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Chapter 24

The Rise of Nationalism FOCUS QUESTION: What were the various stages in the rise of nationalist movements in Asia and the Middle East, and what problems did they face? Although the West had emerged from World War I relatively intact, its political and social foundations and its self-confidence had been severely undermined. Within Europe, doubts about the viability of Western civilization were widespread, especially among the intellectual elite. These doubts were quick to reach perceptive observers in Asia and Africa and contributed to a rising tide of unrest against Western political domination throughout the colonial and semicolonial world. That unrest took various forms but was most evident in increasing worker activism, rural protests, and a rising national fervor among anticolonialist intellectuals. In areas of Asia, Africa, and Latin America where independent states had successfully resisted the Western onslaught, the discontent fostered by the war and later by the Great Depression led to a loss of confidence in democratic institutions and the rise of political dictatorships. Modern Nationalism The first stage of resistance to the West in Asia and Africa (see Chapters 21 and 22) had resulted in humiliation and failure and must have confirmed many Westerners’ conviction that colonial peoples lacked the strength and the know-how to create modern states and govern their own destinies. In fact, the process was just beginning. The next phase—the rise of modern nationalism— began to take shape at the beginning of the twentieth century and was the product of the convergence of several factors. The most vocal source of anticolonialist sentiment was a new urban middle class of westernized intellectuals. In many cases, these merchants, petty functionaries, clerks, students, and professionals had been educated in Western-style schools. A few had spent time in the West. Many spoke Western languages, wore Western clothes, and worked in occupations connected with the colonial regime. Some even wrote in the languages of their colonial masters. The results were paradoxical. On the one hand, this ‘‘new class’’ admired Western culture and sometimes harbored a deep sense of contempt for traditional ways. On the other hand, many strongly resented the foreigners and their arrogant contempt for colonial peoples. Though eager to introduce Western ideas and institutions into their own society, these intellectuals were dismayed at the gap between ideal and reality, theory and practice, in colonial policy. Although Western political thought exalted democracy, equality, and individual freedom, democratic institutions were primitive or nonexistent in the colonies. Equality in economic opportunity and social life was also noticeably lacking. Normally, the middle classes did not suffer in the same manner as impoverished peasants or menial workers, but they, too, had complaints. They were usually relegated to low-level jobs in the government or business and paid less than Europeans in similar positions. The superiority of the Europeans was expressed in a variety of ways, including ‘‘whites only’’ clubs and the use of the familiar form of the language (normally used by adults to children) when addressing the locals. Under these conditions, many of the new urban educated class were very ambivalent

Duiker, William J.. The Essential World History, Volume II: Since 1500: 2 (p. 622). Cengage Textbook. Kindle Edition.

