WAR - Bitterness towards European, or even Local, Political Domination (Lesson)

Bitterness towards European, or even Local, Political Domination

The Japanese defeat of Russia in 1905 during the Russo-Japanese War seemed remarkable at the time and inspired non-Europeans living under a European thumb to be hopeful that their day would come. This "unsettled" period included an increase in anti-colonial movements—as well as revolts within independent nations—throughout the world.

China

Following the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901 CE, foreign nations forced China to agree to the Boxer Protocol that demanded China make reparation payments to those nations affected by the rebellion and to allow European troops to be stationed throughout China. This meant that while China was never formally colonized by Europeans, those outsiders were granted special exemptions to Chinese law. Based on the humiliation Han Chinese felt at the losses amassed by the foreign-run Qing Dynasty, another rebellion followed after the Boxer Rebellion. In 1911 CE, Dr. Sun Yat-sen and other disgruntled Chinese intellectuals led a revolution that finally toppled the Qing Dynasty. The Revolution of 1911, or Xinhai Revolution, thus ended more than three thousand years of Imperial rule in China. He then formed a political party—the Guomindang—under the principles of nationalism, democracy and support for the people's livelihood. As head of his political party, he served as the first president of the newly-formed Republic of China (ROC.) based on the Guomindang's principles, Dr. Sun developed a plan to modernize China's politics that involved unifying the various people and regions of the nation. One of his first acts was to give up his post as president to Yuan Shikai (a former military leader.) Unfortunately, this decision led to a backpedaling of progression for China as Yuan Shikai attempted to restore Imperial rule to the nation by outlawing the Guomindang. Yuan Shikai was not successful at this attempt—mainly because he died in 1916 CE—and the nation of China devolved into a nation of ruling and competing warlords. But Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Guomindang would eventually make a comeback.

 

India

The last major anti-colonial uprising in India occurred decades before the turn of the 20th Century when the sepoys inspired the Great Indian Rebellion of 1857. Since then, India existed under a system of government known as the British Raj. An unexpected consequence of living under British Imperial rule for the people of India was the unification they experienced as a nation. Always before, locals of the Indian subcontinent existed as separate groups of people distinguished by language or religion or location. Under British unification, the Indian colonial subjects were united in a way they had never been before and this helped to form a national Indian identity. One aspect of this new national identity was a continued dissatisfaction with their foreign-led government. In 1885, the Indian National Congress formed to provide a discussion medium for Indians to vent their concerns regarding Imperial injustices. The Congress held debates over the British treatment of India—discussing whether or not the British truly had India's best interests in mind when making policies or if the British were just milking the wealth out of India. As India entered the 20th Century, these debates grew more sophisticated and widespread; therefore, opposition to colonial rule at that time was more sophisticated in nature than in any other colonial location. In 1906 CE, Muslim Indians broke away from the Indian National Congress and formed their own Muslim League with the same stated purposes. In this way, both Hindu and Muslim Indians were poised to take their anti-colonial movements to the next level during the new century. Then World War I interrupted.

 

Africa

As the continent was midway through the upheaval known as the "Scramble for Africa" at the turn of the 20^th Century, its anti-colonial movements were still very young. But already Africans could see how the European presence on their continent was causing unprecedented environmental problems among the growing social issues. As European plantations spread, trees were chopped down causing deforestation and soils were exhausted. Plus, European colonial rulers had a tendency to relocate native Africans to concentrated areas causing overgrazing and overcultivation in those locations in which they were allowed to live. As part of this rounding up process, also, many males were removed from their families to work on plantations or mines leaving women and children unprotected. Even as they noticed this environmental and social degradation, though, most Africans did not have a resource to which to protest—European colonial administrators and westernized African elites were not interested in local opposition to policies that fattened their purses.

This is not to say that there weren't any anti-colonial movements on the continent at the turn of the century, though.

