HISTORY OF EUROPEAN COLONIZATION 18:
INTERWAR PERIOD:
Germany lost ww1, and most of its colonies were taken by Belgium, France, England
- France: Togoland & Cameroon
- Britian: Rest of Togoland & Cameroon, German East Africa
- Belgium: Ruanda & Urundi
- South Africa: Southwest Africa (colony receives another colony)
- Japan, Australia, New Zeland: Pacific Islands
New colonies post-WW1: Mandates, Italy and Ethiopia
Boom of colonialism in INTERWAR PERIOD
- colonies become more linked with metropoles
- more immigration from metropole to colony and reverse
- more missionaries
- more infrastructure
- exhibitions celebrating colonial rule.
COLONIAL DECLINE:
- general economic decline (reconstruction of Europe, not growing of colonies), Great Depression, More democracy leading to more expenses
- loss of image: WW1’s violence leads to cultural pessimism (EU no longer the ‘civilized’); new ideologies: fascism, Nazism (growing from past colonial ideas)
- competition between US, Soviet Union, Japan. US - past colony, anti-colonial; USSR - anti-colonial; Japan - desire to build its own imperial empire
- shrinking gaps between colonizer and colonized: equality in knowledge, education, more contact with Europeans, better spread of ideas due to colonial infrastructure
- technological backwardness shrank
- in Moroccoa: Republic of the Rif (Abd el-Krim), uprising that Europe couldn’t defeat for over 3 years.
- growing social consciousness about exploitation
- anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist literature spreading (Marx, Lenin)
REACTION TO DECLINE:
- infiltrating colonizer structures: missionaries, officials
- group formation: organization to resist colonial system. Along: religious lines, ethnic groups, age, gender, class, blackness… (sub and supra national groups)
- political parties: communist party of Vietnam (ho chi minh, 1925) [parties through political interests]; partai nasional Indonesia (sukarno, 1927) [parties through national interests]
- violence: strikes, insurrections
CRACKS IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE:
- loss of position in Türkiye, Persia, China
- loss of white settler colonies: Ireland (1922), White dominions become independent in 1926 with Balfour declaration
- frustrations in Arab world: Egypt, Iraq, Palestine & Jewish migration
- Growing problems in India
Egyptian Revolution 1919:
Saad Zaghoul: conference of Versailles he demands independence.
- Brits exile him → protests.
- Brits eventually recognize INDEPENDENCE; King Faud & then King Farouk become leaders
- Brits keep Sudan and Suez
- 1952 Nasser takes control, 1956 he declares Sudan and Suez independent
Palestine:
- 1920-1945: 400k jews immigrate
- Tel Aviv, agriculture developments (collective farms)
- jewish-exclusive school system
- literacy rates: 86% for jews; 22% for Arabs
- new institutions: assembly of representatives, secret service, etc.
- MANY PROTESTS
- 1920: first wave of anti-Zionist riots
- 1936-39: Arab revolt
SOLUTION: - 1939: White paper, but WW2 breaks out and Britian doesn’t have time to implement
- 1948: Isreal created because of WW2’s outcome
- 48, 56, 67, 73 - uprisings and wars
- Intifadas of 85-93, 2000-05
- Gaza War of 2023
- Wars lead to Israeli expeditions into Palestinian lands
- very political conflict
!ALL OF THIS IS ROOTED IN THE PROMISES OF BRITIAN AND EUROPEAN COLONIZATION!
India before Gandhi:
- Representation (parties): Indian National Congress, Muslim League
- Action: violence (esp. post 1905, Brits respond by supporting Muslim minority)
- disenchantment after WW1: promise of responsible government unfulfilled, Dyer, Massacre of Amritsar, they contributed a lot (Mesopotamia, Flanders, but nothing!)
