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The New Imperialism in Southeast Asia, Austronesia, and the Pacific 751

the Indian Ocean, and British merchants were particularly anxious to exploit the rich tin resources of the Malay Peninsula, for which the Second Industrial Revolu- tion had dramatically increased demand.

As in Africa, local rivalries supported a policy of “divide and conquer.” British “residents” gave local rulers “advice” on the governance of their sultanates; if a sultan refused, they would simply recognize another ambitious man as ruler and work through him. As in Egypt and the princely states of India, indigenous rulers remained in place but power was squarely in the hands of Europeans. The British prided themselves on having brought efficient administration to yet another cor- ner of the globe. Meanwhile, they expanded plantations of commercial crops such as pepper, palm oil, and rubber.

Insular Southeast Asia, Austronesia, and the Pacific

Rubber in French Indochina After 1875, the Second Industrial Revolution caused a sharp rise in global demand for rubber, leading to the creation of large plantations in French Indo- china and British Malaya. As this image from a Vietnamese plantation indicates, first-stage processing took place on site, making rubber plantations “agro-industrial enterprises” similar to the old sugar plantations of the West Indies (see Chapter 19), with labor condi- tions that could be equally harsh.

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The Dutch had been the dominant European pres- ence in the islands of Southeast Asia since the seven- teenth century (see Chapter 16). After the Dutch East India Company was disbanded in 1799, colonial authorities imposed even harsher economic condi-

tions on the Dutch East Indies. In 1830, for example, Dutch authorities forced rice farmers on the island of Java to convert to sugar production. One Dutch official declared that “they must be taught to work, and if they were unwilling out of ignorance, they must be ordered to work.”* Through coercion the Dutch could buy sugar at low prices and then sell it for a great profit on world markets.

Dutch authorities asserted more and more formal administrative control over Java and Sumatra, where individual sultans had previously been left in charge of local affairs. At the same time, the increasing presence of other European powers motivated the Dutch to seek control of hundreds of other islands. Those who resisted, such as rebels on the Hindu-ruled island of Bali, were slaughtered. The New Imperialism significantly deepened Dutch power over the Indonesian archipelago.

The United States was the new presence in Asia and the Pacific. The arrival of Admiral Perry in Japan in 1853 (see Chapter 24) significantly expanded American influence in Asia, and the United States claimed a direct territorial stake in the Pacific when it annexed the Hawai’ian Islands in 1898. *Cited in D. R. SarDesai, Southeast Asia Past and Present, 4th ed. (Boulder: Westview, 1997), p. 92.

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752 Chapter 26 The New Imperialism in Africa and Southeast Asia, 1830–1914

The extension of American imperialism to the Philippines came as a result of the Spanish-American War of 1898–1900. That conflict, initially centered on the Caribbean island of Cuba, spread to include the Philippines, where Spain had been in power since the foundation of Manila in 1571.

In the 1880s Filipino nationalists began resisting Spanish authority, and in 1896 they revolted to gain independence. In 1899, the Spanish handed the islands over to the Americans by secret treaty. Some Americans protested that it was contrary to American principles to become a colonial power. The writer Mark Twain joined the Anti-Imperialist League, declaring that American motives in the Philippines were no more pure than those of European imperialists and just as driven by economics.

The Filipino revolutionaries continued to struggle for independence, now against an American army of occupation. Four years of fighting left five thousand U.S. soldiers and over sixteen thousand Filipino combatants dead. As in South Africa at the same time, thousands of civilians perished in concentration camps used to separate them from the guerrillas. While the Anti-Imperialist League con- tinued its protests, President William McKinley declared that “it is our duty to uplift and civilize and Christianize” the Filipinos, making Social Darwinism a driving idea in U.S. foreign policy.

Observing the debate in American public opinion, British poet of empire Rud- yard Kipling urged Americans to take on imperial responsibilities:

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.*

Kipling worried that the British empire was in decline and that only an impe- rialistic United States could save the world for “Anglo-Saxon civilization.” Ameri- cans needed to “take up the White Man’s burden,” Kipling argued, for the benefit of the Filipinos themselves. A differing view of such events was offered by the African American writer W. E. B. Du Bois (doo BOYZ), who, noting that the New Imperial- ism had led to white domination across the world, predicted in 1903 that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.”† His statement was as true for Southeast Asia as it was for Africa or the United States, and throughout the Pacific Ocean as well.

Because Australia and New Zealand were settlement colonies, British motivation for expansion there predated the Second Industrial Revolution and the New Imperi- alism. By the time the scramble for Africa began in the 1870s, in fact, Australian Aborigines had already been reduced to a defeated and subservient people as the continent’s economy, fueled by wool exports and gold discoveries, boomed. In New Zealand, however, British settlers had faced tougher resistance from the Polynesian- speaking Maori people. Though an 1840 treaty had created the framework for *Verse from “The White Man’s Burden” by Rudyard Kipling, from Rudyard Kipling’s Verse Defini- tive Edition by Rudyard Kipling, 1920, Doubleday. †W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Vintage, 1990).

Imperial Comparisons Through Case Studies 753

British-Maori coexistence, guaranteeing the Maori land rights and giving them the status of British subjects, by the 1860s warfare had broken out. British victory was followed by new legislation that eased the way for European purchase of Maori land: by 1890 indigenous New Zealanders had lost nearly 95 percent of their holdings.

Okinawa was annexed by Japan in 1879. French Polynesia, with its capital on Tahiti, was established in 1889. New Guinea was taken by Germany in 1884; in 1899, Samoa was divided between Germany and the United States. The process of the New Imperialism was complete: by century’s end, empires blanketed the globe.

Imperial Comparisons Through Case Studies

Case studies from Africa and Southeast Asia demonstrate both the economic and the political implications of the New Imperialism. The history of rubber shows how industrial and technological developments led to imperialism as a form of economic domination. Politically, a comparison of how the rulers of Siam (Thailand) and Ethiopia retained their independence shows how these exceptions prove the rule of Western dominance. (See the feature “Visual Evidence in Primary Sources: National Flags.”)

During the Second Industrial Revolution, inventors found new applications for rubber in such products as waterproof clothing and factory conveyor belts. The spread of telephones, electrical lines, and bicycles generated a booming trade in rubber. At first the only

source was the Brazilian Amazon (see Chapter 25), where “rubber barons” built palatial homes while indigenous Amerindian peoples suffered from the introduc- tion of diseases to which they had no resistance.

Even Brazil’s extensive rubber reserves were not enough to meet demand. To maintain their country’s monopoly, Brazilians tried to prevent the export of rubber seeds, but a British agent managed to smuggle some to a specially built hothouse at Kew Gardens outside London (see Chapter 21). From there, rubber seedlings were sent to British colonies in Asia. Plantings in Singapore were successful, and from there rubber was taken to Malaya, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Dutch East Indies. As in Brazil, great fortunes were made at the expense of local farmers, and rainfor- ests were felled to make room for large rubber plantations. European traders secured access to an essential commodity and reaped the lion’s share of profits, as colonial taxation drove local peasants to work for low wages under harsh conditions.

The most notorious abuses took place in the Congo Free State, the personal domain of Leopold II, where wild rubber grew in abundance. The Belgian king ordered his agents to use whatever means necessary to maximize the harvest from Central African forests and paid them bonuses based on the amount of rubber they delivered. The result was a reign of terror. Sometimes the agents kept women in cages, promising to release them only after their husbands had delivered enough rubber. Like the farmers forced to grow cotton in East Africa, the families of rubber collectors went hungry because they could not tend their own fields.

When the unreasonable rubber quotas were still not met, the killing began. Belgian officers and agents paid Free State soldiers to bring back the hands of those they killed. These soldiers would sometimes chop off the hands of the living and bring them back to the Belgian trade stations for a cash reward. Eventually 10 mil- lion people died, mostly from hunger.

A Case Study of the New Imperialism: Rubber

Visual Evidence in Primary Sources

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Banners and flags have a long history as markers of individual and group identity. Flags took on even more important symbolic power in the nine- teenth century with the rise of European nation- states and the spread of their empires. In the West, where flags had earlier been closely associ- ated with royal families, they now became the symbols of entire nations. The imposition of a nation’s flag beyond the nation’s frontier became a defining symbol of imperialism.

Here are nineteenth-century flags from societ- ies that struggled to retain their independence: Liberia (West Africa), Ethiopia (East Africa), Siam (or Thailand, Southeast Asia), the Hawai’ian king- dom, and the Cherokee nation (United States). Creating these flags and preserving the right to fly them were important expressions of resistance to colonialism.

National Flags

The West African Republic of Liberia was founded in 1847 by freed American slaves. An earlier version of the flag had a cross rather than a star in the upper left. When the flag was first presented, “many eyes were suffused with tears. . . . Who that looked back to America and remembered what he saw and felt there, could be otherwise than agitated?”*

This flag, first used in 1897, features the “Lion of Judah” as a symbol for Ethiopia. Red stands for power and faith; yellow for peace, wealth, and love; and green for land and hope. These became the colors of global African nationalism, and they can now be found on the flags of nations such as Ghana, Zimbabwe, Guyana, and Grenada. The flag has deep religious symbolism for Jamaican Rastafarians.

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*Cited in Carl Patrick Burrowes, Power and Press Freedom in Liberia, 1830–1970 (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2004), p. 60.

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This flag dates from 1891. One of several dif- ferent flags from Siam, it was flown above the palace only when the king was present. At the center is the royal coat of arms, with a trident and golden crown above. Later, the flag of Thai- land evolved to emphasize national rather than royal identity, with horizontal stripes of red, white, and blue.

This flag was commissioned by Kamehameha the Great, the first Hawai’ian to unify the islands, in 1816, and it flew until 1893. The eight bars represent the major Hawai’ian Islands, and the British Union Jack reflects the attempts of Hawai’ian monarchs to use an alliance with Britain as protection against the United States and other imperialist powers. This is the current state flag of Hawai’i.

After the U.S. government forcibly moved the Cherokee people to Oklahoma (see Chapter 25), the nation adopted a constitution to mark their quest for sovereignty in their new home. The date on this flag (currently in use) commemo- rates that constitution. Each of the seven yellow stars represents one of the original Cherokee clans; the black star represents those who lost their lives on the “Trail of Tears.”

Q u e s t i o n f o r A n a l y s i s ❯❯ How do these flags combine indigenous and imported design elements?

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756 Chapter 26 The New Imperialism in Africa and Southeast Asia, 1830–1914

Leopold claimed to be a great humanitarian, but by the late 1890s stories of violence from the Congo began to reach home. A clerk in Brussels noticed that ships arriving full of rubber and ivory were returning to the Congo with only guns and ammunition in their holds. His further investiga- tion revealed the full horror of Leopold’s crimes, and he helped form the Congo Reform Associa- tion to demand that they be ended. Finally, in 1908 King Leopold sold his African empire to the Belgian government, reaping a huge profit on the sale. A heritage of violence still affects the Congo today, while Brussels is filled with the many grand monuments that Leopold built with the fortune he made in the rubber trade.

Given the overwhelming strength of European domi- nation in the age of the New Imperialism, it seems surprising that Ethiopia and Siam (present-day Thai- land) managed to retain their independence. A com-

parison between them shows that while factors such as competent leadership were important, the continuing independence of these two states merely confirmed overwhelming European domination in Africa and Southeast Asia.

The ancient Christian kingdom of Ethiopia first met modern European fire- power in 1868 when a British relief column was sent to rescue several British sub- jets held hostage by the Ethiopian king. The British easily crushed the African army they encountered. Though the Ethiopian leader had killed himself on the field of battle, leaving the kingdom defenseless, the British then withdrew.

When Menelik II (r. 1889–1913) became emperor, he was determined to strengthen his state against further assault. Ethiopia, like Tokugawa Japan, had long had a decentralized political structure in which rural lords, commanding their own armies, were as powerful as the emperor himself. Menelik (MEN-uh-lik) consolidated power at the imperial court and created his own standing army, equipped with the latest repeating rifles. He also used his credentials as a Christian to enhance his diplomatic influence in Europe, where his ambassadors played the European powers against one another to Ethiopia’s advantage.

Menelik was also fortunate that the European assault on Ethiopia came from Italy, the weakest of the European imperial powers. At the Battle of Adowa (1896) the Ethiopians were victorious, though Italy did take the strategically important region of Eritrea on the Red Sea. Britain, by then dominant in northeastern

Enduring Monarchies: Ethiopia and Siam

Menelik II (r. 1889–1913) Emperor who used diplomacy and military reorgani- zation to retain Ethio- pian independence, defeating an Italian army of invasion at Adowa in 1896.

Torture in King Leopold’s Congo Here two victims of King Leopold’s policies, Mola and Yoka, display their mutilated limbs. The hands of Mola were eaten by gan- grene after his hands were tied too tightly by Leopold’s agents. Yoka’s right hand was cut off by soldiers who planned to receive a bounty at headquarters by using the hand as proof of a kill. Once the world learned about this extreme violence, humanitarian voices were raised against Leopold. (Courtesy, Anti-Slavery International, London)

Imperial Comparisons Through Case Studies 757

Africa, was convinced that Menelik would be able to maintain security on the Egyptian frontier and allow European traders free access to his kingdom. Since this was a cheaper solution than occupying the country by force, the British sponsored the development of modern infrastructure, such as banks and rail- roads, during Menelik’s reign. The benefits, as usual, went to Ethiopian elites and European investors. The Ethiopian majority continued to scratch a meager living from the soil.

Simultaneously, the kings of Siam also faced the danger of absorption into European empires, with the British expanding from India in the west and the French threatening from Indochina in the east. Two long-ruling kings, Mongkut (r. 1851–1868) and Chulalongkorn (r. 1868–1910), transformed the ancient king- dom into a sovereign nation. Both used internal reform and diplomatic engage- ment to deal with the threats of the New Imperialism.

As a young man Mongkut (MANG-koot) lived in a Buddhist monastery. When he emerged to become king in 1851, he found that his monastic experience, where he had interacted with men from all social classes, prepared him to become a popular leader. Having learned English, mathematics, and astronomy from West- ern missionaries, he could interact effectively with Europeans as well.

Observing China’s fate after the Opium Wars (see Chapter 24), Mongkut was determined to meet the Western challenge. Conservatives at court opposed his reforms, arguing that they would undermine Buddhist traditions. Nevertheless, Mongkut invited Western emissaries to his capital, installed them as advisers, and exempted them from the usual court protocols, such as crawling on their knees before the king. Though Mongkut favored the British, he balanced their influence with French and Dutch advisers. He also opened Siam to foreign trade, giving merchants from various countries a stake in his system.

Most importantly, Mongkut chose an English tutor for his son and heir, Chu- lalongkorn. After Chulalongkorn (CHOO-luh-AWHN-korn) came to power in 1868, he appointed an able set of Siamese advisers who understood that their traditions and sovereignty could be preserved only through reform. Chulalong- korn altered the legal system to protect private property, abolished slavery and debt peonage, expanded access to education, and encouraged the introduction of telegraphs and railroads. Moreover, he centralized governmental power through a streamlined bureaucracy that reached from the capital into the smallest villages.

Like his father, Chulalongkorn was an able diplomat who played Europeans off one another. Lacking a strong army, he gave up claims to parts of his empire, such as Laos, to protect the core of his kingdom. Not only did this appease the French and the British, but it also gave his kingdom a more ethnically Thai character.

Chulalongkorn was fortunate that the British and the French were anxious to avoid conflict between their Indian and Indochinese empires. Because their trad- ers and missionaries were allowed to establish themselves in the kingdom, and because the Siamese leader was able to ensure peace and stability in his domain, the French and British agreed in 1896 to recognize the independence of the king- dom of Siam as a buffer between their empires (see Map 26.2).

As with Ethiopia, the independence of Siam was secured by internal reform, centralization of government power, and deft diplomatic maneuvering, all out- comes of effective political leadership. Nevertheless, had the British or French wished to conquer Ethiopia or Siam, they could have done so. The achievement of Menelik and Chulalongkorn in the 1890s was to position their countries to take advantage of inter-European rivalries.

Chulalongkorn (r. 1868–1910) King of Siam (Thailand) who modernized his coun- try through legal and constitutional reforms. Through successful diplomacy he ensured Siam’s continued independence while neighboring societies were absorbed into European empires.

758 Chapter 26 The New Imperialism in Africa and Southeast Asia, 1830–1914

In the age of the New Imperialism, it was only under unusual circumstances that African and Southeast Asian societies could retain their sovereignty. King Khama’s situation was much more common. He did his best with the diplomatic resources at his disposal, but his kingdom was too small and too poorly armed to

King Chulalongkorn of Siam This photograph from 1890 shows King Chulalongkorn of Siam with his son, the Crown Prince Vajiravudh Rama, who was studying in Britain. Chu- lalongkorn used deft diplomacy to maintain the independence of Siam (Thailand) during the height of the European scramble for colonial territory. Father and son are dressed in European style, but the warm embrace of their hands was a Southeast Asian touch. Brit- ish males rarely showed such affection in Victorian portraits.

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Imperial Comparisons Through Case Studies 759

survive as an independent state. Unlike Menelik and Chulalongkorn, most African and Southeast Asian rulers did not command sufficient resources to protect them- selves from the New Imperialism. Even in Ethiopia and Siam, the economic impact of Western industrial capitalism brought new and difficult challenges to rural peoples, who were now bound, like their counterparts in colonial empires, to a global economy to which they contributed much more than they received.

Context and Connections

The New Imperialism in World History

In the second half of the nineteenth century many small-scale societies and kingdoms that had main- tained their autonomy could no longer resist the impe- rial ambitions of aggressive European nation-states. The story of their often spirited resistance and ulti- mate defeat was a global one: from the Great Plains of Canada and the United States, to the Yucatán of Mexico (see Chapter 25), to small Pacific islands, to the interior of the African continent. If even a mighty empire like Qing China succumbed (see Chapter 24), smaller states like King Khama’s Bangwato could not hope to defend themselves.

When King Khama and his colleagues traveled to London in 1895, they were visiting the epicen- ter of global financial and military power. By then, however, the British could no longer be complacent. They had lost their early industrial lead to emerg- ing economies in Germany and the United States, and the British empire, while still by far the world’s largest, faced challenges from its newly ambitious competitors in the age of the New Imperialism.