• In German Southwest Africa, resistance from the Herero and San people was so widespread it led to colonial orders for genocidal extermination of the Herero between 1904 and 1906 CE.
• Between 1905 through 1906 CE, African rebels in German East Africa led the Maji-Maji Rebellion in response to the German relocation of local males to work on German plantations. Under the leadership of a Kinjikitile Ngwale, followers believed they were immune to German bullets and raided German forts. The results were disastrous for those who participated in the rebellion with untold numbers killed that broke the spirit of the rebellious.
• Under King Leopold II, the Congo Free State deteriorated to a point where nearly half of the native Africans there died. The miserable conditions of living in a world ruled by Leopold II inspired Polish-Briton Joseph Conrad to write Heart of Darkness that questioned the imperialism and racism he saw there as Africans ruled by Leopold II struggled to meet the quotas he instilled on the collection of rubber and elephant tusks. Pressured by foreign governments and the Belgian Parliament, Leopold II ceded his control of the Congo Free State in 1908 CE. Prior to the cession, though, Leopold II burned his archives to prevent widespread knowledge of the atrocities he conducted there. The Congo Free State continued as a colonial entity, though, under the control of the Belgian Parliament and known henceforth as the Belgian Congo.
• The most destructive anti-colonial insurrection in Africa occurred in South Africa, though, during the Anglo-Boer War from 1899 to 1902 CE. The "Anglo" part of the title refers to the British and the "Boer" part of the title refers to descendants of Dutch and Huguenot settlers living in Africa. (Here's a little background behind how two groups of Europeans settled in the same area of Africa: The Dutch East India Company first settled the southern tip of Africa in the 1600s CE. Following the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 CE, the British took over the former Dutch colony of Cape Province. From that point forward, British settlers flooded the region forcing the Boers—the Dutch word for "farmer"—to move farther inland creating new settlements known as the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The discovery of diamonds in the 1860s in those areas changed the course of history in South Africa as more British immigrants arrived. In 1871 and 1877 CE, the British annexed part of the Orange Free State and then all of the Transvaal. This led to the often overlooked First Boer War in 1880-1881 CE in which the Boers defeated the British. Then in the 1880s, hostility reignited between the British and the Boers when gold was found in the Boer regions. Once again British settlers flooded into Boer territory. The British Prime Minister of Cape Colony Cecil Rhodes made no attempt to hide his desire to bring the Boer settlements under British control.) Fearing an inevitable British invasion, Transvaal President Paul Kruger declared war on Great Britain that flared into the Anglo-Boer War. The Boers had the home-turf advantage, but in the end they were no match for the British military. In 1902, the Boers signed a peace treaty that resulted in their republics converting into British colonies. But the war contained a couple of "firsts" for the age— The British created "concentration camps" where they rounded up nearly 160,000 Boers and Africans. (By the end of the war, nearly 28,000 Boers and 14,000 native Africans—including women and children—had died in these camps.) And a new role in journalism emerged—war correspondent—who documented all of the aspects of the entire war for the world to watch.

 

Mexico

As mentioned earlier, the period between 1890 and 1910 CE was punctuated with great financial booms and busts throughout different nations that were usually linked. Following a banking crisis in 1907 CE, Mexico experienced a revolution provoked by a combination of unequal land distribution and irritated workers. During the 1910 Mexican Revolution, peasants overthrew President Porfirio Díaz—the science-minded president (some might say "dictator") that served seven presidential terms over a span of thirty-five years. It was due to Díaz's disputed victory to an eighth term in 1910 that the rebellion actually got underway. While it was true that President Díaz had been responsible for establishing stability in Mexico following earlier decades of disarray—his government built the railroads, upgraded harbors, heightened agricultural output, established an oil industry, developed positive relations internationally, and lured foreign investments—it had done so dictatorially and without consistency. Those who were either political foes or politically impotent (as were most of the peasantry) reaped very little reward from Díaz's decades in office. The Mexican Revolution lasted a decade—mostly because of the number of leaders within the revolution that fought against each other.

At the end of the Mexican Revolution, roughly 10% of the population was dead and Mexico created a new government and constitution based on the ideals of former President Benito Juárez and his Constitution of 1857. In a sense, it was a return to a pre-colonial way of life as more rights were given to the non-elite of Mexico.

 

The Balkans

At the turn of the 20^th Century, the Balkans—a peninsula in eastern and southeastern Europe—was known as the " Powder Keg of Europe." Here's why... Prior to the 1800s, most of the region was under the authority of the Ottoman Empire; but during that century, many ethnic nationalities living within the Balkans began to push for independence resulting in Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Romania achieving various levels of success. But it wasn't just nationalities within the Ottoman Empire that sought to break away—the Russian Empire also saw a need for the location to no longer be in Ottoman hands (as it would give Russia access to the Black Sea and increase its geopolitical power.) This worried the rest of Europe, as they didn't mind when Russia pushed east, but felt threatened when it pushed west—which it did in the 1870s. Therefore, Western Europeans held the Congress of Berlin in the late 1870s to determine the fate of the Balkan states. At that point, Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania received outright independence and formed their own sovereign nations but with less territory than before the Congress; Bosnia and Herzegovina became part of Austria-Hungary; and Bulgaria and Macedonia returned to the Ottoman Empire. So, the map looked like this...

As the Ottoman Empire was then referred to as " the sick man of Europe," Western Europeans hoped that these divisions of the Balkans at the Congress of Berlin would prevent Russia from gaining control of the territory while satisfying the various nationalities that called the Balkans home. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. At the time, there was a Pan-Slavism Movement—a call to unite all of the Slavic peoples into one political organization. The Russians hoped to unite the Slavs of the Balkans by incorporating them into Russia. The Slavs of the Balkans hoped to unite the Slavs of the Balkans independently of Russia or the Ottoman Empire but never agreed as to which nation would take the lead role in that union. In the end, no one was happy with the way the Balkans were divided, as opposed to united, at the Congress of Berlin—and this led to the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 as the Slavs still living under Ottoman rule fought to exit.

[Side Note: Just to give you a sense of how unstable the Balkans were—watch the map in the sidebar as it highlights the constant border changes of the region from 1796 to 2008.]

As you can see, many throughout the world were becoming disenchanted with both European domination (or colonialism) and local mismanagement. But as "unsettled" as the world was between 1890 and 1910 CE due to that period's financial unrest, migrations, nationalism and political dissatisfaction, it was about to embark on another span of time unprecedented in the turmoil it would cause.

 

 

Recap Section

Review what you've learned in the activity below.

 

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