The 20th century began with Europeans occupying empires around the globe and confident that things would stay that way. In 1900, the United States and Japan were rising powers, while Russia and China were crumbling from within. The two world wars and one global Cold War later, European hegemony had declined dramatically, and China's power was rapidly rising. What a difference a century can make! Between those historical bookends, European colonies around the world gained independence in Russia became the first of many communist nations. After World War II, the Union of Soviet Socialist republics (USSR) and the United States led their allies through decades of global tensions. At the beginning of the 21st-century, Cold War worries had faded, but new challenges to political, social, and economic stability emerged.
Key concept 6.2: Global Conflicts Shake World Stability
World historians often look at the two world wars as one event with the pause in the middle. Other major wars in history had similar patterns. For example, the Crusades and the hundred years war took long "timeouts" before restarting hostilities.
A. World War I (1914 – 1918)
When World War I ended in 1918, the survivors prayed that it would indeed be the "war to end all wars." No war involving Europe had ever caused so much widespread destruction of lives, property, and empires. The creation of a global league of Nations at the war's end, designed to keep the peace, give many people hope that governments and individuals had learned their lesson and would find ways to avoid future wars. Their hopes were short-lived.
1. Causes of World War I
i. Imperialism
- By the end of the 19th century, the colonial powers of Europe had competed for decades overland in Africa and Asia. But the beginning of the 20th century, wrangling continued over ever – diminishing amounts of unclaimed territories, leading to increased competitions and suspicions among European nations.
ii. Nationalism
- Tensions rose inside the Austro Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Russian Empire from ethnic groups that wanted to break off and form their own nations. In addition, leaders of the newly unified nations, such as Germany and Italy, naturally had great pride in their countries and expressed it through imperialist expansion and weapons buildup.
iii. Arms race
- The Industrial Revolution spurred the mass production of weapons that could kill at faster rates, and from longer distances, than ever before. The French developed a machine gun that could shoot 300 bullets amended, and the Germans built a cannon that could fire projectiles over 50 miles. National pride among the "great powers" of Europe started an unofficial competition among governments to see who could produce the best weapons.
iv. Alliances
- Rather than to risk going it alone in armed conflict, the great powers formed to competing military alliances in the early 20th century: Russia, England, and France formed the Triple Entente and Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary formed the Triple Alliance. Geographically, the intolerant was positioned on Germany's eastern and western borders, leading that nations leaders to develop "first strike" plans in both directions
v. All these factors (imperialism, nationalism, the arms race, and the alliance system) led to heightened tensions in Europe by 1914.
- The event that sparked World War I was the assassination of the future Emperor of Austria-Hungary in Bosnia, a province that was teeming with nationalist independence fervor. A chain of reactions to the assassination led to a realignment of the prewar alliances into two slightly different groups: the Allies, initially England, France, Russia, and Italy, and the central powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire.
vi. The Central Powers had short-term advantages at the start of World War I:
- They were connected geographically; The Allies were separated.
- Germany had the best trained and best equipped army in the world going into the war.
- The German industrial system was better suited folk conversion to wartime production than were those of the Allies.
vii. The Allies had long-term advantages at the start of World War I:
- The Allies had more men of military age than did the Central Powers.
- The Allies had more factories, but converting them to war production took time.
- The Allies had a stronger Navy and therefore able to enforce a blockade of the ports of the Central Powers.
2. Features of World War I
i. No one expected a long war. Germany attacked France and Russia simultaneously, expecting a quick retreat that would establish Germany as the unquestioned power in Europe.
- When that did not occur, the two sides hunkered down into defensive positions in France (the Western front) and Russia (the Eastern front) by the end of 1914.
- By 1915, fighting spread to the Ottoman Empire and the European colonies in Africa.
ii. The new weapons of World War I – including the machine gun, poison gas, the airplane, and the submarine – led to changes in tactics and philosophies about the rules of war.
- The machine guns rapid killing power forced combatants on all sites into defensive trenches, but despite the enormous losses, military leaders repeatedly sent long lines of men charging across "no man's land," the open fields that lay between the opponents.