Before 1850, European maritime prowess had only intermittently been translated into political domina- tion, though British control over India set a precedent

FOR COMPARISON

Industrial Revolution (Ch. 23) ...

Second Industrial Revolution (Ch. 26)

(from ca. 1780) 1918

Lifetime of King Khama of the Bangwato

1837

Suez Canal

1923

1830 1850 1870 1890 1910 1930

AFRICA

SOUTHEAST ASIA

1869

Battle of Omdurman

1898

Union of South Africa

1910

Federation of Indochina

1897

U.S. possession of Philippines

1900

Xhosa Cattle Killing

1856–1857

Berlin Conference

1884

First steamship crosses the Pacific (Ch. 23)

1853

Reign of Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia

1889 1913

First Opium War (Ch. 24)

1839 1842

Boxer Rebellion (Ch. 24)

1898 1901

Reign of King Chulalongkorn of Siam

1868 1910

Plains Indians suppressed, completing dispossession of native peoples in North America (Ch. 25)

1868 1890

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(see Chapter 20). It was the Industrial Revolution that provided the means and motivation for further impe- rial expansion (see Chapter 23). Initially, though, it seemed that the British would be content with “infor- mal empire” rather than more direct forms of admin- istrative domination: in China and Latin America that policy was generating great profit without the expense of conquest and control. By the late nineteenth cen- tury, however, refinements in chemical and metallurgi- cal processes—the Second Industrial Revolution—led to more sophisticated production techniques, much larger industrial corporations, and intensified com- petition for raw materials and markets. As Britain’s new competitors developed newer and more efficient industrial infrastructure, such competition unleashed the rapid expansion of empires in the last quarter of the century. The “scramble for Africa” was the most dramatic example of the new global quest for imperial dominion.

By 1900, when foreign troops occupied the For- bidden City in Beijing (see Chapter 24) and the pro- cess of partition and conquest in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific neared completion, the orga- nizing principle of a world unified by industrial mar- kets was clear. Western Europe and the United States stood astride the globe, seemingly reinforcing the Social Darwinist claim of their natural superiority,

with only Japan offering a clear example of non- European achievement in the race to industrialized military power.

Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific offered a safety valve for European and Japanese competi- tion in the late nineteenth century, but entering the twentieth century the flags of empire crowded against each other across the world, and European conflicts would turn inward during two great world wars (see Chapters 27 and 29). The First and Second World Wars would draw the world’s peoples into devastat- ing conflict arising from inter-European competition, but would ultimately undercut Western domination. By mid-century, anticolonial nationalists would effec- tively organize themselves to campaign for national independence. By the end of the twentieth century, the West’s global dominance, which had seemed so natural in 1900, would come to appear a relatively brief episode in world history.

Meanwhile, King Khama’s mission to London had important long-term consequences. Because of his efforts, the Bangwato and the other peoples of Botswana entered the British empire as a protectorate and avoided incorporation into apartheid South Africa (see Chap- ter 31). It was perhaps a small victory when measured against the great events of the time, but one of which Khama’s descendants are justifiably proud.

Voyages on the Web: King Khama III The Voyages Map App follows the traveler’s journeys using interactive study tools, including 360-degree panoramic views of historic sites, zoomable maps, audio summaries, flash cards, and quizzes.

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Go to the CourseMate website at www.cengagebrain.com for additional study tools and review materials—including audio and video clips—for this chapter.

Headrick, Daniel. The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1981.

Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.

Lockard, Craig. Southeast Asia in World History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Markus, Harold G. The Life and Times of Menelik II: Ethiopia 1844– 1913. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.

Martin, B. G., ed. Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth Century Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Owen, Norman G., ed. The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004.

Packenham, Thomas. The Scramble for Africa, 1976–1912. 2d ed. London: Longman, 1999.

Parsons, Neil. King Khama, Emperor Joe and the Great White Queen: Victorian Britain Through African Eyes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Peiers, J. B. The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle Killing Movement of 1856–1857. London: James Currey, 1989.

Reid, Richard. A History of Modern Africa: 1800 to the Present. 2d ed. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

Wyatt, David K. A Short History of Thailand. 2d ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

King Khama III (732) New Imperialism (735) Second Industrial Revolution

(736) David Livingstone (736) King Leopold II of Belgium

(737)

Berlin Conference (737) Asante kingdom (742) Samori Toure (742) Shaka (743) Xhosa Cattle Killing (744) Cecil Rhodes (744) Union of South Africa (745)

Suez Canal (746) Muhammad Ahmad, the

Mahdi (746) Federation of Indochina (749) Menelik II (756) Chulalongkorn (757)

Key Terms

For Further Reference

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Danube R.

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a

A driatic Sea

B l a c k S e a

N o r t h S e a

B a r e n t s S e a

Baltic Sea

Bay of Biscay

AT L A N T I C O C E A N

Caspian Sea

Corsica

Sardinia

Cyprus

Sicily

Lake Garda

Gothenburg

Berlin

Stockholm St. Petersburg (Petrograd, 1914–1924)

Tornio

Murmansk Narvik

Kiev

Moscow

Rome

Athens KashanAntioch

Kaffa

Yerevan

Tabri

Sava

Isfahan

Qum

Tiflis

Nachivan

Baghdad

Constantinople

London

Oslo

Haparanda

Vardo

Helsinki

Cherbourg

Paris

Riga

UNITED KINGDOM

IRISH FREE STATE

(indep. 1921)

S PA I N

I TA LY

F RANC E SWITZERLAND

ALBANIA

GERMANY

ROMANIA

BULGARIA

LATVIA

ESTONIA

LITHUANIA

NORWAY

DENMARK

NETHERLANDS

BELGIUM

SWEDEN

F I N L A N D (indep. 1917)

R U S S I A (U.S.S.R. after 1922)

POLAN D

HUNGARY

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

YUGOSLAVIA

GREECE

TURKEY

AUSTRIA

A F R I C A

A S I A

to/from New York City

to NYC

to Paris

to Bukhara &

Central Asian

frontier

ATLANTIC

O C EAN

PAC I F IC

O C EAN

Seattle

Yakima Eugene

Reno Chicago

New York City

Salt Lake City

San Francisco

Los Angeles

Portland

Minneapolis Detroit Provincetown

U N ITE D STATE S 0

0 250 500 Mi.

250 500 Km.

Louise Bryant and John Reed witness Russian Revolution, 1917.

Bryant visits Central Asia, 1920.

Bryant goes on speaking tour across the U.S., 1919.

0 200 400 Mi.

200 400 Km.

The Travels of Louise Bryant Louise Bryant’s journeys

Louise Bryant’s 1919 speaking tour

City visited by Bryant

Other city

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n the grey horizon of human existence looms a great giant called Working Class Consciousness. He treads with thunderous step through all the countries of

the world. There is no escape, we must go out and meet him. It all depends on us whether he will turn into a loathsome, ugly monster demanding human sacrifices or whether he shall be the savior of mankind.*

*Quotes from Louise Bryant, Six Red Months in Moscow (New York: George H. Doren, 1919), p. xx.

World War I as Global “Total” War (p. 764)

The Postwar Settlements (p. 774)

Pioneers of Global Revolution: Mexico, China, and Russia (p. 780)

War, Revolution, and Global Uncertainty, 1905–192827

Louise Bryant

(Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)

The violence and brutality of the First World War (1914–1918) made a mockery of the nineteenth-century idea of progress. The carnage left many people with doubt and pessimism about the future. Others, inspired by the revolutionary changes that accompanied the war, saw a brighter day dawning. Having witnessed the Russian Revolution of 1917 firsthand and interviewed many world leaders, the American journalist Louise Bryant (1885–1936) was in a good position to gauge the high stakes of the postwar world. She was entering the period of world history that one historian later called “the age of extremes.” Bryant believed that the world was, for better or for worse, at a turning point:

Danube R.

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a

A driatic Sea

B l a c k S e a

N o r t h S e a

B a r e n t s S e a

Baltic Sea

Bay of Biscay

AT L A N T I C O C E A N

Caspian Sea

Corsica

Sardinia

Cyprus

Sicily

Lake Garda

Gothenburg

Berlin

Stockholm St. Petersburg (Petrograd, 1914–1924)

Tornio

Murmansk Narvik

Kiev

Moscow

Rome

Athens KashanAntioch

Kaffa

Yerevan

Tabri

Sava

Isfahan

Qum

Tiflis

Nachivan

Baghdad

Constantinople

London

Oslo

Haparanda

Vardo

Helsinki

Cherbourg

Paris

Riga

UNITED KINGDOM

IRISH FREE STATE

(indep. 1921)

S PA I N

I TA LY

F RANC E SWITZERLAND

ALBANIA

GERMANY

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Louise Bryant and John Reed witness Russian Revolution, 1917.

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Bryant goes on speaking tour across the U.S., 1919.

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The Travels of Louise Bryant Louise Bryant’s journeys

Louise Bryant’s 1919 speaking tour

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1st proof: 09/02/08 2nd proof: 10/6/08 Final: 10/10/08

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Join this chapter’s traveler on “Voyages,” an interactive tour of historic sites and events: www.cengagebrain.com

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Bryant was an exceptional woman for her times. Impatient with restrictive con-ventions and an ardent feminist, she was described as someone who “refuses to be bound . . . an artist, a joyous, rampant individualist, a poet and a revolutionary.”* She was a child of the American West, born in San Francisco and then, after her father’s premature death, raised on a remote ranch in Nevada with only her grandfather, a Chinese cook, and her imagination for company. After graduating from the Uni- versity of Oregon, Bryant wanted to be a serious journalist, but the only job she could get was as a “society” writer for a Portland newspaper. It was 1909, and women were not expected to be involved with “hard” news. She married a dentist but felt increasingly hemmed in by her middle-class surroundings.

*John Reed, cited in Mary Anne Dearborn, “Reviving Louise Bryant,” Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission, http://www.ochcom.org/bryant/.

Louise Bryant (1885–1936) American journalist, traveler, feminist, and author of several books on the Russian Revolution.

764 Chapter 27 War, Revolution, and Global Uncertainty, 1905–1928

Then a young journalist named John Reed swept into her life. She left with him for New York, experiencing the cultural and intellectual dynamism of Green- wich Village. This was the life she craved, full of adventure and purpose. After a series of stormy love affairs that nearly tore their relationship apart, Bryant and Reed were married, and together they traveled to Russia in the summer of 1917. Both left important records of that experience, but Reed overshadowed Bryant in historical memory. Given the gender perceptions of the time, Bryant’s journalism was never taken as seriously as that of her husband.

During her lifetime Bryant witnessed remarkable changes. In the industrialized world telephones and electricity became commonplace, and the automobile and airplane were invented; Bryant saw the great aviator Amelia Earhart, a symbol of female emancipation, as a role model. In some places, women fought for and won the right to vote. The creativity of African American musicians led to the creation of jazz music, the first significant influence of the United States on global culture. Sci- entific advances continued, as physicists such as Albert Einstein made huge strides toward understanding nature at both cosmic and atomic levels, while Sigmund Freud, whom Bryant once interviewed, plumbed the depths of the human psyche.

But a shadow of uncertainty hung over these accomplishments. The industri- ally driven devastation of the First World War in Europe caused immense suffering not only for soldiers but also for civilians. In mobilizing their empires for the war effort, the European powers made their local conflict a genuinely global one, severely disrupting the lives of many Africans, Asians, and peoples of the Pacific. While the president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, confidently pro- claimed that this was “the war to end all wars,” one that would “make the world safe for democracy,” competing national interests destabilized the postwar world.

Meanwhile, both before and during the war, major world societies—Mexico, China, and Russia—were rocked by revolution. Louise Bryant, a socialist, saw hope in uncertainty, applauding downtrodden people who rose up against local oppres- sors or imperial masters. But she recognized as well the dangers that war and revo- lution had unleashed.

Fo cu

s Q ue

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❯❯ How can the First World War be regarded as a “total war,” both for the domestic populations of the main combatants and for the entire world?

❯❯ How did the postwar settlements fail to resolve global political tensions?

❯❯ How did the outcomes of revolutions in Mexico, China, and Russia add to the uncertainty of the postwar world?

World War I as Global “Total” War

World War I (1914–1918) represented a radical change in warfare. Conditions of “total war” meant that the fight engaged masses of civilians and required the complete mobilization of economic and human resources. Governments

World War I as Global “Total” War 765

assumed unprecedented powers to regulate social, political, and economic life. For each of the main combatants—Germany, Austria, Britain, France, Russia, and the United States—the war strained traditional social and political systems. Nothing would remain the same. The British called it simply the Great War.

The war can also be called “total” because it was a truly global conflict, involv- ing not just Europeans but also Americans, Indians, Chinese, Australians, Japa- nese, Vietnamese, Arabs, Turks, Armenians, Africans, and others. While colonial peoples had been caught up in earlier European conflicts, the global involvement of World War I was unprecedented. Young men from the United States shipped out to Europe, Indian soldiers marched to Baghdad, Southeast Asians worked behind the lines on the western front, West Africans fought in the trenches: all had life-changing experiences.

On June 28, 1914, in the Balkan city of Sarajevo, a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Fer- dinand, heir to the Austrian throne. The Balkan region had long been an unstable zone between the

Austrian and Ottoman empires (see Map 27.1). As the Ottomans declined, Austri- ans were asserting themselves, in the process provoking local nationalists who did not want to escape one empire only to be dominated by another (see Chapter 23).

Despite their cultural similarities as Slavs and their long history of coexis- tence, the inhabitants of the Balkans vied with one another over religious differ- ences. Serbian nationalists, members of the Orthodox Christian faith, looked to their coreligionists in Russia for support; Croatian nationalists allied themselves with Catholic Austria; Bosnian Muslims sided with the Ottoman empire.

These local Balkan tensions led to mobilization for full-scale war between the great powers because of the rising militarism, aggressive nationalism, and intense imperial competition that had preoccupied the leading industrial nations since the age of the New Imperialism (see Chapter 26). In the late nineteenth century, tensions between the great powers, now including Japan and the United States, had found an outlet in colonial rivalries outside of Europe. By 1900, however, there were no African, Asian, or Pacific lands left to conquer. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was therefore like a spark that set alight the dry tinder of heavily militarized national competition.

After dismissing Otto von Bismarck in 1890 (see Chapter 23), Kaiser Wilhelm II (r. 1888–1918) abandoned careful diplomacy for a more aggressive foreign policy. His naval buildup caused Britain to reverse its practice of avoiding commitments on the continent. Likewise the French and Russian governments, alarmed by German ambitions, overcame their long-standing mutual distrust. A series of treaties pro- duced a combination of alliances that divided Europe into two opposing blocs: the Triple Entente (ahn-TAHNT) of France, Britain, and Russia against the Triple Alli- ance of Germany, Austria, and Italy. The alliance system gave diplomats few options for the resolution of any crisis.

Thus the Balkan crisis led to an explosive confrontation between two hostile and heavily armed camps. The Austrian government threatened Serbia with war if it did not comply with a set of humiliating demands. The Serbs appealed to Russia, while the Germans backed up the Austrians. The Ottoman empire, fearful of Rus- sian and British designs, allied itself with Germany. After a period of indecision, Italy joined with Britain, France, and Russia.

Causes of World War I, 1890–1914

Kaiser Wilhelm II (r. 1888–1918) German emperor whose foreign policy and military buildup changed the European balance of power and laid the foundation for the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente.

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World War I as Global “Total” War 767

Public opinion compounded the war atmosphere. In urbanized, industrial societies, foreign affairs were no longer the exclusive purview of diplomatic elites. Expanding electorates had involved broader segments of European populations in politics at a time when inexpensive daily newspapers struck a nationalistic tone. Declarations of war were therefore met with popular excitement and patriotic demonstrations. Only in Russia, where the tsar and his ministers generally ignored public opinion, did the government act without a popular mandate. With remark- able naïveté, Europeans believed the war would be quick and conclusive, and that their side would win. (See the feature “Movement of Ideas Through Primary Sources: Emma Goldman’s Critique of Militarism.”)

Louise Bryant was cynical about the war, seeing it as nothing but a capitalist tactic to increase profits. It seemed clear to her and to other socialists that French and German workers shared common cause against their bosses; for them to fight each other under the banner of patriotism went against their own best interests. Nevertheless, even the German Social Democratic Party, which had long urged “workers of the world unite!”, now voted in favor of war.

German war planners had hoped that Britain might remain neutral, but the British had pledged to defend neutral Belgium. When the Germans attacked Belgium en route to France, war with Britain became inevitable. Unlike 1870, when the Prussians quickly took Paris, in

1914 the German advance was stopped 20 miles (32.2 km) short (see Map 27.1). The ensuing stalemate on the western front resulted in a new tactic: trench warfare. On one side, French and British soldiers fortified entrenched positions with razor wire; on the other side, Germans did the same. Miserable in the muddy trenches, soldiers were called on to charge “over the top,” braving harrowing gunfire in des- perate attempts to overrun enemy positions. With bombs bursting around them, or choking on poisonous mustard gas, they had little chance of survival, let alone vic- tory. Immobilized, battle lines established early in Belgium and northern France hardly shifted as the trenches were reinforced and connected with tunnels in elabo- rate underground networks for supplies and communications.

The casualties of trench warfare were horrific as the two sides fought year after year over the same small stretches of territory. At the Battle of Verdun in 1916, more than half a million French and German troops lost their lives. The same year, the Battle of the Somme killed nearly a million British and German soldiers. The slaughter brought no advantage to either side. Often, young men from the same neighborhood, school, or village volunteered to join the same regiment, trained and shipped out together, then received the same order to go over the top—they might all be killed in a few minutes.

Many young men had married as they headed off to war: for decades after- ward, millions of war widows lived lives of regret for their lost youth. The survi- vors of trench warfare lost not only their companions but also their physical and mental health. The constant barrage of artillery shells meant that many suffered for the rest of their lives from “shell shock,” the trauma of their ordeal in the trenches returning with every loud sound. “Lost generation” was the term used to refer to the young adults who came of age during the Great War, not just those who died, but also those who lost their hopes and dreams.

Civilians also suffered. Before 1914, despite their increasing rivalry, Germany and Britain had been major trade partners. Now, to undermine the German war

Total War in Europe: The Western and East- ern Fronts

western front During World War I, the line separating the elaborate trenches of German and Allied positions, which soon became almost immo- bile. Trench warfare was characteristic of the western front.

