Chapter 39: The End of Empire

Vocabulary

• Partition: The action or state of dividing up a state into two or more states. This occurred in India. 

• Nonalignment: People, or countries, that are not aligned with other people, or countries, in a pact or treaty. This also occurred in India. 

• Ho Chi Minh: Leader of North Vietnam from 1945-1969, and one of Southeast Asia’s most influential communist leaders. At the Geneva Peace Conference in 1954, Vietnam was divided up at the seventeenth parallel, and that’s why Ho Chi Minh was the president. 

• Balfour Declaration: A British declaration from 1917 that supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. 

• Arab Nationalism: A nationalist ideology celebrating the glories of Arab civilization, the language and literature of the Arabs, calling for rejuvenation and political union in the Arab world. 

• Suez Crisis: The Suez Crisis, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression. In the 1950's. President Nasser of Egypt claimed ownership of the Suez Canal, thus causing an international crisis by denying access to shipping from other nations. It brought Egypt to the verge of war with the U.K 

• Kwame Nkrumah: Kwame Nkrumah (21 September 1909 - 27 April 1972), was an influential 20th century advocate of Pan-Africanism, and the leader of Ghana and its predecessor state, the Gold Coast, from 1952 to 1966.

• Cultural Revolution: A political upheaval in China 1966–76 intended to bring about a return to revolutionary Maoist beliefs. Largely carried forward by the Red Guard, it resulted in attacks on intellectuals, a large-scale purge in party posts, and the appearance of a personality cult around Mao Zedong. It led to considerable economic dislocation and was gradually brought to a halt by premier Zhou Enlai 

• Tiananmen Square: A massive demonstration for democratic reform, begun on Tiananmen Square by Chinese students in April, 1989, and was brutally repressed on June 3 and 4, 1989.

• Indira Gandhi: Daughter of Nehru, and served as prime minister of India from 1966-1977. She was assassinated in 1984. 

• Iranian revolution: The Iranian revolution was about the commoners being freed from the Shah. The reason for this was because the Shah turned the Iranian society into a Capitalist society. The Iranian people did not like this and a series of revolts occurred. The Shah was able to suppress these revolts but soon, his own soldiers started to betray him. Soon, the Shah was forced to leave the country to Egypt. 

• Nelson Mandela: South African statesman who was released from prison to become the nation's first democratically elected president in 1994 (born in 1918). He ended South African apartheid. 

Focus Question #1

            What patterns of decolonization can you find by looking at India, Palestine, Egypt, Vietnam, Ghana, Kenya, and Algeria?

            In all of these countries, they were revolutions, either led by peaceful movements, such as Mohandas Gandhi in India, or violent movements, such as those in Kenya or Vietnam.

            Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were perhaps the two most important figureheads in India’s struggle for independence. Gandhi, who is undoubtedly the more famous of the two, and Nehru were both opposed to partition, which is the action or state of dividing up a state into two or more states. In India’s case, it meant dividing into two states, one Hindu and the other Muslim. Partition also occurred for a short amount of time in Vietnam, which split up into North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The Northern Vietnam was led by communist leader Ho Chi Minh.

            A second pattern was nationalism, which was apparent in the Middle East and Egypt. The Egyptian military leader Abdel Nasser committed themselves to opposing Israel and taking command of the Arab world. However, Arab nationalism made this task exceedingly difficult.

Focus Question #2

            Discuss “the problem of Palestine” in the context of nationalism. Be sure to address both Israelis and Palestinians.

            The “problem of Palestine” refers to the conflict between Jewish, or Israeli, peoples and the Islamic, or Palestinian, peoples. Both groups felt they deserved to inhabit this region.

            The Arabs that inhabited Palestine did not want Jewish peoples to come to Palestine, and thus many attacks were conceived and carried out against them when they began to relocate there. This added to the already distressful lives of the Jews, who were also dealing with the holocaust in Germany at this time, and many were killed by Palestinians after they had successfully escaped the Holocaust.

            However, the Israelis had the support of the British in the form of the Balfour Declaration, which was a British declaration from 1917 that supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and therefore they migrated to Palestine anyways. On the other side, pan-Arab nationalism was growing among the indigenous Palestinians, and they received some support from pan-Arab nationalist groups.