- The result was four years of shocking numbers of deaths and injuries. In the battle of the Somme in France, 20,000 British soldiers died the first day, and 60,000 died before the first soldier reached the German trenches. After four months of continuous battle, after 1.5 million men from both sides were killed, wounded, missing, or captured.
- An unintended consequence of this kind of slaughter was a lowering of the value of humanity in the war. Civilians came to be considered legitimate targets in "total war" – where the full economic production and political power of nations were engaged in military victory. Submarines torpedoed enemy civilian ships – like the British steamship Lusitania – and canons indiscriminately fired huge artillery shells into cities far away.
iii. One effect of European global colonization was the use of soldiers recruited from Africa and Asia to fight in the war.
- India committed 1 million troops to aid the British forces.
- Military campaigns ensued in the colonies, especially in Africa, with German soldiers and their African recruits battled British and French soldiers and their African recruits.
- Australian soldiers joined their British counterparts at the field Allied assault on Gallipolli , in the Ottoman Empire.
- The British also convinced Arabs to unite with them against the Ottomans in Southwest Asia, promising Arab independence from the Ottomans as a reward.
iv. In 1917, the United States entered World War I on the Allies' side "to make the world safe for democracy," and idealistic pledge made by US president Woodrow Wilson.
- By late 1918, the addition of US soldiers pushed the central powers to the breaking point, and an armistice was signed. An armistice is an agreement that all sides will lay down their arms and leave the battlefield without declaring a winner- or loser.
- Wilson hoped for "peace without victory," believing that punishing Germany after the war would lead to resentment and another war.
- After the fighting stopped, however, England and France declared themselves the winners and Germany the loser.
v. President Wilson proposed the Fourteen Point plan, designed to stop future wars through a checklist of international agreements. The key competent was an international aid organization – the League of Nations – that was set up to settle differences between member nations before they erupted into armed conflict. The U.S. Congress refused to join the very League that Wilson created. Thus, the League was crippled from the outset.
3. Consequences of World War I
i. Approximately 20,000,000 soldiers and civilians died in the war, which was fought in Europe, Southwest Asia, and Africa. The political, social, economic impact of the loss of so many people shaped many Europeans attitudes about war for the next two decades. In the 1930s, for example, a large number of citizens and politicians in England and France favored appeasement, giving in to an aggressor nation rather than challenging it and risking war.
ii. The Treaty of Versailles approved the league of Nations but, yielding to pressures from angry citizens back home, the leaders of England and France also dictated terms to the central powers and focused on punishing Germany (so much for "peace without victory"). Germany was required to take full blame for starting the war, drastically reduced its military forces, and pay billions in war reparations to England and France.
- Developed a strong sense of resentment towards the Allied nations, especially after their economy imploded in the 1920s due to harsh reparation demands from the English and French.
- The German currency, the Mark, plummeted from a rate of four to the dollar in 1914 to over a trillion to the dollar by late 1923.
- The allies required Germany to ditch its constitutional monarchy and set up Republic – known as the Weimer Republic.
- The government was too frail and fragmented to deal effectively with the unprecedented economic crisis. These events caused many Germans to seek radical alternatives to the Weimer Republic and to seek revenge against England and France.
iii. Several international treaties between the world wars sought to limit the expansion of military might and thus reduce the chance of war.
- The five powered treaty, the London conference of 1930, the Geneva conventions, and the Kellogg's Brian Pact were the most famous.
- The first two treaties limited the number of battleships each nation could have. Japan rejected the limits because it was allotted fewer ships than the United States and England.
- The Geneva conventions set rules for war, particularly the treatment of prisoners of war.
- The Kellogg – Briand Pact outlawed war.
iv. Many of the African and Middle Eastern colonies controlled by Germany and the Ottoman Empire were reassigned by the league of Nations to France and England, we established a mandate system of rule over them.
- Under this system, France and England were the guide to Middle Eastern colonies of Syria and Lebanon (France), Palestine and Jordan (England), and Iraq (England) until the League decided the colonies were ready for independence.