Movement of Ideas Through Primary Sources

768

Emma Goldman’s Critique of Militarism

Preparedness, the Road to Universal Slaughter” was written by the anarchist Emma Goldman and published in New York in 1915. Emma Gold- man (1869–1940) was born into a Jewish family in Lithuania, then part of the Russian empire. As a teenager she moved to St. Petersburg, where she was first exposed to radical politics, and at six- teen she moved to New York. As a young woman she advocated violence and assassination, tactics that were deeply rooted in Russia’s anarchist and revolutionary traditions (see Chapter 23). Later she became a pacifist, preferring mass organiza- tion as a means of countering the economic and political oppression of industrial capitalism. Lou- ise Bryant, who attended a speech by Goldman in Portland in 1914, was just one of many young Americans stirred to radical political action by

her oratory. The two became well acquainted, and Goldman attended the funeral of Bryant’s husband John Reed in Moscow in 1921.

Goldman was arrested several times, once for heading an anticonscription campaign in the leadup to the First World War. After the Alien Act of 1918 allowed the deportation of “undesirable” immigrants without a trial, in 1919 the U.S. gov- ernment deported her back to Russia. She left after two years, profoundly disappointed at the suppression of civil rights by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Goldman then settled in Canada, traveling frequently to France and England, and continued to write and speak in defense of indi- vidual liberty.

Source: Mother Earth 10, no. 10 (December 1915).

Preparedness, the Road to Universal Slaughter “Ammunition! Ammunition! O, Lord, thou who rulest heaven and earth, thou God of love, of mercy and of justice, provide us with enough ammunition to destroy our enemy.” Such is the prayer which is ascending daily to the Christian heaven. . . . [All] of the Euro- pean people have fallen over each other into the devouring flames of the furies of war, and America, pushed to the very brink by unscrupulous politicians, by ranting dema- gogues, and by military sharks, is preparing for the same terrible feat. In the face of this approaching disaster, it behooves men and women not yet overcome by the war mad- ness to raise their voice of protest, to call the attention of the people to the crime and outrage which are about to be perpetrated upon them.

America is essentially the melting pot. No national unit composing it is in a position to boast of superior race purity, particular historic mission, or higher culture. Yet the jingoes and war speculators are filling the

air with the sentimental slogan of hypocriti- cal nationalism, “America for Americans,” “America first, last, and all the time.” This cry has caught the popular fancy from one end of the country to another. In order to maintain America, military preparedness must be engaged in at once. A billion dol- lars of the people’s sweat and blood is to be expended for dreadnaughts and submarines for the army. The pathos of it all is that the America which is to be protected by a huge military force is not the America of the people, but that of the privileged class; the class which robs and exploits the masses, and controls their lives from the cradle to the grave. No less pathetic is it that so few people realize that preparedness never leads to peace, but that it is indeed the road to universal slaughter. . . .

Forty years ago Germany proclaimed the slogan: “Germany above everything. Ger- many for the Germans, first, last and always. We want peace; therefore we must prepare

”

769

for war. Only a well armed and thoroughly prepared nation can maintain peace, can command respect, can be sure of its national integrity.” And Germany continued to pre- pare, thereby forcing the other nations to do the same. The terrible European war is only the culminating fruition of the hydra-headed gospel, military preparedness. . . .

But though America grows fat on the manufacture of munitions and war loans to the Allies to help crush Prussians the same cry is now being raised in America which, if carried into national action, would build up an American militarism far more terrible than German or Prussian militarism could ever be, and that because nowhere in the world has capitalism become so brazen in its greed and nowhere is the state so ready to kneel at the feet of capital.

“Americanization” societies with well known liberals as members, they who but yesterday decried the patriotic clap-trap of today, are now lending themselves to befog the minds of the people and to help build up the same destructive institutions in America which they are directly and indirectly help- ing to pull down in Germany—militarism, the destroyer of youth, the raper of women, the annihilator of the best in the race, the very mower of life. . . .

The very proclaimers of “America first” have long before this betrayed the

fundamental principles of real Americanism, of the kind of Americanism that Jefferson had in mind when he said that the best government is that which governs least; the kind of America that David Thoreau worked for when he proclaimed that the best gov- ernment is the one that doesn’t govern at all; or the other truly great Americans who aimed to make of this country a haven of refuge, who hoped that all the disinherited and oppressed people in coming to these shores would give character, quality and meaning to the country. That is not the America of the politician and munition speculators. . . .

Supposedly, America is to prepare for peace; but in reality it will be the cause of war. It always has been thus—all through bloodstained history, and it will continue until nation will refuse to fight against nation, and until the people of the world will stop preparing for slaughter. Prepared- ness is like the seed of a poisonous plant; placed in the soil, it will bear poisonous fruit. The European mass destruction is the fruit of that poisonous seed. It is imperative that the American workers realize this before they are driven by the jingoes into the madness that is forever haunted by the specter of danger and invasion; they must know that to pre- pare for peace means to invite war, means to unloose the furies of death.

Q u e s t i o n s f o r A n a l y s i s ❯❯ Based on these arguments, how would Goldman have responded to the criticism that as a

Lithuanian Jew she had no right to question American patriotism?

❯❯ If we consider the actual experience of the United States during and after the war, were Goldman’s warnings justified?

effort, the British navy blockaded Germany’s seaports, and in response German submarines targeted British shipping in the Atlantic Ocean. International trade came to a standstill. European prosperity had been based on an interlinked world economy, and its collapse led to an extreme shortage of consumer goods, espe- cially when domestic industries shifted toward the production of war materiel.

Protracted total war transformed European government and society. Because all of a nation’s energies had to be tapped in the interests of survival, governmental power expanded. The transition to a more planned economy was least revolution- ary in Germany, where the state and large corporations were already in close coop- eration before the war. In Britain, however, national economic planning represented a major shift away from economic liberalism. Everywhere, the First World War began a long-term trend toward greater government involvement in economies.

Government bureaucracies of all kinds expanded dramatically. Unions lost the right to strike. Traditional liberties—freedom of speech, freedom of assembly—were

The Western Front Trench warfare on the western front was a harrowing experience. When officers called for the troops to “go over the top,” the men had to navigate a gaunt- let of razor wire while facing exploding shells, constant gunfire, and sometimes poison gas. There were more than 1.5 million casualties in the Battle of the Somme alone, includ- ing, undoubtedly, some of the British soldiers shown here. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)

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World War I as Global “Total” War 771

curtailed. The British Parliament even began to regulate the hours of the nation’s pubs, where working men and women sought relief from wartime drudgery. Less time spent drinking, it was thought, would improve industrial efficiency.

For women, the war brought opportunities as well as costs. The nursing pro- fession expanded, and with so many men absent, women became more important in factories as well. In France, many women ran family farms. Such circumstances undermined the idea that the woman’s place was in the home, while men domi- nated the public sphere. Before the war, British suffragists, campaigners for wom- en’s voting rights, used hunger strikes and public demonstrations to press their cause. The wartime contributions of British women helped swing public opinion, and in 1918 women over thirty possessing property and education were granted the right to vote.

In eastern Europe total war extracted a higher price than in the West. The original conflict between the Austrian empire and Serbia escalated when the Rus- sian army entered the Balkan conflict, spreading warfare as far as Romania and Bulgaria. But the main battle line between German and Russian forces was the eastern front. Having only recently begun to industrialize, Russia was still a primarily rural empire, a fatal weakness under conditions of industrialized total war. German invaders took hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners, whom they treated with extreme harshness. Morale among peasant conscripts was poor to begin with and deteriorated rapidly. Mutinies were common: soldiers and sail- ors, mostly descendants of serfs, felt little loyalty toward their aristocratic officers. Sometimes they killed their own commanders rather than head into futile battles; frequently they simply abandoned their weapons and walked home. Louise Bry- ant noticed them as she entered Russia, “great giants of men, mostly workers and peasants, in old, dirt-colored uniforms from which every emblem of Tsardom had been carefully removed.”*

Famine stalked the Russian countryside as war disrupted food production. Fac- tories closed when industrialists lost access to the Western capital on which Rus- sian industrialization depended. Despite deteriorating circumstances, Tsar Nicholas II refused to consider the humiliating conditions of surrender offered by the Ger- mans. By 1917, the Russian people were demoralized and exhausted.

Apart from the mobilization of civilian life in Europe, total war also required access to global resources such as petroleum, now essential for the maintenance of supply lines. Battles were fought in Africa and the

Middle East; Japan declared war on Germany to seize German concessions in China; Britain and France depended on their Asian and African empires for man- power and materiel. With the entrance of the United States, by 1917 the Great War had truly become a world war.

The decision by the Ottoman empire to side with Germany opened a south- ern front that extended the war to the Middle East and North Africa. During the late nineteenth century, German banks, commercial houses, and manufacturers had invested heavily in the Ottoman economy, and the Ottomans saw a German alliance as protection against the French, British, and Russians. The most impor- tant strategic Ottoman position was the Dardanelles, a narrow strait connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. In 1915, British forces, including many

eastern front The front in Russia during World War I. The German army moved quickly across eastern Europe into Russia; low morale plagued the poorly equipped Russian army in the face of superior German technology.

Total War: Global Dimensions

southern front The front in World War I caused by the Ottoman empire’s decision to ally with the German army. Britain mobilized colonial forces from India, Egypt, and Aus- tralia to engage Otto- man forces at Gallipoli; British forces also occupied Mesopotamia and Palestine.

*Quotes from Louise Bryant, Six Red Months in Moscow (New York: George H. Doren, 1919), p. 21.

772 Chapter 27 War, Revolution, and Global Uncertainty, 1905–1928

Australians, attacked the heavily fortified Ottoman position at Gallipoli. In a scene reminiscent of the car- nage on the western front, thousands of Australian sol- diers were mowed down. After a quarter of a million casualties, the British withdrew from Gallipoli.

In the wake of Gallipoli, the British could spare neither men nor materiel from their home islands to fight on the southern front, so they mobilized regi- ments from their African and Asian colonies. A force made up primarily of Egyptian soldiers under British command moved toward Ottoman-controlled Pales- tine, while Indian soldiers engaged Ottoman forces in Mesopotamia. Knowing that many Arab subjects of the Ottoman empire were unhappy with Turkish rule, the British also forged an alliance with Arab leaders.

Though the French did little fighting outside Europe, they also looked to their empire for support. They had long recruited indigenous soldiers from their imperial possessions, but the number of volunteers was not enough to meet wartime demand. French colonial officials pressured local African leaders in their colonial territories to supply, by force if neces- sary, more conscripts for the French army. The most famous regiment of colonial recruits was the Senega- lese Sharpshooters, young Muslims from French West Africa who developed a reputation as fearsome fighters. They suffered cruelly from the harsh winters of northern France, however, and many died or were maimed on the western front.

Most of the Arab, Indian, and African soldiers mobilized by the British and the French during the war were Muslims, creating a potential condition of divided loyalty as they fought for Christian empires, especially since the Ottoman sultan was widely regarded as the caliph, or successor to the political powers of the Prophet Muhammad. The British commander of the Palestinian campaign was therefore careful when entering Jerusalem—holy to Islam as well as to Christi-

anity and Judaism—to assure his Indian troops as well as the city’s residents that all their holy sites would be respected.

Battles between German East Africa and British-controlled Kenya also demon- strated the scope of total war in East Africa. On one side were African soldiers led by German officers, and on the other a largely Indian army commanded by the British. The German commander’s only goal was to tie down the Anglo-Indian forces to keep them from being redeployed to the Middle East. He therefore repeat- edly struck and then retreated, requisitioning local food reserves for his army and destroying what was left to deny sustenance to his opponents. Famine and disease stalked the land; total war reached even the remote interior of East Africa.

In Southeast Asia, the main consequence of the war was French recruitment of young Vietnamese men for the Indochinese Labor Corps. The French needed laborers behind their lines on the western front and preferred to relieve French

Senegalese Sharpshooters Mostly Muslim soldiers from French West Africa who were con- scripted by the French empire in World War I and developed a repu- tation as fearsome fighters.

Franco-African Soldier Total war meant the mobi- lization of African and Asian colonial subjects. This young man, fighting for “the greater glory of France,” is a Senegalese Sharpshooter, most likely a West Afri- can Muslim. He stands proudly, with German helmets perched atop his head. Perhaps the helmets were captured in fighting; more likely, they were placed on his head for dramatic effect by a studio photographer.

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soldiers of hard work such as digging fortifications and maintaining roads. Those jobs were given to Vietnamese conscripts, allowing the French to concentrate more troops on the front line. At the same time Indochinese rice and rubber were directed to support the French war effort.

The Indians, West Africans, and Vietnamese conscripted by the British and French, as well as the civilians in colonial territories who produced coffee, rubber, tin, and other goods for imperial forces, contributed much to the war effort but received little in return. Later, anticolonial nationalist leaders would base their claims to greater self-government or independence on the sacrifices they had made during the war.

The United States’s entrance into the war was a major turning point, again highlighting the global nature of total war. In 1914, the country had a small army, and Americans were still inclined to follow George

Washington’s advice that the republic should not “entangle our peace and prosper- ity in the toils of European ambition.” Initially, President Woodrow Wilson (in office 1913–1921) kept the United States out of the war, but true neutrality proved impossible. With Germany’s trade blocked by the British navy, America supplied industrial and military provisions to France and Britain. Between 1914 and 1916 American exports to these two countries grew from $824 million to $3.2 billion, bringing industrial expansion to the United States without any military cost.

America’s entry into the war was largely in response to Germany’s use of sub- marine warfare, itself a reaction to the British embargo on Germany. In 1915, the Germans sank the Lusitania, a civilian passenger ship with many Americans on board. After President Wilson protested, the Germans promised to stop attacking ships without warning. Meanwhile, business interests in the United States urged a rapid military buildup. While citing national security reasons, they were also aware, as critics like Louise Bryant pointed out, that military spending was highly profitable.

Early in 1917 the Germans, aiming to stop American arms shipments to Brit- ain, resumed submarine attacks. By that time Wilson had decided on war, but he still had to convince Congress and the American people. Americans, it seemed, could be persuaded to overcome their hesitation to fight only if they were offered some great moral purpose. “The world must be made safe for democracy,” Wilson told Congress. “Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.”

Wilson’s idealism swung public opinion in favor of war, and a draft was insti- tuted. Now the United States faced the same mandates of total war as the other combatants. Mobilization gave the government unprecedented power. Economic and political life became more centralized while restrictions were placed on free speech, the right of workers to strike, and freedom of the press.

Though the Americans did not experience the worst of trench warfare, the timing of their arrival was critical. The Germans had imposed a humiliating peace on Russia (covered later in this chapter) and were speeding troops west to try to break the gridlock on the western front. The arrival of a million-strong American force turned the tide in favor of the British and the French; on November 11, 1918, the Germans agreed to an armistice ending hostilities, and the war was over. The United States was now in a position to influence the peace talks that followed, taking a place alongside the major European powers. Germany was excluded from the bargaining table, as were the Asians and Africans, whose fates were also to be determined.

The Role of the United States

Woodrow Wilson (in office 1913–1921) President of the United States during and after World War I. Wilson’s idealistic view, enshrined in his Four- teen Points, was that Allied success in the war would lead to the spread of peace and democracy.

774 Chapter 27 War, Revolution, and Global Uncertainty, 1905–1928

The Postwar Settlements

As diplomats headed to France to prepare the peace terms, an outbreak of influ-enza raced around the world, killing tens of millions. Wartime violence and dislocation had paved the way for an epidemic that further deepened the world’s distress. Between 1918 and 1920 as many as 50 million people died, far more than had lost their lives during the war itself. The influenza epidemic contributed to the sense that the world had changed in some fundamental way and that the future was uncertain.

In this atmosphere, representatives of the Allied powers—Britain, France, Italy, and the United States—gathered at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. In retrospect, the settlements negotiated in Paris seem clearly wrongheaded. France was intent on punishing Germany for the war, undermining the liberal political order created after Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated in 1918. New national boundaries drawn in eastern Europe and the Mediterranean generated violence, instability, and dictatorships. Britain and France confiscated German colonies and Ottoman provinces for their own empires, thus stoking the flames of nationalism in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. And the U.S. Senate voted against joining the new League of Nations that Woodrow Wilson had proposed precisely to avoid a catastrophic recurrence of total war.

The principal leaders at the Paris Peace Conference— Woodrow Wilson of the United States, Georges Clem- enceau of France, and David Lloyd George of Britain—faced an enormous task. Germany had to

somehow be reincorporated into Europe. The Austrian and Ottoman empires were in ruins, requiring the construction of entirely new political systems in central Europe and western Asia (see Map 27.2). Moreover, Germany had to relinquish its colonies in Africa and the Pacific. The world’s map had to be redrawn.

Wilson brought to Paris the same high-minded attitude with which he earlier urged America’s entry into the war. His “Fourteen Points” contained specific rec- ommendations based on a few clear principles. Wilson stressed the importance of free trade, the right of peoples to national self-determination, and the creation of a permanent international assembly to provide safeguards against future wars. The British goal, on the other hand, was to safeguard Britain’s imperial interests, while Clemenceau demanded that Germany pay reparations as punishment for the war.

As the Allies negotiated, others sought to influence the outcome. At a Pan- African Congress also held in Paris in 1919, black leaders from Africa, the West Indies, and the United States spoke for the interests of Africans and peoples of African descent. A delegation of Egyptians also planned to attend the conference to represent Arab and Muslim interests, but the British government refused them permission to travel. The Chinese delegation, upset by concessions made to Japan, angrily returned home. Also in Paris was a young Vietnamese man named Ho Chi Minh (hoh chee MIN), who petitioned the Western powers to apply the principle of self-determination to the Vietnamese people in French Indochina. Rebuffed, Ho became a member of the French Communist Party and later the leader of a Vietnamese insurgency against the French (see Chapter 29). Lacking a voice at the Paris Peace Conference, many of the world’s people could only wait to see what the great powers would decide for them.

