solving international disputes. . . .

When I spoke with President Eisenhower—and I have just returned from the United States of America—I got the impression that the President of the U.S.A.—and not a few people support him—understands the need to relax international tension. . . .

There is only one way of preserving peace—that is the road of peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems. The question stands thus: either peaceful

coexistence or war with its catastrophic consequences. Now, with the present relation of forces between socialism and capitalism being in favor of socialism, he who would continue the “cold war” is moving toward his own destruction. . . .

Already in the first years of the Soviet power the great Lenin defined the general line of our foreign policy as being directed toward the peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems. For a long time, the ruling circles of the Western Powers rejected these truly humane principles. Nevertheless the principles of peaceful coexistence made their way into the hearts of the vast majority of mankind. . . .

It is not at all because capitalism is still strong that the socialist countries speak out against war, and for peaceful coexistence. No, we have no need of war at all. If the people do not want it, even such a noble and progressive system as socialism cannot be imposed by force of arms. The socialist countries therefore, while carrying through a consistently peace-loving policy, concentrate their efforts on peaceful construction; they fire the hearts of men by the force of their example in building socialism, and thus lead them to follow in their footsteps. The question of when this or that country will take the path to socialism is decided by its own people. This, for us, is the holy of holies.

Why did Nikita Khrushchev feel that the conflict between the socialist and the capitalist camps that Lenin had predicted was no longer inevitable?

SOURCE: From G. F. Hudson et al., eds., The Sino-Soviet Dispute (New York: Frederick Praeger, 1961), pp. 61–63, cited in Peking Review, no. 40, 1959.

162 CHAPTER 7 East and West in the Grip of the Cold War

OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS

Confrontation in Southeast Asia

In December 1960, the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF) was born. Composed of political and social leaders opposed to the anti-Communist government, it operated under the direction of the Communist regime in North Vietnam and served as the formal representative of revolutionary forces in the south throughout the remainder of the Vietnam War. When, in the spring of 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson began to dispatch U.S. combat troops to Vietnam to prevent a Communist victory there, the NLF issued the declaration presented below. The second selection is from a speech that Johnson gave at Johns Hopkins University in April 1965 in response to the NLF.

Statement of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (1965) American imperialist aggression against South Vietnam and interference in its internal affairs have now continued for more than ten years. More American troops and supplies, including missile units, Marines, B-57 strategic bombers, and mercenaries from South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia, Malaysia, etc., have been brought to South Vietnam. . . .

The Saigon puppet regime, paid servant of the United States, is guilty of the most heinous crimes. These despicable traitors, these boot-lickers of American imperialism, have brought the enemy into our country. They have brought to South Vietnam armed forces of the United States and its satellites to kill our compatriots, occupy and ravage our sacred soil and enslave our people.

The Vietnamese, the peoples of all Indo-China and Southeast Asia, supporters of peace and justice in every part of the world, have raised their voice in angry protest against this criminal unprovoked aggression of the United States imperialists.

In the present extremely grave situation, the South Vietnam National Liberation Front considers it necessary to proclaim anew its firm and unswerving determination to resist the U.S. imperialists and fight for the salvation of our country. . . . [It] will continue to rely chiefly on its own forces and potentialities, but it is prepared to accept any assistance, moral and material, including arms and other military equipment, from all the socialist countries, from nationalist countries, from international organizations, and from the peace-loving peoples of the world.

Lyndon B. Johnson, “Peace Without Conquest” The world as it is in Asia is not a serene or peaceful place.

The first reality is that North Viet-Nam has attacked the independent nation of South Viet-Nam. Its object is total conquest.

Of course, some of the people of South Viet-Nam are participating in attack on their own government. But trained men and supplies, orders and arms, flow in a constant stream from north to south.

This support is the heartbeat of the war. And it is a war of unparalleled brutality. Simple

farmers are the targets of assassination and kidnapping. Women and children are strangled in the night because their men are loyal to their government. And helpless villages are ravaged by sneak attacks. Large-scale raids are conducted on towns, and terror strikes in the heart of cities. . . .

Why are these realities our concern? Why are we in South Viet-Nam?

We are there because we have a promise to keep. Since 1954 every American President has offered support to the people of South Viet-Nam. We have helped to build, and we have helped to defend. Thus, over many years, we have made a national pledge to help South Viet-Nam defend its independence.

Our objective is the independence of South Viet-Nam, and its freedom from attack. We want nothing for ourselves—only that the people of South Viet-Nam be allowed to guide their own country in their own way.

We will do everything necessary to reach that objective. And we will do only what is absolutely necessary.

How did the NLF justify its claim to represent the legitimate aspirations of the people of South Vietnam? What was President Johnson’s counterargument?

SOURCES: “Statement of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam,” New Times (March 27, 1965), pp. 36–40. Source for Johnson’s speech: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965. Volume I, entry 172, pp. 394–399. Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1966.

From Confrontation to Coexistence 163

Hanoi responded to U.S. escalation by infiltrating more of its own regular force troops into the south, and by 1968, the war was a virtual stalemate. The Communists were not strong enough to overthrow the Saigon regime, whose weakness was shielded by the presence of half a million U.S. troops, but President Johnson was reluctant to engage in all-out war on North Vietnam for fear of provoking a global nuclear conflict. In the fall, after the Communist-led Tet offensive shook the fragile stability of the Saigon regime and aroused heightened antiwar protests in the United States, peace negotiations began in Paris.

THE ROAD TO PEACE Richard Nixon (1913–1994) came into the White House in 1969 on a pledge to bring an hon- orable end to the Vietnam War. With U.S. public opinion sharply divided on the issue, he began to withdraw U.S. troops while continuing to hold peace talks in Paris. But the centerpiece of his strategy was to improve relations with China and thus undercut Beijing’s limited support for the North Vietnamese war effort. During the 1960s,

relations between Moscow and Beijing had reached a point of extreme tension, and thousands of troops were stationed on both sides of their long common frontier. To intimidate their Communist rivals, Soviet sources dropped the hint that they might decide to launch a preemptive strike to destroy Chinese nuclear facilities in Xinjiang. Sensing an opportunity to split the onetime allies, Nixon sent his emis- sary Henry Kissinger on a secret trip to China. Responding to the latter’s assurances that the United States was deter- mined to withdraw from Indochina and hoped to improve relations with the mainland regime, Chinese leaders invited President Nixon to visit China in early 1972.

Incensed at the apparent betrayal by their close allies, in January 1973 North Vietnamese leaders signed a peace treaty in Paris calling for the removal of all U.S. forces from South Vietnam. In return, the Communists agreed to seek a political settlement of their differences with the Saigon regime. But negotiations between north and south over the political settlement soon broke down, and in early 1975, convinced that Washington would not intervene, the

War in the Rice Paddies. The first stage of the Vietnam War consisted primarily of guerrilla conflict, as Viet Cong insurgents relied on guerrilla tactics to bring down the U.S.-supported government in Saigon. In 1965, however, in a desperate bid to prevent a Communist victory, President Lyndon Johnson ordered U.S. combat troops into South Vietnam, as shown here. Although U.S. military commanders believed that helicopters would be a key factor in defeating the insurgent forces in Vietnam, this was one instance when technological superiority did not produce a victory on the battlefied.

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Communists resumed the offensive. At the end of April, under a massive assault by North Vietnamese military forces, the South Vietnamese government surrendered. A year later, the country was unified under Communist rule.

Why had the United States lost the Vietnam War? Many Americans argued that by not taking the war directly to North Vietnam, the White House had forced the U.S. armed forces to fight “with one hand tied behind their backs.” Others retorted that the United States should not have gotten involved in a struggle for national libera- tion in the first place. Many years later, Dean Rusk, who had been secretary of state during the 1960s, declared that U.S. political leaders had underestimated the determina- tion of the enemy and overestimated the patience of the American people. Perhaps, too, they had overestimated the ability of the Saigon government to earn the support of the people of South Vietnam.

The Communist victory in Vietnam was a humiliation for the United States, but its strategic impact was limited because of the new relationship with China. During the next decade, Sino-American relations continued to improve. In 1979, diplomatic ties were established be- tween the two countries under an arrangement whereby the United States renounced its mutual security treaty with the Republic of China in return for a pledge from China to seek reunification with Taiwan by peaceful means. By the end of the 1970s, China and the United States had established diplomatic relations, while forging a “strategic relationship” in which each would cooperate with the other against the common threat of Soviet “hegemonism” (China’s term for Soviet policy) in Asia.

An Era of Equivalence When the Johnson administration sent U.S. combat troops to South Vietnam in 1965 in an effort to prevent the expansion of communism in Southeast Asia, Washington’s primary concern was with Beijing, not Moscow. By the mid-1960s, U.S. officials viewed the Soviet Union as an essentially conservative power, more concerned with pro- tecting its vast empire than with expanding its borders. In fact, U.S. policy makers periodically sought Soviet assis- tance in achieving a peaceful settlement of the Vietnam War. As long as Khrushchev was in power, they found a receptive ear in Moscow. Khrushchev did not want to risk a confrontation with the United States in Southeast Asia.

After October 1964, when Khrushchev was replaced by a new leadership headed by party chief Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) and Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin (1904– 1980), Soviet attitudes about Vietnam became more ambivalent. On the one hand, the new Soviet leaders had no desire to see the Vietnam conflict poison relations

between the great powers. On the other hand, Moscow was anxious to demonstrate its support for the North Vi- etnamese to deflect Chinese charges that the Soviet Union had betrayed the interests of the oppressed peoples of the world. As a result, Soviet officials voiced sympathy for the U.S. predicament in Vietnam but put no pressure on their allies to bring an end to the war. Indeed, the Soviets became Hanoi’s main supplier of advanced military equip- ment in the final years of the war.

Still, Brezhnev and Kosygin continued to pursue the Khrushchev line of peaceful coexistence with the West and adopted a generally cautious posture in foreign affairs. By the early 1970s, a new age in Soviet-American relations had emerged, often referred to as d�etente, a French term meaning a reduction of tensions between the two sides. One symbol of the new relationship was the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, often called SALT I (for Strategic Arms Limitation Talks), signed in 1972, in which the two nations agreed to limit their missile systems.

Washington’s objective in pursuing the treaty was to make it unlikely that either superpower could win a nuclear exchange by launching a preemptive strike against the other. U.S. officials believed that a policy of “equivalence,” in which there was a roughly equal power balance between the two sides, was the best way to avoid a nuclear confrontation. D�etente was pursued in other ways as well. When President Nixon took office in 1969, he sought to increase trade and cultural contacts with the Soviet Union. His purpose was to set up a series of “linkages” in U.S.-Soviet relations that would persuade Moscow of the economic and social benefits of maintain- ing good relations with the West.

The Helsinki Accords of 1975 were a symbol of that new relationship. Signed by the United States, Canada, and all European nations on both sides of the Iron Cur- tain, these accords recognized all borders in Central and Eastern Europe established since the end of World War II, thereby formally acknowledging for the first time the Soviet sphere of influence. The Helsinki Accords also committed the signatory powers to recognize and protect the human rights of their citizens, a clear effort by the Western states to improve the performance of the Soviet Union and its allies in that area.

An End to D�etente? Protection of human rights became one of the major for- eign policy goals of the next U.S. president, Jimmy Carter (b. 1924). Ironically, just at the point when U.S. involve- ment in Vietnam came to an end and relations with China began to improve, the mood in U.S.-Soviet relations began to sour, for several reasons.

An Era of Equivalence 165

RENEWED TENSIONS IN THE THIRD WORLD Some Americans had become increasingly concerned about aggressive new tendencies in Soviet foreign policy. The first indication came in Africa. Soviet influence was on the rise in Somalia, across the Red Sea in South Yemen, and later in Ethiopia. Soviet involvement was also on the increase in southern Africa, where an insurgent move- ment supported by Cuban troops came to power in Angola, once a colony of Portugal. Then, in 1979, Soviet troops were sent to neighboring Afghanistan to protect a newly installed Marxist regime facing rising internal resist- ance from fundamentalist Muslims. Some observers sus- pected that Moscow’s motive in deciding to advance into hitherto neutral Afghanistan was to extend Soviet power into the oil fields of the Persian Gulf.

To deter such a possibility, the White House promul- gated the Carter Doctrine, which stated that the United States would use its military power, if necessary, to safe- guard Western access to the oil reserves in the Middle East. In fact, sources in Moscow later disclosed that the Soviet advance into Afghanistan had little to do with a strategic drive toward the Persian Gulf but was an effort take advan- tage of the disarray in U.S. foreign policy since the defeat in Vietnam by increasing Soviet influence in a sensitive region increasingly beset with Islamic fervor. Soviet officials feared that the wave of Islamic activism could spread to the Mus- lim populations in the Soviet republics in central Asia and were confident that the United States was too distracted by the so-called Vietnam syndrome (the public fear of U.S. involvement in another Vietnam-type conflict) to respond.

Other factors also contributed to the growing suspicion of the Soviet Union in the United States. During the era of d�etente, Washington officials had assumed that Moscow accepted the U.S. doctrine of equivalence—the idea that both sides possessed sufficient strength to destroy the other in the event of a surprise attack. By the end of the 1970s, however, some U.S. defense analysts began to charge that the Soviets were seeking strategic superiority in nuclear weapons and argued for a substantial increase in U.S. defense spending. Such charges, combined with evidence of Soviet efforts in Africa and the Middle East and reports of the persecution of Jews and dissidents in the Soviet Union, helped undermine public support for d�etente in the United States. These changing attitudes were reflected in the failure of the Carter administration to obtain congres- sional approval of a new arms limitation agreement (SALT II) signed with the Soviet Union in 1979.

Countering the Evil Empire The early years of the administration of President Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) witnessed a return to the harsh

rhetoric, if not all of the harsh practices, of the Cold War. President Reagan’s anti-Communist credentials were well known. In a speech given shortly after his election in 1980, he referred to the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” and frequently voiced his suspicion of its motives in for- eign affairs. In an effort to eliminate perceived Soviet advantages in strategic weaponry, the White House began a military buildup that stimulated a renewed arms race. In 1982, the Reagan administration introduced the nuclear- tipped cruise missile, whose ability to fly at low altitudes made it difficult to detect by enemy radar. Reagan also became an ardent exponent of the Strategic Defense Initia- tive (SDI), nicknamed Star Wars. Its purposes were to create a space shield that could destroy incoming missiles and to force Moscow into an arms race that it could not hope to win.

The Reagan administration also adopted a more activ- ist stance in the Third World. By providing military sup- port to the anti-Soviet insurgents in Afghanistan, the White House helped maintain a Vietnam-like war in Af- ghanistan that would embed the Soviet Union in its own quagmire. In Central America, where the revolutionary Sandinista regime in Nicaragua was supporting a guerrilla insurgency movement in nearby El Salvador, the Reagan administration began to provide material aid to the gov- ernment in El Salvador while simultaneously applying pressure on the Sandinistas by giving support to an anti- Communist guerrilla movement (the Contras) in Nicara- gua. The administration’s Central American policy caused considerable controversy in Congress, and critics charged that growing U.S. involvement there could lead to a repeat of the nation’s bitter experience in Vietnam.

Toward a New World Order In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931) was elected secre- tary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow. During Brezhnev’s last years and the brief ten- ures of his two successors (see Chapter 9), the Soviet Union had entered an era of serious economic decline, and the dynamic new party chief was well aware that drastic changes would be needed to rekindle the dreams that had inspired the Bolshevik Revolution. During the next few years, he launched a program of restructuring (perestroika) to revitalize the Soviet system. As part of that program, he set out to improve relations with the United States and the rest of the capitalist world. When he met with President Reagan in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, in 1985, the two leaders agreed to set aside their ideologi- cal differences.

Gorbachev’s desperate effort to rescue the Soviet Union from collapse was too little and too late. In 1991,

166 CHAPTER 7 East and West in the Grip of the Cold War

the Soviet Union, so long an apparently permanent fixture on the global scene, suddenly disintegrated. In its place arose several new nations from the ashes of the Soviet

Empire. Meanwhile, the string of Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe broke loose from Mos- cow’s grip and declared their independence from Commu- nist rule (see Chapter 9). The era of the Cold War was over.

The end of the Cold War lulled many observers into the seductive vision of a new world order that would be characterized by peaceful co- operation and increasing pros- perity. Sadly, such hopes have not been realized. A bitter civil war in the Balkans in the mid-1990s graphically demon- strated that old fault lines of national and ethnic hostility still divided the post–Cold War world. Elsewhere, bloody ethnic and religious disputes broke out in Africa and the Middle East. Then, on Sep- tember 11, 2001, the world entered a dangerous new era when terrorists attacked the

nerve centers of U.S. power in New York City and Washington, D.C., inaugurating a new round of tension between the West and the forces of militant Islam.

CONCLUSION A T T H E E N D O F W O R L D W A R I I , the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, began to compete for political domination. The two power blocs faced each other across an ideological divide characterized by high levels of hostility and suspicion. This ideological division began in Europe but soon spread to the rest of the world as the United States fought in Korea and Vietnam to pre- vent the spread of communism, while the Soviet Union used its influence to prop up pro-Soviet regimes in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. To many contempo- rary observers, a nuclear confrontation appeared almost inevitable.

As the twentieth century entered its last two decades, however, there were tantalizing signs of a thaw in the Cold War. In 1979, China and the United States decided to establish mutual diplomatic relations, a consequence of Beijing’s decision to focus on domestic reform and stop

supporting wars of national liberation in Asia. Six years later, the ascent of Mikhail Gorbachev to leadership, cul- minating in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, brought a final end to almost half a century of bitter rivalry between the world’s two superpowers.

The Cold War thus ended without the horrifying vision of a mushroom cloud. Unlike earlier rivalries that had culminated in the century’s two world wars, the antagonists had gradually come to realize that the struggle for supremacy could be carried out in the political and economic arena rather than on the battlefield. And in the final analysis, it was not military superiority, but political, economic, and cultural factors that brought about the tri- umph of Western civilization over the Marxist vision of a classless utopia. The world’s policy makers could now shift their focus to other problems of mutual concern. These issues will be addressed in the chapters that follow.

Mikhail Gorbachev. After graduating from the University of Moscow with a law degree in 1955, Mikhail Gorbachev rose rapidly through the ranks of the Communist Party and was elected general secretary of the party in 1985. To colleagues who questioned Gorbachev’s qualifications because of his relative youth, one of his supporters remarked, “He has a nice smile, but he has iron teeth.” A pragmatist at heart, Gorbachev realized that drastic reforms were needed to prevent a total collapse of the Soviet system. During the late 1980s he liberalized economic policy and sought to achieve a new openness in Soviet politics. Unintentionally, he opened the door to the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

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TIMELINE

1945 1955 1965 1975 1985

Europe Yalta

Conference (1945)

NATO formed (1949)

Marshall Plan (1947)

Warsaw Pact created (1955)

The Americas

Asia

SALT pact signed (1972)

Geneva Conference ends conflict in Indochina (1954)

Civil war in China (1946–1949)

Korean War (1950–1953)

Sino-Soviet dispute breaks into open (1961)

Communists seize power in South Vietnam (1975)

Nixon visits China (1972)

U.S. sends combat troops to Vietnam (1965)

United States and China normalize relations (1979)

Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979)

Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)

Meeting at Reykjavik (1985)

Tito expelled from Soviet bloc (1948)

Death of FDR (1945)

CHAPTER NOTES

1. Department of State Bulletin, February 11, 1945, p. 213. 2. Quoted in Joseph M. Jones, The Fifteen Weeks, February 21–June 5,

1947, 2nd ed. (New York, 1964), pp. 140–141.