- The reality of the situation was that these areas were simply added to the British and French colonial collection.
- African mandates formally under German control were Southwest Africa and Tanganyika.
- These moves prompted more nationalist feelings in the people living in the colonies in the Middle East and Africa, and also in Southeast Asia.
v. The Russian, Austrian, Ottoman, and German empires fell during or just after World War I.
- Austria's once – huge empire was divided into several nations, including Yugoslavia, Hungary, and the smaller Austria.
- The Democratic nation of Turkey was established by nationalists led by most of our Kamal, who went by the title "Ataturk."
vi. To Allied Nations, the United States and Japan, emerged from the war with their industrial capacity and colonial possessions in tact, unlike most of Europe, and with poised to rise to the top of the world's economic ladder.
vii. Conducting the war amidst rising internal problems proved too much for the Russian czar's government.
- In 1917, the czar resigned and was replaced by a provisional democracy. But it quickly fell to a communist uprising.
- Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin negotiated an early withdrawal from the war with the German government and thus fighting on the Eastern front ended.
- As payback for quitting the war early (and because they feared the new communist government), the Allied Powers pretended Russia had never been on this site and refuse to give them a seat at Versailles.
viii. Arming their colonial subjects to support the war effort may not have been in Europe's best interest because at the end of the war, nationalist leaders in African and Asian colonies had military training and equipment.
- Adding to their inclinations towards independence, many elites had learned about European ideals, such as self-rule, while attending European schools before the war.
- Another encouragement for leaders of colonial independence movements was found in a key feature of the FourteenPoint plan – a call for "self-determination" for nationalist groups. This Wilsonian concept was specifically intended for groups in Europe, but none of the colonial subjects in Africa or Asia worried about that detail.
ix. World War I ended with many issues unresolved: what would be the future of European imperialism around the world? Could Western nations slow the process of military technology to the colonies Western Mark how would Europe handle colonial nationalist movements? In addition, new issues that didn't exist before the war included what to do about a newly communist aggression nation and how to recover from the economic, political, and social damages brought by World War I.
B. World War II (1939 – 1945)
1. Causes of World War II
i. Primarily a continuation of unresolved issues from World War I, World War II outdid its predecessor in duration, global scope, use of military technology, and death.
- The treaty of Versailles required Germany to accept full guilt for the war, reduce its military forces, hand over its colonies, and pay billions in war reparations to England and France. Germany however, was rocked by overwhelming economic collapse. These humiliations left many Germans seeking vengeance.
- One man in particular, Adolf Hitler, tapped into these emotions and exploited them as a means of gaining power.
ii. Starting in late 1929, the Great Depression shook the foundations of the global economy. However, Western European nations had suffered all who the decade after the war.
- The United States was the chief financer of England, France, and Germany steps in the 1920s, and when those nations struggled to repay their loans, US banks began to falter, setting off chained reactions that damaged global financial markets.
- Another cause of the Great Depression was over production of goods in the United States – especially farm products. More produced meant lower prices to farmers; lower prices meant farmers default on bank loans, banks closed, and money supplies dried up.
iii. The result in the industrialized nations was that, in the 1930s, they all recognized they governments to be more active in financial matters, including government programs, unemployment compensation, bank regulation, and many others.
- Italy, Germany, and Japan were the most prominent nations that radically changed their governmental and financial systems. These systems were changed to fascism to address economic crises in these three countries.
- Russia – known as Soviet Union after 1922 – was isolated from the global economy. Europe and the United States wanted nothing to do with the new communist government.
iv. Italy introduced fascism in the 1920s as a political and social means to address its post World War I economic woes.
- Which was also the case in communism – but it allowed private ownership of business and other property – as was the case in capitalism. One catch – all decisions ultimately came from a single dictator with enormous power, and dissent was severely punished. Anyone considered "outside" the accepted fascist model faced unemployment, jailed, or death.
- Before the international meltdown of the Great Depression, Italy's fascist system – led by Benito Mussolini – appeared to be on and upswing in the 1920s.
