Nationalistic Movements
Israel
In 1939, Britain, who controlled Palestine, reversed its 1917 Balfour Declaration, which had promised to secure a Jewish homeland. This deepened conflict between Jews and Arab Palestinians, both of whom had historical claims to the land. Following World War II, Holocaust survivors poured into Palestine, and built up American support for their own nation-state. Tensions continued to grow, and in 1947 Britain turned the problem over to the United Nations. In November 1947, the United Nations voted to separate Palestine into two separate states: one Jewish, one Arab. This plan was accepted by Jews, but rejected by the Arabs. In May of the following year, Israel declared independence. Its Arab neighbors quickly moved against the new nation. The war ended with Israel winning the war and increasing its territory, while some 700,000 Palestinians were uprooted and left as refugees, their lands being given to Jewish immigrants. This situation left peace unsettled in the region.
In 1967, Israel responded to Egyptian military movements, and in six days of conflict won the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem from Jordan. This resulted in much greater territory for Israel and many more Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), led by Yasir Arafat gained support among Arab Palestinians. The PLO fought for the destruction of Israel through guerilla warfare including, bombings and airplane hijackings. Israel responded with force, and the conflict continued.
In 1993, the PLO and Israel reached a peace agreement, known as the Oslo Accords. This historic, yet fragile, deal gave Palestinians the Gaza Strip and the West Bank territories, where they could govern with limited self-rule. This would be done under an independent Palestinian Authority, which recognized Israel and pledged to end terror attacks. Both Jews and Arabs rejected the Oslo Accords – Jews because Israel gave up land, and Arabs because they did not secure their own state. The Palestinian terror campaign and violent Israeli reprisals continued. In 2003, the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations presented a “road map for peace” to Israelis and Palestinians, with steps to take toward a settled peace in the region. Little progress has been made, each side blaming the other for slow movement toward peace.
Pan-Arabism
Pan-Arabism also had its roots in the early 20th century. This nationalist movement emphasized Arabs’ common history and language, and aimed to create a single Arab state. After the 1960s, however, the movement was much less about merging Arab states together, and more about creating institutions that would promote trade, foster cultural exchange, build up common economic goals, and provide military cooperation between Arab countries. It emphasized political cooperation while keeping the existing states intact. In reality, however, the Arab states did little to achieve these goals as trade barriers remained in place and the restricted movement of people continued. The Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s highlighted the deep divisions that existed between Arab states.
India
Indians had pushed for self-rule since the late nineteenth century, and demands grew louder following World War I. During World War II, Mohandas K. Ghandi and the Indian National Congress started the Quit India movement in an effort to achieve immediate independence from the British. The British treated this movement as a rebellion, jailed Ghandi and 60,000 others. Meanwhile, the Muslim minority wanted its own state, separate from the Hindus in India.
In 1947, the British left India after hastily partitioning the sub-continent into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. This partition was troubled from the start, however, as Hindus and Muslims were often neighbors. Following independence Hindus and Muslims turned on one another, the violence resulting in the death of nearly a million Muslims and 10 million more as refugees. In January 1948, a Hindu extremist assassinated Ghandi for his tolerance of Muslims. Border clashes continued for decades in the Kashmir province on the border between India and Pakistan. Other nationalist groups also wanted independence from India. In the 1980s, Sikhs in the Punjab province fought for self-rule, a movement that was put down by Prime Minister Indira Ghandi. A few years later, the Tamil speaking Hindu minority in Sri Lanka also pushed for their own nation. The Indian government similarly squashed their efforts.
Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi grew up in the Indian independence movement and was jailed by the British for her efforts. In 1964, she became the nation’s second prime minister, after her father, and initially proved popular and energetic. She was voted out of office in 1977, but voted back in 1980. Soon after, Sikhs in the Punjab region began to protest for an independent state. Thousands occupied the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest site for Sikh worship. Gandhi sent troops to attack the demonstrators and killed more than a thousand Sikhs. In response, two of Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards assassinated her within a few months.
China
During the 1930s, China suffered a civil war between the Guomindang Nationalist government headed by Chiang Kai-shekand the Communists led by Mao Zedong. Both sides paused the civil war to fight together against the Japanese during World War II, but in 1945 the civil war resumed. The Nationalists’ policies eroded their popular support, leading to Communist victory in 1949. Nationalist leaders fled to Taiwan and Mao founded the People’s Republic of China.
Mao began the first Five Year Plan in 1953 which successfully increased agricultural and manufacturing outputs. It was a violent campaign of land reform, however, that killed millions. In 1958, Mao instituted the Great Leap Forward, which aimed to build on the first plan’s successes, but was a failure and resulted in millions of people dying of starvation in just a few years. Mao pushed forward with the Cultural Revolution in 1966, a program of violent social change designed to rid China of anything from the “old way.” After Mao’s death in 1976, moderates gained power, introduced elements of a market economy and led China to major economic growth.