3. Quoted in Misha Glenny, The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers (New York, 1999), pp. 543–544.

4. Cited in the New York Review of Books, June 9, 2011, p. 71.

168 CHAPTER 7 East and West in the Grip of the Cold War

C H A P T E R

The United States, Canada, and Latin America

O N M A Y 2 2 , 1 9 6 4 , President Lyndon B. Johnson gave a policy speech before an audience of students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He used the occasion to propose a new domestic strategy—to be known as the “Great Society”—to bring about major economic and social reforms in the United States. The aim of these reforms, he said, would be to use the national wealth “to enrich and elevate our national life and to advance the quality of our American civilization.”1

In his State of the Union address the following January, President Johnson unveiled some of the details of his plan. They included increased funding for education, urban renewal, crime fighting, disease prevention, a new Medicare program, and a war on poverty. Finally, he called for an extension of voting rights to guarantee the franchise to all citizens.

During the next few years, the U.S. Congress enacted many of the programs proposed by the Johnson administration, and the Great Society became a familiar part of the American landscape. A few years, later, however, it came under attack, as a more conservative electorate turned away from expensive welfare programs and endorsed a more modest approach to meeting the social needs of the American people. An era of active government intervention to bring about changes in the fabric of American society had come to an end.

C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G

Q Historians have described post–World War IIpolitics in the United States as swinging between liberalism and conservatism like a pendulum. Why do you think U.S. politics has taken this form?

The United States Since 1945 For a generation after World War II, the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal continued to determine the parame- ters of American domestic politics. The New Deal gave rise to a distinct pattern that signified a basic transformation in American society. This pattern included a dramatic increase in the role and power of the federal government; the rise of organized labor as a significant force in the economy and politics; a commitment to the welfare state, albeit a re- stricted one (Americans did not have access to universal health care as citizens of most other industrialized societies did); a grudging acceptance of the need to resolve problems of minority groups; and a willingness to experiment with deficit spending as a means of stimulating the economy.

An Era of Prosperity and Social Commitment One reason for the success of New Deal policies in the postwar era was the general economic recovery that took

President Lyndon Johnson at work

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place in the years following the resumption of peace. A shortage of consumer goods during the war had left Americans with both surplus income and the desire to purchase these goods after the war. Then, too, the grow- ing power of organized labor enabled more and more workers to obtain the wage increases that fueled the growth of the domestic market. Increased government expenditures (justified by the theory of English economist John Maynard Keynes that government spending could stimulate a lagging economy to reach higher levels of pro- ductivity) also indirectly subsidized the American private enterprise system. Outlays on defense, especially after the Korean War began in 1950, provided money for scientific research in universities and markets for weapons indus- tries. After 1955, tax dollars built a massive system of interstate highways, and tax deductions for mortgages subsidized homeowners. Between 1945 and 1973, real wages grew at an average rate of 3 percent a year, the most prolonged advance in American history.

Also contributing to the economic recovery was the decision by Western leaders to avoid the vicious trade wars that had taken place in the 1930s. The first stage took place in 1947, when twenty-three nations accepted the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT); its goal was to lower tariffs and quotas in order to promote free trade on a global basis. To stimulate growth in poorer nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was established to stabilize the global financial system by supervising exchange rates and providing financial and technical assistance to nations encountering economic dif- ficulties. The World Bank was created to provide grants and loans to assist developing countries in building up their infrastructure so that they could compete more effectively in the global marketplace. As the world econ- omy gradually recovered and demand for U.S. manufac- tures increased, the United States assumed the role of workshop of the world, providing jobs for millions of American servicemen returning home from the European and Pacific Theaters.

Riding the wave of popular approval for Roosevelt’s progressive program, the Democratic Party controlled the White House until 1952, when the Republican candidate and war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower won election to the presidency. Ike, as he was popularly known, was by instinct a fiscal and “small government” conservative, but he tacitly accepted the fundamental premises of the New Deal and even extended them by embarking on the construction of a massive interstate highway system. Although the project was justified on the grounds of national defense, it served as a massive jobs program and stimulated the economy while improving the nation’s infrastructure.

The Eisenhower years, however, were clouded by a growing sense of insecurity about the world beyond the borders of the United States. The Communist victory in China aroused fears that Communists had infiltrated the United States. A demagogic senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, helped intensify a massive “Red scare” with unsubstantiated allegations that there were hun- dreds of Communists in high government positions. Congressional hearings on the matter were held by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and dozens of government officials and public figures were accused of radical sympathies or past membership in the Com- munist Party. A number of film actors and producers were placed on a blacklist that prevented them from finding employment in Hollywood. One U.S. senator even accused General George C. Marshall of treason for his efforts to bring about a truce in the civil war in China.

In the end, McCarthy overplayed his hand when he attacked alleged “Communist conspirators” in the U.S. Army, and he was censured by Congress in 1954. Soon afterward, his anti-Communist crusade came to an end. The pervasive fear of communism and the possibility of a nuclear war, however, remained strong. For those millions of Americans living in major metropolitan areas, the wailing of a siren in the night always conjured up latent fears of a surprise nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. The 1950s were not as tranquil as they have often been portrayed in more recent times.

TOWARD THE GREAT SOCIETY The Democrats returned to power in 1960 with the election of John F. Kennedy as president. At age forty-three, Kennedy became the youngest elected president in the history of the United States and the first born in the twentieth cen- tury. The new administration focused primarily on for- eign affairs, but also inaugurated an extended period of increased economic growth, the result—in part—of lower taxes and a business-friendly atmosphere. But the bright promise of a new era of peace, progress, and prosperity was suddenly shattered on November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated under mysterious circumstan- ces by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas.

Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, who won a new term as president in a landslide in 1964, used his stunning mandate to pursue the growth of the welfare state, first begun in the New Deal. Johnson’s Great Soci- ety programs included health care for the elderly, a “war on poverty” to be fought with food stamps and a “job corps,” a new Department of Housing and Urban Devel- opment to deal with the problems of the cities, and fed- eral assistance for education.

170 CHAPTER 8 The United States, Canada, and Latin America

FOCUS ON CIVIL RIGHTS Johnson’s other domestic pas- sion was the achievement of equal rights for African Americans. The civil rights movement began in earnest in 1954 when the U.S. Supreme Court took the dramatic step of striking down the practice of maintaining racially segregated public schools. According to Chief Justice Earl Warren, “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” A year later, during a boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, the eloquent Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) surfaced as the leader of a growing movement for racial equality.

By the early 1960s, a number of groups, including King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), were organizing demonstrations and sit-ins across the South to end racial segregation. In August 1963, King led the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. This march and King’s impassioned plea for racial equality had an electrifying effect on the American people (see the box on p. 172). The Kennedy administration initiated legisla- tion to extend civil rights, but the president died before the bill was enacted into law.

On June 21, 1964, three young civil rights workers dis- appeared while investigating the torching of an African American church in Mississippi. A few weeks later, their bodies were discovered in a partially constructed dam nearby. President Johnson took advantage of the uproar caused by the incident to promote the cause of civil rights legislation, and in 1964, Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act, which ended segregation and discrimination in the workplace and in all public accommodations. The Voting Rights Act, passed the following year, eliminated racial obstacles to voting in southern states.

Outside the South, African Americans had had voting rights for many years, but local patterns of segregation resulted in considerably higher unemployment rates for blacks than for whites and left them segregated in huge urban ghettos. Calls for militant action by radical black nationalist leaders, such as Malcolm X of the Black Mus- lims, attracted more attention than the nonviolent appeals of Martin Luther King. In the summer of 1965, race riots erupted in the Watts district of Los Angeles and led to thirty-four deaths and the destruction of more than one thousand buildings. After the assassination of Martin Luther King by a white supremacist in 1968, more than one hundred cities experienced rioting, including Wash- ington, D.C., the nation’s capital. The combination of riots and provocative comments by radical black leaders led to a “white backlash” and a decline in support for civil rights issues among the white population.

A NATION DIVIDED Americans were also increasingly divided over the costly war in Vietnam (see Chapter 7).

The antiwar movement arose out of the free speech movement that began in 1964 at the University of Califor- nia at Berkeley as a protest against the impersonality and authoritarianism of the large university. As the war pro- gressed and U.S. casualties mounted, protests escalated. Teach-ins, sit-ins, and the occupation of university build- ings alternated with more radical demonstrations that increasingly led to violence. Supporters contended that the antiwar movement had helped weaken the willingness of many Americans to continue the war. But the combina- tion of antiwar demonstrations and ghetto riots in the cities also provoked many people to embrace “law and order,” an appeal used by Richard M. Nixon (1913–1994), the Republican presidential candidate in 1968. With Nixon’s election in 1968, a shift to the right in American politics had begun.

America Shifts to the Right There has always been an element of tension between the concepts of liberty and equality in American society, between the desire for individual freedom and the right of every citizen to an equal opportunity to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (in the words of the Declaration of Independence). The New Deal had followed an era of rugged individualism—epitomized by the famous remark by President Calvin Coolidge that “the business of govern- ment is business”—and had dominated the American scene for a generation. Now the pendulum was about to swing in the other direction.

NIXON AND WATERGATE Nixon owed his election, at least in part, to the disarray within the Democratic Party over the war in Vietnam, where more than 500,000 U.S. troops were now stationed, and the new president did not seek to reverse the liberal programs enacted by his predecessors. He even signed the National Environ- mental Policy Act, which established a national policy for the protection of the environment. Nixon also reduced U.S. involvement in Vietnam by gradually withdrawing American troops and appealing to the “silent majority” of Americans for patience in bringing the conflict to an end. He also broke with his strong anti-Communist past when he visited China in 1972 and opened the door to the eventual diplomatic recognition of that Communist state.

But on racial issues, Nixon clearly embarked on a new course. The strategy was dictated in part by the hope for political gain. A slowdown in racial desegregation appealed to southern whites, who had previously tended to vote Democratic. The Republican strategy also gained support among white Democrats in northern cities, where

The United States Since 1945 171

“I Have a Dream” In the spring of 1963, a bomb attack on a church that killed four African American children and the brutal fashion in which police handled black demonstrators brought the nation’s attention to the policies of racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. A few months later, on August 28, 1963, the African American religious leader Martin Luther King Jr. led a march on Washington, D.C., and gave an inspired speech at the Lincoln Memorial that catalyzed the civil rights movement.

Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream” Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves, who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free; one hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination; one hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity; one hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. . . .

So we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was the promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note in so far as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. . . .

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy; now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice; now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid

rock of brotherhood; now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. . . .

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. . . . I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. . . .

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. And this will be the day. This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, “My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father died, land of the pilgrims’ pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. . . .

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”

Martin Luther King Jr. was known as a highly skilled and moving orator. What are some of the rhetorically effective elements in this speech?

SOURCE: Reprinted by arrangement with the Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr., c/o Writers House as agent for the proprietor, New York, NY. Copyright ª 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., copyright ª renewed 1991 Coretta Scott King.

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court-mandated busing to achieve racial integration had produced a white backlash.

But Nixon was paranoid about conspiracies and, de- spite a resounding victory in the presidential election in 1972, began to use illegal methods of gaining political intelligence about his political opponents. One of the pres- ident’s advisers explained that their intention was to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political ene- mies.” Nixon’s zeal led to the infamous Watergate scan- dal—the attempted bugging of Democratic National Headquarters located at the Watergate complex in down- town Washington, D.C. Although Nixon repeatedly lied to the American public about his involvement in the affair, secret tapes of his own conversations in the White House revealed the truth. On August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned from office, an act that saved him from almost certain impeachment and conviction.

THE FIRST OIL CRISIS After Watergate, American domestic politics focused on economic issues. Gerald R. Ford (1913–2006) became president when Nixon resigned, only to lose in the 1976 election to the Democratic former governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, who campaigned as an outsider against the Washington establishment. Both Ford and Carter faced severe economic problems. The period from 1973 to the mid-1980s was one of economic stagnation, which came to be known as stagflation—a combination of high inflation and high unemployment. In 1984, median family income was 6 percent below that of 1973.

The economic downturn stemmed at least in part from a dramatic rise in oil prices. Oil had been a cheap and abundant source of energy in the 1950s, but by the late 1970s, half of the oil used in the United States came from the Middle East. An oil embargo imposed by the Organi- zation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel as a reaction to the Arab-Israeli War in 1973 and OPEC’s subsequent raising of prices led to a quadrupling of the cost of oil. By the end of the 1970s, oil prices had increased twentyfold, encouraging inflationary tendencies throughout the entire economy. Although the Carter administration proposed a plan for reducing oil consump- tion at home while spurring domestic production, neither Congress nor the American people could be persuaded to follow what they regarded as drastic measures.

By 1980, the Carter administration was facing two dev- astating problems. High inflation and a noticeable decline in average weekly earnings were causing a perceptible drop in American living standards. At the same time, a cri- sis abroad had erupted when fifty-three Americans were taken hostage by the Iranian government of Ayatollah Khomeini (see Chapter 15). Carter’s inability to gain the

release of the American hostages led to the perception at home that he was a weak president. His overwhelming loss to Ronald Reagan in the election of 1980 brought forward the chief exponent of conservative Republican policies and a new political order.

DISMANTLING THE WELFARE STATE The conservative trend accelerated in the 1980s. The election of Ronald Reagan changed the direction of American policy on sev- eral fronts. Reversing decades of the expanding welfare state, Reagan cut spending on food stamps, school lunch programs, and job programs. At the same time, his admin- istration fostered the largest peacetime military buildup in American history. Total federal spending rose from $631 billion in 1981 to more than $1 trillion by 1986. But instead of raising taxes to pay for the new expenditures, which far outweighed the budget cuts in social areas, Reagan convinced Congress to support supply-side eco- nomics. Massive tax cuts were designed to stimulate rapid economic growth and produce new revenues.

The American public, weary of high levels of gov- ernment spending on social issues that never seemed to produce results, found President Reagan’s approach appealing and reelected him by overwhelming margins to a second term in 1984. The country experienced an economic upturn that lasted until the end of the decade, but the administration’s spending policies also resulted in record government deficits, which loomed as an obsta- cle to long-term growth. In 1980, the total government debt was around $930 billion; by 1988, the total debt had almost tripled, reaching $2.6 trillion. The inability of George H. W. Bush (b. 1924), Reagan’s vice president and successor, to deal with an economic downturn led to the election of a Democrat, Bill Clinton (b. 1946), in November 1992.

Seizing the Political Center The new president was a southerner who claimed to be a new Democrat—one who favored fiscal responsibility and a more conservative social agenda—a clear indication that the rightward drift in American politics had not been reversed by his victory. During his first term in office, Clinton reduced the budget deficit and signed a bill turning the welfare program back to the states while pushing mea- sures to strengthen education and provide job opportunities for those Americans removed from the welfare rolls. By seizing the center of the American political agenda, Clinton was able to win reelection in 1996, although the Republican Party now held a majority in both houses of Congress.

President Clinton’s political fortunes were helped con- siderably by a lengthy economic revival. Thanks to

The United States Since 1945 173

downsizing and technological advances, major U.S. corpo- rations began to recover the competitive edge they had lost to Japanese and European firms in previous years. At the same time, a steady reduction in the annual govern- ment budget deficit strengthened confidence in the per- formance of the national economy. Although wage increases were modest, inflation was securely in check, and public confidence in the future was on the rise. Reflecting that confidence in American competitiveness, the administration joined the new World Trade Organiza- tion (WTO), which replaced GATT, and signed a free trade agreement with Mexico.

Many of the country’s social problems remained unre- solved, however. Although crime rates were down, drug use, smoking, and alcoholism among young people remained high, and the specter of rising medical costs loomed as a generation of baby boomers (so called because they were born during the two decades after World War II when there was a dramatic spike in the number of births) neared retirement age. Americans remained bitterly divided over such issues as abortion and affirmative action programs to rectify past discrimination on the basis of gender, race, or sexual orientation.

President Clinton contrib- uted to the national sense of unease by becoming the focus of a series of financial and sex- ual scandals that aroused con- cerns among many Americans that the moral fiber of the country had been severely undermined. Accused of lying under oath in a judicial hear- ing, he was impeached by the Republican-led majority in Congress. Although the effort to remove Clinton from office failed, his administration was tarnished, and in 2000, Repub- lican candidate George W. Bush (b. 1946), the son of Clin- ton’s predecessor, narrowly defeated Clinton’s vice presi- dent, Albert Gore, in the race for the presidency. Bush too sought to occupy the center of the political spectrum while heeding the concerns of his conservative base.

THE POLITICS OF TERRORISM

On September 11, 2001, Mus- lim terrorists hijacked four commercial jet planes shortly after they took off from Boston, Newark, and Washing- ton, D.C. Two of the planes were flown directly into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, causing both buildings to collapse; a third slammed into the Pentagon, near Washington, D.C; and the fourth crashed in a field in central Pennsylvania. About three thousand people were killed, including everyone aboard the four airliners.

The hijackings were carried out by a terrorist organiza- tion known as al-Qaeda, which had been suspected of bombing two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and attack- ing a U.S. naval ship, the U.S.S. Cole, two years later. Its leader, Osama bin Laden (1957–2011), was a native of Saudi Arabia who was allegedly angry at the growing U.S. presence in the Middle East. President Bush vowed to wage an offensive war on terrorism, and in October 2001, with United Nations support, U.S. forces attacked al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan (see Chapter 15).

The Bush administration had less success in gain- ing UN approval for an attack on the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which the White House accused of amassing weapons of mass destruction and providing

The Panama Canal: Lifeline to the World. Since its completion in 1914, the Panama Canal has served as one of the major maritime routes for the shipment of goods around the world. The original treaty between the United States and the Republic of Panama put the canal under U.S. control, but in 1979, operation of the canal reverted to Panamanian administration as the result of a treaty engineered by President Jimmy Carter. Today, about 1,200 ships pass through the canal each month. Annual shipping tonnage through the canal surpassed 330 million tons in 2012. Here a container ship passes through one of the locks into Gatun Lake.

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support to terrorist groups in the region. Nevertheless, in March 2003, U.S. forces invaded Iraq and quickly over- threw the Hussein regime. Initially, the invasion had broad popular support in the United States, but as insur- gent activities continued to inflict casualties on U.S. and Allied occupation forces—not to speak of the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians—the war became more con- troversial. The failure to locate the suspected weapons of mass destruction raised questions about the motives behind the administration’s decision to invade Iraq. Some Americans called for an immediate pullout of U.S. troops.

The Bush administration was also dogged by an eco- nomic downturn and a number of other domestic prob- lems, including the outsourcing of American jobs to Asian countries (especially China, which joined the WTO in 2001) and the failure to control illegal immigration from Mexico. But it benefited from the public perception that the Republican Party was more effective at protecting the American people from the threat of terrorism than its Democratic rival. Evangelical Christians—one of the nation’s most vocal communities—were also drawn to the Republican Party for its emphasis on traditional moral val- ues and the sanctity of the family and its opposition to abortion. Riding the wave of such concerns, President Bush defeated the Democratic candidate John F. Kerry in the presidential election of 2004.