masters and the civilization that they represented. Out of this mixture of hope and resentment emerged the first stirrings of modern nationalism in Asia and Africa. During the first quarter of the century, in colonial and semicolonial societies from the Suez Canal to the Pacific Ocean, educated native peoples began to organize political parties and movements seeking reforms or the end of foreign rule and the restoration of independence. RELIGION AND NATIONALISM At first, many of the leaders of these movements did not focus as much on nationhood as on the defense of indigenous religious beliefs or economic interests. In Burma, the first expression of modern nationalism came from students at the University of Rangoon, who protested against official persecution of the Buddhist religion and British lack of respect for local religious traditions (such as failing to remove footware when entering a Buddhist temple). The protesters adopted the name Thakin (TAHK-in), a polite term in the Burmese language meaning ‘‘lord’’ or ‘‘master,’’ thus emphasizing their demand for the right to rule themselves. Only in the 1930s did the Thakins begin to focus specifically on national independence. In the Dutch East Indies, Sarekat (SAR-eh-kaht) Islam (Islamic Association) began as a self-help society among Muslim merchants to fight against domination of the local economy by Chinese interests. Eventually, activist elements realized that the problem was not the Chinese merchants but the colonial presence, and in the 1920s, Sarekat Islam was transformed into the Nationalist Party of Indonesia (PNI), which focused on national independence. Like the Thakins in Burma, this party would lead the country to independence after World War II. THE NATIONALIST QUANDARY: INDEPENDENCE OR MODERNIZATION? Building a new nation, however, requires more than a shared sense of grievances against the foreign invader. A host of other issues also had to be resolved. Soon patriots throughout the colonial world were debating such questions as whether independence or modernization should be their primary objective. The answer depended in part on how the colonial regime was perceived. If it was viewed as a source of needed reforms, a gradualist approach made sense. But if it was seen primarily as an impediment to change, the first priority, for many, was to bring it to an end. The vast majority of patriotic individuals were convinced that to survive, their societies must adopt much of the Western way of life; yet many were equally determined that the local culture would not, and should not, become a carbon copy of the West. What was the national identity, after all, if it did not incorporate some traditional elements? Another reason for using traditional values was to provide ideological symbols that the common people could understand and would rally around. Though aware that they needed to enlist the mass of the population in the struggle, most urban intellectuals had difficulty communicating with the rural populations who did not understand such unfamiliar concepts as democracy and nationhood. As the Indonesian intellectual Sutan Sjahrir (SOO-tan syah-REER) lamented, many westernized intellectuals had more in common with their colonial rulers than with the people in the villages (see the box on p. 624). As one French colonial official remarked in some surprise to a French-educated Vietnamese reformist, ‘‘Why, Monsieur, you are more French than I am!’’ Gandhi and the Indian National Congress Nowhere in the colonial world were these issues debated more vigorously than in India. Before the Sepoy Rebellion (see Chapter 21), Indian consciousness had focused mainly on the question of religious identity. But in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a stronger sense of national consciousness began to arise, provoked by the conservative policies and racial arrogance of the British colonial authorities. The first Indian nationalists were almost invariably upper class and educated. Many were from urban areas such as Bombay (now Mumbai), Madras (now Chennai), and Calcutta (now Kolkata). At first, many tended to prefer reform to revolution and believed that India needed modernization before taking on the problems of independence. Such reformists did have some effect. In the 1880s, the government allowed a measure of self-government, but all too often, such efforts were sabotaged by local British officials. The slow pace of reform convinced many Indian nationalists that relying on British benevolence was futile. In 1885, a small group of Indians, with some British participation, met in Bombay to form the Indian National Congress (INC). They hoped to speak for all India, but most were high-class English-trained Hindus. Like their reformist predecessors, members of the INC did not demand immediate independence and accepted the need for reforms to end traditional abuses like child marriage and sati. At the same time, they called for an Indian share in the governing process and more spending on economic development and less on military campaigns along the frontier. The British responded with a few concessions, but change was glacially slow. The INC also had difficulty reconciling religious differences within its ranks. Its stated goal was self-determination for all Indians regardless of class or religion, but many of its leaders were Hindu and inevitably reflected Hindu concerns. In the first decade of the twentieth The Rise of Nationalism 623

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century, the separate Muslim League was created to represent the interests of the millions of Muslims in Indian society. NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE In 1915, a young Hindu lawyer returned from South Africa to become active in the INC. He transformed the movement and galvanized India’s struggle for independence and identity. Mohandas Gandhi (moh-HAHN-dus GAHN-dee) was born in 1869 in Gujarat (goo-juh-RAHT), in western India, the son of a government minister. After studying law in London, in 1893 he went to South Africa to work in a law firm serving Indian e´migre´ s working as laborers there. He soon became aware of the racial prejudice and exploitation experienced by Indians living in the territory and tried to organize them to protect their interests. On his return to India, Gandhi became active in the independence movement, setting up a movement based

Duiker, William J.. The Essential World History, Volume II: Since 1500: 2 (p. 624). Cengage Textbook. Kindle Edition.