Tiananmen Square
During the 1980s, when moderates controlled the government following Mao’s death, many Chinese argued for more political freedom and economic reforms. This movement culminated in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Hundreds of thousands of protesters filled the square for weeks calling for democracy. Students staged a hunger strike, and others built barricades. The government sent in troops and tanks, which finally broke through the barricades and began to fire on the protesters killing or wounding thousands. More were arrested. Through this show of force, the government maintained tight control and demonstrated the limits of the reforms it was willing to make.
Africa
World War II created a powerful wave of nationalism in African colonies. Africans began to push back against colonization, especially after India gained independence. Each nation had its own struggle, and the European powers all responded differently.
Africans in the Gold Coast, a British colony, were the first to gain their independence. Led by Kwame Nkrumah, a man inspired by U.S. civil rights efforts, Marcus Garvey, and Mohandas Ghandi, Africans held strikes and boycotts against the colonial power. They achieved independence in 1957, electing Nkrumah as the first prime minister and changing the country’s name to an ancient African one, Ghana. Ghana’s success provided more inspiration to other colonies. Kenya, though, had many more white settlers, who owned the majority of the colony’s fertile land. Jomo Kenyatta led a nonviolent fight for the land, but radicals turned to guerilla fighting. The British labeled these fighters the Mau Mau and put thousands in concentration camps and killed thousands more. Kenyans finally achieved independence in 1963 and elected Kenyatta as their first president.
Southern Rhodesia was a self-governing British colony ruled by a small white minority. This white minority claimed independence in 1965 in response to British pressure to govern by majority rule. Africans responded with guerilla tactics and successfully opened the government to African majority rule. Southern Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, and Robert Mugabe, the most radical candidate, won the first free election in 1980 after which he instituted a one-party system limiting political freedom.
France anticipated that its colonies would become incorporated into France, but many Africans wanted their independence. France struck a deal in 1958 that colonies like Senegal and Ivory Coast would be members of the French Community and France would remain in charge of foreign policy, but the colonies would have self-rule and would continue to receive French aid. In 1960, those colonies received full independence. In Algeria, the National Liberation Front fought using guerrilla warfare from 1954 to 1962, when it finally won its independence from France.
Unlike Britain and France, Belgium had no intention of letting go of its colonies and did nothing to transition them toward independence. As a result, when the Congo was thrust into sudden independence in response to violent protests, civil war ensued. In 1965, army general Mobutu took control and built a brutal dictatorship that lasted over 30 years.
African nationalists fought long wars against Portugal who held onto their colonies until 1974 when the military took over in Portugal and pulled out of Africa. Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique were hurled into independence without a good foundation for either their governments or their economies.
South Africa had achieved self-rule in 1910, but a white minority held all political and economic power. In 1948 the Afrikaner National Party, made up of Dutch descendants, instituted apartheid, a rigid system of racial segregation designed to maintain white power. The African National Congress (ANC) organized protests, and was banned by the government in 1960. For the next three decades, South Africa helped white minorities in neighboring countries maintain their power as well. In 1989, President F. W. de Klerk recognized the need for reform; he ended apartheid and the ANC ban.
Anti-Apartheid
In response to apartheid laws instituted in 1948 by the white Afrikaner National Party, the African National Congress organized acts of peaceful civil disobedience. The government responded to one such march by shooting and killing more than 60 peaceful demonstrators in Sharpeville. After this, the ANC and Nelson Mandela embarked on a more violent course of action. The government banned the ANC in 1960 and arrested Mandela in 1964, but he remained a popular symbol of protest. Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others continued the fight from within and outside of South Africa. Many South African whites also joined the movement. In 1976, police shot black school children who were protesting, leading to riots across the country. In the 1980s, the government made small concessions, but Black Africans were still excluded from politics and segregated in civil life. In 1989, President F. W. de Klerk instituted reforms that legalized the ANC, ended apartheid, and freed Mandela from prison. This, however, was not enough to end the violence in the nation. Finally, in 1994, the first multi-racial election was held. South Africans elected antiapartheid leader Mandela as president.
Pan-Africanism
Pan-Africanism had its roots in the early 20th century, but reemerged in the 1960s and 1970s. It advocated for Black Nationalism and the unity and cooperation of African peoples in Africa and around the world. In the United States it manifested as the Black Power movement and inspired African Americans to explore African cultural roots. In Africa, in an effort to correct damage done by colonialism, the Organization for African Unity was formed in 1963. The African Union, influenced by the European Union, organized in 2002 to promote the political and economic integration of African countries.