After the election, the Bush administration sought to rein in the rising cost of domestic spending by presenting new proposals to reform Social Security and the Medicare program. But the public was leery of cuts to popular enti- tlement programs, and the plans were quickly dropped. In the meantime, the war in Iraq continued to distract the White House from other pressing issues, including a dra- matic rise in the price of oil and an exploding national budget deficit. In midterm elections held in the fall of 2006, the Democratic Party seized control of both houses of Congress for the first time in twelve years.

A HISTORIC MILESTONE The presidential campaign of 2008 was historic in terms of the major candidates for high office. The nominee of the Democratic Party, Illinois senator Barack Obama (b. 1961), was an African American of mixed parentage. Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate, selected Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his run- ning mate. The Republican Party ran strongly on issues of national security, but a sudden financial crisis, brought on by a serious downturn in the housing market and an ensu- ing credit crunch, put the public focus squarely on the national economy. When the votes were counted, Barack Obama had won a decisive victory over his Republican rival, while Democratic majorities increased in both houses of Congress.

Barack Obama had run on a platform of economic change and social renewal, but his immediate challenge was to reverse the sudden downturn and put the U.S. economy back on a path of steady growth. In the face of Republican opposition, his administration enacted into law a stimulus program to put millions of newly unem- ployed Americans back to work. But the new president was unwilling to abandon his ambitious social agenda and successfully pushed through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—popularly known as Obamacare— that provided access to inexpensive health care to most U.S. citizens. Other legislative proposals, including addi- tional stimulus projects and immigration reform, stalled in Congress after Republicans made big gains in the 2010 midterm elections.

The presidential election of 2012 was fought primarily on the state of the nation’s economy, which had shown only modest improvement under Obama’s stewardship. Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, ran on a plat- form of low taxes and a sharp reduction in entitlement spending. But the reelection of President Obama—who called for a balanced approach combining tax increases for wealthy Americans and modest cuts in social spending— suggested that, although many Americans remained dis- trustful of government, liberal programs like Social Secu- rity and Medicare were still widely popular.

But if, for the time being, the pendulum rests in the “vital center” of American politics, the political arena itself is more divided than ever. Disagreements between the two major parties over a variety of fundamental issues, including the role of government, the social safety net, abortion, and gay rights, have become increasingly wide. This partisan divide threatens the ability of the political system to deal with the multiple challenges facing the nation today.

The Changing Face of American Society Major changes have taken place in American society in the decades since World War II. New technologies such as television, jet planes, and the computer have dramati- cally altered the pace and nature of American life. Increased prosperity has led to the growth of the middle class, the expansion of higher education, and a rapid increase in consumer demand for the products of a mass society. The building of a nationwide system of super- highways, combined with low fuel prices during much of the period and steady improvements in the quality and operability of automobiles, has produced a highly mobile society in which the average American family moves at

The Changing Face of American Society 175

least once every five years, sometimes from one end of the continent to the other.

One consequence of this change has been a movement from rural areas and central cities into the suburbs. There has also been an exodus of Americans from the Northeast and Midwest to the “sunbelt” areas of the West and the South, where new industries have resulted in rapid economic growth.

A Consumer Society, a Permissive Society These changes in the physical surroundings of the country have been matched by equally important shifts in the social fabric. Boosted by rising incomes, the baby boom generation grew up with higher expectations about their future material prospects than their parents had. The members of this new consumer society focused much of their attention on achieving a middle-class lifestyle, com- plete with a home in the suburbs, two automobiles, and ample time for leisure activities. The growing predilection for buying on the installment plan was an important fac- tor in protecting the national economy from the cycle of “boom and bust” that had characterized the prewar pe- riod, but also increased the level of personal debt.

With the introduction of credit cards, the personal debt of the average American skyrocketed, while the savings rate plummeted to its lowest level in decades. By the end of the 1990s, adjustable rate mortgages had become increasingly popular. Inappropriate mortgages were a major factor in the financial crisis that struck the national economy in the fall of 2008, as were risky banking prac- tices. The fact is that millions of Americans, with the encouragement of their political leaders, were spending beyond their means. When housing prices stopped rising, the number of home foreclosures increased dramatically, triggering a massive financial crisis; the ensuing leap in unemployment led to more foreclosures, and the nation faced its most serious economic recession in decades.

American social mores were also changing. Casual atti- tudes toward premarital sex (a product in part of the introduction of the birth control pill) and the use of drugs (a practice that increased dramatically during the Vietnam War) marked the emergence of a youth movement in the 1960s that questioned all authority and fostered rebellion against older generations.

The new standards were evident in the breakdown of the traditional nuclear family. Divorce rates increased exponentially so that by the end of the century, one of every two marriages was likely to end in divorce. Atti- tudes toward extramarital sex were also changing, and the stigma attached to children born out of wedlock eroded

dramatically. At the same time, Americans were also becoming more receptive to gay rights. In the 2012 elec- tions, several states approved referendums allowing same-sex marriage, and in June 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down restrictive provisions contained in the Defense of Marriage Act, while declaring that the power to define marriage resided in the individual states.

The Melting Pot in Action One of the primary visual factors that has helped shape American society in the postwar era has been the increas- ing pace of new arrivals from abroad. As restrictions on immigration were loosened after World War II, millions of immigrants began to arrive from all over the world. Although the majority came from Latin America, sub- stantial numbers came from China, Vietnam, and the countries of southern Asia. By 2003, people of Hispanic origin surpassed African Americans as the largest minority group in the country.

In recent years, illegal immigration—primarily from Mexico but also to a lesser extent from other countries in Central America—has become a controversial issue in American politics. Since many undocumented immi- grants gravitate to low-paying jobs that are not attrac- tive to most Americans, they have usually been tacitly accepted by the public as a necessary evil. Now, how- ever, their numbers have increased dramatically, and critics point to the financial burden the new arrivals place on the nation’s educational and medical systems. At the same time, recent immigrants, many of them undocu- mented, have became an increasingly indispensable ele- ment in the U.S. economy, comprising one-quarter of all farmworkers and 14 percent of all those employed in construction jobs. As more immigrants attain citizenship, they are having an impact on U.S. politics. The number of Hispanics living in the United States has increased to 50 million, more than 15 percent of the total population; of these, some 22 million are eligible to vote, and their political preferences have proved to be a decisive factor in some recent elections.

Women and Society Many of the changes taking place in American life reflect the fact that the role of women has been in a state of rapid tran- sition. In the years immediately following World War II, many women gave up their jobs in factories and returned to their traditional role as homemakers, sparking the “baby boom” of the late 1940s and 1950s. Eventually, however, many women became restive with their restrictive role as wives and mothers and began to enter the workforce at an increasing rate. Unlike the situation before the war, many of

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them were married. In 1900, for example, married women made up about 15 percent of the female labor force. By 1970, their number had increased to 62 percent.

American women were still not receiving equal treat- ment in the workplace, however, and by the late 1960s, some began to assert their rights and speak as feminists. One of the leading advocates of women’s rights in the United States was Betty Friedan (1921–2006). A journalist and the mother of three children, Friedan grew increas- ingly unhappy with her attempt to fulfill the traditional role of housewife and mother. In 1963, she published The Feminine Mystique, in which she argued that women were systematically being denied equality with men. The Feminine Mystique became a best seller and transformed

Friedan into a prominent spokeswoman for women’s rights in the United States.

As women became more actively involved in public issues, their role in education increased as well. Beginning in the 1980s, women’s studies programs began to prolifer- ate on college campuses throughout the United States. In recent years, considerably more than half of all students enrolled in institutions of higher learning are women. The consequences are evident throughout society as a whole, as women are beginning to occupy senior positions in the legal profession, medicine, politics, and business. Accord- ing to recent studies, in nearly 20 percent of U.S. house- holds, the wife is the primary breadwinner.

Although women have steadily made gains in terms of achieving true equality in legal rights and economic opportunity in American society, much remains to be done. In recent years, much of the energy in the women’s liberation movement has focused on maintaining the right to legalized abortion. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade established the legal right to abor- tion. That ruling, however, came under attack from those Americans who believe that an abortion is an act of mur- der against an unborn child, and the issue has remained an important factor in political campaigns.

The Environment Environmental problems first began to engage public opinion in the United States during the 1950s, when high pollution levels in major cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and Pittsburgh, combined with the popularity of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, aroused concerns over the impact that unfettered industrialization was having on the quality of life and health of the American people. During the next several decades, federal, state, and local governments began to issue regulations directed at reduc- ing smog in urban areas and improving the quality of rivers and streams throughout the country.

In general, most Americans reacted favorably to such regulations, but by the 1980s, the environmental move- ment had engendered a backlash as some people com- plained that excessively radical measures could threaten the pace of economic growth and cause a loss of jobs. By the end of the century, environmental issues had become deeply entangled with worries about the state of the national economy. Still, growing concerns about the potential impact of global warming kept the state of the environment alive as a serious problem in the world community (see Chapter 16). In 2006, the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth appeared in movie theaters across the country. Produced by Albert Gore, Clinton’s vice president, it sought to arouse public awareness of

The Women’s Liberation Movement. In the late 1960s, as women began once again to assert their rights, a revived women’s liberation movement emerged. Feminists in the movement maintained that women themselves must alter the conditions of their lives. During this women’s liberation rally, some women climbed the statue of Admiral Farragut in Washington, D.C., to exhibit their signs.

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the severity of the current climatic crisis. In the presi- dential elections held two years later, Barack Obama made environmental issues a centerpiece of his cam- paign, but as the effects of the financial crisis of 2008 rippled through the economy, his administration felt compelled to put economic concerns at the front of the agenda. Climate change, however, does not fluctuate according to the vicissitudes of American politics, and the massive hurricane that struck the East Coast in the fall of 2012 was a vivid reminder that global warming is not simply a theory, as some have maintained, but a looming reality. A major challenge for the near future will be to balance the obvious benefits from the exploitation of shale oil deposits with the potential damage to the environment.

Science and Technology After World War II, the United States emerged as the leading nation in promoting the development of science and technology. Taking advantage of wartime advances in aircraft, weaponry, and electronics, the federal govern- ment took the lead in supporting large-scale projects composed of teams of scientists working in ever-larger lab- oratories, many of them located on university campuses. By 1965 almost 75 percent of all scientific research funds

came from the government. Much of this expense was funded by or for the national defense establishment. One of every four scientists and engi- neers trained in the decades af- ter World War II was engaged in the creation of new weap- ons systems.

There was no more stun- ning example of how the new scientific establishment oper- ated than the space race of the 1960s. In 1957, the Soviet Union announced that it had sent the first space satellite, Sputnik I, into orbit around the earth. In response, the United States launched a gigantic proj- ect to land a manned space- craft on the moon within a decade. Massive government funding financed the scientific research and technological advances that attained this goal in 1969.

The postwar alliance of science and technology led to an accelerated rate of change that became a fact of life throughout Western society. The emergence of the com- puter, in particular, has revolutionized American busi- ness practices and transformed the way individuals go about their lives and communicate with each other. Although early computers, which required thousands of vacuum tubes to function, were quite large, the devel- opment of the transistor and the silicon chip enabled manufacturers to reduce the size of their products dramatically. By the 1990s, the personal computer had become a fixture in businesses, schools, and homes around the country. The Internet—the world’s largest computer network—provides millions of people around the world with quick access to immense quantities of information as well as rapid communication and commer- cial transactions. The United States was initially at the fore- front of this process, but in recent years, innovation has become a global phenomenon.

Science is also being harnessed to serve other social purposes, including the development of biologically engi- neered food products, the formulation of new medicines to fight age-old diseases, and the development of alterna- tive fuels to replace oil and the internal combustion engine. Recent interest has focused on the invention of new automobile engines that—like the hybrid varieties

Oil: Blessing or Curse? The availability of ample supplies of liquid energy has fueled the rise of the United States as an economic powerhouse for over a century. Yet today it is widely considered a major factor in promoting global warming, thus producing rising sea levels and damaging the environment for future generations. In recent years, the challenge has acquired a new urgency, as major new sources of oil and natural gas in the Western Hemisphere reduce U.S. dependence on imports from the Middle East. Shown here is an oil derrick currently operating off the coast of South America.

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now entering the market—rely on some combination of electrical power and liquid energy. To encourage this process, the Obama administration has set higher energy consumption standards for vehicles produced in the United States in future years.

The World of Culture The changing character of American society is vividly reflected in the world of culture, where the postwar era brought forth a new popular culture increasingly oriented toward the interests of young people.

Art and Architecture After World War II, the American art world began to experiment with a variety of styles to express reality in new ways. One group of young artists, known as Abstract Expressionists, painted large nonrepresentational can- vases in an effort to express a spiritual essence beyond the material world. Among the first was Jackson Pollock (1912–1956), who developed the technique of dripping and flinging paint onto a canvas laid on the floor. Pol- lock’s large paintings of swirling colors express the energy of primal forces as well as the vast landscapes of his native Wyoming.

Other artists, concerned that art was being over- whelmed by popular culture, sought to make painting more accessible to the public by portraying aspects of everyday life on canvases. The most famous practitioner of Pop Art, as it was called, was Andy Warhol (1930–1987), whose works featured repetitious images of daily items such as soup cans, or even faces of such well-known fig- ures as the Mona Lisa and Marilyn Monroe. Another in- fluential figure was Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008), whose “collages” juxtaposed disparate images and every- day objects—photographs, clothing, letters, even cigarette butts—to reflect the energy and disorder of the world around us.

By the early 1970s, Postmodernism became the new vehicle of revolt. Convinced that art should serve society by addressing social inequities relating to race, gender, or sexual orientation, some artists began to experiment with a new technique called conceptual art. Using innova- tive techniques such as photography, video, and even “installations” (machine- or human-made objects, some- times as large as a room), such artists produced shocking works with the intent of motivating the viewer to political action. A powerful example was the untitled installation by Robert Gober (b. 1954): in its center, a stereotypical statue of the Virgin Mary stands over an open drain while a steel pipe pierces her body. Such a violent violation of

the Madonna can be viewed by Christians as depicting the resilience of faith in a world of doubt. For non-Christians, Gober’s work represents the indomitable spirit of human- ity, which remains intact despite a century of adversity.

In architecture as well, the postwar era has been marked by experimentation and diversity. Tiring of the repetition and impersonality of the international style, innovative American architects have created their own Postmodern skyline, with pyramidal and cupola-topped skyscrapers of blue-green glass and brick, while others have returned to the past by incorporating traditional materials, shapes, and decorative elements into their buildings. Modernist rectan- gular malls have tacked on Greek columns and entryways shaped like ancient Egyptian pyramids.

New Concepts in Music Musical composers also experimented with radically new concepts. One innovator was John Cage (1912–1992), who defined music as the “organization of sound” and included all types of noise in his music. Any unconventional sound was welcomed: electronic buzzers and whines, tape recordings played at altered speeds, or percussion from any household item. His most discussed work, called 403300, was four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence—the “music” being the sounds the audience heard in the hall during the “performance,” such as coughing, the rustling of programs, the hum of air conditioning, and the shuffling of feet.

In the 1960s, minimalism took hold in the United States. Largely influenced by Indian music, minimalist composers such as Philip Glass (b. 1937) focus on the subtle nuances in the continuous repetitions of a melodic or rhythmic pattern. Since the 1960s, there has also been much experimental electronic and computer music. Despite the excitement of such musical exploration, how- ever, much of it is considered too cerebral and alien, even by the educated public.

One of the most accomplished and accessible con- temporary American composers, John Adams (b. 1947), has labeled much of twentieth-century experimental com- position as the “fussy, difficult music of transition.” His music blends Modernist elements with classical tradi- tions using much minimalist repetition interspersed with dynamic rhythms. Critics have applauded his operas Nixon in China (1987) and Doctor Atomic (2005), which dramatizes the anxious countdown to the detonation of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico in 1945.

New Trends in Literature Fictional writing in the 1960s reflected growing concerns about the materialism and superficiality of American

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culture and often took the form of exuberant and comic verbal fantasies. As the pain of the Vietnam War and the ensuing social and political turmoil intensified, authors turned to satire, using black humor and cruelty in the hope of shocking the American public into a recognition of its social ills. Many of these novels—such as Thomas Pynchon’s V. (1963), Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961), and John Barth’s Sot-Weed Factor (1960)—were wildly imagina- tive, highly entertaining, and very different from the writ- ing of the first half of the century, which had detailed the “real” daily lives of small-town or big-city America.

In the 1970s and 1980s, American fiction relinquished the extravagant verbal displays of the 1960s, returning to a more sober exposition of social problems, this time related to race, gender, and sexual orientation. Much of the best fiction explored the moral dimensions of contem- porary life from Jewish, African American, feminist, or gay perspectives. Bernard Malamud (1914–1986), Saul Bel- low (1915–2005), and Philip Roth (b. 1933) presented the Jewish American experience, while Ralph Ellison (1914–1994), James Baldwin (1924–1987), and Toni Morri- son (b. 1931) dramatized the African American struggle.

Some outstanding women’s fiction was written by foreign-born writers from Asia and Latin America, who examined the problems of immigrants, such as cultural identity and assimilation into the American mainstream.

Popular Culture Since World War II, the United States has been the most influential force in shaping popular culture in the West and, to a lesser degree, throughout the world. Motion pic- tures were the primary vehicle for the diffusion of Ameri- can popular culture in the years immediately following World War II and continued to dominate both European and American markets in the next decades. Although developed in the 1930s, television did not become readily available until the late 1940s. By 1954, there were 32 mil- lion sets in the United States as television became the cen- terpiece of middle-class life. In the 1960s, as television spread around the world, American networks unloaded their products on Europe and developing countries at extraordinarily low prices. Only the establishment of quota systems prevented American television from com- pletely inundating these countries.

The United States has also dominated popular music since the end of World War II. Jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, rock, rap, and hip-hop have been the most popular music forms in the Western world—and much of the non-Western world—during this time. Artists like the late Michael Jackson and Madonna have become superstars throughout the world. All of these music forms originated

in the United States and are rooted in African American musical innovations. These forms later spread to the rest of the world, inspiring local artists, who then transformed the music in their own way.

In the postwar years, sports became a major product of both popular culture and the leisure industry in the United States. The emergence of professional football and basketball leagues, as well as the increasing popularity of their college equivalents, helped to transform sports into something akin to a national obsession. Sports became a cheap form of entertainment for consumers, as fans did not have to leave their homes to enjoy athletic competi- tions. In fact, some sports organizations initially resisted television, fearing that it would hurt ticket sales. The tre- mendous revenues possible from television contracts overcame this hesitation, however. As sports television revenue has escalated, many sports have come to receive the bulk of their yearly revenue from broadcasting con- tracts. Today, sports have become a major force in Ameri- can society, and individual sports teams—whether amateur or professional—attract the fervent allegiance of millions of devoted supporters.

Canada: In the Shadow of Goliath Canada experienced many of the same developments as the United States in the postwar years. For twenty-five years after World War II, Canada realized extraordinary economic prosperity as it set out on a new path of indus- trial development. Canada had always had a strong export economy based on its abundant natural resources. Now it also developed electronic, aircraft, nuclear, and chemical engineering industries on a large scale. Much of the Cana- dian growth, however, was financed by capital from the United States, which resulted in U.S. ownership of Cana- dian businesses. While many Canadians welcomed the economic growth, others feared U.S. economic domina- tion of Canada and its resources.