- Fascism appealed to many people around the world – Germany, Spain, and then Japan followed Italy's political model.
v. In Germany, Nazism was Adolf Hitler's version of fascism. The national Socialist (abbreviated "Nazi") German workers party was a fringe group in the early 1920s, at a time when the Weimer Republic was floundering. It claimed opposition to both democracy on one hand and communism on the other, and promoted past and future German glories.
- After a failed coup in 1923 landed Hitler in jail, he decided to undermine the Weimer government from within the system. Impassioned speeches about German glory gained Hitler popular support, and the Nazis rose in power in the Weimer legislature. Careful cultivation of sympathetic government and business leaders helped Hitler's cause.
- Using propaganda, lies, and murder, the Nazis and Hitler were in absolute control of Germany by 1934.
vi. Fascism requires conquest to obtain cheap labor and raw materials – and to unite its people against enemies, real or invented.
- Except for Spain, the fastest nations of the 20th century attacked their neighbors.
- Italy invaded North Africa in Ethiopia in the 1930s.
- Germany invaded Czechoslovakia and Austria about the same time.
vii. Japan began attacking its neighbors even before it officially turned to fascism. Some historians argue that World War II really started in 1931 – eight years before the official date – when Japan invaded Manchuria, enslaved or killed its people and, and occupied their coal mines and factories. Not satisfied with the conquest alone, Japan invaded China in 1937.
viii. The well intentioned but weak league of Nations did little to stop aggression by Italy, Germany, and Japan in the 1930s. European leaders hoped that fascists would be satisfied after limited conquests and seek no more territories.
- This policy of appeasement only seemed to encourage the attackers, who showed no respect for the league of Nations pleas for peace.
- The appeasement policy of the 1930s had long term effects: after World War II, one of the biggest lessons the United States and the USSR took from the prewar Iraq was to reject appeasement in favor of "peace through strength" during the confrontational Cold War.
2. Features of World war II
i. Like World War I, there were two sets of alliances in World War II: the Allies and the Axis Powers.
- Germany, Italy, and Japan formed the Axis starting in the late 1930s.
- England, France, Poland, and most of Western Europe formed the Allies by 1940s. The Allies grew in number as they were attacked by Axis nations.
- A year later, the USSR and the United States joined the Allies
ii. Unlike World War I, which featured trench war and little movement of forces, World War II began with fast – moving fronts. This change occurred because technology improved the machines that were introduced in World War I.
- Tanks and airplanes moved much faster by the 1930s, and defensive trenches were impractical.
- Germany introduced the blitzkrieg ("lightning war"), which involved bombing from airplanes and swift advances by tanks and support vehicles. Only then did foot soldiers entered the battle – if there were still people left to fight back. This method of fighting stunned early victims of Nazi aggression.
iii. In the European theater, the war started in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. England had appeased the German fascist dictator Hitler in his conquest of central Europe. But it finally drew a line at Poland.
- After war was declared, Germany swiftly conquered most of Western Europe, including France, by 1940.
- Russia and Germany had announced a peace treaty in 1939, so England faced Nazi aggression alone.
- Two significant events in 1941 turned the tide against Nazi Germany: Hitler's surprise invasion of Russia went poorly, and the United States entered the war against the axis powers after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
- Unlike its position in World War I, Russia state with the Allies to the end of the war, despite suffering more than 25 million deaths.
iv. The first Allied offensive against the axis powers was in North Africa. From there, the Allies invaded Italy but were still fighting there when the war in Europe ended.
- The turning point of the war in Europe was the Allied invasion of Normandy (in France) in 1944. Steadily pushed back to their homeland on both the Eastern and Western France, the Germans surrendered in May 1945.
v. World War II's battles were on a greater global scale than were those of World War I.
- Campaigns throughout the Pacific were added to those in Europe and Africa.
- Japan's attack on China from 1937 to 1945 was particularly brutal, causing approximately 20,000,000 deaths.