on nonviolent resistance—the Hindi term was satyagraha (SUHT-yuhgrah-hah), meaning ‘‘hold fast to the truth’’—to try to force the British to improve the lot of the poor and grant independence to India. His goals were to convert the British to his views while simultaneously strengthening the unity and sense of self-respect of his compatriots. When the British attempted to suppress dissent, he called on his followers to refuse to obey British regulations. He began to manufacture his own clothes, dressing in a simple dhoti (DOH-tee) made of coarse homespun cotton, and adopted the spinning wheel as a symbol of Indian resistance to imports of British textiles. Gandhi, now increasingly known as Mahatma (mahHAHT-muh), India’s ‘‘Great Soul,’’ organized mass protests to achieve his aims, but in 1919, they got out of hand and led to violence and British reprisals. British troops killed hundreds of unarmed protesters in the city of Amritsar (am-RIT-sur) in northwestern India. Gandhi was horrified at the violence and briefly retreated from active politics. Nevertheless, he was arrested for his role in the protests and spent several years in prison. Gandhi combined his anticolonial activities with an appeal to the spiritual instincts of all Indians. Though he had been born and raised a Hindu, his universalist approach to the idea of God transcended individual religion, although it was shaped by historical Hindu themes. In a speech in 1931, he described God as ‘‘an indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything . . . , an unseen power which makes itself felt and yet defies all proof.’’ 1 While Gandhi was in prison, the political situation continued to evolve. In 1921, the British passed the Government of India Act, transforming the heretofore advisory Legislative Council into a bicameral parliament, two-thirds of whose members would be elected. Similar bodies were created at the provincial level. In a stroke, 5 million Indians were enfranchised. But such reforms were no longer enough for many members of the INC, who wanted to push aggressively for full independence. The British exacerbated the situation by increasing the salt tax and prohibiting the Indian people from manufacturing or harvesting their own salt. Gandhi, now released from prison, returned to his earlier policy of civil disobedience by joining several dozen supporters in a 240-mile walk to the sea, where he picked up a lump of salt and urged Indians to ignore the law (see the Film & History feature on p. 626). Gandhi and many other members of the INC were arrested. Organizations to promote women’s rights in India had been established shortly after 1900, and Indian women now played an active role in the movement. Women accounted for about 20,000, or nearly 10 percent, of all those arrested for taking part in demonstrations during the interwar period. Women marched, picketed foreign shops, and promoted the spinning and wearing of homemade cloth. By the 1930s, women’s associations were also actively promoting social reforms, including women’s education, the introduction of birth control devices, the abolition of child marriage, and universal suffrage. In 1929, the Sarda Act raised the minimum age of marriage to fourteen. NEW LEADERS AND NEW PROBLEMS In the 1930s, a new figure entered the movement in the person of Jawaharlal Nehru (juh-WAH-hur-lahl NAY-roo) (1889– 1964), son of an earlier INC leader. Educated in the law in Great Britain and a brahmin by birth, Nehru personified the new Anglo-Indian politician: secular, rational, upper class, and intellectual. In fact, he appeared to be everything that Gandhi was not. With his emergence, the independence movement embarked on two paths, religious and secular, Indian and Western, traditional and modern. The dual character of the INC leadership may well have strengthened the movement by bringing together the two primary impulses behind the desire for independence: elite nationalism and the primal force of Indian traditionalism. But it portended trouble for the nation’s new leadership in defining India’s future path. In the meantime, Muslim discontent with Hindu dominance over the INC was increasing. In 1940, the Muslim League called for the creation of a separate Muslim state of Pakistan (‘‘land of the pure’’) in the northwest. As strife between Hindus and Muslims increased, many Indians came to realize with sorrow (and some British colonialists with satisfaction) that British rule was all that stood between peace and civil war. The Nationalist Revolt in the Middle East In the Middle East, as in Europe, World War I hastened the collapse of old empires. The Ottoman Empire, which had dominated the eastern Mediterranean since the seizure of Constantinople in 1453, had been growing