Canada’s close relationship with the United States has been a notable feature of its postwar history. In addition to fears of economic domination, Canadians have also worried about playing a subordinate role politically and militarily to their neighboring superpower. Canada agreed to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949 and even sent military contingents to fight in Korea the following year. But to avoid subordination to the United States or any other great power, Canada has consistently and actively supported the United Nations. Nevertheless, concerns about the United States have not kept Canada from maintaining a special relationship with its southern

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neighbor. The North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), formed in 1957, was based on close coopera- tion between the air forces of the two countries for the defense of North America against aerial attack. As another example of their close cooperation, in 1972, Canada and the United States signed the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement to regulate water quality of the lakes that border both countries.

After 1945, the Liberal Party continued to dominate Canadian politics until 1957, when John Diefenbaker (1895–1979) achieved a Conservative victory. But a major recession returned the Liberals to power, and under Lester Pearson (1897–1972), they created Canada’s welfare state by enacting a national social security system (the Canada Pension Plan) and a national health insurance program.

The most prominent Liberal government, however, was that of Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000), who came to power in 1968. Although French Canadian in background, Trudeau was dedicated to Canada’s federal union. In 1968, his government passed the Official Languages Act, creating a bilingual federal civil service and encouraging the growth of French culture and language in Canada. Although Trudeau’s government vigorously pushed an industrialization program, high inflation and Trudeau’s efforts to impose the will of the federal government on the powerful provincial governments alienated voters and weakened his government.

For Canada, the vigor of the U.S. economy in the 1980s and 1990s was a mixed blessing, for the American behemoth was all too often inclined to make use of its power to have its way with its neighbors. Economic recession had brought the Conservative Party to power in Canada in 1984, but its decision to privatize many of Canada’s state-run corpo- rations and sign a free trade agree- ment with the United States cost the government much of its popu- larity. In 1993, the ruling Conser- vatives were crushed in national elections, winning only two seats in the House of Commons. The Liberals took over with the charge of stimulating the nation’s sluggish economy.

The new Liberal government also faced a festering crisis over the French-speaking province of

Quebec. In the late 1960s, the Parti Qu�eb�ecois, headed by Ren�e Levesque, campaigned on a platform calling for Quebec’s secession from the Canadian confederation. To pursue their dream of separation, some underground sep- aratist groups even turned to terrorism. In 1976, the Parti Qu�eb�ecois won Quebec’s provincial elections and called for a referendum that would enable the provincial govern- ment to negotiate Quebec’s independence from the rest of Canada. But voters in Quebec rejected the plan in 1995, and debate over Quebec’s status continued to divide Canada as the decade came to a close. Provincial elections held in April 2003 delivered a stunning defeat to the Parti Qu�eb�ecois, and in the first decade of the new century, the issue had declined as a factor in Canadian politics.

In the meantime, the ruling Liberal Party became plagued by scandals, and in 2006, national elections brought the Conservatives, under new prime minister Ste- phen Harper (b. 1959), to power in Ottawa. The new gov- ernment sought to pursue a policy of limited government and lower tax rates, but Harper was hampered by the fact that his party did not control a majority of votes in the House of Commons. That problem was rectified in 2011, however, when national elections gave the Conservatives a resounding victory, freeing Prime Minister Harper to pursue a more aggressive agenda. Chief among the challenges is to negotiate the country’s delicate economic relationship with the United States.

Democracy, Dictatorship, and Development in Latin America Since 1945 The Great Depression of the 1930s caused political instability in many Latin American countries (see Chapter 5), but it also helped trans- form Latin America from a tradi- tional to a modern economy. Since the nineteenth century, Latin Am- ericans had exported raw materials while buying the manufactured goods of the industrialized coun- tries. As a result of the Great De- pression, however, export markets virtually vanished, and the revenues available to buy manufactured goods declined. In response, many Latin American countries encouraged the

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development of new industries to produce goods that were formerly imported. Due to a shortage of capital in the private sector, governments often invested in the new industries, thereby leading, for example, to government- run steel industries in Chile and Brazil and petroleum industries in Argentina and Mexico.

An Era of Dependency In the 1960s, however, most Latin American countries were still dependent on the United States, Europe, and now Japan for the advanced technology needed for modern industries. To make matters worse, poverty in some coun- tries limited the size of domestic markets, and many coun- tries were unable to find markets abroad for their products.

These failures resulted in takeovers by military regimes that sought to curb the demands of the new industrial middle class and the working class that had increased in size and power as a result of industrialization. In the 1960s, repressive military regimes in Chile, Brazil, and Argentina abolished political parties and turned to export- import economies financed by foreigners while encourag- ing multinational corporations to come into their countries. Because these companies were primarily interested in taking advantage of Latin America’s raw materials and abundant supply of cheap labor, their presence often offered little benefit to the local economy and contributed to the region’s dependence on the industrially developed nations.

In the 1970s, Latin American regimes grew even more reliant on borrowing from abroad, especially from banks in Europe and the United States. Between 1970 and 1982, debt to foreigners increased from $27 billion to $315.3 bil- lion. By 1982, a number of governments announced that they could no longer pay interest on their debts to foreign banks, and their economies began to crumble. Wages fell, and unemployment skyrocketed. Governments were forced to undertake fundamental reforms to qualify for additional loans, reducing the size of the state sector and improving agricultural production in order to stem the flow of people from the countryside to the cities and strengthen the domestic market for Latin American prod- ucts. In many cases, these reforms were launched by dem- ocratic governments that began to replace the discredited military regimes during the 1980s.

In the 1990s, the opening of markets to free trade and other consequences of the globalization process began to have a growing impact on Latin American economies. As some countries faced the danger of bankruptcy, belt- tightening measures undertaken to reassure foreign inves- tors provoked social protests and threatened to undermine the precarious political stability in the region.

Not all political parties in Latin America opted to adopt the capitalist model. In some countries, resentment at eco- nomic and social inequities led to the emergence of strong leftist movements or even to social revolution. The most prominent example was Cuba, where in the late 1950s Fidel Castro established a regime based loosely on the Soviet model. Eventually, other revolutionary movements flourished or even came to power in Chile, Uruguay, and parts of Central America as well (see “The Leftist Variant” below).

THE ROLE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH The Catholic Church has sometimes played a significant role in the process of social and political change. A powerful force in Latin America for centuries, the church often applied its prestige on the side of the landed elites, helping them maintain their grip on power. Eventually, however, the church adopted a middle stance in Latin American society, advocating a moderate capitalist system that would respect workers’ rights, institute land reform, and provide for the poor. Some Catholics, however, took a more radi- cal path to change by advocating a theology of liberation. Influenced by Marxist ideas, advocates of liberation theology believed that Christians must fight to free the oppressed, using violence if necessary. Some Catholic clergy recommended armed rebellions and even teamed up with Marxist guerrillas in rural areas. Other radical priests worked in factories alongside workers or carried on social work among the poor in the slums.

In recent years, the Catholic Church in Latin Amer- ica has encountered a new challenge in the growth of evangelical Protestant sects. In Brazil, one of the rea- sons advanced for the rising popularity of these sects is the Vatican’s stand on issues such as divorce and abor- tion. In a recent survey, the vast majority of Brazilian Catholics supported the right to abortion in cases of rape or danger to the mother and believed in the use of birth control to limit population growth and achieve smaller families.

THE BEHEMOTH TO THE NORTH Throughout the post- war era, the United States has cast a large shadow over Latin America. In 1948, the nations of the region formed the Organization of American States (OAS), which was intended to eliminate unilateral action by one state in the internal or external affairs of another state, while encour- aging regional cooperation to maintain peace. It did not end U.S. interference in Latin American affairs, however. The United States returned to a policy of unilateral action when it believed that Soviet agents were attempting to use local Communists or radical reformers to establish governments hostile to U.S. interests. In the 1960s,

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President Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress encouraged social reform and economic development by providing private and public funds to elected governments whose reform programs were acceptable to the United States. But when Marxist-led insurrections began to spread throughout the region, the United States responded by providing massive military aid to anti-Communist regimes to forestall the possibility of a Soviet bastion in the West- ern Hemisphere.

The foremost example of U.S. interference occurred in Chile, where the Marxist Salvador Allende (1908–1973) was elected president in 1970. When Allende’s govern- ment began to nationalize foreign-owned corporations, General Augusto Pinochet (1916–2006), with covert U.S. support, launched a coup d’�etat, which resulted in the deaths of Allende and thousands of his followers. But Pinochet’s flagrant abuse of power led to unrest and even- tually, in 1989, to a return of civilian rule.

Since the 1990s, the United States has played an active role in persuading Latin American governments to open their economies to the international marketplace. Though globalization has had some success in promoting prosper- ity in the region, it has also led to economic dislocation and hardship in some countries, provoking familiar cries of “Yanqui imperialismo” from protest groups and the election in recent years of leftist governments in several countries in the region.

Nationalism and the Military: The Examples of Argentina and Brazil The military became the power brokers of twentieth- century Latin America. Especially in the 1960s and 1970s, military leaders portrayed themselves as the guardians of national honor and orderly progress. In the mid-1970s, only Colombia, Venezuela, and Costa Rica maintained democratic governments.

A decade later, pluralistic systems had been installed virtually everywhere except in Cuba, Paraguay, and some of the Central American states. The establishment of dem- ocratic institutions, however, has not managed to solve all the chronic problems that have plagued the states of Latin America. Official corruption continues in many countries, and the gap between rich and poor is growing, most nota- bly in Brazil and in Venezuela, though leftist regimes in both countries have adopted policies designed to redistrib- ute the wealth.

ARGENTINA Until World War II, a landed oligarchy, composed of wheat and cattle interests and backed by conservative elements in the military, had dominated Argentine politics. But in 1943, some leading military

officers grew restive and seized power on their own. When labor unrest broke out, the demagogic army colonel Juan Per�on (1895–1974) publicly supported the workers and with their support was elected president in 1946.

Per�on pursued a policy of increased industrialization to please his chief supporters—the urban middle class and the descamisados, or “shirtless ones,” of the working class. At the same time, he sought to free Argentina from for- eign investors. The government bought the railways; took over the banking, insurance, shipping, and communica- tions industries; and assumed regulation of imports and exports. But Per�on’s regime was also authoritarian. His wife, Eva Per�on (1919–1952), organized women’s groups to support the government while Per�on created fascist gangs, modeled after Hitler’s Storm Troops, that used vio- lence to intimidate his opponents. But growing corruption in the Per�on government and the alienation of more and more people by the regime’s excesses encouraged the military to overthrow him in September 1955. Per�on went into exile in Spain.

It had been easy for the military to seize power, but they found it harder to rule, especially now that Argentina had a party of Peronistas clamoring for the return of the exiled leader. In the 1960s and 1970s, military and civilian governments (the latter closely watched by the military) alternated in power. When both failed to provide eco- nomic stability, military leaders decided to allow Juan Per�on to return. Reelected president in September 1973, Per�on died one year later. In 1976, the military installed a new regime, using the occasion to kill more than six thou- sand leftists in what was called the “Dirty War.” With economic problems still unsolved, the regime tried to divert popular attention by invading the Falkland Islands in April 1982. Great Britain, which had controlled the islands since the nineteenth century, decisively defeated the Argentine forces. The loss discredited the military and opened the door once again to civilian rule. In 1983, Ra�ul Alfons�ın (1927–2009) was elected president and sought to reestablish democratic processes.

In 1989, however, Alfons�ın was defeated in the presi- dential elections by the Peronist candidate, Carlos Sa�ul Menem (b. 1930). Initially, the charismatic Menem won broad popularity for his ability to control the army, but when he sought to rein in rampant inflation by curbing government spending, rising unemployment and an eco- nomic recession cut into his public acclaim. Plagued with low growth, rising emigration (a growing number of descendants of European settlers were returning to live in Europe), and shrinking markets abroad, the gov- ernment defaulted on its debt to the International Mone- tary Fund (IMF) in 2001, initiating an era of political

Democracy, Dictatorship, and Development in Latin America Since 1945 183

chaos. In May 2003 with the economy in paralysis, N�estor Kirchner (1950–2010) assumed the presidency and sought to revive public confidence. The new pres- ident took decisive steps to end the crisis, adopting measures to stimulate economic growth and promote exports. By 2005, the debt to the IMF had been fully paid off. Kirchner also encouraged measures to bring the military officers who had carried out the Dirty War of the 1970s to justice. N�estor Kirchner’s success in stabilizing the Argentine economy, which resulted in a 9 percent increase in the gross domestic product, was undoubtedly a factor in the presidential campaign in 2007, when his wife Cristina Fern�andez de Kirchner (b. 1953) was elected to succeed him in office. But grow- ing income inequality, rising inflation—always a threat to prosperity in Argentina—and an energy crisis have tarnished the performance of the first female president in the country’s history.

BRAZIL After Get�ulio Vargas was forced to resign from the presidency in 1945 (see Chapter 5), a second Brazilian republic came into being. In 1949, Vargas was reelected to the presidency. But he was unable to solve Brazil’s eco- nomic problems, especially its soaring inflation, and in 1954, after the armed forces called on him to resign, Var- gas committed suicide. Subsequent democratically elected presidents had no better success in controlling inflation while trying to push rapid industrialization. In the spring of 1964, the military decided to intervene and took over the government.

The armed forces remained in direct control of the country for twenty years, setting a new economic course by cutting back somewhat on state control of the economy and emphasizing market forces. The new policies seemed to work, and during the late 1960s, Brazil experienced an “economic miracle” as it moved into self-sustaining eco- nomic growth, generally the hallmark of a modern econ- omy. Promoters also pointed to the country’s success in turning a racially diverse population into a relatively color- blind society.

Rapid economic growth carried with it some po- tential drawbacks. The economic exploitation of the Amazon River basin opened the region to farming but in the view of some critics threatened the ecological balance not only of Brazil but of the earth itself. Ordi- nary Brazilians hardly benefited as the gulf between rich and poor, always wide, grew even wider. At the same time, rapid development led to an inflation rate of 100 percent a year, and an enormous foreign debt added to the problems. Overwhelmed, the generals resigned from power and opened the door for a return to democracy in 1985.

In 1990, national elections brought a new president into office—Fernando Collor de Mello (b. 1949). The new administration promised to reduce inflation with a drastic reform program based on squeezing money out of the economy by stringent controls on wages and prices, drastic reductions in public spending, and cuts in the number of government employees. But Collor de Mello’s efforts—reminiscent of Menem’s in Argentina— were undermined by reports of official corruption, and he resigned at the end of 1992 after being impeached. In new elections two years later, Fernando Cardoso (b. 1931) was elected president by an overwhelming majority of the popular vote. Cardoso, a member of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, introduced mea- sures to privatize state-run industries and to reform social security and the pension system. He rode a wave of economic prosperity to reelection in 1998. But eco- nomic problems, combined with allegations of official corruption and rising factionalism within the ruling party, undermined his popularity, leading to the victory of the Workers’ Party in 2002.

The new president, Luiz In�acio Lula da Silva (b. 1945), a former lathe operator, was enormously popular among the country’s working masses and had come to power on a promise to introduce antipoverty programs and reverse his predecessor’s policy of privatizing major industries. On taking office in 2003, however, Lula immediately cau- tioned his supporters that the party’s ambitious plans could not be realized until urgent financial reforms had been enacted. That remark effectively summed up the challenge that the new administration faced: how to sat- isfy the pent-up demands of its traditional constituency— the millions of Brazilians still living in poverty—while dealing effectively with the realities of exercising power.

During the next few years, the Brazilian economy experienced dramatic growth in several areas: millions of acres of virgin lands were brought under cultivation in the interior, enabling the country to become a major exporter of agricultural products, including wheat, cotton, and soybeans. In late 2007, the government announced the discovery of significant underwater oil reserves off the southeastern coast of the country. Such successes led to growing prosperity for many Brazilian citizens, who took advantage of low interest rates to increase their purchases of automobiles, homes, and consumer goods. Ambitious social programs began to reduce the gap between wealth and poverty—always one of the most visible characteris- tics of Brazilian society. When Lula left office in 2010 after two terms as president, the country was poised to become a hemispheric superpower and had recently announced plans to organize a defensive alliance of Latin American countries similar to NATO.

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Lula’s prot�eg�ee and chief of staff, the onetime radical activist Dilma Rousseff (b. 1947), was elected to succeed him as president in 2010 on the promise of building a new “Brazil without Misery.” She has embraced the anti- poverty programs of her predecessor, cleaning up the slums—known as favelas—that surround every major city, and recently announced an affirmative action program to increase the percentage of citizens of color in public uni- versities. But Brazil’s recent history of rapid growth has been undermined by the global recession, and her hopes to continue the successes of the Lula years face severe challenges.

The Mexican Way During the 1950s and early 1960s, Mexico’s ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), focused on industrial development. Steady economic growth com- bined with low inflation and real gains in wages for more and more people made those years appear to be a golden age in Mexico’s economic development. But massive stu- dent protests in 1968, which turned violent and resulted in hundreds of casualties, were a clear sign of discontent beneath the surface. The protests persuaded PRI leaders to introduce political reforms. The government eased

rules for the registration of political parties and allowed greater freedom of debate in the press and universities. But economic problems continued to trouble Mexico.

In the late 1970s, vast new reserves of oil were discov- ered in Mexico. As sales of oil abroad rose dramatically, the government became increas- ingly dependent on oil reve- nues. When world oil prices dropped in the mid-1980s, Mexico was no longer able to make the payments on its for- eign debt, which had reached $80 billion in 1982. The gov- ernment was forced to adopt new economic policies, includ- ing the sale of publicly owned companies to private parties.

During the 1990s, Mexican leaders continued the eco- nomic liberalization policies of the previous decade, and in 1994 President Carlos Salinas

(b. 1948) negotiated the North American Free Trade Agree- ment (NAFTA) with the United States and Canada. But although NAFTA was highly controversial in the United States because of the fear that U.S. firms would move facto- ries to Mexico, where labor costs are cheaper and environ- mental standards less stringent, many Mexicans felt that NAFTA was more beneficial to the U.S. economy than to its southern neighbor. An indication of Mexico’s continuing economic problems was the rising popular unrest in south- ern parts of the country. Unhappy farmers, many of them native Amerindians, increasingly protested the endemic poverty and widespread neglect of the needs of the indige- nous peoples, who comprise about 10 percent of Mexico’s total population of 100 million people.

In 2000, a national election suddenly swept the ruling PRI from power. The new president, Vicente Fox (b. 1942), came to office with high expectations and promised to address the country’s many problems, including political corruption, widespread poverty, environmental concerns, and a growing population. But he was hampered both by the PRI, which still controlled many state legislatures and held a plurality in Congress, and by the protest movement in rural areas in the south. Although the movement has since faded, it aroused such a groundswell of support from around the country that Fox found himself under

Renewing Rio. In accepting an invitation to host the Summer Olympic Games in 2016, the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro committed itself to tackling one of the city’s chronic problems—the grinding poverty of many of its urban residents. Nowhere is this challenge more visible than in the vast slums, known as favelas, which coexist side by side with wealthy beach districts in fashionable Copacabana and Ipanema. Adding to the problem is the fact that many of these neighborhoods have long been controlled by drug gangs, who have violently resisted efforts by the city’s security forces to evict them. In recent years, Rio’s favelas have attracted the attention of Hollywood filmmakers, as this illustration subtly suggests.

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considerable pressure to deal with generations of neglect in solving the problems of Mexico.

The conservative lawyer Felipe Calder�on (b. 1962) took over from Fox in December 2006 in a presidential election disputed by his rival, Andr�es Manuel L�opez Obra- dor. With PRI support, Calder�on sought to rule from the center, while adopting measures to alleviate poverty and bring about fiscal reform. But his efforts were undermined by the economic slowdown in the United States.