Paris Peace Conference (1919) Conference that resulted in the Ver- sailles treaty, which added to post–World War I tensions. A war-guilt clause and reparations payments destabilized Germany, and efforts to create stable nations from former imperial prov- inces in eastern Europe were problematic. The Paris Peace

Conference

In the end, the Versailles treaty that resulted from the Paris Peace Conference fell far short of Wilson’s goals. The Allies did agree to Wilson’s plan for a League of Nations that would provide a permanent diplomatic forum in the hopes of avoiding future conflict. But tensions resulted from French insistence on punish- ment for Germany; from the difficulty in creating coherent states in eastern Europe; from the imperial ambitions of Britain and France; and from the lack of participation in the League of Nations by both Russia, embroiled in revolution, and the United States, retreating into isolationism. The First World War was not a war to end all wars, and the world had not been made safe for democracy.

League of Nations Assembly of sovereign states, advocated by Woodrow Wilson, that was intended to pro- vide a permanent diplomatic forum in the hopes of avoiding future conflict.

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MAP 27.2 Territorial Changes in Europe After World War I The Versailles treaty altered the map of Europe dramatically through the application of Woodrow Wilson’s policy of “national self-determination.” New nations appeared in central and eastern Europe, carved from the former Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires, though the complex ethnic composition of the region often made it impossible to draw clear lines between “peoples” and “states.” The handover of the key regions of Alsace and Lorraine from Germany to France caused much bit- terness among German nationalists. (© Cengage Learning)

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776 Chapter 27 War, Revolution, and Global Uncertainty, 1905–1928

After surrender and the kaiser’s abdication, German liberals and socialists cooperated in the creation of the new Weimar Republic. Many years after the revolutions of 1848, Germany finally had a liberal, democratic constitution. But cultivating a liberal

political culture was still difficult. A communist uprising in 1919 challenged the Weimar (VAHY-mahr) leaders from the left, while on the right angry veterans blamed liberal weakness for the nation’s defeat. At war’s end, many Germans were hungry, cold, and dispirited.

The harsh peace terms insisted upon by France made recovery more difficult than it had to be. The French insisted on huge reparation payments that crippled the German financial system. As one British economist immediately warned, the economic punishment of Germany was simply foolish in an era of economic interdependence: everyone stood to lose. The treaty also called for the complete demilitarization of the Rhineland, the German province bordering France, and severe restrictions on German rearmament.

By 1923 the new Weimar Republic was foundering. It was unable to meet its reparation obligations, and the French occupied the Ruhr Valley, Germany’s industrial heartland, in lieu of payment. As the government printed more money to make up for the shortfall in its treasury, inflation spiraled out of control. People needed a wheelbarrow full of bank notes to buy a loaf of bread, and the savings of the middle class were wiped out. Although an attempt by right-wing military forces to seize power from elected politicians was thwarted, the rebellious officers had a good deal of public support.

Then signs of recovery appeared. In 1925 international agreements eased Ger- many’s reparation payments and ended the occupation of the Ruhr Valley. The Ger- man economy finally came back to prewar levels, and Berlin regained its status as a major cultural, intellectual, and artistic center. In just a few years, however, another economic crisis would drive many Germans toward the political extremes of left and right, undermining the Weimar Republic’s fragile liberalism (see Chapter 28).

In the meantime, postwar reconstruction was transforming eastern, central, and southeastern Europe, where competitive nationalist sentiments led to con- flict. The complex cultural geography of the region meant that ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups lived scattered among each other in many places, making it impossible to delineate neat boundaries between them.

Along the German-Polish cultural frontier, for example, German-speakers and Polish-speakers often lived side by side in the same towns and villages, along with a substantial Jewish population. Poland, which had disappeared from the map of Europe in the eighteenth century (see Chapter 20), was now restored as a nation- state. Polish nationalists felt that Germans who found themselves living in the new Poland had to either accept second-class status or move west to Germany, where they “belonged.” The repression of Polish Jews was even more extreme. In this tense atmosphere it proved impossible for Poland to develop a liberal, demo- cratic political culture. In 1926, tired of the endless squabbling of politicians, con- servative army officers seized power and imposed restrictions on free speech and political organization. Likewise, the new Balkan state of Yugoslavia, where Croa- tian Catholics and Bosnian Muslims resented the political dominance of Ortho- dox Serbs, emerged as an authoritarian state.

The slide toward dictatorship in eastern, central, and southern Europe arose from a contradiction that Wilson had not recognized: that nationalism is based on the rights of groups, while liberalism focuses on the rights of individuals. Nationalists,

Weimar Republic (1919–1933) The gov- ernment of Germany created after World War I, based on a liberal democratic constitution. The new republic was immedi- ately faced with huge war debts, political turmoil, and rising inflation.

The Weimar Republic and Nation Building in Europe

The Postwar Settlements 777

with an “us versus them” mentality, were prone to restrict the rights of minority groups rather than follow the liberal philosophy of protecting individual rights regardless of ethnic background. The problem was particularly acute for peoples with no state to protect them, such as Europe’s Jews and the Roma (Gypsies). As a basis for political reconstruction, nationalism caused as many problems as it solved.

The fate of former German colonies and Ottoman provinces was another issue to be determined in the postwar settlements. In Africa and the Middle East, French and British colonial interests took priority. The great powers paid only token attention to the

concept that rights of national self-determination should be granted to African and Arab peoples. Instead, the Allies devised the Mandate System, which assumed that since not all the world’s people were ready for self-governance, the great powers should rule over them under League of Nations auspices until they were “prepared.” Race was the unspoken determinant of who was deemed capable of self-rule.

In Africa, the Mandate System allowed the French, British, Belgian, and South African governments to take over former German colonies. With the addition of German East Africa (today’s Tanzania) to its empire, Britain finally achieved Cecil Rhodes’s dream of controlling a continuous stretch “from Cape to Cairo” (see Chapter 26). The French expanded their West African holdings, and the Belgians enlarged their Central African empire. While the Mandate System required reports to the League of Nations showing that they were looking out for “native rights,” the Europeans ruled the mandated territories just like their other African colonies, doing little or nothing to prepare them for eventual self-determination.

Still, African experiences during the war and the Mandate System’s long-term goal of national self-determination for former German colonies inspired a new generation of African nationalists. In South Africa, for example, leaders of the Afri- can National Congress called for greater rights, including an extension of the right to vote to Western-educated African property owners and an end to residential segregation. In West Africa, consciousness of the continent’s place in the wider world also increased. More African students studied in Europe and the United States and came back questioning the legitimacy of colonial rule. Thus, the seeds of African nationalism began to sprout in the wake of World War I.

The most complex application of the Mandate System came in the Middle East, where the collapse of Ottoman authority created a power vacuum. While the French and British wanted control of such rich and strategic areas as Turkey, Mes- opotamia, Syria, and Palestine, they had to contend with well-organized forces of Turkish, Arab, and Jewish nationalism.

As the Ottoman empire collapsed, some of its subject peoples sought to liber- ate themselves. Hoping for an independent state, some Armenians had supported Russia during the war. Ottoman officials responded by relocating millions of Armenians in a forced march west. As many as 1.5 million Armenians perished in what most historians call the Armenian Genocide, an attempt to destroy the peo- ple and their culture.

The surviving Armenians did finally gain a state of their own in the postwar settlements, though other peoples in the region, such as the Kurdish-speaking population of the former Ottoman empire, did not. The great powers rejected their proposal for a new state of “Kurdistan,” and the Kurdish people were scat- tered across the new postwar states of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran.

The Mandate System in Africa and the Mid- dle East

Mandate System System by which for- mer Ottoman provinces and German colonies were redistributed; based on the idea that some societies were not ready for national self-determination, it expanded the empires of Britain, France, Belgium, and Japan while angering African, Arab, and Chinese nationalists.

778 Chapter 27 War, Revolution, and Global Uncertainty, 1905–1928

In the Middle East the postwar situation was complicated by three contradic- tory promises made by the British during the war: the first to the Arabs, the second to the French, and the third to Zionists, Jewish nationalists who hoped to estab- lish a Jewish state in Palestine.

In 1915, to gain Arab support against the Ottoman empire, the British had promised the prominent Hashemite family to “recognize and support the independence of the Arabs” after the war. Contradicting that agreement, the British then signed a secret treaty with the French arranging to divide Ottoman provinces between them- selves. A third agreement, difficult to reconcile with the previous two, was the Bal- four Declaration of 1917, which committed the British government to support the creation of a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine. The British government was seeking additional support for the war effort from Zionists.

Zionism had originated in the late nineteenth century among European Jews who were alarmed at persistent anti-Semitism. After nearly two millennia of Jewish exile from their original home, Zionists argued, a nation-state was necessary to repre- sent Jewish interests in the world and give Jews a place of refuge in times of crisis. They had advocated Jewish emigration to Ottoman Palestine before the war. How- ever, most Zionists had never been to the Middle East, and most of the people actu- ally living in Palestine in 1917 were Arab.

After the war, the British tried to use the Mandate System to reconcile these contradictory promises. True to their 1916 secret agreement, the British and the French divided the Middle East region between them. The French received a League of Nations mandate over Syria and Lebanon, and the British stitched together three Ottoman provinces centered on the cities of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra into a new entity they called Iraq. Members of the Hashemite family were installed in Syria and Iraq as political leaders, though the French and British retained control over military, security, and economic issues.

The French were not able to impose their authority on Syria without a fight. Faisal al-Hashemi had been declared king of an independent Arab state by the Syr- ian National Congress and had traveled to Paris as head of an Arab delegation in 1919. When the French tried to impose their authority, Faisal and his supporters resisted. Defeated by the French, Faisal then fled to Baghdad, where the British agreed to install him as king of Iraq. Lacking a base of support in Iraq, Faisal proved compliant with British authorities, who were looking for a way to balance Arab demands with their own strategic and economic interests.

Instability in Iraq could have been anticipated. An artificial creation, it was divided between a Shi’ite Arab majority in the south, a Sunni minority in the center, and a Kurdish-dominated region in the north. The choice of Faisal as king showed British favoritism toward the Sunni Arabs. Gertrude Bell, the British diplomat most responsible for the creation of modern Iraq, wrote in 1920: “I don’t for a moment doubt that the final authority must be in the hands of the Sunnis, in spite of their numerical inferiority. . . . Otherwise you will have a theocratic state, which is the very devil.”* Shi’ite Iraqis resented Sunni political ascendancy, which would last until the American invasion of 2003 (see Chapter 32). The British also drew a new line on the map at the Jordan River, separating Palestine, which they ruled directly, from the new kingdom of Jordan, where they installed yet another Hashemite ruler as king.

Arab nationalists complained vigorously about the Mandate System, saying that Arabs “are not naturally less than other more advanced races” and that they

Balfour Declaration (1917) Declaration that committed the British government to help create “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. Britain made this declaration to gain support from Zionists during World War I.

*Gertrude Bell, “Letter to Her Father,” October 3, 1920; cited in Scott Horton, “Bell on the Shi’a in Iraq,” Harpers Magazine, March 19, 2008.

The Postwar Settlements 779

did “not stand in need of a mandatory power.” Still, the lack of Arab unity gave Europeans the upper hand. The French remained dominant in Syria, and the British in Iraq, even after they later accelerated the transition from mandate status to fuller sovereignty.

The situation was even more complicated in Palestine. Wartime anti-Semitism had increased the popularity of Zionism among American and European Jews, and even many who had no plans to emigrate to Palestine contributed money to purchase land for those who did decide to move. Arab leaders were alarmed. While still the majority in Palestine, Arabs there feared a future in which they would become a minority in the land where many of their fami- lies had lived for over a thousand years.

It was impossible for the British to please both Zionists and Arab nationalists. The Balfour Declaration’s support for a “national home” for Jews in Palestine fell short of support for a Jew- ish state, as the British asserted their own authority over the mandated territory. Arab nationalists viewed any immigration of Jews into Palestine with suspicion. When the British allowed such immigration in large numbers in the early 1920s, massive Arab demonstrations erupted. When the British curtailed Jewish immigration in response, Zionist leaders were furious. The British were determined to keep Palestine because of its strategic location in the eastern Mediterranean region, but the political price for doing so was exceptionally high. (See the feature “World History in Today’s World: Israel, Palestine, and the Right of Return.”)

British and French leaders viewed the enlargement of their empires in Africa and the Middle East as spoils of war that augmented their existing global reach. They anticipated that they would retain their traditional global dominance, especially with the Russians distracted by revolution, the Germans desperate and disarmed, and the Americans returning to isolationism. But the world had changed. The British had liquidated many foreign investments to fight the war and slipped from being the world’s largest creditor to facing significant debts, especially to the United States. Western European economic supremacy was on the wane. The belief that future control of the world system lay with Europe was therefore an illusion. The forces of anticolonial nationalism were gathering throughout Africa and Asia. Just two generations later, the British and French empires were being supplanted by independent African and Asian nations, and European hegemony was replaced by the rising power of the United States and the new Soviet Union (see Chapter 29).

Gertrude Bell Gertrude Bell (astride a camel in the cen- ter of this photograph) was an English traveler, writer, and archaeologist who played a central role in shaping Britain’s Middle East policy during and after the Great War. Fluent in Arabic, Bell helped organize the anti-Ottoman Arab upris- ing of 1916–1917. She was influential in the creation of the new kingdoms of Jordan and Iraq after the war; some have criticized the imperial arrogance with which she drew their boundaries. The most powerful woman in Britain’s foreign service, though herself opposed to women’s suffrage, Bell died and was buried in Baghdad.

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Israel, Palestine, and the Right of Return

Jewish Zionists and Palestinian Arabs both claim a “right of return” to the same small country, incompatible visions that have been a major factor in stalling the Middle East peace process. Without agreement on the core question of who has a right to immigrate to Israel, no lasting peace will be possible.

For Israelis, the right of all Jews to relocate to Israel is a fundamental principle. In 1950, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, passed a law stating firmly that “every Jew has the right to come to this country.” That law applies across the entire Jewish diaspora, meaning that all Jews from anywhere in the world have, as a matter of ancient heritage, automatic immigra- tion rights.

Two traditional paths to Jewish status— maternal ancestry and conversion—are both recognized. However, ultraorthodox rabbis have discriminated against converts to less stringent Reform and Conservative versions of Judaism and sometimes against secular Jews as well. In a 2011 case, a gay couple came to Israel and applied for citizenship. It was quickly granted to the Jewish man, but initially denied to his non-Jewish partner, even though the rights of

“spouses” are guaranteed under the law. Israelis continue to disagree on the basic question: “who is a Jew?”

For Palestinians, the phrase “right of return” means something altogether different. Their assertion is that Arab refugees who fled Palestine in the 1948 war that followed the creation of Israel (see Chapter 30) should be allowed to return to their ancestral homes. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families have lived in exile in surrounding Arab coun- tries, and across the world, since that time. Some still hold title deeds for the properties that their grandparents and great-grandparents abandoned, and sometimes even the keys to their old houses.

For Israel, the question involves its very survival as a Jewish state. If a large number of the millions of Palestinians were to return, the percentage of Arab citizens in Israel could rise from the current 20 percent to over half the population. Given that arithmetic, Israeli lead- ers have refused to compromise on the issue, while Palestinian leaders have been equally adamant that they will not give up their histori- cal claims.

World History in Today’s World

Pioneers of Global Revolution: Mexico, China, and Russia

In the twentieth century the revolutionary traditions of Europe and the Atlantic world (see Chapters 22 and 23) would spread across the globe. First in China, Mexico, and Russia and later in societies across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, masses of common people mobilized to topple existing elites and to usher in new political systems (see Chapter 29). As Louise Bryant had suspected, socialism would now play a much greater role. While nineteenth-century revolutionaries had struggled to balance nationalism with liberalism, now the mixture of nation- alism and socialism proved most potent, much to the horror of conservatives everywhere.

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In 1915, when Louise Bryant first met her future hus- band and journalistic ally John Reed, he had just returned from Mexico, where he had accompanied the rebel leader Pancho Villa into battle. Reed’s enthu-

siasm for the revolutionary cause was contagious, inspiring Bryant with exhilarat- ing tales of downtrodden Mexican cowboys fighting for liberation against corrupt politicians, landowners, and priests.

Before 1910, Porfirio Diáz ruled Mexico as an elected dictator, winning rigged elections ever since 1880. Under Diáz’s economic liberalism and political authori- tarianism, foreign investors had financed the development of many large-scale plantations producing crops for export (see Chapter 25). The benefits of growth were, however, monopolized by foreigners and the small group of oligarchs with connections to the Diáz regime. The new and increasingly important petroleum sector, for example, was almost entirely under foreign, largely American, control.

A dissatisfied younger generation of Mexicans demanded reform. Among their leaders was Francisco Madero, educated at the University of California in the United States, who ran for the presidency in 1910 against the old dictator. When Diáz claimed victory, Madero refused to concede, rallying supporters under the slogan “Effective Suffrage and No Reelection.” Madero’s message resonated across Mexico; the aged Diáz fled to Europe.

Removing a dictator is often an easier task that creating a stable new political order, however: the overthrow of Diáz was only the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. In 1913, Madero was assassinated by one of his military officers, who was in turn deposed by the liberal leader Venustiano Carranza, who then had to fight to assert his government’s authority. Though Carranza held power in Mexico City and controlled the federal army, two former partners in his revolutionary coalition, Emiliano Zapata (1879–1919) and Pancho Villa, now turned against him. As many as 2 million people were killed in the chaos of the civil war that engulfed Mexico between 1913 and 1920.

Rallying support with the cry ¡Justicia, Tierra, y Liberdad! (“Justice, Land, and Liberty!”), Zapata followed in the tradition of Father Hidalgo in his passionate embrace of the rights of the poor (see Chapter 22). His followers, mostly landless Indian peasants from southern Mexico, wanted to redistribute the large planta- tions to the landless. Carranza, a middle-class moderate like Madero before him, saw that as an unacceptable intrusion on the rights of property owners. In 1919, Carranza’s agents assassinated Zapata, and the southern rebel army fell apart.

In the north Pancho Villa, praised by John Reed for his “reckless and romantic bravery,” led the fight against Carranza’s government. His army of small ranchers and cowboys (vaqueros) resented the elite who controlled the best grazing lands and water sources. Villa was angered when the United States officially recognized the Carranza government: his downfall came after he crossed the border to attack a town in New Mexico. The U.S. army counterattacked, Villa went into hiding, and in 1923 he was assassinated. His exploits made him an enduring folk hero, and together Villa and Zapata personified the aspirations of millions of the poorest Mexicans.