Duiker, William J.. The Essential World History, Volume II: Since 1500: 2 (p. 625). Cengage Textbook. Kindle Edition.

weaker since the end of the eighteenth century, troubled by government corruption, the declining effectiveness of the sultans, and the loss of considerable territory in the Balkans and southwestern Russia. In North Africa, Ottoman authority, tenuous at best, had disintegrated in the nineteenth century, enabling the French to seize Algeria and Tunisia and the British to establish a protectorate over the Nile River valley. DECLINE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE Reformist elements in Istanbul had tried from time to time to resist the trend, but military defeats continued: Greece declared its independence, and Ottoman power declined steadily in the Middle East. A rising sense of nationality among Serbs, Armenians, and other minority peoples threatened the stability and cohesion of the empire. In the 1870s, a new generation of reformers seized power in Istanbul and pushed through a constitution creating a legislative assembly representing all peoples in the state. But the sultan they placed on the throne suspended the new charter and attempted to rule by traditional authoritarian means. By the end of the century, the defunct 1876 constitution had become a symbol of change for reformist elements,

Duiker, William J.. The Essential World History, Volume II: Since 1500: 2 (p. 626). Cengage Textbook. Kindle Edition.

now grouped together under the name Young Turks. They found support in the army and administration and among Turks living in exile. In 1908, the Young Turks forced the sultan to restore the constitution, and he was removed from power the following year. But the Young Turks had appeared at a moment of crisis for the empire. Internal rebellions, combined with Austrian annexations of Ottoman territories in the Balkans, undermined support for the new government and provoked the army to step in. With most minorities from the old empire now removed from Istanbul’s authority, many ethnic Turks began to embrace a new concept of a Turkish state based on those of Turkish nationality. The final blow to the old empire came in World War I, when the Ottoman government allied with Germany in the hope of driving the British from Egypt and restoring Ottoman rule over the Nile valley. In response, the British declared an official protectorate over Egypt and, aided by the efforts of the dashing if eccentric British adventurer T. E. Lawrence (popularly known as Lawrence of Arabia), sought to undermine Ottoman rule in the Arabian peninsula by encouraging Arab nationalists there. In 1916, the local governor of Mecca declared Arabia independent from Ottoman rule, while British troops, advancing from Egypt, seized Palestine (see the map on p. 631). In October 1918, having suffered more than 300,000 casualties during the war, the Ottoman Empire negotiated an armistice with the Allied Powers. MUSTAFA KEMAL AND THE MODERNIZATION OF TURKEY During the next years, the tottering empire began to fall apart as the British and the French made plans to divide up Ottoman territories in the Middle East and the Greeks won Allied approval to seize the western parts of the Anatolian peninsula for their dream of re-creating the substance of the old Byzantine Empire. The impending collapse energized key elements in Turkey under the leadership of a war hero, Colonel Mustafa Kemal (moos-tahFAH kuh-MAHL) (1881–1938), who had successfully defended the Dardanelles against the British during World War I. Now he resigned from the army and convoked a national congress that called for the creation of an elected government and the preservation of the empire’s remaining territories in a new republic of Turkey. Establishing his capital at Ankara (AN-kuh-ruh), Kemal drove the Greeks from the Anatolian peninsula and persuaded the British to agree to a new treaty. In 1923, the last Ottoman sultan fled the country, which was now declared a Turkish republic. The Ottoman Empire had come to an end. During the next few years, President Mustafa Kemal, now popularly known as Atatu¨rk (ah-tah-TIRK), or ‘‘Father Turk,’’ attempted to transform Turkey into a modern secular republic. The trappings of a democratic system were put in place, centered on an elected Grand National Assembly, but the president was relatively intolerant of opposition and harshly suppressed critics. Turkish nationalism was emphasized, and the Turkish language, now written in the Roman alphabet, was shorn of many of its Arabic elements. Popular education was emphasized, old aristocratic titles like pasha and bey were abolished, and all Turkish citizens were given family names in the European style. Atatu¨rk also took steps to modernize the economy. overseeing the establishment of a light industrial sector producing textiles, glass, paper, and cement and instituting a fiveyear plan on the Soviet model to provide for state direction over the economy. Atatu¨rk was no admirer of Soviet communism, however, and the Turkish economy can be better described as a form of state capitalism. He also established training institutions and model farms in an effort to modernize the agricultural sector, but such reforms had little effect on the predominantly conservative peasantry. Perhaps the most significant aspect of Atatu¨rk’s reform program was his attempt to break the power of the Islamic clerics and transform Turkey into a secular state. The caliphate was formally abolished in 1924 (see the box on p. 628), and Shari’a (Islamic law) was replaced

