Land-based Empires

Germany

• a unified nation only since 1871

• German imperial efforts were frustrated, however, by the simple fact that British and French imperialists had already carved up most of the world

• German-French antagonisms and German-British rivalries went far toward shaping the international alliances that contributed to the spread of war after 1914.

  • • French-German confrontation over Morocco in 1905

      • • Trying to isolate the French diplomatically, the German government announced its support of Moroccan independence, which French encroachment endangered.

        • The French responded to German intervention by threatening war.

        • An international conference in Algeciras, Spain, in the following year prevented a clash of arms, but similar crises threatened the peace in subsequent years.

Ottoman empire

• Ottoman Empire weakened, it began losing outlying provinces situated closest to Europe

  • • 1902–1903 -- Macedonia rebelled

    • 1908 -- Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia.

    • 1909 -- Crete, occupied by European “peacekeepers” since 1898, merged with Greece

    • 1910 -- Albania became independent

    • 1912 -- Italy conquered Libya, the Ottomans’ last foothold in Africa

• Between 1912 and 1913, the states of the Balkan peninsula—including Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, and Romania—fought two consecutive wars for possession of European territories held by the Ottoman empire

  • • The Balkan wars strained European diplomatic relations and helped shape the tense circumstances that led to the outbreak of the Great War

Austria-Hungary

• 1879 the governments of Germany and Austria-Hungary formed the Dual Alliance

  • • a defensive pact that ensured reciprocal protection from a Russian attack and neutrality in case of an attack from any other power

    • Fear of a hostile France motivated Germans to enter into this pact, whereas Austrians viewed it as giving them a free hand in pursuing their Balkan politics without fear of Russian intervention

Russia

• suffered a loss of territory in Asia due to the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905).

• By WWI, Russia was;

  • • the fifth largest industrial power in the world

    • largest oil producer

    • largest exporter of grain (1/2 of worlds supply of rye and 2nd largest wheat producer)

    • GDP equivalent to Meiji Japan

Maritime Empires

British

• In 1870 Britain, the first industrial nation, produced almost 32 percent of the world’s total industrial output

• by 1914 Britain’s share had dropped to 14 percent, roughly equivalent to that of Germany

• Economic rivalries fomented colonial competition

  • • Britain and Russia faced off in Persia (modern-day Iran) and Afghanistan

    • Britain and France in Siam (modern-day Thailand) and the Nile valley

    • Britain and Germany in east and southwest Africa

France

• Economic rivalries fomented colonial competition

  • • Germany and France in Morocco and west Africa.

• Stagnation

  • • until 1860, France was the wealthiest nation in the world

    • 1914 -- GDP had fallen behind the United States, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, at least one Scandinavian country, and several commonwealths of the British Empire.

§ Ottoman

Armenian genocide

• After 1913 the Ottoman state adopted a new policy of Turkish nationalism intended to shore up the crumbling imperial edifice

  • • The new nationalism stressed Turkish culture and traditions, which only aggravated tensions between Turkish rulers and non-Turkish subjects of the empire.

    • the state viewed Christian minorities as an obstacle to Turkism

• Those wartime atrocities that took place principally between 1915 and 1917 have become known as Armenian genocide.

  • • Best estimates suggest that close to a million Armenians perished.

WWI

• Initial success

  • • successfully fended off Allied forces on the beaches of Gallipoli in 1915 and in Mesopotamia in 1916

Ottoman retreat on all fronts

• yielded to the Russians in the Caucasus

• Turkish troops were unable to defend the empire against invading British armies that drew heavily on recruits from Egypt, India, Australia, and New Zealand

  • • British armies advanced on the Ottoman state:

      • • one entering Mesopotamia

        • the other advancing from the Suez Canal toward Palestine—they received significant support from an Arab revolt against the Turks

    • 1916 -- abetted by the British, the nomadic bedouin of Arabia under the leadership of Ibn Ali Hussain, sherif of Mecca and king of the Hejaz

    • The motivation for the Arab revolt centered on securing independence from the Ottoman empire and subsequently creating a unified Arab nation spanning lands from Syria to Yemen

      • • The British government did not keep its promise of Arab independence after the war

Republic of Turkey and Mustafa Kemal

• Turkish nationalists and wartime hero set out to defy the Allied terms

• Mustafa Kemal organized a national army that drove out Greek, British, French, and Italian occupation forces and abolished the sultanate and replaced it with the Republic of Turkey, with Ankara as its capital.