- new measures: too little, too late
MAHATMA GANDHI:
- lawyer, studied in Cambridge, came back to India, stayed in South Africa for over 20 years, returned to India in 1915
- Gandhi turns INC from elite to mass party
- travels across India, holds speeches, is very popular
- satyagraha non-violent boycott: holding Brits up to their own contradictions
- provoking Brits into using violence, showing the falseness of their words of civilization
- constructive program strategy
- 1930: roundtable conference in London
- 1942: radicalized. Quit India Movement
- 1947: independence
- he is unhappy about the partitioning of India, because he wanted a united Hindu-Muslim India, which didn’t happen.
- Legacy: non-violence. Heavy criticism of European model, desires a new model, not just a replacement of Euroepans with local leaders
WW2:
JAPAN - building empire (scramble for China in 1890s), later in 1930s and 40s. Manchuria, Nanking in 1937. Rape of Nanking, massacres, heavy violence.
December 1941: United States, Pearl Harbour Hawaii. Japan does this to avoid resistance to its conquest.
- 1941: Phillipines, Thailand, Burma, Dutch East Indies… Establishes gigantic empire.
- it was able to achieve this due to the violence Europeans saw in Nanking and Pearl Harbour
- Churchil destroys infrastructure in India to avoid Japanese invasion. Leads to Benghal famine.
- Japanese position themselves as anti-European, many people welcome them.
- Railroads in Burma
- Local leadiers and ideologues have varied beliefs about Japanese expansionism.
- 1944: defeated by British India
- 1945: defeated by US (Hiroshima & Nagasaki)
JAPANESE IMPERIALISM IS IMPORTANT, BECAUSE BY THE TIME THE JAPANESE ARE DEFEATED THE LOCAL PEOPLES HAVE DEVELOPED STRONG ANTI-EU SENTIMENTS, SO ITS HARD TO EUROEPAN COLONIZERS TO RETURN
ITALY - 1935-36 Abyssinian campaign by Mussolini. Following past defeats, he tries to retake the Ethiopian territory.
- its occupation is only 9 years, during the war
- Decolonized after WW2:
Ethiopia is independent
Eriteria Joins Ethiopia
Smaliland becomes British
Lybia - 1945 UN administration, 1952 independent - After decolonization: bloody conflicts
- 1970s in the Horn: Mengistu (Ethiopian communist taking power in the 50s, embarking war against Somalia), Ogaden war
- 1993: Eritrea independent after civil war
- Somalia: independent in 1960s; troubled since 1990s
CAUSES OF DECOLONIZATION:
technical catch up, confronting colonial ideology, radicalization through education, ideas about equality through more travel, further fueled by WW2 (Europe weakened, new superpowers against colonialism), movements of antifascism and antiracism, UN - against colonization, joined by many previous colonies, observation effect: Asia to Africa, Atlantic Charter (1941) - Churchil agrees to self-determination of colonies and less expansion of spheres of influence
GEOGRAPHY OF DECOLONIZATION:
Interwar and WW2: middle east (Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel)
post-ww2: South and Southeast Asia (India, Dutch East Indies, Indonesia, Indochina)
1950s: Northern Africa
1960s: Sub-Saharan Africa
India after WW2:
- Muslim-Hundi violence
- Brits support Muslims (who believe in 2 Indias: a Hindu and a Muslim one)
- Nehru: Hindu leader (secular, cherishes all religions), leader of India
- Jinnah: Muslim leader (dies of cancer soon after independence), leader of Pakistan
- Churchil lost elections
- Attlee, labour PM, is elected: tolerant of Indian independence
- 1947: Independence a year earlier than Attlee’s promise.
- India, West and East Pakistan (East becomes Bangladesh later)
- ethnic cleansing in Punjab and Bengal; 10-15 million refugees, 1m murders
- Hindus in Pakistan, Muslims in India move due to further expanding violence.
- Hindu raja of Kashmir wants it to not take a side in the Hindu/Muslim conflict. he wants it to be a kind of Asian Switzerland.
- 1947: Pakistan invasion of Kashmir; 1949: India offers raja help only if he takes the side of India
- this conflict remains ongoing (partially): 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and even 1999 - Kashmir problem still has not been solved.
- Pakistan and India BOTH claim all of Kashmir (India because the maharaja signed it to them, Pakistan because it is majority muslim)