Contemporary History of the World

Crisis and Transition, 1900-1930

 Overview

• Revolutions
• The Persian Revolution (1905-1911)
• The “Young Turks” Revolution (1908)
• The Mexican Revolution (1910-20)
• The Chinese Revolution (1911) and the consolidation
of the territory by Chiang Kai-check (1928)
• The Russian Revolution (1905, 1917) and Civil War
(1917-23)
• Failed Revolutions: Spartacus Uprising (Germany
1919), Hungarian Revolution of Béla Kun, Spanish
general strikes of 1917, Italian general strike of 1922.

• Wars between Sovereign Nations and Empires

• Spanish-American War (1898)
• Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)
• World War I (1914-1919)
• Theatres of Operation: Western Front, Eastern
Front, Ottoman Empire, Africa.
• Was there a unifying theme? In general, the period featured the end
• Wars of Independence of old, decrepit empires and ruling elite: Ottoman and Austro-
Hungarian empires; Qing (or Manchu) Dynasty of China; Junker class of
eastern Prussia; the Samurai of Japan; aristocratic military and
• Irish War of Independence and Civil War (1919-1921) diplomatic elites of Britain and France; oligarchical political systems of
• The Riff War of Independence (1919-1923) Mexico, Spain, and Italy. In their place came new popular and
• The beginning of and Indian independence movement: nationalist political and social organizations. New empires (United
The Amritsar Massacre (1919) and the rise of States, Japan) gained influence and strength, replacing the old, in the
Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharl Nehru in India (1919) Atlantic and Pacific.
 Revolutions
• Even before World War I (194-1919), revolutions toppled, weakened, or
transformed old imperial regimes, such as the Quajar Dynasty in Persia,
the Sultans in the Ottoman Empire, or the Manchu Dynasty of China.
• Secularizing and Modernizing Revolutions in the Islamic World
• The Persian Revolution (1905), the Coup d’état (1921), and the
Monarchy of “Iran”: The Quajar Dynasty had governed Persia – a
historic empire -- since 1789, although it had become victim to both
Russian and British competition over “spheres of influence” in what
was called the “Great Game” in the nineteenth century. In 1909, a
popular uprising forced the monarchy to accept a liberal constitution
that allowed for elections, representative government, and broad
freedoms of the press and assembly. In 1921, the dynasty was
overthrown by the military general, Reza Shah, who, in 1925, founded
the Pahlavi dynasty and renamed the country “Iran”.