In elections in 2012, the PRI returned to power. The new president, Enrique Pe~na Nieto (b. 1966), is a charis- matic figure who reminds some observers of John F. Kennedy, but he faces enormous challenges. Forty percent of Mexicans live in poverty, and one in ten earns less than the equivalent of one U.S. dollar a day. At the same time, crime rates are soaring, despite the government’s efforts to crack down on the country’s influential drug cartels.

The Leftist Variant Most of the countries in Latin America have followed the path laid out by the three examples described above. Mili- tary dictatorships have been replaced by elected govern- ments that, at least on paper, follow standard democratic principles. In many cases, though, the influence of tradi- tional ruling elites remains strong, leading to significant levels of popular discontent. In some countries, this has resulted in the emergence of governments dominated by leftist parties influenced by the ideas of Karl Marx. The foremost examples are Cuba and Venezuela.

THE CUBAN REVOLUTION An authoritarian regime, headed by Fulgencio Batista (1901–1973) and closely tied economically to U.S. investors, had ruled Cuba since 1934. In the early 1950s, a guerrilla movement—led by Fidel Castro (b. 1926) assisted by Ernesto “Ch�e” Guevara (1928– 1967), an Argentinian who believed that revolutionary upheaval was necessary for change to occur—emerged in the Sierra Maestra. As the rebels gradually gained support, Batista responded with such brutality that he alienated his own supporters. The dictator fled in December 1958, and Castro’s revolutionaries seized Havana on January 1, 1959.

As the new regime moved to nationalize key elements of the Cuban economy, relations between Cuba and the United States quickly deteriorated. When the Soviet Union began to provide military and economic aid to Cuba, Presi- dent Eisenhower directed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to “organize the training of Cuban exiles, mainly in Guatemala, against a possible future day when they might return to their homeland.”2 In October 1960, the United States declared a trade embargo of Cuba, driving Castro closer to the Soviet Union.

On January 3, 1961, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Cuba. The new U.S. president, John F. Ken- nedy, approved a plan originally drafted by the previous administration to launch an invasion to overthrow Cas- tro’s government, but the landing of 1,400 CIA-assisted Cubans in Cuba at the Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961, turned into a total military disaster. This fiasco encour- aged the Soviets to make an even greater commitment to Cuban independence by attempting to place nuclear mis- siles in the country, an act that led to a showdown with the United States (see Chapter 7).

The missile crisis persuaded Castro that the Soviet Union was unreliable. If revolutionary Cuba was to be secure and no longer encircled by hostile states tied to U.S. interests, it would have to instigate social revolution in the rest of Latin America. He believed that once guerrilla wars were launched, peasants would flock to the movement and over- throw the old regimes. Guevara attempted to launch a guer- rilla war in Bolivia but was caught and killed by the Bolivian army in the fall of 1967. The Cuban strategy had failed.

In Cuba, however, Castro’s socialist revolution pro- ceeded, with mixed results. The regime provided free med- ical services for all citizens, and a new law code expanded the rights of women. Illiteracy was wiped out by creating new schools and establishing teacher-training institutes that tripled the number of teachers within ten years. Eschewing the path of rapid industrialization, Castro encouraged agri- cultural diversification. But the Cuban economy continued to rely on the production and sale of sugar. Economic prob- lems forced the Castro regime to depend on Soviet sub- sidies and the purchase of Cuban sugar by Soviet bloc countries.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union was a major blow to Cuba, as the new government in Moscow no longer had a reason to continue to subsidize the onetime Soviet ally. During the 1990s, Castro began to introduce limited market reforms and to allow the circulation of U.S. dollars. But most Cubans remain locked in poverty, and although an ail- ing Fidel Castro was replaced in 2008 by his younger brother, Ra�ul Castro (b. 1931), the system of political repres- sion remains intact. Wary of the elusive signs of liberaliza- tion in Cuba, the Obama administration has maintained its embargo on trade, although restrictions on travel between the two countries and on remittances to Cuban families from relatives in the United States have been relaxed.

VENEZUELA: THE NEW CUBA? With the discovery of oil in the small town of Cab�ımas in the early 1920s, Venezuela took its first step toward becoming a major exporter of oil and one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America. At first, profits from “black rain” accrued mainly to the nation’s elite families, but in 1976 the oil industry was nationalized,

186 CHAPTER 8 The United States, Canada, and Latin America

and Venezuela entered an era of national prosperity. But when the price of oil on world markets dropped sharply in the 1980s, the country’s economic honeymoon came to an end, and in 1989 President Carlos Andr�es P�erez (1922–2010) launched an austerity program that cut deeply into the living standards of much of the population.

After popular demonstrations led to an army crackdown in 1992, restive military forces launched an abortive coup to seize power. Five years later, one of the leading members of the plot—a paratroop commander named Hugo Ch�avez (1954–2013)—was elected president in national elections. Taking advantage of rising oil prices, Ch�avez launched an ambitious spending program to improve living conditions for the poor. Although such measures earned his regime broad national support, Ch�avez’s efforts to silence critics and strengthen presidential powers—including a program to organize his supporters into “Bolivarian circles” (in honor of the nineteenth-century Venezuelan liberator Sim�on Bol�ıvar) at the local level—displayed his all-too-evident dic- tatorial tendencies.

A longtime admirer of Fidel Castro, Ch�avez strength- ened relations with Cuba and encouraged revolutionary movements throughout Latin America. After 2006, he acquired new allies with the election of leftist governments in Bolivia and Ecuador. As an outspoken opponent of

“Yanqui imperialismo,” he pro- posed resistance to U.S. pro- posals for a hemispheric free trade zone, charging that such an organization would operate only for the benefit of the United States. Until his death from cancer in 2013, by using his country’s oil wealth as a means of promoting his political objectives, Ch�avez had replaced Fidel Castro as Washington’s most dangerous adversary in Latin America. After Ch�avez’s death, his vice president Nicol�as Maduro (b. 1962) was elected president and vowed to con- tinue his predecessor’s policies.

Trends in Latin American Culture Postwar literature in Latin America has been vibrant. Writers such as Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012), and No-

bel Prize winners Mario Vargas Llosa (b. 1936) and Gabriel Garc�ıa M�arquez (b. 1927) are among the most respected literary names of the last half century. These authors often use dazzling language and daring narrative experimentation to make their point. Gabriel Garc�ıa M�arquez from Colombia is a master of this style. In One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), he explores the transfor- mation of a small town under the impact of political vio- lence, industrialization, and the arrival of a U.S. banana company. Especially noteworthy is his use of magical real- ism; the outrageous events that assail the town are related in a matter-of-fact voice, thus transforming the fantastic into the commonplace.

Unlike novelists in the United States and Western Europe, who tend to focus their attention on the interior landscape within the modern personality in an industrial society, fiction writers in Latin America, like their coun- terparts in Africa and much of Asia, have sought to pro- ject an underlying political message. In his epic The War of the End of the World, the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa condemns the fanaticism and the inhumanity of war. In his novel The Feast of the Goat (2001), he expresses his moral outrage at the cruel dictatorship of Fulgencio Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. Others, like Vargas Llosa’s countryman, Jos�e Maria Arguedas (1911–1969),

Hey Buddy! Wanna Buy a Used Car? After seizing power in 1959, the regime of Fidel Castro forbade the sale of automobiles in revolutionary Cuba, and even severely restricted imports from Soviet bloc nations. As a result, almost the only vehicles on the streets of Havana were vintage U.S. cars from the 1940s and 1950s, whose owners kept them running with rubber bands and bailing wire. In 2011, the regime suddenly reversed course and authorized the sale and purchase of vehicles. Cuban owners welcomed the decision, which opens up a lucrative market for antique automobiles among buyers in the United States and Europe.

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have championed the cause of the Amerindians and lauded the diversity that marks the ethnic mix throughout the con- tinent. Some have run for high political office as a means of remedying social problems. Some have been women, reflecting the rising demand for sexual equality in a society traditionally marked by male domination. The memorable phrase of the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957)— “I have chewed stones with woman’s gums”—encapsulates the plight of Latin American women.

A powerful example of Postmodern art in Latin Amer- ica is found in the haunting work of the Colombian sculp- tor Doris Salcedo (b. 1958). Her art evokes disturbing

images of her country’s endless civil war and violent drug trade. Salcedo often presents everyday wooden furniture, to which she has applied a thin layer of cement and frag- ments of personal mementos from the owner’s past life: a remnant of lace curtain, a lock of hair, or a handkerchief. Frozen in time, these everyday souvenirs evoke the pain of those who were dragged from their homes in the mid- dle of the night and senselessly murdered. Salcedo’s work can be experienced as an impassioned plea to stop the kill- ing of innocent civilians or as the fossilized artifact from some future archaeologist’s dig, showing traces of our brief and absurd sojourn on earth.

CONCLUSION D U R I N G T H E S E C O N D H A L F of the twentieth century, the United States emerged as the preeminent power in the world, dominant in its economic and technolog- ical achievements as well as its military hardware. Although the Soviet Union was a serious competitor in the arms race engendered by the Cold War, its economic achievements paled in comparison with those of the U.S. behemoth.

The worldwide dominance of the United States was a product of a combination of political, economic, and cul- tural factors and showed no signs of abating as the new century began. But recently there are some warning signs that bear watching: an increasing gap in the distribution of wealth that could ultimately threaten the steady growth in consumer spending, an educational system that all too

often fails to produce graduates with the skills needed to master the challenges of a technology-driven economy, and an increasingly dysfunctional political system that undermines the ability of the government to provide ser- vices to a nation of more than 300 million people.

For most of the twentieth century, the fortunes of the nations of Latin America were tied, for good or ill, to the United States. But in the last two decades, a number of nations in the region have emerged as economic power- houses in their own right. Foremost among these is Brazil, which for the first time promises to live up to its reputa- tion as the next global economic superpower. At the same time, democratic institutions are steadily taking root throughout the continent. Is Latin America finally in a position to take charge of its own destiny?

TIMELINE

1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005

United States

Death of Jackson Pollock (1956) Era of

“magical realism”

Eisenhower era (1953–1961)

Latin America

Presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981–1989)

Terrorist attack on the United States (2001)

Obama elected as first African American U.S. president (2008)

Rule of Juan Perón in Argentina (1946–1955)

Castro takes power in Cuba (1959)

Lula da Silva becomes president of Brazil (2003)

Assassination of John F. Kennedy (1963)

Watergate scandal (1972)

Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement (1955–1968)

Emergence of women’s liberation movement (1960s)

Chávez elected president of Venezuela (1997)

Presidency of Bill Clinton (1993–2001)

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CHAPTER NOTES

1. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, Bk. 1, 1963–64 (Washington, D.C., 1965), p. 704.

2. Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956–1961 (Garden City, 1965), p. 533.

Conclusion 189

C H A P T E R

9 Brave New World: The Rise and Fall of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

A C C O R D I N G T O K A R L M A R X , capitalism is a system that involves the exploitation of man by man; under socialism, it is the other way around. That wry joke, an ironic twist on the familiar Marxist saying of the previous century, was typical of popular humor in post–World War II Moscow, where the dreams of a future Communist utopia had faded in the grim reality of life in the Soviet Union.

During the 1950s, the annual rate of economic growth in the Soviet Union exceeded 6 percent, and there were widespread predictions, even in the United States, that the Soviet Union would eventually surpass the United States as the world’s preeminent economic power. But Soviet leaders had made a calculated decision to emphasize military spending at the expense of other sectors of the economy, and as growth rates dropped dramatically in the 1980s, the standard of living for Soviet citizens continued to stagnate. For much of the population in the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites, the “brave new world” prophesied by Karl Marx remained but a figment of his fertile imagination.

C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G

Q What reasons have been advanced to explainwhy the Soviet sytem collapsed in 1991? Which do you think are the most persuasive?

The Postwar Soviet Union At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union was one of the world’s two superpowers, and its leader, Joseph Stalin, was at the height of his power. As a result of the war, Stalin and his Soviet colleagues were now in control of a vast empire that included Eastern Europe, much of the Balkans, and territory gained from Japan in East Asia (see Map 9.1).

From Stalin to Khrushchev World War II had devastated the Soviet Union. Twenty million citizens lost their lives, and cities such as Kiev, Kharkov, and Leningrad suffered enormous physical destruction. As the lands that had been occupied by the German forces were liberated, the Soviet government turned its attention to restoring the nation’s economic structures. Nevertheless, in 1945, agricultural production was only 60 percent and steel output only 50 percent of prewar levels. The Soviet people faced incredibly difficult conditions: they worked longer hours than before the war, ate less, and were ill-housed and poorly clothed.

In the immediate postwar years, the Soviet Union removed goods and materials from occupied Germany and extorted valuable raw materials from its satellite states in Eastern Europe. More important, however, to create a new industrial base, Stalin returned to the method he had used in the 1930s—the extraction of devel- opment capital from Soviet labor. Working hard for little

How to shop in Moscow

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pay and for precious few consumer goods, Soviet citizens were expected to produce goods for export with little in return for themselves. The incoming capital from abroad could then be used to purchase machinery and Western technology. The loss of millions of men in the war meant that much of this tremendous workload fell upon Soviet women, who performed almost 40 percent of the heavy manual labor.

AN INDUSTRIAL POWERHOUSE The pace of economic recovery in the postwar Soviet Union was impressive. By 1947, Russian industrial production had attained 1939 levels; three years later, it had surpassed those levels by 40 percent. New power plants, canals, and giant factories

were built, and new industrial enterprises and oil fields were established in Siberia and Soviet Central Asia. A new five-year plan, announced in 1946, reached its goals in less than five years. Returning to his prewar forced-draft system, Stalin had created an industrial powerhouse.

Although Stalin’s economic recovery policy was success- ful in promoting growth in heavy industry, primarily for the benefit of the military, consumer goods remained scarce, as long-suffering Soviet citizens were still being asked to sacrifice for a better tomorrow. The development of thermonuclear weapons, MIG fighter jets, and the first space satellite (Sputnik) in the 1950s may have elevated the Soviet state’s reputation as a world power abroad, but domestically, the Soviet people were shortchanged. Heavy

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MAP 9.1 The Soviet Union. After World War II, the boundaries of Eastern Europe were redrawn as a result of Allied agreements reached at the Tehran and Yalta Conferences. This map shows the new boundaries that were established throughout the region, placing Soviet power in the center of Europe.

How had the boundaries changed from the prewar era?

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industry grew at a rate three times that of personal con- sumption. Moreover, the housing shortage was acute, with living conditions especially difficult in the overcrowded cities.

When World War II ended, Stalin had been in power for more than fifteen years. During that time, he had removed all opposition to his rule and emerged as the undisputed master of the Soviet Union. Constantly increasing repression became the hallmark of the regime. In 1946, government decrees subordinated all forms of literary and scientific expression to the political needs of the state. Along with the anti-intellectual campaign came political terror. By the late 1940s, an estimated 9 million people were in Siberian concentration camps.

Increasingly distrustful of competitors, Stalin exercised sole authority and pitted his subordinates against one another. One of these subordinates, Lavrenti Beria, head of the secret police, controlled a force of several hundred thousand agents, leaving Stalin’s colleagues completely cowed. As Stalin remarked mockingly on one occasion, “When I die, the imperialists will strangle all of you like a litter of kittens.”1

Stalin’s morbid suspicions even extended to some of his closest colleagues. In 1948, Andrei Zhdanov, his pre- sumed successor and head of the Leningrad party organi- zation, died under mysterious circumstances. The doctors

who had attended Zhdanov were charged with causing his death (hence, the label “the doctors’ plot”), but most historians believe it was done on Stalin’s order. Within weeks, the Leningrad party organization was purged of several top leaders, many of whom were charged with traitorous connections with Western intelligence agencies. In succeeding years, Stalin directed his suspicion at other members of the inner circle, including Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Known as “Old Stone Butt” in the West for his stubborn defense of Soviet security interests, Molotov had been a loyal lieutenant since the early years of Stalin’s rise to power. Now Stalin distrusted Molotov and had his Jewish wife sent to a Siberian concentration camp.

THE RISE AND FALL OF NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV Stalin died—presumably of natural causes—in 1953 and, after some bitter infighting within the party leadership, was succeeded by Georgy Malenkov, a veteran administrator and ambitious member of the Politburo. Malenkov came to power with a clear agenda. In foreign affairs, he hoped to promote an easing of Cold War tensions and improve relations with the Western powers. For Moscow’s Eastern European allies, he advocated a so-called New Course in their mutual relations and a decline in Stalinist methods of rule. Inside the Soviet Union, he hoped to reduce defense

The Portals of Doom. Perhaps the most feared location in the Soviet Union was Lyubyanka Prison, an ornate prerevolutionary building in the heart of Moscow. Taken over by the Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution, it became the headquarters of the Soviet secret police, the Cheka, later to be known as the KGB. It was here that many Soviet citizens accused of “counterrevolutionary acts” were imprisoned and executed. The figure on the pedestal is that of Felix Dzerzhinsky, first director of the Cheka and a loyal henchman of Joseph Stalin. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the statue was removed.

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expenditures and assign a higher priority to improving the standard of living. Such goals were laudable and probably had the support of the majority of the Russian people, but they were not necessarily appealing to key pressure groups within the Soviet Union—the army, the Commu- nist Party, the managerial elite, and the security services (now known as the Committee for State Security, or KGB). Malenkov was soon removed from his position as prime minister, and power shifted to his rival, the new party general secretary, Nikita Khrushchev.

During his struggle for power with Malenkov, Khru- shchev had outmaneuvered his rival by calling for height- ened defense expenditures and a continuing emphasis on heavy industry. Once in power, however, Khrushchev showed the political dexterity displayed by many an American politician and reversed his priorities. He now resumed his predecessor’s efforts to reduce tensions with the West and boost the standard of living of the Russian people. He moved vigorously to improve the perfor- mance of the Soviet economy and revitalize Soviet society. By nature, Khrushchev was a man of enormous energy as well as an innovator. In an attempt to loosen the strangle- hold of the central bureaucracy over the national econ- omy, he abolished dozens of government ministries and split up the party and government apparatus. Khrushchev also attempted to rejuvenate the stagnant agricultural sec- tor, long the Achilles heel of the Soviet economy. He attempted to spur production by increasing profit incen- tives and opened “virgin lands” in Soviet Kazakhstan to bring thousands of acres of new land under cultivation.

Like any innovator, however, Khrushchev had to over- come the inherently conservative instincts of the Soviet bureaucracy, as well as of the mass of the Soviet popula- tion. His plan to remove the “dead hand” of the state, however laudable in intent, alienated much of the Soviet official class, and his effort to split the party angered those who saw it as the central force in the Soviet system. Khrushchev’s agricultural schemes inspired similar opposi- tion. Although the Kazakhstan wheat lands would eventu- ally demonstrate their importance, progress was slow, and his effort to persuade the Russian people to eat more corn (an idea he had apparently picked up during a visit to the United States) led to the mocking nickname “Cornman.” Disappointing agricultural production, combined with high military spending, hurt the Soviet economy. The industrial growth rate, which had soared in the early 1950s, declined dramatically from 13 percent in 1953 to 7.5 percent in 1964.