Carranza’s government instituted a new constitution in 1917, trying to bal- ance the different interests that had emerged during the revolution. While the Constitution of 1917 protected the rights of property owners, it also declared that “private property is a privilege created by the Nation,” opening the path for land reforms benefiting peasants. The constitution also promised to protect working

Emiliano Zapata (1879–1919) Leader of a popular uprising during the Mexican Revolution; mobilized the poor in southern and central Mexico to demand “justice, land, and liberty.”

The Mexican Revolu- tion, 1910–1920

conditions, for example, by enforcing the eight-hour workday. The mineral resources of the country, including oil, were declared property of the nation as a whole, and not of any individual, local or foreign, a provision that would allow future Mexican governments to nationalize the energy sector of the economy (see Chapter 28).

These promises of land reform, workers’ rights, and the use of oil resources for the good of the nation were not immediately implemented, however, and remained points of contention far into the future. Moreover, the revolution did not lay the foundation of a truly liberal political culture. Though Mexico avoided the replacement of one dictator by another, a single political party established a

Villa and Zapata This photograph from 1915 shows Pancho Villa (center, sitting on the presidential throne in the National Palace) with Emiliano Zapata (right) at his side, his trademark hat on his knee. The two revolutionaries were soon chased from Mexico City, however, by forces loyal to Venustiano Carranza. Zapata was assassinated by Carranza’s men in 1919, Villa by unknown assailants in 1923. (© Underwood & Underwood/Corbis)

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monopoly on power. After 1920, leaders of the National Revolutionary Party used patronage, corruption, and backroom deals to try to reconcile the interests of the rich and the poor, the needs of the nation and the influence of foreign investors, and rural and urban populations. Mostly, however, party leaders acted to extend their own wealth and power. The revolution that had begun with such excitement sank into corruption and bureaucratic stasis.

After the humiliations of the Boxer Rebellion (see Chapter 24), China entered the twentieth century in desperate need of a new government to unify its peo-

ple and defend itself against foreign encroachment. In 1911, the last Qing emperor, a boy at the time, abdicated when Yuan Shikai (yoo-ahn shee-KI), the most capable of the Qing generals, refused to come to the dynasty’s defense. Nationalists led by Sun Zhongshan, better known as Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), declared a new Republic of China. Lacking an army, Sun was dependent on Yuan’s support. In 1912, after serving as president for only a few weeks, he stepped aside, and dele- gates to the new national assembly elected Yuan as president.

Sun Yat-sen (soon yot-SEN) grew up near Guangzhou, the center of Euro- pean influence in south China. He earned a medical degree in Hong Kong in 1892 and then moved to Hawai’i, where he started the political organizing that would put him at the head of the Guomindang (gwo-min-DAHNG), or National- ist, Party. Sun envisioned a stable, modernized China, with a liberal legal system and a just distribution of resources, taking its rightful place among the world’s great powers.

The new Republic of China faced daunting challenges. Japanese imperialists were already in formal control of Taiwan and exercised great power in Manchu- ria. In 1919, Western diplomats gave Japan control over Chinese territory on the Shandong peninsula formerly controlled by Germany, in acknowledgment of its wartime alliance with France and Britain. On May 4, 1919, Chinese uni- versity students staged an unprecedented public demonstration in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, appealing to the government to restore Chinese dignity in the face of Japanese aggression. Their May Fourth Movement led to strikes, mass meetings, and a boycott of Japanese goods. Chinese nationalism was on the rise, but the republican government was powerless to respond to the stu- dents’ appeals.

The domestic military situation was another challenge for Sun and the Guomindang. In 1916 Yuan broke with the Nationalists and declared the foun- dation of a new imperial dynasty. When regional generals rejected Yuan’s impe- rial pretensions, formed their own armies, and began to act as warlords, the country descended into a decade of chaos. The only stable and prosperous parts of China were the foreign enclaves. Sun retreated to Guangzhou, where the Guomindang was rebuilt by his brother-in-law and successor Jiang Jieshi, known in the West as Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975). Chiang was a tough military man who defeated the warlords and finally established central authority over most of the country by 1927. Under Chiang’s authoritarian command, however, Sun’s idealistic emphasis on reform was supplanted by a growing culture of militarism and corruption.

Meanwhile, in 1921, in the wake of the May Fourth Movement, the Chinese Communist Party was formed in Shanghai. Seeking support from the new communist

The Chinese Revolution

Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) The founding father of the Republic of China after the revolution of 1911; established the Guomindang, or Nationalist Party.

May Fourth Movement (1919) A student-led protest in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square against the failure of the Versailles treaty to end Japanese occupa- tion of Chinese terri- tory. Such anti-Japanese protests spread across China, and focused on a boycott of Japanese goods.

government in Russia, Chiang Kai-shek made a tactical alliance with the Commu- nists. But in 1927, when he felt more secure in power, Chiang turned against them. Guomindang soldiers and street thugs killed thousands of Communists in the coastal cities, and those remaining fled to the countryside.

One Chinese Communist, Mao Zedong (1893–1976), argued that there was an advantage in this forced retreat into the countryside, since it would be the peas- ants who would lead the way to socialism. Rejecting the traditional Marxist emphasis on the leading role of the industrial workers, Mao wrote: “In a very short

May Fourth Movement May 4, 1919, was an important day in the development of Chinese nationalism. Hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, angered by the Versailles treaty, which had given Chinese territory to Japan. Demonstrations were held across the country, with students playing a large role. The pro- tests lasted for months as supporters of the movement boycotted Japanese goods. The demonstration in this photograph took place in November 1919 in the city of Fuzou. (Sidney Gamble Photographs, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library)

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time . . . several hundred million peasants will rise like a tornado . . . and rush forward along the road to liberation. They will send all imperialists, warlords, corrupt officials, local bullies, and bad gentry to their graves.” By allying with this elemental peasant force, Mao believed, the Communists could drive Chiang from power and bring about true revolution.

While Chiang and the Guomindang controlled the cities, Mao and the Com- munists established rural bases (see Map 28.1 on page 818). It would be two decades before the contest of power between the Nationalists and the Commu- nists would finally be resolved (see Chapter 30).

Even more than the Mexican and Chinese Revolu- tions, the Russian Revolution had a profound impact on world history. Both those who were sympathetic to the revolution, like Louise Bryant, and those who

saw the emergence of “godless communism” as a threat to freedom and decency agreed that a fundamental historical change had occurred. Indeed, the Bolsheviks and their leader Vladimir Lenin saw themselves as fighting not just to control one country but also to change the destiny of all humanity.

Russia’s first revolutionary crisis had occurred in 1905, after Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (see Chapter 24). Protesters converged on the Winter Pal- ace in St. Petersburg to petition the tsar for reform, carrying holy icons and peti- tions addressing the tsar respectfully as “our father.” Mounted on horseback, the tsar’s private guards rode the marchers down, killing many and shattering old bonds of trust.

In the ensuing crisis, Tsar Nicholas II (r. 1894–1917) conceded a series of reforms, including, for the first time, a representative assembly, called the Duma. He also approved a crash program of industrialization that, though it achieved substantial progress by 1913, also created further social instability. The money for industrialization came largely from higher taxes on already miserable peasants, and the new industrial workers labored under much worse conditions and at much lower pay than their Western counterparts.

Although representatives of the Russian middle class could now express their desire for greater reform through the Duma, real power still lay with aristocrats, army officials, and the tsarist bureaucracy. While some reformers argued that the powers of the Duma could be expanded, others argued that nothing would change until the old order was entirely swept away. One of these revolutionary groups was the Social Democratic Party, communist followers of the Marxist tradition.

After 1903, the Social Democrats split into two factions. One group, the Mensheviks, adhered to the traditional Marxist belief that socialism could only be built on the foundation of capitalism. Before Russia’s workers could seize power for themselves, a modern industrial economy would have to be built. The Mensheviks therefore favored an alliance with the Russian middle class and sup- ported a revolution that would lead to a liberal, multiparty constitutional republic.

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), the leader of the opposing Bolshevik faction, had a different vision. Lenin’s radicalism started in childhood, when his elder brother was hanged for plotting to assassinate the tsar. Lenin himself was exiled first to Siberia and then to western Europe. There he developed his theory that a “revolutionary vanguard,” a small, dedicated group of professional revolutionists,

Russia’s October Revolution

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Born Vladimir Ilyich Uly- anov, Lenin led the Bolsheviks to power during the Russian Revolution of 1917. Leader of the Commu- nist Party until his death in 1924.

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could represent the interests of the industrial proletariat. Rather than waiting for Russia’s industrial workers to increase in numbers and in political consciousness, Lenin argued, the Bolshevik vanguard could seize power and rule in the name of the working class. Dictatorship rather than democracy was implicit in Lenin’s concept of the revolutionary vanguard, with self-appointed leaders speaking for the masses rather than the masses speaking for themselves.

Lenin’s opportunity to implement his ideas came as a result of World War I. Many blamed the tsar for the huge human and economic costs of war. Faced with mutiny in the army and near anarchy across the country, Tsar Nicholas abdicated in February 1917. When Louise Bryant arrived in the summer of 1917, the Provisional Government that had replaced him was also losing legitimacy when it decided to continue to fight Germany, hoping to maintain access to foreign loans and to share in the division of Ottoman lands if the Allies won. The German military, hoping that Lenin’s presence would undermine the pro-war provisional government in St. Peters- burg, gave him transport on a sealed train car from Switzerland back to Russia.

By then the Russian people were simply sick and tired of war. Louise Bryant described the passionate appeal of one veteran for peace at a public meeting: “Com- rades! I come from the place where men are digging their graves and calling them trenches! I tell you the army can’t fight much longer!” A peasant delegate said that if they were not given sufficient land “they would go out and take it.” “Over and over like the beat of the surf came the cry of all starving Russia,” Bryant wrote, “‘Peace, land and bread!’”* The Provisional Government was unable to deliver on any of these demands.

After the tsarist bureaucracy collapsed, a new form of social and political orga- nization emerged: the soviets (Russian for “committees”) of workers in factories, of residents in urban neighborhoods, of railway workers, and even of soldiers and sailors in the military. It was a radical form of democracy in which participants in a common enterprise had the right to speak and be represented, with decisions made through public discussion and consensus. This model of direct popular con- trol was quite popular with Russia’s anarchists, who followed in the tradition of Mikhail Bakunin (see Chapter 23).

In this atmosphere, Lenin returned from exile. As Russian society slid from dictatorship to near anarchy, his clear vision and organizational abilities put the Bolsheviks in a position to make a play for power. In Bryant’s words, “Lenin is a master propagandist. . . . He possesses all the qualities of a ‘chief,’ including the absolute moral indifference which is so necessary to such a part.”* Though a sophisticated intel- lectual who wrote complex books on Marxist theory, in the summer of 1917 Lenin reduced the Bolshevik program to two simple slogans: “Peace, Land, and Bread!” and “All Power to the Soviets!” The fiery speeches and tireless organizing of another prominent Bolshevik, Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), did much to advance the com- munist cause that summer. (See the feature “Visual Evidence in Primary Sources: History, Photography, and Power.”)

In the fall, Lenin and the Bolsheviks planned and executed a coup d’état that later communists would celebrate as the October Revolution. Hardly a shot was fired in the Provisional Government’s defense. Lenin disbanded the Constituent Assembly recently elected to write a new constitution. As Bryant wrote, “A big sailor marched into the elaborate red and gold assembly chamber and announced in a loud voice: ‘Go along home!’”* Russia’s brief experiment with multiparty representa- tive democracy had ended.

*Quotes from Louise Bryant, Six Red Months in Moscow (New York: George H. Doren, 1919), pp. 48–49, 138–139, 78.

Pioneers of Global Revolution: Mexico, China, and Russia 787

The Communist Party, as the Bolsheviks were now called, considered the Constituent Assembly irrele- vant. Defending the revolution was the first order of the day. To fulfill their promise to bring peace, they signed a treaty in 1918 ceding to Germany rich Ukrai-

nian and Belarusian lands. The Communists saw this unequal treaty as only a temporary setback, being certain that workers in Germany would soon rise up, overthrow their government, and establish a true and equitable peace with Russia. Their self-assurance in such dangerous circumstances was remarkable.

The Communists also contended with powerful counter-revolutionary forces, as aristocratic generals turned their attention from the Germans to undoing the revolution. The Russian Civil War of 1919–1921 pitted the Communist Red Army, commanded by Leon Trotsky, against the “White Armies” organized by former tsarist generals with the help of the United States and Great Britain. The Commu- nists murdered the tsar and his family and organized a secret police service even more terrifying than the old tsarist one.

By 1921, when the civil war ended, Lenin was securely in control and ruling with an iron hand. The anarchic democracy of freely elected soviets was replaced by strict party discipline in all facets of life. Even within the Communist Party Central Committee, dominated by Lenin, only limited debate was permitted. All other political organizations were banned.

Bryant believed that circumstances pushed the Communists toward dictator- ship. “In the beginning,” she wrote of Lenin, “he imagined he could maintain a free press, free speech and be liberal toward his enemies. But he found himself faced by a situation where iron discipline was the only method capable of carrying the day.”* Perhaps that was a naïve judgment: the free play of ideas and organizations was never part of Lenin’s plan. The emerging communist dictatorship of the Bolsheviks was not just a product of the difficult circumstances faced by postwar Russia but, as Mikhail Bakunin had warned half a century earlier, a logical outcome of Karl Marx’s political philosophy.

It was of great import for world history that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were able to assert their claim to power not only in Russia, but also across most of the old Russian empire. Though they lost lands in the west (such as Poland, Finland, and Lithuania), they retained the rich lands of the Ukraine, the vastness of Siberia, Central Asia with its potential for agricultural development, and the strategic Cau- casus Mountains in the south. These regions were brought together in 1922 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.). Allegedly a federal republic, in real- ity the Soviet Union was a top-down dictatorship dominated by Moscow.

After the civil war ended, Lenin instituted the New Economic Policy (1921– 1924). Peasants were allowed to keep the land they had recently won and to farm it as they saw fit. Restrictions on private business were lifted for all but the largest enterprises, such as transportation and heavy industry. Under the New Economic Policy, the country experienced a brief respite of relative peace and the beginnings of economic recovery. But it was also during this time that, in an ominous preview of the future, the first of the Soviet labor camps was established, with the motto “With an Iron Hand, Mankind Will Be Driven to Happiness!”

Louise Bryant never returned to Russia after Lenin’s death in 1924, perhaps because she did not want to see how little her hopes for socialism were being

Stalin and “Socialism in One Country”

Civil War and the New Economic Policy, 1917–1924

*Louise Bryant, Mirrors of Moscow (New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1923), pp. 11–12.

Visual Evidence in Primary Sources

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As Joseph Stalin consolidated his power over the Soviet Union beginning in the late 1920s, he ordered that the history of the Russian Revolu- tion be altered to magnify his own role. Stalin’s propagandists portrayed him as having been exceptionally close to Vladimir Lenin, his close

confidant and handpicked successor. In fact, while Lenin appreciated Stalin’s discipline and loyalty, he regarded the younger man as of lim- ited intelligence. In the 1930s, when Stalin began purging many of Lenin’s closest allies from the Communist Party and executing many of the

History, Photography, and Power

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During the revolution, Lev Kamenev served as editor of the communist daily newspaper Pravda (“Truth”). He traveled to London to explain communist policies to the British government but was deported after one week.

Although the Bolsheviks fought against Russia’s deeply rooted anti-Semitism, it returned under Stalin’s rule. Trotsky, born Lev Bronstein, was the most prominent of the Jewish Bolsheviks.

Though Lenin is shown here as a passionate orator, in fact he was not a good public speaker. To stir the masses with oratory the Bolsheviks relied on Leon Trotsky, who, as described by Louise Bryant, “swayed the assembly as a strong wind stirs the long grass.”

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Stalin resented the leading role that Trotsky played as commander of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War of 1919–1921, and Trotsky was airbrushed out of all photographs from that period. In 1936 Kamenev was accused of plot- ting against Stalin and executed. Trotsky, exiled from Russia, died in Mexico in 1940 when one of Stalin’s agents plunged an ice pick into his skull.

“Old Bolsheviks” who knew Lenin personally (see Chapter 28), the historical record was “adjusted” to remove many prominent revolutionists from the story.

Stalin’s propagandists altered the photographic as well as the historical record of the revolution. This picture of Lenin speaking in Moscow in 1920

(left) is an iconographic image that was repro- duced around the world. From the later 1920s, when the retouched version (below) was first pro- duced, until the 1990s, Soviet citizens saw only the altered image in which two prominent Com- munists, Leon Trotsky and Lev Kamenev, had been erased and replaced with a set of wooden steps.

Q u e s t i o n f o r A n a l y s i s ❯❯ With today’s widespread knowledge about digital editing, is it more or less likely that

viewers would be fooled by such brazen alterations as seen in these photographs?

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790 Chapter 27 War, Revolution, and Global Uncertainty, 1905–1928

realized after Joseph Stalin (r. 1926–1953) succeeded Lenin. Expelled from the seminary where he briefly studied, Stalin lacked Lenin’s intellectual brilliance. While the exiled Lenin associated with European intellectuals, Stalin was robbing banks to raise funds for the party. Having spent time in jail, he knew the ways of the tsarist secret police from personal experience. Stalin, his chosen revolutionary name, means “man of steel.”

From 1919 to 1924, Stalin was absolutely loyal to Lenin, who entrusted him with secret and sensitive tasks. He stayed in the background while other Commu- nists argued about policies and sought positions of authority, serving on all the important committees but joining no faction. When Lenin died, Stalin exploited divisions within the Central Committee to position himself as a safe and neutral choice for leadership. But by 1926, Stalin had consolidated his authority and established a personal dictatorship, driving Leon Trotsky, his main competitor for the role of heir to Lenin, into exile.

More than personal ambition was at stake. Stalin had a clear vision of how to move the Soviet Union forward, a vision encapsulated by the slogan “Social- ism in One Country.” Some Communists, like Trotsky, who thought social- ism could be built in Russia only with the help of revolutions in advanced industrial nations, advocated a policy of fomenting proletarian uprisings in the West. Other Communists, acknowledging the weak development of Russian capitalism and the small size of the Russian proletariat, thought that the mixed approach of the New Economic Policy, with scope for private enterprise, was the correct course. Stalin rejected both ideas. Instead, socialism would be built through top-down government control of every aspect of economic, political, and social life.