• Revolution of the “Young Turks” (1908) and the Rise of Atatürk (1923).
The Ottoman Empire – with its central polity on the Anatolian Peninsula
in Turkey – used Arabic for much official state business. Its capital, Atatürk (1923-1938) and Reza Shah (1925-1941): These two generals
Istanbul, was largely Arabic. The “Young Turk” movement imposed a came to power in Iran and Turkey – formerly Persia and the Ottoman
“Turkification” on the Empire and advocated ”Westernization” in an Empire – in the aftermath of revolutions and World War I. Their
attempt to “de-Islamicize” and modernize the empire. This continued legitimacy rested on “westernizing” their countries. Both allowed
after the First World War I and the rise of the successful general Atatürk women into the universities and the professions, and forbade the
(Mustaf Kemal). application of Sharia law in courts. Iran even prohibited the use of the
hijab (the headscarf). Both pursued an independent foreign policy in
an attempt to shake of the imperial influence of Britain and Russia.
• The Chinese Revolution (1911) and Unification under Chiang Kai-
Check (1928)
• The Manchu (Qing) Dynasty – torn apart by foreign powers – was
overthrown by a Revolution led by Sun Yat-Sen who set up a
revolutionary republican government in Canton (Guangzhou) in the
south.
• Still, he was unable to unite the country. China remained
dominated by local warlords linked to foreign powers with British
influence in the south, the United States in Beijing, and Japan in
Manchuria.
• Following the death of Sun, the new leader Chiang Kai-Check and
his revolutionary Kuomintang (the Chinese National Party or the
“KMT”) succeeded for a short time to unify the country. In 1928,
the famous “Northern Campaign” of 1928 was carried out to
“expel the foreigners” (meaning the Japanese).
• The Russian Revolutions (1905, 1917), Civil War (1919-21), and the
Rise of Stalin (1922-28)
• The Russian Revolution followed a similar script as Iran, Turkey, and
China. In 1905, the Romanov dynasty was first forced into accepting
a constitution following its loss in the Russo-Japanese War. In
1917, Lenin and the Bolsheviks (1917) overthrew the monarchy,
and won a civil war against monarchists (1919-1921). By 1928, Josef
Stalin assumed power, instigating an intense industrialization and
modernization program and carrying out intense purges of the
opposition.
• Mexican Revolution and Civil War (1910-1917) and Civil War (1920s):
• The oligarchical regime of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911) came to an end in 1911 when it faced a “Zapatista” rebellion in the north led by Emiliano
Zapata and later Pancho Villa. In 1917, the state adopted a constitution, although the revolution ended with the consolidation of the socialist PRI
(Partido Revolucionario Institucional) in 1929, which governed Mexico until the year 2000.
• On the left, Diego Rivera (El Arsenal, 1928), one of the many murals celebrating the Mexican Revolution. On the right. El-Lizitsky, (Beat the Whites
with a Red Wedge, 1919). These revolutions commenced a new era in which art and images played a large propagandistic role in the era of mass
politics.
• Failed Revolutions in Europe
• In the wake of the Russian Revolution and the
defeat of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian
Empires in World War I, there were a number
of socialist revolutions that took place but did
not succeed.
• Spain (1917): During World War I, a general
strike was called to coincide with a
revolutionary assembly in Barcelona that
threatened the Madrid regime, neutral in
World War I.
• Spartacus Uprising (Berlin, 1919): A
communist uprising in Berlin – inspired by the
Russian Revolution -- was crushed by
government troops.
• Hungarian Revolution (1919): A Hungarian
revolution led by the Bolshevik Béla Kun was
more successful than the Spartacus uprising,
lasting more than a 100 days. It disintegrated as
Romanian and Czech troops, backed by the Rosa Luxemburg: Above, the communist leader Rosa Luxemburg speaking during the
Entente, mobilized on its borders. Spartacus Uprising.
• Italy (1922): Workers in Italy called a general Although communist and socialists revolutions and worker general strikes failed in
strike in 1922, leading to fear of “Bolshevik Spain, Italy, Germany, Hungary and other countries, all these countries still witnessed
Revolution” which was subsequently crushed the fall of old regimes and the coming of new forms of politics. In Spain, the Bourbon
by Mussolini’s Black Shirts. Monarchy – representative of the old oligarchical system and linked to the Army --
finally fled into exile in 1931, a precursor to the coming of the Second Republic.
 World War I