In 1939, Britain, who controlled Palestine, reversed its 1917 Balfour Declaration, which had promised to secure a Jewish homeland. This deepened conflict between Jews and Arab Palestinians, both of whom had historical claims to the land. Following World War II, Holocaust survivors poured into Palestine, and built up American support for their own nation-state. Tensions continued to grow, and in 1947 Britain turned the problem over to the United Nations. In November 1947, the United Nations voted to separate Palestine into two separate states: one Jewish, one Arab. This plan was accepted by Jews, but rejected by the Arabs. In May of the following year, Israel declared independence. Its Arab neighbors quickly moved against the new nation. The war ended with Israel winning the war and increasing its territory, while some 700,000 Palestinians were uprooted and left as refugees, their lands being given to Jewish immigrants. This situation left peace unsettled in the region.
In 1967, Israel responded to Egyptian military movements, and in six days of conflict won the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem from Jordan. This resulted in much greater territory for Israel and many more Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), led by Yasir Arafat gained support among Arab Palestinians. The PLO fought for the destruction of Israel through guerilla warfare including, bombings and airplane hijackings. Israel responded with force, and the conflict continued.
In 1993, the PLO and Israel reached a peace agreement, known as the Oslo Accords. This historic, yet fragile, deal gave Palestinians the Gaza Strip and the West Bank territories, where they could govern with limited self-rule. This would be done under an independent Palestinian Authority, which recognized Israel and pledged to end terror attacks. Both Jews and Arabs rejected the Oslo Accords – Jews because Israel gave up land, and Arabs because they did not secure their own state. The Palestinian terror campaign and violent Israeli reprisals continued. In 2003, the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations presented a “road map for peace” to Israelis and Palestinians, with steps to take toward a settled peace in the region. Little progress has been made, each side blaming the other for slow movement toward peace.
Pan-Arabism
Pan-Arabism also had its roots in the early 20th century. This nationalist movement emphasized Arabs’ common history and language, and aimed to create a single Arab state. After the 1960s, however, the movement was much less about merging Arab states together, and more about creating institutions that would promote trade, foster cultural exchange, build up common economic goals, and provide military cooperation between Arab countries. It emphasized political cooperation while keeping the existing states intact. In reality, however, the Arab states did little to achieve these goals as trade barriers remained in place and the restricted movement of people continued. The Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s highlighted the deep divisions that existed between Arab states.
India
Indians had pushed for self-rule since the late nineteenth century, and demands grew louder following World War I. During World War II, Mohandas K. Ghandi and the Indian National Congress started the Quit India movement in an effort to achieve immediate independence from the British. The British treated this movement as a rebellion, jailed Ghandi and 60,000 others. Meanwhile, the Muslim minority wanted its own state, separate from the Hindus in India.
In 1947, the British left India after hastily partitioning the sub-continent into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. This partition was troubled from the start, however, as Hindus and Muslims were often neighbors. Following independence Hindus and Muslims turned on one another, the violence resulting in the death of nearly a million Muslims and 10 million more as refugees. In January 1948, a Hindu extremist assassinated Ghandi for his tolerance of Muslims. Border clashes continued for decades in the Kashmir province on the border between India and Pakistan. Other nationalist groups also wanted independence from India. In the 1980s, Sikhs in the Punjab province fought for self-rule, a movement that was put down by Prime Minister Indira Ghandi. A few years later, the Tamil speaking Hindu minority in Sri Lanka also pushed for their own nation. The Indian government similarly squashed their efforts.
Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi grew up in the Indian independence movement and was jailed by the British for her efforts. In 1964, she became the nation’s second prime minister, after her father, and initially proved popular and energetic. She was voted out of office in 1977, but voted back in 1980. Soon after, Sikhs in the Punjab region began to protest for an independent state. Thousands occupied the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest site for Sikh worship. Gandhi sent troops to attack the demonstrators and killed more than a thousand Sikhs. In response, two of Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards assassinated her within a few months.
China
During the 1930s, China suffered a civil war between the Guomindang Nationalist government headed by Chiang Kai-shekand the Communists led by Mao Zedong. Both sides paused the civil war to fight together against the Japanese during World War II, but in 1945 the civil war resumed. The Nationalists’ policies eroded their popular support, leading to Communist victory in 1949. Nationalist leaders fled to Taiwan and Mao founded the People’s Republic of China.
Mao began the first Five Year Plan in 1953 which successfully increased agricultural and manufacturing outputs. It was a violent campaign of land reform, however, that killed millions. In 1958, Mao instituted the Great Leap Forward, which aimed to build on the first plan’s successes, but was a failure and resulted in millions of people dying of starvation in just a few years. Mao pushed forward with the Cultural Revolution in 1966, a program of violent social change designed to rid China of anything from the “old way.” After Mao’s death in 1976, moderates gained power, introduced elements of a market economy and led China to major economic growth.