In 1928, Stalin launched the first of his Five-Year Plans. The entire economy was nationalized in a crash policy of industrialization. Noting that Russia was far behind more advanced economies, Stalin said, “We must make good this lag in ten years . . . or we will be crushed.” After the Soviet Union cut all ties with foreign economies, there was only one way Stalin could raise the capital needed for indus- trialization: by squeezing it out of the Soviet people. Low wages and harsh work- ing conditions characterized new factories built to produce steel, electricity, chemicals, tractors, and other vital foundations of industrial growth. Especially productive workers received medals rather than higher wages, while poor perfor- mance could result in exile to a Siberian labor camp.

Faced with Stalin’s brutal policies, people could no longer even turn to reli- gion for solace. Denouncing the Orthodox Church as a foundation of the old, tsarist regime, Stalin turned churches into municipal buildings and heavily regu- lated the few remaining monasteries. In the world’s first atheistic state, commu- nist theory, stripped of complexity and vitality, was the new orthodoxy. Russia’s rich cultural traditions now atrophied under Stalin’s dictatorship, with artists required to produce simple propaganda in line with state policy or face severe consequences.

Still, within ten years the successes of “Socialism in One Country” were nota- ble. The Soviet Union had the fastest-growing industrial economy in the world, with production increasing as much as 14 percent a year. But the harshly repressive society Stalin created bore little resemblance to the hopeful scenario portrayed by Louise Bryant in the books she wrote during the early years of the revolution. Sta- lin’s version of socialism was indeed a “loathsome, ugly monster demanding human sacrifices.”

“Socialism in One Country” Joseph Stalin’s slogan declaring that Soviet socialism could be achieved without passing through a capitalist phase or revolutions in indus- trial societies. This policy led to an econ- omy based on central planning for industrial growth and collectiv- ization of agriculture.

Context and Connections

Entering the “Age of Extremes”

Over the past century we have become accustomed to the drastic changes set in motion by the First World War. It is hard for us to imagine a world where politi- cal and economic power was so highly concentrated in Europe; where women were politically voiceless; where despite industrialization, the power of human and ani- mal muscles was still the main energy source for farm- ing; where ancient empires endured; and where a naïve belief in limitless progress was widely shared. War and revolution shattered such complacency.

The industrialized nature of total war came as a shock. Going into the war, cavalry regiments were essential to European war planning. But the entire cavalry system was rendered anachronistic by the sav- age firepower of shells and machine guns. Hundreds of thousands of horses were killed, and the whole culture of “civilized” warfare between mounted “gentlemen”

disappeared. Strafing aircraft and poison gas pointed to a more violent future when the lines between sol- diers and civilians would blur even further. Just a gen- eration later, during the Second World War, the tar- geting of civilian populations for aerial bombardment became common (see Chapter 29).

In cultural terms, total war accelerated the existing trend toward “mass societies” in which com- mon people played a much larger role. Posters and newspapers were the principal media used to galva- nize public support for war, but already radio was supplementing telegraphy and new film industries had been born. By 1920, commercial radio broad- casts and the growth of cinema had created a broad platform for such dynamic cultural developments as the new African American art form of jazz music, which spread across the globe to enrich the lives

FOR COMPARISON

Lifetime of Louise Bryant

(b. 1885)

World War I Paris Peace Conference

1936

1900 1910 1920 1930 1940

EUROPE

THE MIDDLE EAST

AND ASIA

NORTH AMERICA

1914 1918 Union of Soviet Socialist RepublicsOctober Revolution in Russia

19221917

End of the Ottoman empire

1919

British mandate in Palestine

1920

Mexican Revolution

1910

Japan annexes Korea (Ch. 26)

1910

Mussolini prime minister in Italy (Ch. 28)

1922

Hitler chancellor in Germany (Ch. 28)

1933

World War II begins (Ch. 28)

1939

Foreign occupation of Beijing (Ch. 24)

1900

United States enters World War I

1917

Chinese Revolution and fall of the Qing dynasty

1911

(to 1991)

Growth of Indian National Congress (Chs. 26–30)

Gandhi leads salt march (Ch. 28)

ca. 1920 1930 (to 1947)

African National Congress gains momentum in South Africa (Chs. 27–31)

ca. 1920 (to 1994)

Great Depression (Ch. 28)

1929

Weimar Republic

1919 1933

1919

ca. 1939

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of millions. Radio and film, however, also provided elites with new means to sway public opinion and could also be used as mechanisms of propaganda and control, a trend that would serve authoritar- ian regimes in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s (see Chapter 28).

To Louise Bryant and other idealists, the rise of mass societies was a sign of human liberation. Revolutions in Mexico, China, and Russia showed that ruling elites could no longer take the obedience of common men and women for granted. The same was true in Europe’s overseas empires, where the war had caused many Africans and Asians to ques- tion the impregnability of their rulers and to aspire to nations of their own (see Chapters 28 and 30). It seemed, however, that the political activation of peasants and workers had a dark side as well, cre- ating conditions of anarchy in which dictatorship could flourish, as in the absolute control estab- lished by the Communist Party in the Soviet Union under Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.

From today’s perspective, communism seems to have been a historical dead end. The Soviet Union no longer exists, and the People’s Republic

of China, while retaining communist political con- trol, has thrown in its lot with market economics (see Chapters 31 and 32). In the immediate postwar era, however, there were many who logically ques- tioned whether it was liberal capitalism that might be destined for historical obsolescence. Many on the conservative right and on the communist left felt empowered by the uncertainty of the war’s after- math, an antiliberal trend that would be greatly magnified by the Great Depression yet to come.

In 1914, secret alliances had propelled the world to war. Woodrow Wilson then offered the League of Nations as a solution, a body where reg- ular and open discussion could head off conflicts before they led to bloodshed. Wilson’s vision would eventually be realized, but not until after another world war and the founding of the United Nations in 1945 (see Chapter 29). In the meantime, the League of Nations proved ineffective, crippled by the lack of participation by the United States and the Soviet Union. As it turned out, the crisis-filled decades of the 1920s and 1930s were merely an interlude between two world wars. The next would dwarf the first in intensity and global impact.

Voyages on the Web: Louise Br yant The Voyages Map App follows the traveler’s journeys using interactive study tools, including 360-degree panoramic views of historic sites, zoomable maps, audio summaries, flash cards, and quizzes.

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Louise Bryant (762) Kaiser Wilhelm II (765) western front (767) eastern front (771) southern front (771) Senegalese Sharpshooters (772)

Woodrow Wilson (773) Paris Peace Conference (774) League of Nations (775) Weimar Republic (776) Mandate System (777) Balfour Declaration (778)

Emiliano Zapata (781) Sun Yat-sen (783) May Fourth Movement (783) Vladimir Lenin (785) “Socialism in One Country”

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Key Terms

Go to the CourseMate website at www.cengagebrain.com for additional study tools and review materials—including audio and video clips—for this chapter.

Bryant, Louise. Six Red Months in Russia. Portland, Ore.: Powells, 2002.

Dearborn, Mary V. Queen of Bohemia: The Life of Louise Bryant. Bridgewater, N.J.: Replica, 1996.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Russian Revolution. 3d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Fromkin, David. A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Rise of the Modern Middle East. New York: Holt, 2001.

Goldstone, Jack. Revolutions: Theoretical, Comparative and Historical Studies. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2002.

Hart, John Mason. Revolutionary Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Keegan, John. The First World War. New York: Vintage, 2000.

Macmillan, Margaret. Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World. New York: Random House, 2003.

Meyer, G. J. A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914–1918. New York: Delacorte, 2007.

Neiberg, Michael S. Fighting the Great War: A Global History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Reed, John. Ten Days That Shook the World. New York: Penguin, 2007.

Schiffrin, Harold. Sun Yat-Sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolu- tion. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

Service, Robert. The Russian Revolution, 1900–1927. 3d ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Strachan, Hew. The First World War in Africa. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

For Further Reference

l l

Suez Canal

B a y o f B i s c a y

B l a c k S e a

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a

Cyprus (Gr. Br.)

Sicily

Crete

London

Paris

Athens

Alexandria

Cairo

Beirut

Jerusalem

Istanbul (Constantinople before 1923)

Berlin

Rome

Izmir (Smyrna)

Ankara

Aleppo

Damascus

Amman

Port Said

Madrid

NORWAY

GERMANY

TU R KEY

SYRIA

IRAQ

TRANSJORDAN

LEBANON

PALESTINE

EGYPTLI BYA

TUNISIA

ALG E R IAMORO CCO

SAUDI ARABIA

RUSSIA (U.S.S.R. after

1922)

ITALY

YUGOSLAVIA

F R A N C E

S PA I N

SWEDEN

DENMARK

PORTUGAL

NETHERLANDS

BELGIUM

SWITZ. AUSTRIA HUNGARY

POLAND

ROMANIA

BULGARIA

ALBANIA

GREECE

UNITED KINGDOM

IRELAND

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

to New York City

t o I n d i a

Ganges R.

I n du

s R

Arabian Sea

INDIAN OCEAN

Bay of Be n g al

Bombay

Peshawar

Lahore

Aligarh Patna

Ahmadabad

Madras

Delhi Lucknow

Benares Calcutta

Bangalore

Hyderabad

H I M

A L AYA M T S .

I N D I A B U R M A

Ceylon

to/ from London

0 250 500 Mi.

250 500 Km.

British territory

Edib observes the Depression in New York, 1928–1929 and 1931–1932.

Halide Edib fights for Turkish independence, 1920.

Edib teaches in India, 1935.

0 200 400 Mi.

200 400 Km.

The Travels of Halide Edib Halide Edib’s journeys

City visited by Edib

Other city

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PD 7.125 x 6.375

ndia seemed to me like Allah’s workshop: gods, men and nature abounded in their most beautiful and most hideous; ideas and all the arts in their ancient and most modern styles lay about pell-mell. Once I used to think that first-hand knowledge of Russia and America would enable one to sense the direction which the world was taking; but this India must certainly have its share in shaping the future. Not because of its immemorial age, but because of the new life throbbing in it! Perhaps the same is true of China. . . . How much must one see and understand before being able to have any idea of the working of history?*

*Halide Edib, Inside India (London: Allen and Unwin, 1937), p. 29.

The Great Depression, 1929–1939 (p. 797)

Fascism, Communism, and Authoritarianism (p. 800)

Authoritarian Regimes in Asia (p. 808)

Anticolonial Nationalism in Asia and Africa (p. 811)

The Road to War (p. 817)

Responses to Global Crisis, 1920–193928

Halide Edib (From Memoirs of Halide Edib by Halide Adivar Edib [N.J.: Gorgias Press]. Reprinted by permission of Gorgias Press)

After she had participated in the struggle for the creation of the new Turkey following the First World War, the novelist Halide Edib (1884–1964) was forced into exile in 1926 after falling out of favor with the country’s president. For the next thirteen years she traveled to France, Britain, and the United States, writing books and lecturing at universities. In 1935 she went to India, a trip that resulted in the book Inside India and speculation about the future direction of the world. From her own experience in Turkey she understood the struggle of formerly powerful societies to over-

come more recent Western domination and the difficulties in recon- ciling ancient cultures with modern influences. Edib’s musings about the future importance of India and China were far-sighted:

l l

Suez Canal

B a y o f B i s c a y

B l a c k S e a

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a

Cyprus (Gr. Br.)

Sicily

Crete

London

Paris

Athens

Alexandria

Cairo

Beirut

Jerusalem

Istanbul (Constantinople before 1923)

Berlin

Rome

Izmir (Smyrna)

Ankara

Aleppo

Damascus

Amman

Port Said

Madrid

NORWAY

GERMANY

TU R KEY

SYRIA

IRAQ

TRANSJORDAN

LEBANON

PALESTINE

EGYPTLI BYA

TUNISIA

ALG E R IAMORO CCO

SAUDI ARABIA

RUSSIA (U.S.S.R. after

1922)

ITALY

YUGOSLAVIA

F R A N C E

S PA I N

SWEDEN

DENMARK

PORTUGAL

NETHERLANDS

BELGIUM

SWITZ. AUSTRIA HUNGARY

POLAND

ROMANIA

BULGARIA

ALBANIA

GREECE

UNITED KINGDOM

IRELAND

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

to New York City

t o I n d i a

Ganges R.

I n du

s R

Arabian Sea

INDIAN OCEAN

Bay of Beng al

Bombay

Peshawar

Lahore

Aligarh Patna

Ahmadabad

Madras

Delhi Lucknow

Benares Calcutta

Bangalore

Hyderabad

H I M

A L AYA M T S .

I N D I A B U R M A

Ceylon

to/ from London

0 250 500 Mi.

250 500 Km.

British territory

Edib observes the Depression in New York, 1928–1929 and 1931–1932.

Halide Edib fights for Turkish independence, 1920.

Edib teaches in India, 1935.

0 200 400 Mi.

200 400 Km.

The Travels of Halide Edib Halide Edib’s journeys

City visited by Edib

Other city

Houghton Mifflin College Hansen, Voyages in World History, 1e Halide Edib 321461_com_28

1st proof: 09/12/08 2nd proof: 10/6/08 Final: 10/10/08

PD 7.125 x 6.375

Join this chapter’s traveler on “Voyages,” an interactive tour of historic sites and events: www.cengagebrain.com

795

Halide Edib (hall-ee-DEH eh-DEEP) was the daughter of a progressive Ottoman official who made sure she learned Arabic and studied the Quran but also had her tutored by an English governess and sent her to a Greek-run school. In 1901, fluent in Turkish, English, Greek, and Arabic, Edib was the first Muslim girl to graduate from the American College for Girls in Istanbul. As a child of privilege,

796 Chapter 28 Responses to Global Crisis, 1920–1939

she had the luxury of exploring many different ideas and forming her identity in a safe and secure environment. She remained a practicing Muslim.

After graduation Edib married and had two children: “My life was confined within the walls of my apartment. I led the life of an old-fashioned Turkish woman.”* But over the next two decades she grew beyond traditional gender roles, publish- ing her first novel in 1908 and helping to found the Society for the Elevation of Women. In 1910 she left her husband after he married a second wife, in confor- mity with Islamic law but against her wishes. After her divorce Edib became even more active in public affairs. In 1912 she was involved with the Turkish Hearth Club, where, for the first time, men and women attended public lectures together. It was the outbreak of war in 1914, however, that thoroughly transformed her life.

The Ottoman government sent Edib west to Damascus and Beirut to organize schools and orphanages for girls. Before long, however, the Ottoman armies were in retreat, and she returned to Istanbul with her second husband, a medical doc- tor. After British forces occupied Istanbul, she fled east in disguise, wearing a veil and carefully concealing her manicured fingernails as she and her husband rode on horseback to join the Turkish nationalist army headquartered at Ankara. She was given official rank and served the cause as a translator and press officer.

Though the nationalists were victorious—Turkey was recognized internation- ally in 1923—Edib’s voyages were not over. During her years of exile, from 1926 to 1939, the uncertainties of the postwar world were turning into genuine global cri- ses. When she came to New York as a visiting professor of literature at Columbia University in 1931–1932, the United States was suffering from the economic col- lapse that became known as the Great Depression. She witnessed the global effects of that economic downturn in Britain and France, from where she also viewed the emergence of fascism with the rise to power of Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany. These fascist regimes represented an assault on the liberal tradi- tion, with state power growing at the expense of individual liberties. In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin was further consolidating his communist dictatorship.

With the global economy in crisis and political tensions on the rise, fewer people defended liberal ideals such as free trade and free political association. Ide- ologies that magnified the role of the state grew in popularity, while extreme nationalism allowed authoritarian rulers in many parts of the world to concen- trate ever greater power. Even the liberal institutions of democratic states were sorely tested by the challenges of the 1930s. Authoritarian tendencies gained momentum wherever liberalism was weak or absent, such as in Russia, the Euro- pean colonial empires, and the new nation of Turkey.

Nationalism could also be a positive force, however, providing a source of hope for many colonized Africans and Asians. The great Indian nationalist leader Mohandas K. Gandhi personified these hopes, while giving the entire world a model of peaceful political change. Like Halide Edib, Gandhi saw the fight for national independence as inseparable from the fight for justice, including equality for women, who had few rights under colonialism. Gandhi’s peaceful philosophy, a source of inspiration to many, stood in sharp contrast to the renewed militarism that would soon lead to another world war.

*Halide Edib, Inside India (London: Allen and Unwin, 1937), p. 207.

Halide Edib (1884–1964) Turkish nationalist best known for her many popular works of fiction featur- ing female protago- nists. She was part of the army that formed the Turkish nation and later served as a mem- ber of the Turkish parliament and as a professor of English literature.

The Great Depression, 1929–1939 797

The Great Depression, 1929–1939

In October 1929 prices on the New York Stock Exchange plunged; within two months, stocks lost half their value. The next year a string of bank failures across Europe and the Americas spread economic turmoil around the world, bringing the Great Depression. Unemployment surged; agricultural prices plummeted. In spite of various government policies intended to correct the problem, by 1939 global markets still had not recovered.

The Great Depression revealed the central role the United States now played in the global economy, as well as the degree to which finance and trade inte- grated nearly all the world’s people into a single eco- nomic system. Historians continue to debate the

causes of the Great Depression, but two factors clearly stand out: the speculative excesses of the American stock market, and the international debt structure that emerged after the First World War.

By the later 1920s the global economy had recovered from postwar malaise, and even Germany, in spite of the punishing reparations it still owed to France, seemed back on the road to recovery (see Chapter 27). In the United States, finan- cial markets reflected the frenetic pace of life during the “jazz age” of the 1920s, with its glamorous movie stars, mass-produced automobiles, and sensational gangsters. Speculators bought stock on borrowed money and, trusting that mar- kets would endlessly increase in value, used paper profits to extend themselves even further. Then on October 24, 1929, the bubble burst. When the stock market collapsed, investors and the bankers who had lent them money were ruined. As capital investment dried up, the stock market collapse turned into a general eco- nomic crisis.

A sharp division between rich and poor magnified the problem. By 1929, only 1 percent of the U.S. population controlled 20 percent of its wealth. Since ordinary workers could no longer afford the products being churned out by American man- ufacturers, many plants went out of business. More and more workers found themselves staring at locked factory gates. By 1932, one-fourth of workers in the United States were unemployed.