• The European Historiography of the “Causes” of

the War
• The old “alliance” system of the European Powers
• The Triple Alliance: In 1879, Germany
and Austro-Hungary formed a defensive
alliance against “expansionist” and
“imperial” powers such as France and
Russia. Italy joined in 1882, Romania in
1883, the Ottoman Empire in 1914, and
Bulgaria in 1915.
• The Triple Entente: Britain and France
sign the “Entente Cordiale” in 1904,
which Russian joined in 1907, ending
Britain’s splendid isolation.
• The “blind faith” in technology.
• Europeans believed that technology –
railways, wireless telegraphs, submarine Titanic:
cables, telephones, electricity,
combustion engines, vaccines and
antibiotics heralded an endless era of The sinking of the Titanic, the largest moving structure ever built, was a metaphor and a
world prosperity and peace. Reality was it harbinger of World War I. In 1897, a German Passenger Steamer called the Kaiser
also brought aircraft carriers, tanks, Wilhelm der Grosse set the record for the fastest Atlantic crossing. In 1907, the British
airplanes, machine guns, and chemical government helped finance the Mauritania (pictured above), which in 1907 recaptured
and biological weapons.
the record for the fastest crossing and held on to it for 22 years. White Star Lines
• The competition for European hegemony and the designed the Titanic in order to beat records of speed and luxury. Before the sinking, one
arms race between Great Britain and Germany. critic had criticized “the mania for speed and smashing records” and the “insane desire for
speed on both land and sea.”
Deaths: The amount of death and destruction in Europe – all in all around 15 million – dwarfed that of the rest of the world. For example, in Africa,
losses were in the hundreds of thousands. Moreover, battlefield deaths were only a small part of the story. In the famine of 1921 and 1922, Russia lost
some five million civilians, hence suffering the greatest losses in the period. The “Spanish Flue” (1918-20) for its part, may have caused 30 to 50 million
deaths throughout the world, and hit Africa suffered particularly hard . The French and British called it the “Spanish Flue,” since it was reported in the
newspapers first in Spain (even though it had already broken out in the trenches on the Western Front). The outbreak of 1918 seems to have originated
in the United States and it was then carried across to Europe when the United States entered the war.
• The Origins of the War: The competition between empires for
colonies and “spheres of influence.”
• In Imperialism: The Highest State of Capitalism (1917), the leader of
the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin, argued that the outbreak of
war was due to geopolitical conflicts between monarchical countries
in the colonies, where their capital sought ever higher rates of
returns, produced increasingly deadly military weaponry, and was
destined to clash.
• Imperial Competition in America, Asia, and Africa
• Spanish-American War (1898): Imperial competition over the
“sphere of influence” and colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific,
in which the United States was the victor.
• Russo-Japanese War (1904-05): Imperial competition over the
“sphere of influence” into Manchuria, in which Japan was the victor.
• The Moroccan Crises:
• The First Morocco Crisis (1905): Germany mobilized troops
on the French border as Germany backed the Sultan’s
independence. Britain’s backing of France diffused the
situation, and France agreed not to occupy Morocco.
• The Second Morocco Crisis (1911): Germany sent the
gunboat, the Panther, to the port of Agadir in the Second
Moroccan Crisis, after France had built up troops in the
interior, hence violating the 1905 agreement. Britain
feared a German Port in Morocco to rival that of Gibraltar.
Again, Britain backed France and Germany backed down,
leading to the establishment of the Protectorate of
Morocco.
• Imperial Competition in the Balkans: The Balkans lay
at the intersection of three empires: The Russian, the
Ottoman, and the Austro-Hungarian. The situation was
further complicated since Greece was backed by
Britain and France, and was strategical located near
the Turkish Straits and the Suez Canal.
• Russian-Turkish War (1877-1878). In 1877, Russia
declared war on the Ottoman Empire in the Russian-
Turkish War (1877-1878). In the war, Russia secured
the independence of Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria
from the Ottoman Empire. Also as a result of the war,
the Austro-Hungarian Empire annexed Bosnia-
Herzegovina.
• The Balkan Wars (1912-1914): In the First Balkan War
(1912-3), The Balkan countries – Serbia, Bulgaria,
Montenegro, and Greece – overcame the expansionist
threat posed by the “Young Turk” revolution of 1908
and definitively expelled the Ottoman Empire from the
Balkans. In the Second Balkan War (1914), the Slavic