• Allied powers officially recognized the Republic of Turkey in a final peace agreement, the Treaty of Lausanne (1923)

Modernization under Mustafa Kemal

• emphasized economic development and secularism

  • • 1924 -- Caliphate ended

• Government support of critical industries and businesses, and other forms of state intervention in the economy designed to ensure rapid economic development, resulted in substantial long-term economic progress

• policy of secularism dictated the complete separation between the existing Muslim religious establishment and the state.

  • • replacement of religious with secular institutions of education and justice

    • the emancipation of women including their right to vote

    • adoption of European-derived law

    • Hindu-Arabic numerals

    • the Roman alphabet

    • and western clothing

• Theoretically heading a constitutional democracy, Atatürk ruled Turkey as a virtual dictator until his death in 1938.

§ Russian

Causes of the Russian Revolution

• Working Conditions and Bloody Sunday (January 22, 1905)

  • • led to establishment of the Duma (the first parliament in Russia)

      • • 1 landowners vote equal to:

          • • 3.5 urban dweller

            • 15 peasants

            • 45 factory workers

        • Power tilted towards the nobility

    • Duma would establish separate military units during WWI when they lost faith in the Czar's leadership

• WWI

  • • In the first year, more than 4 million Russian soldiers had been killed, wounded or taken prisoner

    • September 1915- Nicholas II assumed direct control over the front.

    • the Csar came to be personally associated with the continuing losses at the front.

    • Left his wife (Czarina Alexandra) in charge of domestic affairs in St. Petersburg

    • estimated 9-10 million casualties

Russian Revolution

• February (March) Revolution

  • • begins as a bread riot / march on the Winters Palace

    • unlike in 1905 when the soldiers fired on the marchers, the soldiers joined them.

    • Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate

    • power was given to a group of elected officials called the Duma

      • • came to be known as the Provisional Government

        • Stayed in the war

        • allowed formerly banned groups back in Russia

        • do not develop a plan to solve land and food issues

• Lenin and the April Thesis

  • • financially backed by the Germans, Lenin is sent by train from Switzerland (where he was exiled) to Petrograd (St. Petersburg)

    • Lenin’s April Theses promising: “peace, land, and bread.”

    • The Bolsheviks gained support from the peasants & urban workers resulting in a split in support for the Provisional Government.

• July Uprising

  • • Lenin attempts to overthrow the Provisional government

    • uprising fails, but Trotsky joins the Bolsheviks and with him popular support increases

• October Revolution (1917)

  • • Bolsheviks (Lenin and Trotsky) demanded an election from the Provisional Government

    • Bolsheviks failed to win a majority (300 out of 670 elected members)

    • January 1918 -- Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace when the newly elected members first met and arrested the non-Bolsheviks members in a coup d'etat.

• December 1917-- Cheka established

  • • Bolsheviks created a secret police

    • response to counter-revolutionaries and other political opponents

    • One of the first important actions taken by the Cheka was to execute the Czar and his whole family

• Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918) Lenin conceded to Germany:

  • • ⅓ of arable land

    • ⅓ of Russia’s factories

    • ⅔ of Russia’s Railroads

    • Lenin believed the International Revolution was near and this would all be renegotiated.

• Red Terror (begins September 1918)

  • • response to the assassination attempts on Lenin

    • campaign of mass killings, torture, and oppression on all who opposed the Bolsheviks that took place from 1918 to 1922

    • Estimates for the total number of people killed during the Red Terror range from 50,000 to 140,000 to over one and half million

Russian Civil War

• estimated 9-million casualties

• The Red Terror coincided with the escalation of the Civil War and the implementation of a policy known as “War Communism” which lasted from June 1918 to March 1921.

  • • Nationalization -- Nationalization is the processes a government taking ownership of a private business (sometimes called centralization)

    • War Communism’s chief feature was the nationalization of private businesses.

    • Peasants took estate lands from nobility

    • Nationalization of all Industry/factories

• Result of "War Communism"

  • • Capitalists pulled money (capital) and left Russia

    • The illegal market was supplying an estimated 65 to 70 percent of the food necessary for survival.

Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP)

• Goal: attempt to rebuild industry and, especially, agriculture OR Strategic Retrenchment

• proclaimed a partial retreat from the policies of war communism following the Russian Civil War and combined political hardening with economic relaxation.

  • • return of most agriculture, retail trade, and small-scale light industry to private ownership

    • state retained control of heavy industry, transport, banking, and foreign trade

    • peasantry were allowed to own and cultivate their own land, while paying taxes to the state.