The vulnerability of the international financial system was revealed when the stock market crash led to a general run on banks in both the United States and Europe. During World War I the United States had replaced Great Britain as the

Great Depression Economic depression beginning in 1929 with the crash of stock prices in New York followed by a series of bank failures in Europe; marked by sustained deflation, unemployment in industrial nations, and depressed crop prices.

The Great Depression in the Industrialized World

Fo cu

s Q ue

st io

ns ❯❯ How did governments in different parts of the world respond to

the crisis of the Great Depression?

❯❯ Why did liberal democracy decline in influence as fascism, commu- nism, and other authoritarian regimes rose in power and popularity?

❯❯ How successful were anticolonial nationalists in Asia and Africa during this period?

❯❯ What major events led to the outbreak of the Second World War?

world’s leading source of investment capital, and European governments were deeply in debt to American banks. The banking crisis was particularly acute in Germany, where the Weimar government was forced to borrow heavily to make the huge payments to France required by the Versailles treaty. Financiers in the United States lent Germans money, which they then paid to France, which then sent the money back to the United States as French payments on American loans. After the stock market collapse, American investors called in their loans to Ger- man banks, and the system collapsed. In the spring of 1931 the largest bank in Vienna declared bankruptcy as the Great Depression became global. By 1933, Ger- man factories produced only half the goods they had manufactured in 1929, and half the workforce was idle.

The policies of Western politicians exacerbated the crisis. In 1930, the United States imposed high tariffs to protect American manufacturing from foreign imports. Great Britain followed suit in 1932, increasing interchange within its empire instead of participating in global free trade. Though intended to save jobs, protectionist measures caused steep declines in international trade and further loss of employment. By the early 1930s the world was trapped in a deflationary spiral, as wages and prices descended in a vicious cycle.

In these circumstances, there was little faith that free markets could solve the problem. As during World War I, governments in France, Britain, and the United States again took a much more active role in domestic economies. In the United States, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (in office 1933–1945) imple- mented his New Deal programs. Social Security created a “safety net” for many of the nation’s elderly, and the Works Progress Administration put the unemployed

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (in office 1933–1945) President of the United States during the Great Depression and World War II. Created the New Deal, intended to stimulate the economy through government spending, financial sector reform, and a safety net for those most in need.

The Great Depression Those left unemployed by the Great Depression often became homeless. Here a Canadian man takes shelter on a cot in an office, his plight seemingly left unsolved by his government’s efforts to provide relief vouchers to “temporarily solve” the problem. (Library and Archives of Canada)

The Great Depression, 1929–1939 799

to work on public infrastructure. Price subsidies helped stabilize farm prices while legislation strengthened workers’ rights to unionize and strike. Government pro- tection of depositors’ accounts restored faith in the banking system. Although the New Deal was quite popular, it did not get at the root of the economic problem, and in 1939 unemployment in the United States still stood at 16 percent.

The same pattern of government intervention unfolded in France and Britain, although the economic role of the state was more strongly developed in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Here, Social Democrats pledged to construct a “welfare state” that would protect their citizens through comprehensive education, health care, housing subsidies, and unemployment insurance. But while such measures reduced suffering, they did not resolve underlying economic issues any more than Roosevelt’s policies. No merely national solution could possibly solve the problem of depressed global markets caused by a shortage of credit.

Depressed agricultural prices hit farmers hard every- where, including hundreds of millions of peasant farm- ers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In very remote areas peasants might have the option of withdrawing

from market production and focusing on their own family and village subsistence. But by the 1930s the vast majority had become so enmeshed in global markets that withdrawal was not an option.

Most Africans, for example, were connected to the world economy either as workers for European-owned mines and plantations or as peasant producers of commodities for export. Small-scale family farms grew cash crops like cocoa, cot- ton, and coffee not only to get the cash for imported goods like cloth, kerosene lamps, and bicycles, but also to pay the taxes demanded by European colonial governments. Parents with extra money often invested in school fees for their children. Thus in some areas, access to Western education was another stimulus for rural families to grow commercial crops.

When coffee and cocoa prices fell by over half in early 1930, many Africans were suddenly unable to meet their tax obligations or pay their debts. Since Western manufactures had increasingly displaced indigenous industries, they had come to depend on imported goods like iron hoes and cotton clothing, which they could no longer afford. Years of hardship followed during which school attendance declined as young people were sometimes forced to leave their villages in search of work.

Conditions were equally bleak where export commodities were produced on plantations. Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer, also experienced the steep fall in prices when coffee consumption in the United States and Europe declined. Exporters destroyed huge stockpiles of Brazilian coffee, hoping that decreasing the supply would increase global prices. Agricultural workers left the plantations to scratch a living out of the soil or to join the destitute in the burgeoning favelas, or urban slums. The situation was similar in Southeast Asia, after a global decline in automobile and bicycle production caused rubber prices to crash. In Vietnam, as in Brazil, unemployed plantation workers were left destitute.

In the villages of India, the drop in crop prices further squeezed farmers who were already, in the words of Halide Edib, “at the mercy of rain, moneylender, and tax-gatherer.”* By 1932 peasant incomes had fallen by half. To avoid losing their land, many families sold the gold jewelry they were saving for their daughters’ dowries. In the 1930s, billions of rupees worth of such “distress gold” were sold, and many couples delayed or canceled marriage. At the same time, many South

The Great Depression in Global Perspective

*Halide Edib, Inside India (London: Allen and Unwin, 1937), p. 170.

800 Chapter 28 Responses to Global Crisis, 1920–1939

Asian Muslims had to cancel plans to perform the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina that could take a lifetime of planning. As cotton prices plunged and textile factories in Europe and the United States cut production or closed, Egyp- tian farmers were struck equally hard. Whereas over 16,000 people a year traveled from Egypt to Arabia before 1929, only about 1,700 made the pilgrimage in 1933.

In Latin America, economic nationalism was a common response to the crisis. In Mexico, for example, President Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized the country’s petroleum industry, arguing that the profits should be used to help the Mexican people rather than enrich foreign companies. To aid rural Mexicans, he redistrib- uted large amounts of land to peasant communities, finally fulfilling the promise of the Mexican Revolution (see Chapter 27). In Brazil, Getúlio Vargas, after seizing dictatorial power in a 1930 coup, began a program of infrastructural and industrial development based on state monopolies intended to end the country’s depen- dence on foreign markets and industrial imports. Cárdenas and Vargas both went even further than leaders in the United States and western Europe in asserting state economic power as a response to the Great Depression.

These were also troubled times in Halide Edib’s native Turkey. Mustafa Kemal, like the Latin American leaders, was determined to build up Turkey’s own indus- trial base and make the country less dependent on foreign imports. Kemal’s gov- ernment followed a policy of “import substitution,” which used high tariffs to shield local producers from global competition. Though import substitution did create some new industrial jobs, the policy was, in global terms, economically dysfunctional. As with the protective tariffs imposed by the leading industrialized nations, the effect was to decrease international trade even further, hampering global economic recovery.

Fascism, Communism, and Authoritarianism

Even in the most liberal societies, where private enterprise and individual liberty were well established, both World War I and the global depression brought greater government economic intervention. In Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union, where liberalism had much shallower roots, the challenges of the early twentieth century created a climate in which explicitly antiliberal, authoritarian political ideologies—fascism and communism—flourished. Fascists, most nota- bly Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany, were contemptuous of representative government. Weak, vain, and vacillating politicians should be replaced by strong leaders who represented not self-interested factions but the people as a whole. Only then, they promised, could national greatness be achieved. Unity of purpose and the role of the state in organizing the collective will were more important in fascist thinking than individual rights. Fascists were extreme nationalists, and while racism was strongly present across the world—from the segregated cities and schools of the United States to the racially based empires of Britain and France—the German Nazis imposed racial policies of unprecedented severity. Germany’s Jews were the principal target.

Communists also had no use for liberal democracy, following Karl Marx’s idea that representative governments were merely committees for managing the affairs of the property-owning bourgeoisie (see Chapter 23). But in opposing the liberal emphasis on individual rights, communists underplayed national unity while emphasizing class solidarity. The workers of each nation, after uniting to over- throw their oppressors, would unite to create global socialism. In reality, the Soviet

fascism Authoritarian political doctrine based on extreme nationalism, elevation of the state at the expense of the individual, and replace- ment of independent social organizations in civil society with state organizations.

Fascism, Communism, and Authoritarianism 801

Union was the only existing communist society in the 1930s. As Stalin collectiv- ized agriculture, oversaw rapid industrialization, and purged the state of his per- ceived enemies, the Soviet people lived in perpetual fear and deprivation.

Although fascists and communists hated each other passionately, they shared a common loathing for liberal democracy. Following the Great Depression, with the democratic nations struggling to restore their vitality without much success, many came to believe that fascism or communism was the cure.

For Benito Mussolini (1883–1945), the state bound the people together: “Everything for the state, nothing against the state, no one outside the state.” Mussolini was bitterly disappointed by the performance of the

Italian government and military during World War I. In the postwar period he organized quasi-military groups made up largely of former soldiers, called Black- shirts, who assaulted socialists and communists in the streets. Their belligerence intimidated middle-class politicians, whose weakness, Mussolini thought, could allow Bolshevism to spread to Italy. Mussolini’s supporters called him Il Duce (ill DOO-chey), “the leader.”

It was true that disunity made the country vulnerable to both outside powers and internal dissension. After all, the Italian nation was only six decades old: for many, local dialects and cultural traditions were still more relevant than national ones. Social tensions accompanied industrialization in the north, while the south was still mired in the poverty that had driven many to emigrate to the United States and Argentina. The existing constitutional monarchy seemed unable to rec- oncile regional and class divisions. The Catholic Church, although it dominated the lives of most Italians, was also powerless to bridge such divides. Extreme nationalism was Mussolini’s answer. (See the feature “World History in Today’s World: Europe’s Far Right.”)

Mussolini stepped in with supreme confidence and determination, offering order, discipline, and unity. His passionate speeches contrasted sharply with the bland style of most politicians. Landowners and industrialists, favoring Musso- lini’s call to unity and order as a means of suppressing anarchism and commu- nism, financed the fascists as the Blackshirts harassed union leaders, broke strikes, and kept potentially rebellious farm laborers and tenants in line.

In 1922, Mussolini organized disaffected war veterans in a march on Rome. Though the elected government declared a state of siege to rebuff Mussolini’s play for power, the king and the military refused to enforce it. With their support Mussolini maneuvered his way into the prime minister’s position. It seemed for a time that the fascists would be willing to work within the framework of Italy’s constitution. As the violence of fascist thugs continued, however, many members of the Italian middle class who had been attracted by Mussolini’s youth and vigor began to turn against him. Mussolini responded by consolidating his power, arresting opponents, and outlawing their political parties. After 1926 Mussolini ruled as dictator.

Mussolini’s definition of fascism was explicitly antiliberal, focusing on the power of the state over the rights of individuals: “Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual.”* The foundation of liberty in liberal societies is free

Mussolini and the Rise of Fascism

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Prime minister of Italy and the world’s first fascist leader. Also known as Il Duce, he founded the Italian Fascist Party and formed an alliance with Hitler’s Germany.

*From Fascism Doctrine and Institutions, 1935, pp. 7–42. http://www.worldfuturefund.org/ wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm.

World History in Today’s World

Europe’s Far Right

In the summer of 2011, hours after the usually placid Norwegian capital of Oslo was rocked by a deadly explosion, a lone gunman went on a rampage at a summer camp for youth volunteers of the country’s ruling Labor Party, killing sixty- nine teenagers and young adults and wounding many others. The killer, Anders Breivik, justified his actions by stating that leftist politicians had sponsored the “Islamic colonization” of his coun- try, leading to the “deconstruction of Norwegian culture.”*

Later that same year, German authorities announced that a Neo-Nazi cell had been respon- sible for a spate of murders and beatings in the past decade, targeting Turkish immigrants. The eastern part of Germany, where high unemploy- ment among young men has provided a fertile recruiting ground for the far-right National Democratic Party, was at the center of the inves- tigation. Meanwhile, liberal and leftist organiza- tions accused German intelligence agencies of focusing on Muslim extremists while ignoring a growing threat from far-right terror groups.

Very few condone such violent, extralegal behavior, of course, and moderate conservative and social democratic parties continue to represent the views of most Europeans. Still, the

emotional fuel of the immigration issue is push- ing more voters to support extreme right-wing parties in several countries. In some, they have recently received enough votes to form signifi- cant parliamentary minorities for the first time, as in Finland and Denmark. Far-right appeals to social conservatism and ethnic solidarity found a wider audience after the recent economic downturn led to higher unemployment and cuts in government spending.

Once it seemed that western Europe had left behind religious divisiveness and national chau- vinism. The fall of fascism, postwar economic resurgence, and the creation of the European Union led to a culture of tolerance, secularism, and cosmopolitanism. Now that consensus is threatened as many Europeans worry that immi- grants, rather than adapting to the languages and cultures of their new homes, will instead remain unassimilated outsiders, threatening their own cultural integrity and national identity.

On the other side of the issue are many who regard far-right voters as racists willing to scape- goat marginalized outsiders, raising the specter of a twenty-first-century fascist resurgence. Mean- while, events in Norway and Germany have focused greater attention on the need for security services to pay close attention to terrorist organizations of all kinds, domestic as well as international.

association: organizations formed voluntarily by people with similar regional, class, or political interests. Mussolini had no sympathy with this idea. Instead, he installed a system of “corporations” by which all citizens involved in a common undertaking would be organized by the state. “Corporatism” replaced independent unions with state-sanctioned ones and took over the nation’s youth organizations. In theory, fascist government controlled the activities of everyone, though the fascists never actually achieved that level of intrusion in the lives of individuals.

For the dull compromises of parliamentary democracy Mussolini substituted a theatrical politics that involved singing, flag waving, marching, and stirring ora- tory. He often invoked Rome’s imperial past and promised to make it once again the center of a mighty empire. In 1935, in defiance of the League of Nations, he invaded Ethiopia to avenge Italy’s humiliating defeat at the Battle of Adowa by King Menelik’s army in 1896 (see Chapter 26). Fervent patriotism in the cause of empire proved another effective way to bind together the young Italian nation.

Some Italians were active supporters of Mussolini’s regime, willing to trade liberty for security and a renewed sense of national pride. Others, usually Italian

*”Norwegian Terror Suspect Breivik Tells Court Today He Deserves a Medal,” The Christian Science Monitor, February 6, 2012.

802

Fascism, Communism, and Authoritarianism 803

communists, paid for opposition to Mussolini with their lives. Most Italians did not care too much one way or the other. Rather than actively supporting the fas- cist cause or risking a fight against it, they simply went on with their daily lives. As the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci wrote, before spending years in a fascist prison: “Indifference is actually the mainspring of history. . . . What comes to pass does so not so much because a few people want it to happen, as because the mass of citizens abdicate their responsibility and let things be.”*

After World War I, Germany was both humiliated and financially devastated by the war and the punitive Versailles treaty (see Chapter 27). Although the Wei- mar Republic had brought liberal democracy to Ger-

many in the 1920s, progress ended with the onset of the Great Depression. Germans were desperate for solutions. By the early 1930s the center was falling out of German politics, as communists on the far left and fascists on the extreme right gained popularity.

The German liberals and socialists who had overseen the creation of the Wei- mar Republic were all heirs to the Enlightenment tradition, believing that the use of reason was key to the achievement of a just and stable social order. For many Germans, however, the war had called into question belief in reason. During what some historians have called an “age of anxiety” in the West, expressionist artists probed darker emotions. The psychological theories of Sigmund Freud, emphasiz- ing the power of unconscious impulses, gained in popularity. Even scientific advances were deeply unsettling, as when Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity challenged Newtonian physics, removing time as an independent variable by pos- iting a four-dimensional space-time in which observation itself depends on the speed and location of the observer. These cultural and intellectual trends rein- forced the general state of overall uncertainty in which the Weimar Republic had been born.

Into this anxious environment stepped Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) and his National Socialist Party, promising to restore greatness, confidence, and order. Hitler had a very different idea than did liberals or socialists of what “the people” meant. Socialists believed that “the people” meant the masses of workers, and liberals believed that each individual was autonomous and that “the people” was simply the sum of those individuals. For Hitler, however, das Volk (das FOHLK), “the people,” was a single organism bound by history, tradition, and race. Just as no cell is independent from the others in a living organism, so all Germans were connected by their racial destiny. Hitler defined Germans as an “Aryan” race supe- rior to all others.

According to Nazism, any German who did not live up to the ideal of racial pride and racial purity was like a cancerous growth that needed to be excised. Nazi targets included communists, with their internationalist doctrine; homosexuals, with their supposed rejection of traditional family values; and the handicapped, considered physically inferior. Proponents of the racist pseudo-science of eugenics (also popular in the United States in the 1930s) argued that selective breeding could lead to superior human beings. If the smartest “Aryan” men and women married and had children, they could produce a “master race.” Eugenic medical practices led to the sterilization of many girls from poor families to stop their “genetic defects” from being passed on to another generation.

Hitler and National Socialism in Germany

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Leader of the National Socialist Party who became chancellor of Germany and dismantled the Weimar constitution. His ultranationalist policies led to persecu- tion of communists and Jews, and his aggressive foreign policies started World War II.

*Antonio Gramsci, from Avanti!, in Selections from Political Writings 1910–1920 (London: Law- rence and Wishart, 1977), p. 17.

804 Chapter 28 Responses to Global Crisis, 1920–1939

But Hitler was even more concerned with racial mixing. Looking for a scapegoat on whom to blame the country’s problems, he tapped into the centuries-old tradition of anti-Semitism. Although German Jews were thoroughly assimilated into national life, he identified them as the main threat: “The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.” For the Nazis, the supposed racial characteristics of Jews contrasted with, and thereby illuminated, the vir- tues of the German Volk. Only by isolating the Jews, and ultimately eliminating them, could the goal of racial purity be achieved.

In the late 1920s such ideas were on the far fringe. But after the Great Depression revealed the weakness of the Weimar political system, voters increasingly abandoned the parties of the center- right and the center-left for the communists and the fascists. Between 1928 and 1932, the National Socialist share of the vote jumped from 2.6 to 37.3 percent of the national total, and Hitler’s deputies controlled more than a third of the seats in the Reichstag. Many of his early supporters came from the lower middle class, people who did not have savings or job security, although some more afflu- ent Germans were also attracted to National Social- ism as a bulwark against communism. Young people were especially caught up in Hitler’s emotional, patriotic appeals. Almost half the party members were under thirty.