- In addition, in 1941 Japan attacked much of Southeast Asia and islands throughout the Pacific, including Hawaii's Pearl Harbor in 1941. United States entered the Pacific war and, with Britain as its main ally, slowly pushed the Japanese empires better meet her back towards its homeland.
- Significant battles occurred in the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia) and in island chains in the central and South Pacific.
- Starting in 1945, US planes repeatedly firebombed Japanese cities in an effort to force unconditional surrender from the government.
- In August 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs, first on Hiroshima and then on Nagasaki, and the war at corruptly stopped.
3. Consequences of World War II
i. The United Nations (UN) replaced the league of Nations after World War II.
- Two key differences: the US headquarters was in the United States, not Europe – a sign of the United States postwar influence – and, unlike the League, the United Nations Security Council had military authority that could be used to stop aggression by nations.
- United Nations forces were employed in combat in the Korean War (1950 to 1953) and the Persian Gulf war (1990 – 9091).
ii. The use of atomic power was a major controversy after World War II.
- Military and government supporters of its use on Japan claimed its overwhelming destruction saved lives that would have been lost in a conventional attack on Japan's homeland.
- Critiques questioned the morality of its use at all and raised concerns about the specter of a world armed with nuclear weapons.
iii. Western Europe's reign as the world's strongest economic and political force ended with World War II.
- Two devastating wars crippled Europe, while the United States emerged as the only major power whose economy and society was relatively unscathed.
- Aided by the United Nations, Europe's colonies in Africa and Asia gained independence, one by one, starting soon after the war. These colonies included the Dutch East Indies, Indochina, India, and Ghana.
iv. The Holocaust was the worst fastest treatment of "outsiders." Hitler's "final solution" targeted Jews and other groups that did not fit into his perverted vision for Germany. 6 million of the 10 million people killed in the Holocaust were Jews from Central and East Europe.
- After the war, the United States and Britain steered UN support for the establishment of a democratic Jewish homeland (Israel) in Palestine.
v. The Cold War started almost immediately after World War II. Global tensions arose between the victorious Allies, with the USSR leading one side and the United States leading the other.
C. The Cold War (c. 1946-c.1989)
1. The conflict that best meets the description of "World war III" was the Cold War.
i. The capitalist United States and its allies in the West competed with the Communist USSR and its allies for global superiority.
ii. What made it "cold cold quote war was that the main antagonists did not fight each other directly on a battlefield. However, everything else involved in the "heart" war was in play: threats of destruction, gathering of military allies, arms buildup, spy networks, and propaganda campaigns. Even the exploration of outer space and Olympic competitions were part of the Cold War.
iii. The addition of nuclear weapons in this era made the outcome of any such war extremely hazardous to the entire world.
2. Causes of the Cold War
i. The Yalta conference
- "Big three" allies (the United States, Britain, and the USSR) met on the creamy and Peninsula to redraw the maps of Europe and Asia for the postwar world.
- Germany and its capital, Berlin were divided into Weston and Soviet regions.
- The USSR to control of most of Eastern Europe (now a separate entity from Western Europe), after promising the United States and Britain it would allow of self-determination.
- When the pledge failed to materialize and Soviet forces began to occupy Eastern Europe, the West became highly suspicious of Soviet intentions.
- For its part, leaders in the USSR feared a US led invasion through Germany or Japan.
ii. The young Yalta Conference also divided coria into communist North and capitalist South nations. Japan was put into the US sphere of influence. The United States replaced Japan's government with the Democratic constitutional monarchy and placed military bases there.
iii. The USSR gained nuclear weapons a few years after the end of World War II. This event stirred great concern among the Western allies, but the Soviet Union claimed the weapons where for self-defense purposes.
3. Features of the Cold War
i. Led by the United States, NATO and its allies enacted diplomatic and military policy of containment to keep the Soviets from spreading communism beyond Eastern Europe. World events challenge this policy around the globe for 45 years.
ii. The Berlin Airlift
- In 1946, the USSR attempted to cut of Weston access to Berlin, which was in Soviet controlled East Germany. For a year, the United States and Britain flew supplies into Western sector of Berlin. The Soviets realized the futility of their blockade and lifted it.