Tiananmen Square
During the 1980s, when moderates controlled the government following Mao’s death, many Chinese argued for more political freedom and economic reforms. This movement culminated in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Hundreds of thousands of protesters filled the square for weeks calling for democracy. Students staged a hunger strike, and others built barricades. The government sent in troops and tanks, which finally broke through the barricades and began to fire on the protesters killing or wounding thousands. More were arrested. Through this show of force, the government maintained tight control and demonstrated the limits of the reforms it was willing to make.
Africa
World War II created a powerful wave of nationalism in African colonies. Africans began to push back against colonization, especially after India gained independence. Each nation had its own struggle, and the European powers all responded differently.
Africans in the Gold Coast, a British colony, were the first to gain their independence. Led by Kwame Nkrumah, a man inspired by U.S. civil rights efforts, Marcus Garvey, and Mohandas Ghandi, Africans held strikes and boycotts against the colonial power. They achieved independence in 1957, electing Nkrumah as the first prime minister and changing the country’s name to an ancient African one, Ghana. Ghana’s success provided more inspiration to other colonies. Kenya, though, had many more white settlers, who owned the majority of the colony’s fertile land. Jomo Kenyatta led a nonviolent fight for the land, but radicals turned to guerilla fighting. The British labeled these fighters the Mau Mau and put thousands in concentration camps and killed thousands more. Kenyans finally achieved independence in 1963 and elected Kenyatta as their first president.
Southern Rhodesia was a self-governing British colony ruled by a small white minority. This white minority claimed independence in 1965 in response to British pressure to govern by majority rule. Africans responded with guerilla tactics and successfully opened the government to African majority rule. Southern Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, and Robert Mugabe, the most radical candidate, won the first free election in 1980 after which he instituted a one-party system limiting political freedom.
France anticipated that its colonies would become incorporated into France, but many Africans wanted their independence. France struck a deal in 1958 that colonies like Senegal and Ivory Coast would be members of the French Community and France would remain in charge of foreign policy, but the colonies would have self-rule and would continue to receive French aid. In 1960, those colonies received full independence. In Algeria, the National Liberation Front fought using guerrilla warfare from 1954 to 1962, when it finally won its independence from France.
Unlike Britain and France, Belgium had no intention of letting go of its colonies and did nothing to transition them toward independence. As a result, when the Congo was thrust into sudden independence in response to violent protests, civil war ensued. In 1965, army general Mobutu took control and built a brutal dictatorship that lasted over 30 years.
African nationalists fought long wars against Portugal who held onto their colonies until 1974 when the military took over in Portugal and pulled out of Africa. Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique were hurled into independence without a good foundation for either their governments or their economies.
South Africa had achieved self-rule in 1910, but a white minority held all political and economic power. In 1948 the Afrikaner National Party, made up of Dutch descendants, instituted apartheid, a rigid system of racial segregation designed to maintain white power. The African National Congress (ANC) organized protests, and was banned by the government in 1960. For the next three decades, South Africa helped white minorities in neighboring countries maintain their power as well. In 1989, President F. W. de Klerk recognized the need for reform; he ended apartheid and the ANC ban.
Anti-Apartheid
In response to apartheid laws instituted in 1948 by the white Afrikaner National Party, the African National Congress organized acts of peaceful civil disobedience. The government responded to one such march by shooting and killing more than 60 peaceful demonstrators in Sharpeville. After this, the ANC and Nelson Mandela embarked on a more violent course of action. The government banned the ANC in 1960 and arrested Mandela in 1964, but he remained a popular symbol of protest. Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others continued the fight from within and outside of South Africa. Many South African whites also joined the movement. In 1976, police shot black school children who were protesting, leading to riots across the country. In the 1980s, the government made small concessions, but Black Africans were still excluded from politics and segregated in civil life. In 1989, President F. W. de Klerk instituted reforms that legalized the ANC, ended apartheid, and freed Mandela from prison. This, however, was not enough to end the violence in the nation. Finally, in 1994, the first multi-racial election was held. South Africans elected antiapartheid leader Mandela as president.
Pan-Africanism
Pan-Africanism had its roots in the early 20th century, but reemerged in the 1960s and 1970s. It advocated for Black Nationalism and the unity and cooperation of African peoples in Africa and around the world. In the United States it manifested as the Black Power movement and inspired African Americans to explore African cultural roots. In Africa, in an effort to correct damage done by colonialism, the Organization for African Unity was formed in 1963. The African Union, influenced by the European Union, organized in 2002 to promote the political and economic integration of African countries.