The German Communist Party also gained strong support in the elections of 1932. Alarmed by the communist threat, German business leaders increased their support for the ardently anticommu- nist National Socialists. Despite their distaste for Hit- ler, whom most educated Germans saw as wild and unrefined, conservatives thought they would be able to control him from behind the scenes as he rallied the public against communism. While President

Paul von Hindenburg was reluctant to elevate Hitler, he needed Hitler’s support to form a governing coalition, which Hitler would join only if he was made chancel- lor. In 1933, Hindenburg announced a new government with Hitler at its head.

A month after he took office, a fire broke out in the Reichstag (the German parliament). The arson was likely the work of a single individual, but Hitler accused the Communist Party of treason and had all Communist members of the Reich- stag arrested. The remaining representatives then passed a law that suspended constitutional protections of civil liberties for four years and allowed Hitler to rule as a dictator. The emergency powers granted to Hitler became permanent.

Hitler dismantled the Weimar institutions and became the Führer (leader) of an industrial state of huge potential power. Changes to German society were sud- den and extreme. The Nazis abolished all political parties other than the National

National Socialist Propaganda The Nazi Party often used images of healthy blond children to emphasize Ger- man vitality and racial superiority and organized young people into party-based boys’ and girls’ clubs. This poster for the “League of German Girls” solicits donations to a fund to “Build Youth Hostels and Homes.” In spite of her smile, and the flowers on the swastika-labeled collection tin, all of the money collected actually went into weap- ons production.

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Fascism, Communism, and Authoritarianism 805

Socialists and replaced Germany’s federal structure with a centralized dictatorship emanating from Berlin. Like the fascists in Italy, they took over or replaced inde- pendent organizations in civil society such as labor unions. Hitler Youth replaced the Boy Scouts and church-sponsored youth groups as part of a plan, reinforced by a new school curriculum, to teach fascism to the next generation. Artists, archi- tects, writers, and filmmakers who did not conform to the National Socialist vision of a strictly regimented society were censored, harassed, and often driven into exile. (See the feature “Visual Evidence in Primary Sources: Angst and Order in German Cinema.”) Hitler promised a Third Reich (“Third Empire”) that would last a thousand years.

The Nazis also restricted the authority of German religious leaders. Protestant churches came under tight state control. Though the Catholic Church had reached an understanding with Mussolini, Hitler was less accommodating. The Nazi state seized church properties and imprisoned priests who resisted totalitarianism. Many Catholics joined the National Socialist Party all the same. Christian leaders would later be criticized for not having done enough to prevent Hitler’s rise to power.

Having already sent the communists off to prison camps, the Führer (FYUR- ruhr) turned to the “Jewish problem.” In 1935, the Nazis imposed the Nuremberg Laws, which deprived Jews of all civil rights and forbade intermarriage between Jews and other Germans. Some Jews emigrated, but most German Jews were deeply assimilated into the country’s cultural and social life and could not imagine that Germans would further persecute them. In 1938, however, the Nazis launched coor- dinated attacks against Jews throughout Germany and Austria. After this “Kristall- nacht” (“Crystal Night”)—named for the smashing of the windows in Jewish homes, synagogues, and stores—more Jews fled. Those who remained were forced into seg- regated ghettos. After 1938, it was no longer possible to suppose that Hitler’s anti- Semitic tirades were merely political rhetoric: the machinery for the destruction of European Jews was being set in motion (see Chapter 29).

Hitler’s dictatorship, like Mussolini’s, relied on either active support or passive consent from the majority of the population. Part of his appeal was negative: at a time of fear and insecurity, Hitler identified enemies, such as communists and Jews, who could be blamed for the country’s problems. But Hitler’s economic suc- cesses also help explain his popularity. While workers in the Western democracies vainly struggled to find jobs, German unemployment dropped from over 6 mil- lion people to under two hundred thousand between 1932 and 1938. It seemed that government economic intervention was key. German ministries fixed prices and allocated resources in close coordination with the country’s largest corpora- tions. Massive public works projects, such as the world’s first superhighways and a large military buildup, put millions of Germans back to work.

With communists and Jews out of the way, Hitler promised, traditional values of courage, order, and discipline would once again inspire and empower the Ger- man people. Women’s highest calling was to stay in the home and nurture pure- bred Aryan children. The Nazis’ massive rallies, with their precision marching, flag waving, and spellbinding speeches by the Führer himself, turned politics into the- ater and gave people a sense of being part of something much larger than them- selves. Radio broadcasts and expertly-made propaganda films such as Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous depiction of a Nazi rally, spread the excite- ment throughout the land.

Of course, not everyone was taken in. But outspoken opposition to Hitler meant imprisonment or death. Most Germans were content to go about their daily lives, appreciative of the relative order and prosperity.

Visual Evidence in Primary Sources

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Expressionism was one response to the horrific experience of war. Strongly emotive, expres- sionism captured the angst of a postwar genera- tion torn from the securities of a world seemingly changed forever. Many expressionists challenged the viewer with strong colors, primitive outlines, violent emotion, rapid movement, and heightened sexual energy. It was art for an age of anxiety. In film, the most famous expressionist work is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a 1920 horror film that

plumbs the darkness of the human psyche; an advertising poster for the film is reproduced here.

Neoclassicism was a different response to postwar uncertainty, with the goal of restoring a sense of order by returning to the calm harmony associated with Greek art. The second image here exemplifies the neoclassical style. Olympia, directed by the great German film artist Leni Riefenstahl, was a tribute to the Berlin Olympics of 1936. While her technical brilliance is widely

Angst and Order in German Cinema

The sets for this silent film featured jagged, canvas- painted backgrounds, with few right angles or settled spaces. The expressionistic look of the film, including sharp contrasts between light and dark, reinforced its theme of disorder and violence in the human psyche.

The film’s emphasis on dark, uncontrollable urges reflected the increasing influence of Sigmund Freud, the great Austrian psychologist who empha- sized the power of the unconscious mind.

The story features the evil Dr. Caligari, who controls a sleepwalking man, Cesare. Caligari displays Cesare at car- nivals, claiming he can predict the future. At night, Cesare performs murder on Caligari’s behalf. Or does he?

The film leaves the viewer to doubt: who is the doctor and who is the patient? Who is sane and who is deranged? What is reality and what is fantasy? Such unsettling, unanswered questions were new to film when Dr. Caligari was premiered in Berlin in 1920, but in later decades they would become common in the genre of psychologically- driven horror films.

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acknowledged, Riefenstahl’s work has also been judged by its propaganda value for the Nazi regime. Neoclassicism was the style preferred by Adolf Hitler.

The National Socialists denounced expression- ism as a perverse form of modernism created by Jews and subversives to undermine the confi- dence and willpower of the German people. In 1937, Joseph Goebbels (Hitler’s minister of pro- paganda) organized an exhibition of so-called “degenerate art” in Munich to rally the public against artistic modernism. Many “degenerate”

painters, architects, designers, and filmmakers were driven into exile.

Germany’s loss was America’s gain. Hollywood benefited enormously from the influx of émigré film talent in the 1930s. Erich Pommer (the pro- ducer of Dr. Caligari) and Billy Wilder (one of the most productive and popular Hollywood direc- tors) were Jewish refugees from fascism who sig- nificantly influenced film in the United States. Along with Jews from Poland, Russia, Lithuania, and elsewhere, they made enduring contributions to American culture.

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Q u e s t i o n f o r A n a l y s i s ❯❯ From what you know of fascism, why were the Nazis so opposed to expressionist works

like Dr. Caligari and so strongly in favor of neoclassical works like Olympia? (Try to watch clips of Dr. Caligari and Olympia online before you answer.)

The look of Olympia could not possibly be more different than that of Dr. Caligari. Here all is rational and orderly; right angles, classical harmony, and idealized depictions of the human body dominate.

After silently and reverently panning across the ruins of the Parthenon, Riefens- tahl’s camera shows a Greek statue of a discus thrower slowly fading into the statuesque figure of a modern athlete, who gracefully completes the throw. The continuity between classical and modern is immediately asserted.

As a photographer and cin- ematographer, director Leni Riefenstahl (1902–2003) was one of the most influential visual artists of the twentieth century. Yet the fact that her art was placed at the ser- vice of Adolf Hitler has long clouded her reputation as a pioneering female artist.

The propaganda value of Olympia for Nazi racism was somewhat undermined by Riefenstahl’s necessary inclusion of the victories of African American athlete Jesse Owens in the 1936 Summer Olympics; his world record-setting long jump is beautifully rendered.

808 Chapter 28 Responses to Global Crisis, 1920–1939

For all the ambition of Mussolini and Hitler, neither could match the total control of society achieved by Joseph Stalin (1879–1953). While Stalin’s totalitarian control predated the global depression and was inde-

pendent of it (see Chapter 27), the Soviet Union also saw an escalation of state power in the 1930s.

Starting in 1928, Stalin launched the U.S.S.R. on a path of rapid industrializa- tion based on centralized Five-Year Plans. Since most of the country was still agri- cultural, Stalin needed to find a way to apply his policy of “Socialism in One Country” to rural areas as well. Lenin had promised the peasants land in return for political support, and his New Economic Policy allowed small-scale private owner- ship in the countryside. But for many communists this policy was an aberration, since private ownership would lead to agrarian capitalism. Instead, Stalin ordered the collectivization of the rural sector and suddenly moved millions of peasants into barracks on collective farms.

There was substantial resistance to collectivization, which Stalin attributed to the kulaks (koo-LAHKS), more prosperous peasants who, he said, were out to exploit their fellow villagers. When Stalin sent the Red Army into the countryside, he said it was to help the masses defeat these kulaks. In reality, the Soviet state was waging war on its own people. The result, in 1932–1933, was famine. Ukrainians suffered the most, victims of Stalin’s brutal punishment for their attempt to estab- lish an independent republic after the First World War.

But the industrial sector continued to expand rapidly. The Communist Party bureaucracy treated the non-Russian parts of the Soviet Union, especially those of Central Asia, in colonial fashion, as sources of raw materials for industrial growth in the Russian heartland. In contrast with other industrial societies, the Soviet Union allowed no unemployment. But Soviet workers received almost no material benefit; wages were kept low to generate investment for further industrial expansion. Rapid industrialization also poisoned the air and water.

In the later 1930s Stalin, always paranoid about plots against him, stepped up his repression of the Old Bolsheviks (see the feature “Visual Evidence in Primary Sources” in Chapter 27). During the Great Purges, Stalin ordered his secret police to arrest many former colleagues of Lenin and forced them to confess to supposed crimes. Movie cameras recorded their statements admitting to trumped-up charges of trea- son before they were taken out and shot. In 1937 alone, Stalin had half of the army’s officer corps imprisoned or executed. The decimation of his own military leadership was an irrational move given that Hitler’s rise to power was a direct threat. Even as he killed and imprisoned his generals, Stalin ordered a massive military buildup to protect the Soviet Union from the likelihood of yet another German invasion.

Soviet citizens lived in a nearly constant state of terror. “Fear by night, and a feverish effort by day to pretend enthusiasm for a system of lies,” writes one his- torian, “was the permanent condition.”* A single wrong word or glance could lead to a knock on the door and exile to Stalin’s gulags, the vast system of slave-labor camps that embodied Stalin’s dictum: “The easiest way to gain control of the popula- tion is to carry out acts of terror.”

Authoritarian Regimes in Asia

The challenge to liberalism was not limited to Europe and the Soviet Union. In many other parts of the world where liberal traditions were absent or only weakly

collectivization Stalin’s replacement of peasant villages with large, state-run collec- tive farms, following the idea of “Socialism in One Country.” Millions died in fam- ines and as a result of state terror campaigns.

Great Purges The execution by Stalin in the late 1930s of many “Old Bolsheviks” he regarded as com- petitors for power. Public trials and forced confessions marked the Great Purges.

*Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 252.

Stalin: Collectivization and the Great Purges

Authoritarian Regimes in Asia 809

developed, the uncertainty of the postwar period and the economic crisis of the Great Depression strengthened authoritarianism. In both Japan and Turkey, state intervention in economic and political life increased through the inter-war years.

Although the Versailles treaty had rewarded Japan with territorial concessions at China’s expense (see Chapter 27), nationalists remained dissatisfied:

We are like a great crowd of people packed into a small and narrow room, and there are only three doors through which we might escape, namely, emigration, advance into world markets, and expansion of territory. The first door has been barred to us by the anti-Japanese immigration policies of other countries. The second is being pushed shut by tariff barriers. . . . It is quite natural that Japan should rush upon the last remaining door . . . of territorial expansion.*

The Great Depression strengthened the arguments of nationalists and militarists for a more aggressive foreign and imperial policy.

In the 1920s, the country had shown signs of heading in a more democratic direction. Japan was a constitutional monarchy, with an emperor whose role was ceremonial. Though still quite limited, voting rights were extended to more Japa- nese men, and the cabinet was no longer chosen by imperial advisers but by the party that gained the most votes in elections.

Other factors, however, limited liberal democracy in Japan. One was the power of civil service bureaucrats, who controlled policy together with the zaibatsu, Japan’s large industrial conglomerates. In 1926, when the new emperor Hirohito came to the throne, ultranationalists saw an opportunity to expand their influ- ence. A new requirement stipulated that the minister of defense be an active mili- tary officer with power nearly equal to that of the prime minister. Even Fukuzawa Yûkichi, back at the turn of the century, had begun to emphasize national glory over individual liberty (see Chapter 24). Militaristic sentiment emphasizing that attitude had grown during the 1920s. After the market collapse of 1930 led to fall- ing farm prices and tough times for the farm families whose sons made up most of the soldiers in the army, the military role in government became even greater.

Ultranationalists in Japan envisioned a new Asian economic system that would combine Japanese management and capital with the resources and cheap labor of East and Southeast Asia. The turning point came with the invasion of Manchuria, in which the Japanese seized northeastern China in the name of their emperor. As part of the Versailles settlement, the Japanese had been allowed to keep soldiers in the Manchurian capital, although Manchuria was still formally a province of China. Then, in 1931, Japanese military commanders there, in defi- ance of civilian politicians in Tokyo, ordered their soldiers to leave their barracks and occupy the main population centers and the transportation infrastructure. Brought to trial, the disobedient officers denounced the government and used the courtroom to whip up public support for the army’s ambitions. As imperial fever grew, civilian politicians lost what little control they had over the military.

As in Italy and Germany, militarization brought Japanese corporations lucra- tive government contracts. And as in the fascist countries, Japan’s economic poli- cies seemed successful. Military spending, even if it required government borrowing, boosted the economy, as did the occupation of Manchuria. After 1932,

Ultranationalism in Japan

*Hashimoto Kingoro, “Address to Young Men,” in Sources of Japanese Tradition, ed. William Theo- dore de Bary, vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), p. 289.

invasion of Manchuria (1931) Invasion that occurred when Japa- nese military officers defied the civilian government and League of Nations by occupying this north- eastern Chinese prov- ince, leading to the further militarization of the Japanese government.

810 Chapter 28 Responses to Global Crisis, 1920–1939

expanding employment opportunities that benefited the Japanese working class further solidified the ultranationalists’ political support.

The new nation of Turkey emerged from the violent collapse of the Ottoman empire in an exceptionally hostile environment. Without the skillful military and political leadership of Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938),

a former Ottoman officer, Turkey may well have been partitioned by the victorious Allies. For his role, Kemal earned the name Atatürk, “Father Turk.” With the success of Kemal’s armies, by 1923 the great powers agreed to recognize a sovereign Turk- ish republic that retained the core territories and population of the old empire.

Halide Edib played an important role in the creation of the new Turkish nation. In 1919, as the Ottoman empire crumbled before British and Greek invaders, she stood in front of a crowd of thousands and rallied them to the cause of Turkish nationalism. Her heart, she later wrote, “was beating in response to all Turkish hearts, warning of approaching disaster. . . . I was part of this sublime national madness. . . . Nothing else mattered for me in life at all.”* She and her husband then went to join Kemal’s forces in Ankara, where she became one of the nationalist leader’s closest confidantes. After independence was secured, however, they had a falling out. Whereas Edib and her husband led a party that favored the expansion of liberal democracy, Kemal intended to be the unchallenged leader of an absolutist state. “What I mean is this,” he told her. “I want everyone to do as I wish. . . . I do not want any

criticism or advice. I will have only my own way. All shall do as I command.” According to her memoirs Edib responded, “I will obey you and do as you wish as long as I believe you are serving the cause.” But Kemal ignored her and said, “You shall obey me and do as I wish.”† Shortly thereafter he banned her politi- cal party and she went into exile.

Kemal’s authoritarian tendencies were not without precedent. Earlier Ottoman reformers had also taken a pater- nalistic view, regarding their subjects like children who needed guidance but also stern discipline. Such attitudes were also common during this era of postwar uncertainty and global economic crisis. Having forged a new country through war, Mustafa Kemal put his personal stamp on the ideas that would guide Turkey for decades to come. His goal was to put Turkey on an equal economic and military foot- ing with the European powers, and he ordered rapid mod- ernization to achieve that end. In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman empire had vacillated about how much it should adopt Western models (see Chapter 23). Kemal had no second thoughts in imposing a secular constitution with a strict line between mosque and state.

Kemal’s drive to separate religion from politics included laws to improve the status of women. His regime gave girls and young women increased access to education, a move Edib strongly supported. Not surprisingly, after the emo- tional pain she suffered when her first husband took a second wife, she also favored the Turkish law abolishing polygamy.

Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938) Also known as Atatürk, an Ottoman officer who led the nationalist army that established the Republic of Turkey in 1923. A reformer who established the secular traditions of the modern Turkish state, he served as its leader until his death.

The Rise of Modern Turkey

Turkey’s New Alphabet The Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal instituted a top-down program of modernization and westernization in the new nation of Turkey. In 1928, he declared that Turkish would no longer be written in Arabic script and that Latin characters would henceforth be used for all purposes, public and private. Here Kemal himself demonstrates the new alphabet.

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*Halide Edib, http://gvcommunity.tripod.com/ladies/haide.htm. †Halide Edib, The Turkish Ordeal (New York: Century, 1926), p. 128.