- This event increased Cold War tensions between the two sites. In 1961, communist East Germany built a wall dividing the pro-West sector of Borland from its communist half.
- The Berlin wall lasted until 1989, when anti-Communist East Berliners rose up and began tearing it down on live television.
iii.The Marshall plan
- As part of the US containment doctrine to limit the expansion of communism, and to help us Western European allies recover from the war, the United States sent billions of dollars in economic and construction aid to as Germany, England, France, and other Western European nations. Japan also received massive amounts of reconstruction assistance.
- The Marshall plan was lauded as a "brilliant success" the prebuilt factories and roads.
- By the early 1950s, Western Europe and Japan had booming economies.
- The USSR attempted a similar aid package for Eastern Europe called Comecon, but it's efforts were less successful.
iv. NATO versus the Warsaw Pact
- in 1949, the United States formed an alliance with Western European nations called the not Atlantic Treaty organization (NATO). It was designed to contain Soviet aggression in Europe. Canada and Turkey were also included.
- The USSR responded with the military alliance of its own, the Warsaw Pact, which most Eastern European nations were compelled to join.
- For decades, most experts assumed world war three would be fought in central Europe – probably over East or West Germany – between these two sides. Almost no forecasters in the 1960s and 1970s expected the USSR to disintegrate by the early 1990s.
v. led by Mao Zedong, Communists to control of China in 1949. The 20th century Chinese revolutions and China's Cold War relationship with the USSR and the West are discussed in more depth later in this chapter.
vi. the Korean War
- in 1950, communist North Korea invaded pro-– West South coria and, for the first time, the United Nations sent soldiers from member nations to push out the aggressor.
- The United States led the United Nations forces in this war, which included a surprise massive surge from communist Chinese soldiers into Korea.
- After three years of constant fighting, the adversaries negotiated new boundaries of the two Koreas near their previous borders. The United States and its military allies announced a global plan of containment designed to keep communism from spreading beyond its 1950 borders.
vii. The Vietnam War
- just after World War II, a war for independence in French colonial Indochina became a Cold War battle for that region, which was divided in the early 1950s into four nations, including procommunist North Vietnam (led by Ho Chi Minh), Pro – West South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
- Westlake in coria, North Vietnam soon invaded South Vietnam to unify the country under communist rule. Vietnam became the focus of US containment policy, and the US government committed its military to fighting unlimited war until running out of resolve.
- In 1975, the Communists of North Vietnam defeated and absorbed South Vietnam, creating a unified Socialist nation. Hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese migrated to France, Australia, and the United States over the two next decadesto escape the Communist system.
viii. In Latin America, Cold War tensions were at their peak during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962
- Cuba became a communist nation in 1959. In the early 1960s, the USSR secretly placed beside us with nuclear capability there. United States discovered the missiles and brought the issue to the United Nations. On the brink of a nuclear war, cooler heads prevailed and the crisis increased.
- A direct line of communication was created to link the white house in the United States and Soviet offices in Moscow, and the US are remote the controversial missiles.
- In the late 1970s and early 1980s, guerrilla wars in Latin America between pro-– and anti-Communist forces involved US and Soviet military "advisors."
ix. other so – called brush wars between Pro – West and Pro – Soviet bloc interests erupted in Africa and Central Asia during the Cold War.
4. Consequences of the Cold War
i.Cost
- the Cold War involved expenditures of many billions of dollars on both sides, especially by the main antagonist: the United States and the USSR.
- Proponents argue that the money spent was much less than what would have been appropriated if there had been a hot water between the rivals, not to mention the cost in human lives.
ii. Nuclear legacy
- the enormous destructive nature of nuclear bombs may well have been the deciding factor in the Cold War remaining cold. The major rivals may have avoided using nuclear weapons, but after the Cold War, many nations developed or tried to build their own nuclear arsenal.
- Few of them responded to calls from the United States, the former USSR, or the United Nations to curtail their nuclear programs.