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by a revised version of the Swiss law code. The fez (the brimless cap worn by Turkish Muslims) was abolished as a form of headdress, and women were discouraged from wearing the traditional Islamic veil. Women received the right to vote in 1934 and were legally equal to men in all aspects of marriage and inheritance. Education and the professions were now open to citizens of both genders, and some women even began to participate in politics. All citizens were given the right to convert to another religion at will. The legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atatu¨rk was enormous. Although not all of his reforms were widely accepted in practice, especially by devout Muslims, most of the changes he introduced were retained after his death in 1938. In virtually every respect, the Turkish republic was the product of his determined efforts to create a modern Turkish nation. MODERNIZATION IN IRAN In the meantime, a similar process was under way in Persia. Under the Qajar (kuhJAHR) dynasty (1794–1925), the country had not been very successful in resisting Russian advances in the Caucasus or resolving its domestic problems. To secure themselves from foreign influence, the Qajars moved the capital from Tabriz to Tehran (teh-RAHN), in a mountainous area south of the Caspian Sea. During the midnineteenth century, one modernizing shah attempted to introduce political and economic reforms but faced resistance from tribal and religious—predominantly Shi’ite— forces. Increasingly, the dynasty turned to Russia and Great Britain to protect itself from its own people. Eventually, the growing foreign presence led to the rise of a Persian nationalist movement. Supported by Shi’ite religious leaders, opposition to the regime rose steadily among both peasants and merchants in the cities, and in 1906, popular pressure forced the shah to grant a constitution on the Western model. As in the Ottoman Empire and Manchu China, however, the modernizers had moved too soon, before their power base was secure. With the support of the Russians and the British, the shah regained control, while the two foreign powers began to divide the country into separate spheres of influence. One reason for the foreign interest in Persia was the discovery of oil reserves there in 1908. Over the next years, oil exports increased rapidly, with the bulk of the profits going to British investors. In 1921, Reza Khan (ree-ZAH KAHN) (1878–1944), an officer in the Persian army, seized power in Tehran. He had intended to establish a republic, but resistance from traditional forces impeded his efforts. In 1925, the new Pahlavi (PAHluh-vee), dynasty with Reza Khan as shah, replaced the now defunct Qajar dynasty. During the next few years, Reza Khan attempted to follow the example of Atatu¨rk in Turkey, introducing reforms to strengthen the central government, modernize the civilian and military bureaucracy, and establish a modern economic infrastructure. In 1935, he officially changed the name of the nation to Iran. Unlike Atatu¨rk, Reza Khan did not attempt to destroy the power of Islamic beliefs, but he did encourage the establishment of a Western-style educational system and forbade women to wear the veil in public. Women continued to be exploited, however; the carpets produced by their intensive labor were a major export—second only to oil—in the interwar period. To strengthen Iranian nationalism and reduce the power of Islam, Reza Khan attempted to popularize the symbols and beliefs of preIslamic times. Like his Qajar predecessors, however, he was hindered by strong foreign influence.

Duiker, William J.. The Essential World History, Volume II: Since 1500: 2 (p. 629). Cengage Textbook. Kindle Edition.