      • Peasants could sell surplus on the open market

• The NEP reintroduced a measure of stability to the economy and allowed the Soviet people to recover from years of war, civil war, and governmental mismanagement

• 1923-75% of all trade was in private hands

Golden Age of Bolshevism (1920-1928)

• Some historians have compared this time between the Russian Civil War and the consolidation of power to the Jacobin period of the French Revolution for its radically liberal views.

  • • Leon Trotsky in From the Old Family to the New (1923) advocated complete equality for women:

      • • "As long as woman is chained to her housework, the care of the family, the cooking and sewing, all her chances of participation in social and political life are cut down in the extreme. "

    • 1927 Soviet silent film Bed and Sofa (radical issues and banned in USA and Europe).

§ Qing

Fall of the Qing

• a revolution in 1911 forced the Xuantong emperor, still a child (also known as Puyi), to abdicate.

Dr. Sun Yatsen (1866–1925)

• a leading opponent of the old regime, proclaimed a Chinese republic in 1912 and briefly assumed the office of president

• the republic soon plunged into a state of political anarchy and economic disintegration marked by the rule of warlords, who were disaffected generals from the old imperial Chinese army, and their troops.

  • • the central government in Beijing ran the post office and a few other services

    • warlords established themselves as provincial or regional rulers

      • • neglect of irrigation projects crucial to the survival of farmers

        • revived the opium trade

        • foreign economic investment left

May Fourth Movement

• following WWI, China expected the U.S. government to support the termination of the treaty system and the restoration of full Chinese sovereignty

• peacemakers at Versailles (1919) approved increasing Japanese interference in China.

• Spearheaded by students and intellectuals in China’s urban areas

  • • against foreign, especially Japanese, interference

    • pledged themselves to rid China of imperialism and reestablish national unity

Nationalists vs. Communist

• Communist

  • • 1921 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was organized in Shanghai

      • • The anti-imperialist rhetoric of the Soviet leadership struck a responsive chord

    • Mao Zedong (1893–1976), a former teacher and librarian who viewed a Marxist-inspired social revolution as the cure for China’s problems, was one of the early members of the CCP.

    • believed in:

      • • women’s equality

        • divorce

        • opposed arranged marriages

        • campaigned against the practice of foot binding

• Nationalist

  • • most prominent nationalist leader at the time, Sun Yatsen, did not share the communists’ enthusiasm for a dictatorship of the proletariat and the triumph of communism

    • Three Principles of the People, called for

      • • elimination of special privileges for foreigners

        • national reunification

        • economic development

        • a democratic republican government based on universal suffrage

• Nationalist People’s Party, or Guomindang

  • • 1923 members of the small CCP began to augment the ranks

    • by 1926, CCP members made up one-third of the Guomindang’s membership

      • • Both organizations availed themselves of the assistance offered by the Soviet Union

        • Soviet advisors helped reorganize the Guomindang and the CCP into effective political organizations.

Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek, 1887–1975)

• 1925 -- took eadership of the Guomindang following the death of Sun Yatsen

• a young general who had been trained in Japan and the Soviet Union

• unlike the CCP, he did not hold a vision for social revolution that involved the masses of China

• 1927

  • • successful Northern Expedition to unify the nation and bring China under Guomindang rule concluded

    • brutally and unexpectedly turned against his former communist allies, bringing the alliance of convenience between the Guomindang and the CCP to a bloody end

• 1928

  • • Guomindang occupied Beijing, set up a central government in Nanjing

    • declared the Guomindang the official government of a unified and sovereign Chinese state

    • communists forced to retreated to a remote area of southeastern China

      • • tried to reconstitute and reorganize their force

• 1930s

  • • increasing Japanese aggression beginning in 1931

    • priority given eliminating the CCP and its Red Army

    • Long March (1934-1935)

      • • No longer able to ward off the relentless attacks of nationalist forces, the communists took flight in October 1934 to avoid annihilation

        • Bursting through a military blockade around their bases in Jiangxi province in southeastern China, some eighty-five thousand troops and auxiliary personnel of the Red Army began the journey of 10,000 kilometers (6,215 miles).

        • difficult terrain and fighting for survival against hunger, disease, and Guomindang forces, the marchers arrived in a remote area of Shaanxi province in northwestern China in October 1935 and established headquarters at Yan’an

        • est. 90% of the CCP forces died

Mexican Revolution (1911-1919)

General Porfirio Díaz

• ruled Mexico from 1876–1910

• Mexico City—with paved streets, streetcar lines, electric street lighting, and public parks—became a showplace, and new telegraph and railroad lines connected cities and towns throughout Mexico

  • • material progress benefited only a handful of well-connected businessmen

    • boom in railroads, agriculture, and mining at the turn of the century actually caused a decline in the average Mexican’s standard of living.