- India, Pakistan, Israel, and Iran are some examples of countries that have developed their own nuclear programs.
D. the post – Cold War World, C.1989 to the present
1. Decline of Communism
i. under the leadership of Soviet president Michael Gorbachev and pushed along by a military buildup by US Pres. Ronald Reagan, the USSR softened its strict Communist philosophies and military aggression by the mid-1980s. These events gave rise to anti-Soviet and pro-democracy movements in Eastern Europe.
ii. The success of these movements was symbolized by the uncontested tearing down of the Berlin wall in 1989.
iii. Faced with the failing economy, loss of international prestige, nationalist revolts from within the Soviet Union, and an intact by members of his own government to overthrow him in a coup attempt, Gorbachev announced the breakup of USSR in 1991, and the Russian Federation was established.
iv. the 13 non-– Russian members of the USSR split off to form their own governments.
2. The decline of communism and its authoritarian methods affected Latin America in that most military dictatorships werereplaced by democratic governments starting in the 1980s. Argentina and Chile are two examples.
3. Not all political movements were in the direction of Democratic rule after the Cold War.
i. In the Middle East, and dictatorships and kingdoms remained in some nations, for example, in Saudi Arabia and Iran
ii. In China, a pro-democracy movement led by students in 1989 was brutally crushed by the government in Beijing's Kinnaman Square, even as the communist regime there was permitting limited capitalism.
II. Decolonization
Europe was weakened after two world wars. A major sign of Europe's decline as a world power was successful colonial independence movements after World War II. Some colonies gained independence peacefully, but others gain independence with violent revolution. By the mid-seven 1970s, almost all former European colonies returned to local control. Decolonization is one of the major themes of the 20th century
A. Asia
1. The major colony to gain independence after World War II was also the largest, India.
i. one does Gandhi led nonviolent resistance to the British Raj for decades, supported by the Indian national Congress and the Muslim league. There are first were successful in 1947, but Gandhi's dream of a United, independent India was not fulfilled.
ii. Muslim majority areas such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, formed separate nations in what was known as the partition of India.
ii. Muslim majority areas such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, formed separate nations in what was known as the partition of India.
2. the Dutch East Indies and Indochina represent to colonies that rebelled violently for independence
- the Netherlands granted independence to the new nation of Indonesia in 1965.
- France granted independence after Indochina split into four nations: Loas, Cambodia, and North and South Vietnam.
3. Hong Kong did not gain independence, but the British peacefully transferred sovereignty of Hong Kong – which it had heldsince the opium wars – to communist China in 1997 on the promise that the island would remain a capitalist haven.
B. Africa
1. North African nations tended to gain independence from European control earlier than sub-Saharan nations.
i. in the 1950s, the United Nations supported the peaceful independence of Libya and Tunisia.
ii. the most significant rebellion in North Africa occurred in Algeria, where French soldiers battled nationalist rebels until France granted independence in 1962.
ii. the most significant rebellion in North Africa occurred in Algeria, where French soldiers battled nationalist rebels until France granted independence in 1962.
2. Ghana was the first sub-Saharan colony to gain independence, peacefully, in 1957
3. Angolan rebels, aided by the USSR, China, and Cuba, fought against Portuguese rule until Angola became independent in 1975.
4. Most of the African colonies gained freedom through peaceful means and with support from the United Nations.
C. Latin America
1. In Latin America, Europe's fuel colonies gained independence in the postwar era as well. The Bahamas and the Guiana a colonies are two examples.
D. Outcome of colonization
1. Some form of colonies had economic success and political stability after decolonization – India, Singapore, and Indonesia are three examples.
i. however, many colonies struggled, facing civil wars, crumbling infrastructures, and continued economic hardships. Malawi and Zaire are but two examples in Africa alone.
ii. one continuity over the centuries has been Africa's lack of industrial production. It remained an exporter primarily of natural resources such as oil, coal, and other minerals.
ii. one continuity over the centuries has been Africa's lack of industrial production. It remained an exporter primarily of natural resources such as oil, coal, and other minerals.