Khrushchev was probably best known for his policy of de-Stalinization. Khrushchev had risen in the party hier- archy as a Stalin prot�eg�e, but he had been deeply dis- turbed by his mentor’s excesses and, once in a position of

authority, moved to excise the Stalinist legacy from Soviet society. The campaign began at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party in February 1956, when Khru- shchev gave a long speech criticizing some of Stalin’s major shortcomings. The speech apparently had not been intended for public distribution, but it was quickly leaked to the Western press and created a sensation throughout the world (see the box on p. 194). During the next few years, Khrushchev encouraged more freedom of expres- sion for writers, artists, and composers, arguing that “readers should be given the chance to make their own judgments” regarding the acceptability of controversial lit- erature and that “police measures shouldn’t be used.”2 At Khrushchev’s order, thousands of prisoners were released from concentration camps.

Khrushchev’s personality, however, did not endear him to higher Soviet officials, who frowned at his ten- dency to crack jokes and play the clown. Nor were the higher members of the party bureaucracy pleased when Khrushchev tried to curb their privileges. Foreign policy failures further damaged Khrushchev’s reputation among his colleagues. Relations with China deteriorated badly under his leadership. His plan to install missiles in Cuba was the final straw (see Chapter 7). While he was away on vacation in 1964, a special meeting of the Soviet Polit- buro voted him out of office (because of “deteriorating health”) and forced him into retirement. Although a group of leaders succeeded him, real power came into the hands of Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982), the “trusted” sup- porter of Khrushchev who had engineered his downfall.

The Brezhnev Years, 1964–1982 The ouster of Nikita Khrushchev in October 1964 vividly demonstrated the challenges that would be encountered by any Soviet leader sufficiently bold to try to reform the Soviet system. In democratic countries, pressure on the government comes from various sources within society at large—the business community and labor unions, interest groups, and the general public. In the Soviet Union, pressure on government and party leaders originated from sources essentially operating inside the governing system—from the government bureaucracy, the party apparatus, the KGB, and the armed forces.

Leonid Brezhnev, the new party chief, was undoubt- edly aware of these realities of Soviet politics, and his long tenure in power was marked, above all, by the desire to avoid changes that might provoke instability, either at home or abroad. Brezhnev was himself a product of the Soviet system. He had entered the ranks of the party lead- ership under Stalin, and although he was not a particularly avid believer in party ideology—indeed, his years in

The Postwar Soviet Union 193

power gave rise to innumerable stories about his addic- tion to “bourgeois pleasures,” including expensive country houses in the elite Moscow suburb of Zhukovka and fast cars (many of them gifts from foreign leaders)—he was no partisan of reform.

Still, Brezhnev sought stability in the domestic arena. He and his prime minister, Alexei Kosygin (1904–1980), undertook what might be described as a program of “de- Khrushchevization,” returning the responsibility for long- term planning to the central ministries and reuniting the

Communist Party apparatus. Despite some cautious attempts to stimulate the stagnant farm sector by increas- ing capital investment in agriculture and raising food prices to increase rural income and provide additional incentives to collective farmers, there was no effort to revise the basic structure of the collective system. In the industrial sector, the regime launched a series of reforms designed to give factory managers (themselves employees of the state) more responsibility for setting prices, wages, and production quotas. These “Kosygin reforms” had little

Khrushchev Denounces Stalin Three years after Stalin’s death, the new Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, addressed the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party and denounced the former Soviet dictator for his crimes. This denunciation, which caused consternation in Communist parties around the world, was the beginning of a policy of de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union.

Khrushchev Addresses the Twentieth Party Congress, February 1956 Comrades, . . . quite a lot has been said about the cult of the individual and about its harmful consequences. . . . The cult of the person of Stalin . . . became at a certain specific stage the source of a whole series of exceedingly serious and grave perversions of Party principles, of Party democracy, of revolutionary legality.

Stalin absolutely did not tolerate collegiality in leadership and in work and . . . practiced brutal violence, not only toward everything which opposed him, but also toward that which seemed to his capricious and despotic character, contrary to his concepts.

Stalin abandoned the method of ideological struggle for that of administrative violence, mass repressions and terror. . . . Arbitrary behavior by one person encouraged and permitted arbitrariness in others. Mass arrests and deportations of many thousands of people, execution without trial and without normal investigation created conditions of insecurity, fear, and even desperation.

Stalin showed in a whole series of cases his intolerance, his brutality, and his abuse of power. . . . He often chose the path of repression and annihilation, not only against actual enemies, but also against individuals who had not committed any crimes against the Party and the Soviet government. . . .

Many Party, Soviet, and economic activists who were branded in 1937–38 as “enemies” were actually

never enemies, spies, wreckers, and so on, but were always honest communists; they were only so stigmatized, and often, no longer able to bear barbaric tortures, they charged themselves (at the order of the investigative judges-falsifiers) with all kinds of grave and unlikely crimes.

This was the result of the abuse of power by Stalin, who began to use mass terror against the Party cadres. . . . Stalin put the Party and the NKVD [the Soviet police agency] up to the use of mass terror when the exploiting classes had been liquidated in our country and when there were no serious reasons for the use of extraordinary mass terror. The terror was directed . . . against the honest workers of the Party and the Soviet state. . . .

Stalin was a very distrustful man, sickly, suspicious. . . . Everywhere and in everything he saw “enemies,” “two-facers,” and “spies.” Possessing unlimited power, he indulged in great willfulness and choked a person morally and physically. A situation was created where one could not express one’s own will. When Stalin said that one or another would be arrested, it was necessary to accept on faith that he was an “enemy of the people.” What proofs were offered? The confession of the arrested. . . . How is it possible that a person confesses to crimes that he had not committed? Only in one way— because of application of physical methods of pressuring him, tortures, bringing him to a state of unconsciousness, deprivation of his judgment, taking away of his human dignity.

What were Stalin’s major crimes, according to Khrushchev? To what degree were these problems resolved under later Soviet leaders?

SOURCE: Congressional Record, 84th Congress, 2nd session, vol. 102, pt. 7 (June 4, 1956), pp. 9389–9402.

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effect, however, because they were stubbornly resisted by the bureaucracy and were eventually adopted by relatively few enterprises within the vast state-owned industrial sector.

A CONTROLLED SOCIETY Brezhnev also initiated a signi- ficant retreat from Khrushchev’s policy of de-Stalinization. Criticism of the “Great Leader” had angered conservatives both within the party hierarchy and among the public at large, many of whom still revered Stalin as a hero of the Soviet system and a defender of the Russian people against Nazi Germany. Many influential figures in the Kremlin feared that de-Stalinization could lead to internal instability and a decline in public trust in the legitimacy of party leadership—the hallowed “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Early in Brezhnev’s reign, Stalin’s reputa- tion began to revive. Although his alleged “shortcomings” were not totally ignored, he was now described in the official press as “an outstanding party leader” who had been primarily responsible for the successes achieved by the Soviet Union.

The regime also adopted a more restrictive policy toward free expression and dissidence in Soviet society. Critics of the Soviet system, such as the physicist Andrei Sakharov, were harassed and arrested or, like the famous writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn (who had written about the horrors of Soviet concentration camps), forced to leave the country. There was also a qualified return to the anti-Semitic policies and attitudes that had marked the Stalin era. Such indications of renewed repression aroused concern in the West and were instrumental in the inclusion of a statement on human rights in the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which guaranteed the sanctity of inter- national frontiers throughout the continent of Europe (see Chapter 7). Performance in the area of human rights con- tinued to be spotty, however, and the repressive character of Soviet society was not significantly altered.

There were, of course, no rival voices to compete with the party and the government in defining national inter- ests. A new state constitution, promulgated in 1977, enshrined the Communist Party as “the leading and guid- ing force” in the Soviet Union (see the box on p. 196). The media were controlled by the state and presented only what the state wanted people to hear. The two major newspapers, Pravda (“Truth”) and Izvestiya (“News”), were the agents of the party and the govern- ment, respectively. Cynics joked that there was no news in Pravda and no truth in Izvestiya. Airplane accidents in the Soviet Union were rarely publicized out of concern that they would raise questions about the quality of the Soviet airline industry. The government made strenuous efforts to prevent the Soviet people from being exposed

to harmful foreign ideas, especially modern art, literature, and contemporary Western rock music. When the Summer Olympic Games were held in Moscow in 1980, Soviet newspapers advised citizens to keep their children indoors to protect them from being polluted with “bourgeois” ideas passed on by foreign visitors.

For citizens of Western democracies, such a political atmosphere would seem highly oppressive, but for the people in the Soviet republics, an emphasis on law and order was an accepted aspect of everyday life inherited from the tsarist period. Conformism was the rule in virtu- ally every corner of Soviet society, from the educational system (characterized at all levels by rote memorization and political indoctrination) to child rearing (it was forbid- den, for example, to be left-handed) and even to yearly vacations (most workers took their vacations at resorts run by their employer, where the daily schedule of activ- ities was highly regimented). Young Americans studying in the Soviet Union reported that friends there were often shocked to hear U.S. citizens criticizing their own presi- dent and to learn that they did not routinely carry identity cards.

A STAGNANT ECONOMY Soviet leaders also failed to achieve their objective of revitalizing the national econ- omy. Whereas growth rates during the early Khrushchev era had been impressive (prompting Khrushchev during a reception at the Kremlin in 1956 to chortle to an Ameri- can guest, “We will bury you,” referring to the Western countries), under Brezhnev industrial growth declined to an annual rate of less than 4 percent in the early 1970s and less than 3 percent in the period 1975–1980. Successes in the agricultural sector were equally meager. Grain pro- duction rose from less than 90 million tons in the early 1950s to nearly 200 million tons in the 1970s but then stagnated at that level (though it should be noted that Soviet statistics were notoriously unreliable).

One of the primary problems with the Soviet economy was the absence of incentives. Salary structures offered lit- tle reward for hard labor and extraordinary achievement. Pay differentials operated within a much narrower range than in most Western societies, and there was little dan- ger of being dismissed. According to the Soviet constitu- tion, every Soviet citizen was guaranteed an opportunity to work.

There were, of course, some exceptions to this general rule. Athletic achievement was highly prized, and a gym- nast of Olympic stature would receive great rewards in the form of prestige and lifestyle. Senior officials did not receive high salaries but were provided with countless “perquisites,” such as access to foreign goods, official auto- mobiles with chauffeurs, and entry into prestigious

The Postwar Soviet Union 195

institutions of higher learning for their children. For the elite, it was blat (influence) that most often differentiated them from the rest of the population. The average citizen, however, had little material incentive to produce beyond the minimum acceptable level. It is hardly surprising that overall per capita productivity was only about half that

realized in most capitalist countries. At the same time, the rudeness of Soviet clerks and waiters toward their custom- ers became legendary.

The problem of incentives existed at the managerial level as well, where the practice of centralized planning discouraged initiative and innovation. Factory managers,

The Rights and Duties of Soviet Citizens In the Soviet Union, and in other countries modeled on the Soviet system, the national constitution was viewed not as a timeless document, but as a reflection of conditions at the time it was framed. As Soviet society advanced from a state of “raw communism” to a fully socialist society, new constitutions were drafted to reflect the changes taking place in society as a whole. The first two constitutions of the Soviet Union, promulgated in 1924 and 1936, declared that the state was a “dictatorship of the proletariat” guided by the Communist Party, the vanguard organization of the working class in the Soviet Union. But the so-called Brezhnev constitution of 1977 described the Soviet Union as a “state of all the people,” composed of workers, farmers, and “socialist intellectuals,” although it confirmed the role of the Communist Party as the “leading force” in society. The provisions from the 1977 constitution presented here illustrate some of the freedoms and obligations of Soviet citizens. Especially noteworthy are Articles 39 and 62, which suggest that the interests and prestige of the state took precedence over individual liberties.

The Soviet Constitution of 1977 Chapter 1: The Political System

Article 6. The leading and guiding force of the Soviet society and the nucleus of its political system, of all state organizations and public organizations, is the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The CPSU exists for the people and serves the people.

The Communist Party, armed with Marxism-Leninism, determines the general perspectives of the development of society and the course of the home and foreign policy of the USSR, directs the great constructive work of the Soviet people, and imparts a planned, systematic, and theoretically substantiated character to their struggle for the victory of communism.

Chapter 6: Equality of Citizens’ Rights Article 35. Women and men have equal rights in the USSR. Exercise of these rights is ensured by according

women equal access with men to education and vocational and professional training, equal opportunities in employment, remuneration and promotion, and in social and political, and cultural activity, and by the special labor and health protection measures for women; by providing conditions enabling mothers to work; by legal protection, and material and moral support for mothers and children, including paid leaves and other benefits for expectant mothers and mothers, and gradual reduction of working time for mothers with small children.

Chapter 7: The Basic Rights, Freedoms, and Duties of Citizens of the USSR

Article 39. Citizens of the USSR enjoy in full the social, economic, political, and personal rights and freedoms proclaimed and guaranteed by the Constitution of the USSR and by Soviet laws. The socialist system ensures enlargement of the rights and freedoms of citizens and continuous improvement of their living standards as social, economic, and cultural development programs are fulfilled. Enjoyment by citizens of their rights and freedoms must not be to the detriment of the interests of society or the state, or infringe the rights of other citizens.

Article 62. Citizens of the USSR are obliged to safeguard the interests of the Soviet state, and to enhance its power and prestige. Defense of the Socialist Motherland is the sacred duty of every citizen of the USSR. Betrayal of the Motherland is the gravest of crimes against the people.

Which of these provisions would seem out of place if they were to appear in the Constitution of the United States?

SOURCE: Excerpts from The Soviet Constitution of 1977. Novosti Press Agency Publishing House. Moscow, 1985.

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for example, were assigned monthly and annual quotas by the Gosplan (the “state plan,” drawn up by the central planning commission). Because state-owned factories faced little or no competition, factory managers did not care whether their products were competitive in terms of price and quality, as long as the quota was attained. One of the key complaints of Soviet citizens was the low qual- ity of most locally made consumer goods. Knowledgeable consumers quickly discovered that products manufactured at the end of the month were often of lower quality (because factory workers had to rush to meet their quotas at the end of the production cycle) and tried to avoid purchasing them.

Often consumer goods were simply unavailable. Whenever Soviet citizens saw a queue forming in front of a store, they automatically got in line, often without even knowing what the line was for, because they never knew when an item might be available again. When they reached the head of the line, most would purchase several of the same item to swap with their friends and neighbors. This “queue psychology,” of course, was a time-consuming process and inevitably served to reduce the per capita rate of productivity.

Soviet citizens often tried to overcome the shortcom- ings of the system by operating “on the left” (the black market). Private economic activities, of course, were ille- gal in the socialized Soviet system, but many workers took to “moonlighting” to augment their meager salaries. An employee in a state-run appliance store, for example, would promise to repair a customer’s television set on his own time in return for a payment “under the table.” Otherwise, the repairs might require several weeks. Knowledgeable observers estimated that as much as one- third of the entire Soviet economy operated outside the legal system.

Another major obstacle to economic growth was inad- equate technology. Except in the area of national defense, the overall level of Soviet technology was not comparable to that of the West or the advanced industrial societies of East Asia. Part of the problem, of course, stemmed from the issues already described. With no competition, factory managers had little incentive to improve the quality of their products. But another reason was the high priority assigned to defense. The military sector regularly received the most resources from the government and attracted the cream of the country’s scientific talent.

There were still other reasons for the gradual slow- down in the Soviet economy. Coal mining was highly inefficient, and only about one-third of the coal extracted actually reached its final destination. Although Soviet oil reserves were estimated to be the largest in the world, for the most part they were located in inaccessible areas of

Siberia where extraction facilities and transportation were inadequate. U.S. intelligence reports predicted that a level- ing off of oil and gas production could cause severe prob- lems for the future growth of the Soviet economy. Soviet planners hoped that nuclear energy would eventually take up the slack, but the highly publicized meltdown of a nu- clear reactor at Chernobyl in 1986 vividly demonstrated that Soviet technology was encountering difficulties in that area as well. Finally, there were serious underlying structural problems in agriculture. Climatic difficulties (frequent flooding, drought, and a short growing season) and a lack of fertile soil (except in the renowned “black earth” regions of Ukraine) combined with a chronic short- age of mechanized farm equipment and a lack of incen- tives to prevent the growth of an advanced agricultural economy.

AN AGING LEADERSHIP Such problems would be intimidating for any government; they were particularly so for the elderly party leaders surrounding Leonid Brezh- nev, many of whom were cautious to a fault. Although some undoubtedly recognized the need for reform and innovation, they were paralyzed by fear of instability and change. The problem worsened during the late 1970s, when Brezhnev’s health began to deteriorate.

Brezhnev died in November 1982 and was succeeded by Yuri Andropov (1914–1984), a party veteran and head of the Soviet secret services. During his brief tenure as party chief, Andropov was a vocal advocate of reform, but most of his initiatives were limited to the familiar nos- trums of punishment for wrongdoers and moral exhorta- tions to Soviet citizens to work harder. At the same time, material incentives were still officially discouraged and generally ineffective. Andropov had been ailing when he was selected to succeed Brezhnev as party chief, and when he died after only a few months in office, little had been done to change the system. He was succeeded by a mediocre party stalwart, the elderly Konstantin Cher- nenko (1911–1985). With the Soviet system in crisis, Moscow seemed stuck in a time warp. As one concerned observer told an American journalist, “I had a sense of foreboding, like before a storm. That there was something brewing in people and there would be a time when they would say, ‘That’s it. We can’t go on living like this. We can’t. We need to redo everything.’”3

Ferment in Eastern Europe The key to security along the Soviet Union’s western frontier was the string of satellite states that had been created in Eastern Europe after World War II. Once Com- munist power had been assured in Warsaw, Prague, Sofia,

Ferment in Eastern Europe 197

Budapest, Bucharest, and East Berlin, a series of “little Stalins” put into power by Moscow instituted Soviet-type five-year plans that emphasized heavy industry rather than consumer goods, the collectivization of agriculture, and the nationalization of industry. They also appropriated the political tactics that Stalin had perfected in the Soviet Union, eliminating all non-Communist parties and estab- lishing the standard institutions of repression—the secret police and military forces. Dissidents were tracked down and thrown into prison, while “national Communists” who resisted total subservience to the nation were charged with treason in mass show trials and executed.

Despite such repressive efforts, however, Soviet-style policies aroused growing discontent in several Eastern European societies. Hungary, Poland, and Romania har- bored bitter memories of past Russian domination and suspected that Stalin, under the guise of proletarian interna- tionalism, was seeking to revive the empire of the Roma- novs. For the vast majority of peoples in Eastern Europe, the imposition of “people’s democracies” (a euphemism invented by Moscow to refer to a society in the early stage of socialist transition) resulted in economic hardship and severe threats to the most basic political liberties.

Unrest in Poland The first signs of unrest appeared in 1953, when popular riots broke out against Com- munist rule in East Berlin. The riots even- tually subsided, but the virus had begun to spread to neighboring countries. In Poland, public demonstrations against an increase in food prices in 1956 escalated into widespread protests against the regime’s economic policies, restrictions on the freedom of Catholics to practice their religion, and the continued presence of Soviet troops (as called for by the Warsaw Pact) on Polish soil. In a desperate effort to defuse the unrest, in October the Polish party leader stepped down and was replaced by Wadyslaw Gomulka (1905– 1982), a popular figure who had previously been demoted for his “nationalist” tenden- cies. When Gomulka took steps to ease the crisis, the new Soviet party chief, Nikita Khrushchev, flew to Warsaw to warn his Polish colleague against adopting policies that could undermine the “dictatorship of the proletariat” (the Marxist phrase for the political dominance of the party) and even weaken security links with the Soviet

Union. After a brief confrontation, during which both sides threatened to use military force to punctuate their demands, Gomulka and Khrushchev reached a compro- mise according to which Poland would adopt a policy la- beled “internal reform, external loyalty.” Poland agreed to remain in the Warsaw Pact and to maintain the sanctity of party rule. In return, Warsaw was authorized to adopt domestic reforms, such as easing restrictions on religious practice and ending the policy of forced collectivization in rural areas.