• Policies:

  • • Díaz discriminated against the nonwhite majority of Mexicans (even though he was a mestizo himself)

    • tried to eradicate what they saw as Mexico’s embarrassingly rustic traditions

      • • French cuisine replaced traditional Mexican dishes

        • replaced sombreros and ponchos with European garments

        • bullfighting and cockfighting remained popular, the well-to-do preferred horse racing and soccer

    • foreign investors to acquire land and extracted resources

Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa against the Constitutionalists

Francisco I. Madero was the son of a wealthy landowning and mining family, educated in the United States

• • • When minor uprisings broke out in 1911, the government collapsed and Díaz fled into exile. The Madero presidency was welcomed by some, but aroused opposition from peasant leaders like Emiliano Zapata

    • In 1913, after two years as president, Madero was overthrown and murdered by one of his former supporters, General Victoriano Huerta

    • Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), president of the United States, showed his displeasure by sending the United States Marines to occupy Veracruz

Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa against the Constitutionalists

• Emiliano Zapata

  • • Indian farmer, had led a revolt against the haciendas in the mountains of Morelos, south of Mexico City

    • His soldiers were peasants, some of them women, mounted on horseback and armed with pistols and rifles.

    • For several years they periodically came down from the mountains, burned hacienda buildings, and returned land to the Indian villages to which it had once belonged

• Francisco “Pancho” Villa

  • from Chihuahua, a northern state where seventeen individuals owned two-fifths of the land and 95 percent of the people had no land at all

  • 1913 -- Villa, a former ranch hand, mule driver, and bandit, organized an army of three thousand men, most of them cowboys

  • They too seized land from the large haciendas, not to rebuild traditional communities as in southern Mexico but to create family ranches.

• Zapata and Villa were part agrarian rebels, part social revolutionaries. They enjoyed tremendous popular support but could never rise above their regional and peasant origins and lead a national revolution

• Constitutionalists

  • • Venustiano Carranza, a landowner, and in Alvaro Obregón, a schoolteacher organized private armies and succeeded in overthrowing Huerta in 1914

    • they represented the interests of Mexico’s middle class and industrial workers.

    • had fewer soldiers than Zapata and Villa; but they held the major cities, controlled the country’s exports of oil, and used the proceeds of oil sales to buy modern weapons.

    • gradually the Constitutionalists took over most of Mexico.

      • • In 1919 they defeated and killed Zapata; Villa was assassinated four years later.

• An estimated 2 million people lost their lives in the civil war, and much of Mexico lay in ruins.

Las soldaderas (women in the Mexican Revolution)

• for many women, the conflict also offered a moment to break from traditional female roles and get out of oppressive circumstances

• soldaderas played traditional roles as nurses or wives, others took up arms

• The majority of soldaderas were women who traveled with their husbands or other male family members to provide domestic help as the men fought

• dressed in a long peasant skirt, large straw hat and cross-bullet belt, showed as much valor as any man

  • • those who donned male clothing and took male names often did so to protect themselves from sexual violence

• high-ranking officials who resented women warriors or saw them as freaks

• Amelio (born Amelia) Robles is believed to be one of the first transgender figures in Latin American history and was recognized as a veteran of the Mexican Revolution by the Ministry of War and was arguably the most respected soldadera because of the “machismo” he displayed.

• at the war’s end, most had to resume their traditional roles as wives and mothers.

The Constitution of 1917

• The Constitutionalists also proposed social programs designed to appeal to workers and the middle class.

• promised universal suffrage and a one-term presidency

• state-run education to free the poor from the hold of the Catholic Church

• the end of debt peonage

• restrictions on foreign ownership of property

• and laws specifying minimum wages and maximum hours to protect laborers.

Most of these reforms would not be implemented until 1934 when Lázaro Cárdenas, was elected President

• Lázaro Cárdena and the Mexican Revolutionary Party (PRM)

  • • removed the generals from government positions

    • redistributed 44 million acres (17.6 million hectares) to peasant communes.

    • He closed church-run schools, replacing them with government schools.

    • nationalized the railroads and numerous other businesses.

    • 1938 -- expropriation of foreign-owned oil companies (PEMEX)