The Hungarian Uprising The developments in Poland sent shock waves through- out the region. The impact was strongest in neighboring Hungary, where the methods of the local “little Stalin,” M�aty�as R�akosi, were so brutal that he had been sum- moned to Moscow for a lecture. In late October 1956, student-led popular riots broke out in the capital of Buda- pest and soon spread to towns and villages throughout the country. R�akosi was forced to resign and was replaced by Imre Nagy (1896–1958), a “national Communist” who attempted to satisfy popular demands without arousing the anger of Moscow. Unlike Gomulka, however, Nagy

How the Mighty Have Fallen. In the fall of 1956, Hungarian freedom fighters rose up against Communist domination of their country in the short-lived Hungarian Revolution. Their actions threatened Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe, however, and in late October, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev dispatched troops to quell the uprising. In the meantime, the Hungarian people had demonstrated their discontent by toppling a gigantic statue of Joseph Stalin in the capital of Budapest. Statues of the Soviet dictator had been erected in all the Soviet satellites after World War II. (“W.C.” identifies a public toilet in European countries.)

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was unable to contain the zeal of leading members of the protest movement, who sought major political reforms and the withdrawal of Hungary from the Warsaw Pact. On November 1, Nagy promised free elections, which, given the mood of the country, would probably have brought an end to Communist rule. Moscow decided on firm action. Soviet troops, recently withdrawn at Nagy’s request, returned to Budapest and installed a new govern- ment under the more pliant party leader J�anos K�ad�ar (1912–1989). While K�ad�ar rescinded many of Nagy’s measures, Nagy sought refuge in the Yugoslav Embassy. A few weeks later, he left the embassy under the promise of safety but was quickly arrested, convicted of treason, and executed.

The dramatic events in Poland and Hungary graphi- cally demonstrated the vulnerability of the Soviet satellite system in Eastern Europe, and many observers through- out the world anticipated an attempt by the United States to intervene on behalf of the freedom fighters in Hungary. After all, the Eisenhower administration had promised that it would “roll back” communism, and radio broad- casts by the U.S.-sponsored Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe had encouraged the peoples of Eastern Europe to rise up against Soviet domination. In reality, Washington was well aware that U.S. intervention could lead to nuclear war and limited itself to protests against Soviet brutality in crushing the uprising.

The year of discontent was not without its consequen- ces, however. Soviet leaders now recognized that Moscow could maintain control over its satellites in Eastern Europe only by granting them the leeway to adopt domestic poli- cies appropriate to local conditions. Khrushchev had al- ready embarked on this path when, during a visit to Belgrade in 1955, he assured Tito that there were “different roads to socialism.” Eastern European Communist leaders now took Khrushchev at his word and adopted reform pro- grams to make socialism more palatable to their subject populations. Even J�anos K�ad�ar, derisively labeled the “butcher of Budapest,” managed to preserve many of Imre Nagy’s reforms to allow a measure of capitalist incentive and freedom of expression in Hungary.

The Prague Spring Czechoslovakia did not share in the thaw of the mid-1950s and remained under the rule of Anton�ın Novotn�y (1904–1975), who had been placed in power by Stalin him- self. By the late 1960s, however, Novotn�y’s policies had led to widespread popular alienation, and in 1968, with the support of intellectuals and reformist party members, Alexander Dubček (1921–1992) was elected first secretary of the Communist Party. He immediately attempted to

create what was popularly called “socialism with a human face,” relaxing restrictions on freedom of speech and the press and the right to travel abroad. Reforms were announced for the economic sector, and party control over all aspects of society was reduced. A period of eu- phoria erupted that came to be known as the “Prague Spring.”

It proved to be short-lived. Encouraged by Dubček’s actions, some Czechs called for more far-reaching re- forms, including neutrality and withdrawal from the Soviet bloc. To forestall the spread of this “spring fever,” the Soviet Red Army, supported by troops from other Warsaw Pact states, invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and crushed the reform movement. Gust�av Hus�ak (1913–1991), a committed Stalinist, replaced Dubček and restored the old order, while Moscow justified its action by issuing what became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine (see the box on p. 200).

The Persistence of Stalinism in East Germany Elsewhere in Eastern Europe, Stalinist policies continued to hold sway. The ruling Communist government in East Germany, led by Walter Ulbricht (1893–1973), consoli- dated its position in the early 1950s and became a faithful Soviet satellite. Industry was nationalized and agriculture collectivized. After the 1953 workers’ revolt was crushed by Soviet tanks, a steady flight of East Germans to West Germany ensued, primarily through the city of Berlin. According to one estimate, some 3 million people, or almost 20 percent of the total population of the German Democratic Republic, had fled to West Germany by 1961. This exodus of mostly skilled laborers (soon only party chief Ulbricht would be left, remarked one Soviet observer sardonically) created economic problems and in 1961 led the East German government to erect the infa- mous Berlin Wall separating West from East Berlin, as well as even more fearsome barriers along the entire border with West Germany.

After walling off the West, East Germany succeeded in developing the strongest economy among the So- viet Union’s Eastern European satellites. In 1971, Walter Ulbricht was succeeded by Erich Honecker (1912–1994), a party hard-liner who was deeply committed to the ideo- logical battle against d�etente. Propaganda increased, and the use of the Stasi, the secret police, became a hallmark of Honecker’s virtual dictatorship. The Stasi had more than 100,000 employees, and its files on suspected subver- sives reportedly took up 125 miles of shelf space.4 Aided by this enormous police bureaucracy, Honecker ruled unchallenged for the next eighteen years.

Ferment in Eastern Europe 199

Culture and Society in the Soviet Bloc In his occasional musings about the future Communist utopia, Karl Marx had predicted that a classless society would emerge to replace the exploitative and hierarchical systems of feudalism and capitalism. Workers would engage in productive activities and share equally in the fruits of their labor. In their free time, they would pro- duce a new, advanced culture, proletarian in character and egalitarian in content.

Cultural Expression The reality in the post–World War II Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe was somewhat different. Beginning in 1946, a series of government decrees made all forms of literary and scientific expression dependent on the state. All Soviet culture was expected to follow the party line. Historians, philosophers, and social scientists all grew accustomed to quoting Marx, Lenin, and, above all, Stalin as their chief authorities. Novels and plays, too, were sup- posed to portray Communist heroes and their efforts to create a better society. No criticism of existing social

The Brezhnev Doctrine In the summer of 1968, when the new Communist Party leaders in Czechoslovakia were seriously considering proposals for reforming the totalitarian system there, the Warsaw Pact nations met under the leadership of Soviet party chief Leonid Brezhnev to assess the threat to the socialist camp. Soon afterward, military forces of several Soviet bloc nations entered Czechoslovakia and imposed a new government subservient to Moscow. The move was justified by the spirit of “proletarian internationalism” and was widely viewed as a warning to China and other socialist states not to stray too far from Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, as interpreted by the Soviet Union. The principle came to be known as the Brezhnev Doctrine.

A Letter to Czechoslovakia To the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia

Warsaw, July 15, 1968 Dear comrades!

On behalf of the Central Committees of the Communist and Workers’ Parties of Bulgaria, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, and the Soviet Union, we address ourselves to you with this letter, prompted by a feeling of sincere friendship based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism and by the concern of our common affairs for strengthening the positions of socialism and the security of the socialist community of nations.

The development of events in your country evokes in us deep anxiety. It is our firm conviction that the offensive of the reactionary forces, backed by imperialists, against your Party and the foundations of the social system in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, threatens to push your country off the road of socialism and that

consequently it jeopardizes the interests of the entire socialist system. . . .

We neither had nor have any intention of interfering in such affairs as are strictly the internal business of your Party and your state, nor of violating the principles of respect, independence, and equality in the relations among the Communist Parties and socialist countries. . . .

At the same time we cannot agree to have hostile forces push your country from the road of socialism and create a threat of severing Czechoslovakia from the socialist community. . . . This is the common cause of our countries, which have joined in the Warsaw Treaty to ensure independence, peace, and security in Europe, and to set up an insurmountable barrier against aggression and revenge. . . . We shall never agree to have imperialism, using peaceful or nonpeaceful methods, making a gap from the inside or from the outside in the socialist system, and changing in imperialism’s favor the correlation of forces in Europe. . . .

That is why we believe that a decisive rebuff of the anti-Communist forces, and decisive efforts for the preservation of the socialist system in Czechoslovakia are not only your task but ours as well. . . .

We express the conviction that the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, conscious of its responsibility, will take the necessary steps to block the path of reaction. In this struggle you can count on the solidarity and all-round assistance of the fraternal socialist countries.

How did Leonid Brezhnev justify the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968? Do you find his arguments persuasive?

SOURCE: Moscow News, Supplement to No. 30(917), 1968, pp. 3–6.

200 CHAPTER 9 Brave New World

conditions was permitted. Even distinguished composers such as Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) were compelled to heed Stalin’s criticisms, including his view that contem- porary Western music was nothing but a “mishmash.” Some areas of intellectual activity were virtually abol- ished; the science of genetics disappeared, and few movies were made during Stalin’s final years.

Stalin’s death brought a modest respite from cultural repression. Writers and artists banned during Stalin’s years were again allowed to publish. The writer Ilya Ehrenburg (1891–1967) set the tone with his novel, signifi- cantly titled The Thaw. Still, Soviet authorities, including Khrushchev, were reluctant to allow cultural freedom to move far beyond official Soviet ideology.

These restrictions, however, did not prevent the emer- gence of some significant Soviet literature, although authors paid a heavy price if they alienated the Soviet authorities. Boris Pasternak (1890–1960), who began his lit- erary career as a poet, won the Nobel Prize in 1958 for his celebrated novel Doctor Zhivago, published in Italy in 1957. But the Soviet government condemned Pasternak’s anti- Soviet tendencies, banned the novel from the Soviet Union, and would not allow him to accept the prize. The author had alienated the authorities by describing a society scarred by the excesses of Bolshevik revolutionary zeal.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) caused an even greater furor than Pasternak. Solzhenitsyn had spent eight years in forced-labor camps for criticizing Stalin, and his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which won him the Nobel Prize in 1970, was an account of life in those camps. Later, Solzhenitsyn wrote The Gulag Archipelago, a detailed indictment of the whole system of Soviet oppres- sion. Soviet authorities denounced Solzhenitsyn’s efforts to inform the world of Soviet crimes against humanity and arrested and expelled him from the Soviet Union after he published The Gulag Archipelago abroad in 1973.

Although restrictive policies continued into the late 1980s, some Soviet authors learned how to minimize bat- tles with the censors by writing under the guise of humor or fantasy. Two of the most accomplished and popular Soviet novelists of the period, Yury Trifonov (1925–1981) and Fazil Iskander (b. 1929), focused on the daily struggle of Soviet citizens to live with dignity. Trifonov depicted the everyday life of ordinary Russians with grim realism, while Iskander used humor to poke fun at the incompe- tence of the Soviet regime.

The situation was similar in the Eastern European satellites, although cultural freedom varied considerably from country to country. In Poland, intellectuals had access to Western publications as well as greater freedom

to travel to the West. Hungar- ian and Yugoslav Commu- nists, too, tolerated a certain level of intellectual activity that was not liked but not prohibited. Elsewhere, intellec- tuals were forced to conform to the regime’s demands.

The socialist camp did par- ticipate in modern popular culture. By the early 1970s, there were 28 million televi- sion sets in the Soviet Union, although state authorities con- trolled the content of the pro- grams that the Soviet people watched. Tourism, too, made inroads into the Communist world as state-run industries provided vacation time and governments facilitated the establishment of resorts for workers on the Black Sea and Adriatic coasts.

Spectator sports became a large industry, although they were highly politicized as the

Stalinist Heroic: An Example of Socialist Realism. Under Stalin and his successors, art was assigned the task of indoctrinating the Soviet population in the public virtues, such as hard work, loyalty to the state, and patriotism. Grandiose statuary erected to commemorate the heroic efforts of the Red Army during World War II appeared in every Soviet city. Here is an example in Minsk, today the capital of Belarus. The flag reads “Forward under the banner of Lenin to the victory of Communism.”

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Culture and Society in the Soviet Bloc 201

result of Cold War divisions. Victory in international ath- letic events was viewed as proof of the superiority of the socialist system over its capitalist rival. Accordingly, the state provided money for the construction of gymnasiums and training camps and portrayed athletes as superheroes.

Social Changes in Eastern Europe The imposition of Marxist systems in Eastern Europe had far-reaching social consequences. Most Eastern European countries made the change from peasant societies to mod- ern industrialized economies. In Bulgaria, for example, 80 percent of the labor force was engaged in agriculture in 1950, but only 20 percent was still working there in 1980. Although the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satel- lites never achieved the high standards of living of the West, they did experience some improvement. In 1960, the average real income of Polish peasants was four times higher than before World War II. Consumer goods also became more widespread. In East Germany, only 17 per- cent of families had television sets in 1960, but 75 percent had acquired them by 1972.

True to their creed, Communist leaders in Eastern Europe took steps to divest traditional elites of their eco- nomic power base and replaced them with their own sup- porters. One route to this reversal of roles was through education.

In some countries, the desire to provide equal educa- tional opportunities led to laws that mandated quota sys- tems based on class. In East Germany, for example, 50 percent of the students in secondary schools had to be children of workers and peasants. The sons of manual workers constituted 53 percent of university students in Yugoslavia in 1964 and 40 percent in East Germany, com- pared to only 15 percent in Italy and 5.3 percent in West Germany. Social mobility also increased. In Poland in 1961, half of the white-collar workers came from blue- collar families. A significant number of judges, professors, and industrial managers stemmed from working-class backgrounds.

Education became crucial in preparing for new jobs in the Communist system and led to higher enrollments in both secondary schools and universities. In Czechoslova- kia, for example, the number of students in secondary schools tripled between 1945 and 1970, and the number of university students quadrupled between the 1930s and the 1960s. The type of education that students received also changed. In Hungary before World War II, 40 per- cent of students studied law, 9 percent engineering and technology, and 5 percent agriculture. In 1970, the figures were 35 percent in engineering and technology, 9 percent in agriculture, and only 4 percent in law.

But as so often happens in programs aimed at creating a new society through social engineering, reality eventu- ally intruded. As the new managers of society, regardless of class background, realized the importance of higher education, they used their power to gain special privileges for their children. By 1971, fully 60 percent of the children of white-collar workers attended a university, and even though blue-collar families constituted 60 percent of the population, only 36 percent of their children attended institutions of higher learning. Even East Germany dropped its requirement that 50 percent of secondary students had to be the offspring of workers and peasants.

This shift in educational preferences demonstrates yet another aspect of the social structure in the Communist world: the emergence of a new privileged class, made up of members of the Communist Party, state officials, high- ranking officers in the military and secret police, and a few special professional groups. The new elite not only possessed political power but also received special privi- leges, including the right to purchase high-quality goods in special stores, paid vacations at special resorts, access to good housing and superior medical services, and advan- tages in education and jobs for their children.

Women in the Soviet Bloc The system also failed to measure up in its treatment of women. Long after the Bolshevik Revolution had called for true equality of the sexes, men continued to dominate the leadership positions of the Communist parties in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Women did have greater opportunities in the workforce and even in the professions, however. In the Soviet Union, women com- prised 51 percent of the labor force in 1980; by the mid- 1980s, they constituted 50 percent of the engineers, 80 percent of the doctors, and 75 percent of the teachers and teachers’ aides. But many of these were low-paying jobs; most female doctors, for example, worked in primary care and were paid less than skilled machinists. The chief administrators in hospitals and schools were still men.

Moreover, although women were part of the work- force, they were still expected to fulfill their traditional roles in the home. Most women worked what came to be known as the “double shift.” After spending eight hours in their jobs, they came home to do the housework and take care of the children. They might spend another two hours a day in long lines at a number of stores waiting to buy food and clothes. Because of the scarcity of housing, they had to use kitchens that were shared by a number of families.

Nearly three-quarters of a century after the Bolshevik Revolution, then, the Marxist dream of an advanced,

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egalitarian society was as far away as ever. Although in some respects conditions in the socialist camp were an improvement over those before World War II, many problems and inequities were as intransigent as ever.

The Disintegration of the Soviet Empire On the death of Konstantin Chernenko in 1985, party leaders selected the talented and vigorous Soviet official Mikhail Gorbachev to succeed him. The new Soviet leader had shown early signs of promise. Born into a peas- ant family in 1931, Gorbachev combined farmwork with school and received the Order of the Red Banner for his agricultural efforts. This award and his good school record enabled him to study law at the University of Moscow. After receiving his law degree in 1955, he returned to his native southern Russia, where he eventually became first secretary of the Communist Party in the city of Stavropol and then first secretary of the regional party committee. In 1978, Gorbachev was made a member of the party’s Central Committee in Moscow. Two years later, he be- came a full member of the ruling Politburo and secretary of the Central Committee.

During the early 1980s, Gorbachev began to realize the immensity of Soviet problems and the crucial need to transform the system. During a visit to Canada in 1983, he discovered to his astonishment that Canadian farmers worked hard on their own initiative. “We’ll never have this for fifty years,” he reportedly remarked.5 On his return to Moscow, he established a series of committees to evaluate the situation and recommend measures to improve the system.

The Gorbachev Era With his election as party general secretary in 1985, Gor- bachev seemed intent on taking earlier reforms to their logical conclusions. The cornerstone of his reform pro- gram was perestroika, or “restructuring.” At first, it meant only a reordering of economic policy, as Gorbachev called for the beginning of a market economy with limited free enterprise and some private property. Initial economic reforms were difficult to implement, however. Radicals criticized Gorbachev for his caution and demanded deci- sive measures; conservatives feared that rapid changes would be too painful. In his attempt to achieve compro- mise, Gorbachev often pursued partial liberalization, which satisfied neither faction and also failed to work, producing only more discontent.

Gorbachev soon perceived that in the Soviet system, the economic sphere was intimately tied to the social and

political spheres. Any efforts to reform the economy with- out political or social reform would be doomed to failure. One of the most important instruments of perestroika was glasnost, or “openness.” Soviet citizens and officials were encouraged to openly discuss the strengths and weak- nesses of the Soviet Union. This policy could be seen in Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, where disasters such as the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 and collisions of ships in the Black Sea received increasing coverage.6 Soon this type of reporting was extended to include reports of official corruption, sloppy factory work, and protests against government policy. The arts also benefited from the new policy as previously banned works were now allowed to circulate and motion pictures began to depict negative aspects of Soviet life. Music based on Western styles, such as jazz and rock, began to be performed openly. Religious activities, previously banned by Soviet authorities, were once again tolerated.

Political reforms were equally revolutionary. In June 1987, the principle of two-candidate elections was intro- duced; previously, voters had been presented with only one candidate. Most dissidents, including Andrei Sakharov, who had spent years in internal exile, were released. At the Communist Party conference in 1988, Gorbachev called for the creation of a new Soviet parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies, whose members were to be chosen in competitive elections. It convened in 1989, the first such meeting since 1918. As an elected member of the Congress, Sakharov called for an end to the Communist monopoly of power, and on December 11, 1989, the day he died, he urged the creation of a new, non-Communist party. Early in 1990, Gorbachev legalized the formation of other political parties and struck out Article 6 of the Soviet consti- tution, which guaranteed the “leading role” of the Commu- nist Party (see the box on p. 196). Hitherto, the position of first secretary of the party was the most important post in the Soviet Union, but as the Communist Party became less closely associated with the state, the powers of this office diminished. Gorbachev attempted to consolidate his power by creating a new state presidency, and in March 1990, he became the Soviet Union’s first president. But by now his stature within the country had diminished, and reformist elements who had vociferously welcomed his policies were increasingly skeptical of success. “Russia,” one erstwhile optimist lamented, “is not ready for democracy.”

Eastern Europe: From Soviet Satellites to Sovereign Nations The progressive decline of the Soviet Union had an impact on its neighbors to the west. As before, Poland was at the forefront. In the late 1970s, high food prices led

The Disintegration of the Soviet Empire 203

to popular protests and the emergence of an independent labor union called Solidarity. Led by Lech WałeRsa (b. 1943), Solidarity rode the wave of national spirit heightened by the visit of Polish-born Pope John Paul II in June 1979 and rapidly became an influential force for change. Sensing a threat to its monopoly on power, the regime outlawed the union and declared martial law in 1981, but the move- ment continued to gain popular support. When Mikhail Gorbachev made it clear that Moscow would not bail it out, the Communist government bowed to the inevitable and permitted free national elections to take place, result- ing in the election of WałeRsa as president of Poland in December 1990. Moscow—inspired by Gorbachev’s policy of encouraging “new thinking” to improve relations with the Western powers—took no action to reverse the verdict in Warsaw.

In Hungary, as in Poland, the process of transition had begun many years earlier. After crushing the Hun- garian revolution of 1956, the Communist government of J�anos K�ad�ar had tried to assuage popular opinion by enacting a series of far-reaching economic reforms (labeled “communism with a capitalist face-lift”), but as the 1980s progressed, the economy sagged, and in 1989, the regime permitted the formation of opposition politi- cal parties, leading eventually to the formation of a non- Communist coalition government in elections held in March 1990.

The transition in Czechoslovakia was more abrupt. After Soviet troops crushed the Prague Spring in 1968, hard-line Communists under Gust�av Hus�ak followed a policy of massive repression to maintain their power. In 1977, dissident intellectuals, inspired in part by the Helsinki Accords, formed an organization called Charter 77 as a vehicle for protest against violations of human rights. Regardless of the repressive atmosphere, dissident activities continued to grow during the 1980s, and when massive demonstrations broke out in several major cities in 1989, Hus�ak’s government, lacking any real popular support, collapsed. At the end of December, he was replaced by V�aclav Havel (1936–2011), a dissident play- wright who had been a leading figure in Charter 77.

But the most dramatic events took place in East Germany, where a persistent economic slump and the ongoing oppressiveness of the regime of Erich Honecker led to a flight of refugees and mass demonstrations against the regime in the summer and fall of 1989. Capitulating to popular pressure, the Communist government opened its entire border with the West. The Berlin Wall, the most tangible symbol of the Cold War, became the site of a massive celebration, and most of it was dismantled by joyful Germans from both sides of the border. In March 1990, free elections led to the formation of a non-

Communist government that began to negotiate political and economic reunification with West Germany (for events in Eastern Europe since 1989, see Chapter 10).

End of Empire The events in Eastern Europe were being watched closely in Moscow. One of Gorbachev’s most serious problems stemmed from the nature of the Soviet Union. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a truly multiethnic country, containing ninety-two nationalities and 112 rec- ognized languages. Previously, the iron hand of the Com- munist Party, centered in Moscow, had kept a lid on the centuries-old ethnic tensions that had periodically erupted throughout the history of this region. As Gorbachev released this iron grip, tensions resurfaced as ethnic groups took advantage of the new openness to protest what they perceived to be ethnically motivated slights. As violence erupted, nationalist movements emerged in all fifteen republics of the Soviet Union. Often motivated by ethnic concerns, many of them called for sovereignty of the republics and independence from Russian-based rule centered in Moscow. The Soviet army, in disarray since the intervention in Afghanistan, appeared powerless to control the situation.

Gorbachev had made it clear that he supported self- determination but not secession, which he believed would be detrimental to the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, in December 1989, the Communist Party of Lithuania took the first step and declared itself independent of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was not long in com- ing. On March 11, 1990, the Lithuanian Supreme Council unilaterally declared Lithuania independent. Its formal name was now the Lithuanian Republic; the adjectives Soviet and Socialist had been dropped. On March 15, the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies, though recognizing a general right to secede from the Union of Soviet Social- ist Republics, declared the Lithuanian declaration null and void; proper procedures, the Congress stated, must be established and followed before secession would be acceptable.

During 1990 and 1991, Gorbachev struggled to deal with Lithuania and the other problems unleashed by his reforms. On the one hand, he tried to appease the con- servative forces who complained about the growing dis- order within the Soviet Union. On the other hand, he tried to accommodate the liberal forces who increasingly favored a new kind of decentralized Soviet federation. Gorbachev especially labored to cooperate more closely with Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007), elected president of the Russian Republic in June 1991. Conservative elements

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from the army, the party, and the KGB, however, had grown increasingly worried about the potential dissolu- tion of the Soviet Union. On August 19, 1991, a group of these discontented rightists arrested Gorbachev and attempted to seize power. Gorbachev’s unwillingness to work with the conspirators and the brave resistance in Moscow of Yeltsin and thousands of Russians who had grown accustomed to their new liberties caused the coup to disintegrate rapidly. The actions of these right- wing plotters served to accelerate the very process they had hoped to stop—the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Despite desperate pleas from Gorbachev, all fifteen republics soon opted for complete independence (see Map 9.2). Ukraine voted for independence on December 1, 1991. A week later, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus announced that the Soviet Union had “ceased to exist” and would be replaced by a much looser federation, the Commonwealth of Independent States. Gorbachev resigned on December 25, 1991, and turned over his responsibilities as commander in chief to Boris Yeltsin, the president of Russia. By the end of 1991, one of the largest empires in world history had come to an end, and a new era had begun in its lands.

The New Russia: From Empire to Nation In Russia, by far the largest of the former Soviet republics, a new power struggle soon ensued. Yeltsin, a onetime engineer who had been dismissed from the Politburo in 1987 for insubordination, was committed to introducing a free market economy as quickly as possible. In December 1991, the Congress of People’s Deputies granted him tem- porary power to rule by decree. But former Communist Party members and their allies in the Congress were opposed to many of Yeltsin’s economic reforms and tried to place new limits on his powers. Yeltsin fought back. Af- ter winning a vote of confidence on April 25, 1993, Yeltsin pushed ahead with plans for a new Russian constitution that would abolish the Congress of People’s Deputies, cre- ate a two-chamber parliament, and establish a strong pres- idency. A hard-line parliamentary minority resisted and in early October took the offensive, urging supporters to take over government offices and the central television station. Yeltsin responded by ordering military forces to storm the parliament building and arrest hard-line oppo- nents. Yeltsin used his victory to consolidate his power in parliamentary elections held in December.

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a

Black Sea

Caspian Sea

AFGHANISTAN PAKISTAN

I R A NIRAQ SYRIA

UZBEKISTAN KYRGYZSTAN

TAJIKISTANTURKMENISTANTURKEYGREECE

R U S S I A

POLAND

LITHUANIA

LATVIA

ESTONIA

CZECH REP. SLOVAKIA

UKRAINE

BELARUS

GEORGIA

Chechnya

ARMENIA AZERBAIJAN

BULGARIA

ROMANIA CROATIA BOSNIA/ HERZE- GOVINA

KOSOVO

SERBIA

MONTE- NEGRO

ALBANIA

MOLDOVA

MACEDONIA

K A Z A K H S T A N

HUNGARY

0 500 1,000 Miles

0 500 750 1,500 Kilometers

MAP 9.2 Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, the fifteen constituent Soviet republics declared their independence. This map shows the states that emerged from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s and also from the former Yugoslavia, which disintegrated more slowly in the 1990s and 2000s. The breakaway region of Chechnya is indicated on the map.

What new nations have appeared in the territory of the old Soviet Union since the end of the Cold War?

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The Disintegration of the Soviet Empire 205

During the mid-1990s, Yeltsin was able to maintain a precarious grip on power while seeking to implement reforms that would set Russia on a firm course toward a pluralistic political system and a market economy. But the new post-Communist Russia remained as fragile as ever. Burgeoning economic inequality and rampant corruption aroused widespread criticism and shook the confidence of the Russian people in the superiority of the capitalist sys- tem over the one that existed under Communist rule. A nagging war in the Caucasus—where the Muslim popula- tion of Chechnya sought national independence from Russia—drained the government’s budget and exposed the decrepit state of the once vaunted Red Army. In presi- dential elections held in 1996, Yeltsin was reelected, but the rising popularity of a revived Communist Party and the growing strength of nationalist elements, combined with Yeltsin’s precarious health, raised serious questions about the future of the country.

What had happened to derail Yeltsin’s plan to trans- form Soviet society? According to some of his critics, he had tried to achieve too much too fast. Between 1991 and 1995, state firms that had previously provided about 80 percent of all industrial production and employment had been privatized, and the prices of goods (previously sub- ject to government regulation) were allowed to respond to market forces. Only agriculture—where the decision to privatize collective farms had little impact in rural areas— was left substantially untouched. The immediate results were disastrous: industrial output dropped by more than one-third, and unemployment levels and prices rose dra- matically. Many Russian workers and soldiers were not paid for months on end, and many social services came to an abrupt halt.

With the harsh official and ideological constraints of the Soviet system suddenly removed, corruption—labeled by one observer “criminal gang capitalism”—became rampant, and the government often appeared inept in coping with the complexities of a market economy. Few Russians appeared to grasp the realities of modern capital- ism and understandably reacted to the inevitable pains that accompanied the transition from the old system by heaping all the blame on the new one. The fact is that Yeltsin had attempted to change the structure of the Soviet system without due regard for the necessity of changing the mentality of the people as well. The result was a high level of disenchantment. A new joke circulated among the Russian people: “We know now that every- thing they told us about communism was false. And everything they told us about capitalism was true.”

THE PUTIN ERA At the end of 1999, Yeltsin suddenly resigned and was replaced by Vladimir Putin (b. 1952), a

former member of the KGB. Putin vowed to bring an end to the rampant corruption and inexperience that perme- ated Russian political culture and to strengthen the role of the central government in managing the affairs of state. During the succeeding months, the parliament approved his proposal to centralize power in the hands of the fed- eral government in Moscow; in early 2001, he presented a new plan to regulate political parties, which now num- bered more than fifty. Parties at both extremes of the po- litical spectrum, from those urging Western-style liberal policies to Gennadi Zyuganov’s revived Communist Party, opposed the legislation—without success.

Putin also vowed to bring the breakaway state of Chechnya back under Russian authority and to adopt a more assertive role in international affairs. Growing public anger at Western plans to expand the NATO alliance into Eastern Europe and at the aggressive actions by NATO countries against Serbia in the Balkans (see Chapter 10) gave the new president an opportunity to restore Russia’s position as an influential force in the world. To undercut U.S. dominance on the political scene, Moscow improved relations with neighboring China and simultaneously sought to cooperate with European nations on issues of common concern. To assuage national pride, Putin entered negotiations with such former republics of the old Soviet Union as Belarus and Ukraine to tighten mutual political and economic cooperation.

In addition, Putin steadily pursued measures to strengthen the power of the state over the political system. When critics complained that he was returning to the worst habits of the Soviet era, Putin responded forcefully, noting that while Russia was moving steadily to create con- ditions for building a democratic society, his government reserved the right to move forward based on its own inter- nal circumstances. “Russia,” he said, “can and will inde- pendently determine for itself the time frame and the conditions of its movement along that path.”7 Putin’s deter- mination to play an active role in that process was clearly demonstrated during the national elections in 2008. Prohib- ited by the constitution from serving a third term as presi- dent, he handpicked a successor—his close ally and United Russia Party member Dmitri Medvedev (b. 1965)—and agreed to serve as prime minister in the new government. Four years later, he was reelected to the presidency amid widespread claims of fraud and voter intimidation.

RUSSIA UNDER THE NEW TSAR Throughout the first decade of the new century, relations between Russia and Western nations steadily deteriorated. Western officials grew increasingly concerned that under Putin Russia was reverting to its autocratic past. They were also critical of Moscow’s efforts to intimidate the new states along its

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perimeter, states that had once been under the firm tute- lage of the Soviet Union. In turn, Moscow was irritated at U.S. and European plans to integrate Eastern European countries into the Western alliance. It was especially incensed when the United States and some European gov- ernments supported the breakaway region of Kosovo in its bid to achieve independence from Russia’s traditional ally Serbia. When dissident elements in Abkhazia and South Ossetia—two restive regions in the state of Georgia— appealed to Moscow for support against alleged govern- ment efforts to engage in ethnic cleansing, Russian military forces entered Georgian territory in support of the rebel forces and extended diplomatic recognition to both regions. Although a cease-fire agreement was eventually reached, the incident strained Moscow’s relations with the United States and Western Europe almost to the break- ing point. When the financial crisis struck the global mar- ketplace in the fall of 2008, Moscow initially reacted with unrestrained pleasure. Flush with foreign currency reserves from its profitable oil exports, Russian officials openly called for the emergence of a new multipolar world no longer dominated by the United States and its Euro- pean allies. In a bid to fill the vacuum, Moscow sought to use its oil wealth as a political weapon and extended a hand of friendship to a number of Washington’s most prominent adversaries, includ- ing Iran and Venezuela. Con- cerned voices in the West expressed alarm at a potential revival of the tensions of the Cold War.

Dreams in Moscow of a pos- sible revival of the powerful Soviet empire, however, are probably misplaced. In the first place, Russia—almost totally dependent on petroleum and other natural resources for its wealth—would be among the first to suffer in the event of another serious economic down- turn. In the second place, the country is suffering from a multitude of serious structural problems, including widespread corruption, bureaucratic incom- petence, a technology gap, and widespread inflation.

Indeed, pride in the recent achievements of the Russian nation is muted these days. Not only have the boundaries

of the old Soviet empire shrunk by one-third, but the liv- ing standards of the Russian people have declined as well. According to recent statistics, mortality rates have risen by an estimated 40 percent in the last three decades, and the national population is predicted to decline by almost 50 million in the next half-century. Since the early 1980s, marriage rates have fallen by more than 30 percent, and the rate of divorce has increased by a similar measure.

Putin has attempted to deal with the chronic problems of Russian society by centralizing his control over the sys- tem and by silencing his internal critics such as the femi- nist punk-rock group Pussy Riot. To those who criticize his tendency to trample on human rights, he is openly contemptuous, declaring that Russia has no intention of following the Western model. Rather, he increasingly turns to the past glories of Mother Russia. There is a widespread sense of unease in Russia today about the decline of the social order—especially the disintegration of the traditional family and the rising incidence of alcohol- ism, sexual promiscuity, and criminal activities—and many of Putin’s compatriots express sympathy with his attempt to restore a sense of pride and discipline in Russian society. He was not alone in his feelings when in the spring of 2005 he expressed the view that the breakup of the Soviet Union was a national tragedy.

Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow. Under Soviet rule, religion was severely discouraged, as the Communist regime sought to neutralize potential sources of opposition to its rule. But the Russian Orthodox faith, long the official religion of Russia under the tsars, has made a comeback. The Russian Orthodox Church is now put forth as a symbol of the glories of Russian civilization, and President Vladimir Putin has wrapped himself in its mantle by appointing a monk of the church as his spiritual adviser. Saint Basil’s Cathedral, located in the heart of Red Square in Moscow, is the most visible symbol of the Orthodox faith in Russia.

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The Disintegration of the Soviet Empire 207

CONCLUSION T H E S O V I E T U N I O N H A D E M E R G E D from World War II as one of the world’s two superpowers. Its armies had played an instrumental role in the final defeat of the powerful German war machine and had installed pliant Communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe. During the next four decades, the Soviet Union appeared to be secure in its power. Its military and economic perfor- mance during the first postwar decade was sufficiently impressive to create an atmosphere of incipient panic in Washington. By the mid-1980s, however, fears that the Soviet Union would surpass the United States as an eco- nomic power had long since dissipated, and the Soviet sys- tem appeared to be mired in a state of near paralysis. Economic growth had slowed to a snail’s pace, corruption had reached epidemic levels, and leadership had passed to a generation of elderly party bureaucrats who appeared incapable of addressing the burgeoning problems that affected Soviet society.

What had happened to tarnish the dream that had inspired Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks to believe they could create a Marxist paradise? Some analysts argue that the ambitious defense policies adopted by the Reagan administration forced Moscow into an arms race it could not afford and thus ultimately led to a collapse of the Soviet economy. Others suggest that Soviet problems were more deeply rooted and would have led to the disin- tegration of the Soviet Union even without outside

stimulation. While Star Wars may have been a factor, the latter argument is surely closer to the mark. For years, if not decades, leaders in the Kremlin had disguised or ignored the massive inefficiencies of the Soviet system. It seems clear in retrospect that the Soviet command econ- omy proved better at managing the early stages of the Industrial Revolution than at moving on to the next stage of an advanced technological society. By the 1980s, behind the powerful shield of the Red Army, the system had become an empty shell.

The perceptive Mikhail Gorbachev recognized the cru- cial importance of instituting radical reforms and hoped that by doing so, he could save the socialist system. By then, however, it was too late. Restive minorities that had long resented the suppression of their national or cultural identities under Moscow’s heavy hand now saw their op- portunity to break away from the Soviet system. Even the Russian people were no longer confident that the bright vision of a Marxist utopia could be transformed into reality.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union and its satellite sys- tem in Eastern Europe brought a dramatic end to the Cold War. At the dawn of the 1990s, a generation of global rivalry between two ideological systems had come to a close, and world leaders turned their attention to the construction of what U.S. President George H. W. Bush called the New World Order. But what sort of new order would it be?

TIMELINE

1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005 2015

Soviet Union and Russia Death of Stalin and

emergence of Khrushchev (1953–1955)

Eastern Europe

Communist governments established in Eastern Europe (1945–1948)

Hungarian uprising (1956)

Revolutions in Eastern Europe (1989–1990)

“Prague Spring” (1968)

Brezhnev era (1964–1982)

Dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991)

Reelection of Putin (2013)

Vladimir Putin to power in Moscow (1999)

Gorbachev years (1985–1991)

Yeltsin era (1991–1999)

208 CHAPTER 9 Brave New World

CHAPTER NOTES

1. Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, England, 1996), p. 166.

2. Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, trans. Strobe Talbott (Boston, 1970), p. 77.

3. Quoted in Hedrick Smith, The New Russians (New York, 1990), p. 30. 4. Cited in Victor Sebestyen, Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet

Empire (New York, 2009), p. 121.

5. Smith, The New Russians, p. 74. 6. Not everyone got the message. Shortly after the news of the

accident came out, a Soviet official claimed to me that it was nothing but “imperialist propaganda.”

7. C. J. Chivers, “Russia Will Pursue Democracy, but in Its Own Way, Putin Says,” New York Times, April 26, 2005.

Conclusion 209

C H A P T E R

Postwar Europe: On the Path