countries fought among themselves over borders.
• Independence of Albania: Albania – a partly
Muslim country – became independent.
• Pan-Slavism: Russia was the leader of the “Pan Slavic”
movement, an intellectual movement born in the 19th The Russian Army crossing the Danube in the Russian-Turkish War (1877-78).
century, which among its many goals sought to achieve Russia gained a large influence as the “protector” of Slavic nations (Bulgaria,
the independence of the “Slavic nations. On the eve of Romania, Serbia) and a promoter of Southern Slav (Greater Serbian) nationalism
World War I, Slovaks, Czechs, Poles, Slovenes, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Croatians, Ukrainians, Transylvanians (Romanians), and
Bosnia-Herzegovinians were still part of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire.
Outbreak of World War I:
Serbian nationalist shot the heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, on 28 June 1914 in an attempt to establish Serbian claims to Bosnia
Herzegovina. A month later on 28 July 1914, Austro-Hungary invaded Serbia, and Russia mobilized troops with the intention to invade. On 2
August, Germany invaded Belgium and Luxembourg, leading Britain and France to declare war on 4 August. In this way, imperial competition
between Russia and Austro-Hungary over “spheres of influence” in the Balkans and over Southern Slav nationalism led to the outbreak of war.
• Theaters of Conflict:
• The “Western Front”: After the German invasion of neutral
Belgium, their progress was stopped at the Battle of Marne
(September, 1914). After this, there was a long war of
attrition in trenches that stretched from Flanders to
Switzerland along the French-German border. The front did
not move until tanks came to the battlefield in 1917, and
the United States entered the war in 1918.
• The “Eastern and Southern Fronts”: There was a similar
military standoff in the East, as German and Russian troops
held each other at bay as did Ottoman and Russian troops.
• Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk (in Belarus): Russian forces
collapsed and the revolutionary government in
Russia signed a treaty.
• The War in Africa:
• German Southwest Africa: The Portuguese held
off a German invasion of Mozambique, and British
volunteers from South Africa (The Boers refused
to fight the Germans) conquered GSWA and
annexed it to South Africa.
• Congo: Initially occupied by the Germans, it was
“retaken” by an Anglo-Belgian Force in 1916. Ending the Myth of the “Civilizing Mission”: Not only did the barbarity of the
war in Europe put an end to the myth that the Europeans were “civilizing”
• German East Africa: Also conquered by British troops powers, this also occurred in Africa. As one German doctor in East Africa wrote,
during the course of the war. In East Africa, 3,156 “Behind us we leave destroyed fields, ransacked magazines, and, for the
whites in British service died in the lines of duty in immediate future, starvation.. We are no longer the agents of culture, or track is
East Africa, but, if Black troops and carriers (forced marked by death, plundering and evacuated villages.” What is more, an
labour that carried supplies to the lines in the absence estimated 2 to 5 percent of the population of the African colonies perished as
of railroads), total losses were over 100,000. German a result of the Spanish Flue! Nowhere did the flue hit as hard as Sub-Saharan
losses were similar to the British. Africa.
• Theatres of Conflict: The Ottoman Empire
• The British strategy was to use its imperial
troops to help conquer the Ottoman Empire,
but, at first, the strategy proved unsuccessful.
• Battle of Gallipoli (Summer-Fall, 1915): The key
battle in the Entente’s attempt to conquer
Istanbul. It counted heavily on troops from the
poorest parts of the Empire – working-class
Australians and New Zealanders (including
many Mauri), and Newfoundlanders. In this
battle, the Entente was forced to retreat into
Egypt. One of the main field commanders was
General Mustafa Kemal (later “Atatürk”).
• Kut al-Amara (Winter of 1915-1916): The British
assembled an Anglo-Indian force to land at
Basra, near the entrance to the Persian Gulf,
and proceed upriver to Bagdad, but it lost a key
battle south of Bagdad in 1916 and was stalled.
• Alliance with Sharif Hussein of Mecca: In 1916,
this leader raised up the Hijaz (western Saudi
Arabia) against the Ottoman empire. By so
doing, he resisted the secularizing measures of
the Young Turks, and rallied Arab nationalists to
his side. He allied with the British and French Lawrence of Arabia and Emir Faisal : T.E. Lawrence, “Lawrence of Arabia,” the British
against the Ottomans. His son, Emir Faisal, led post-graduate archaeologist turned military colonel, fought with Arab irregular troops
irregular troops in the Arab provinces against during the war under the command of the son of the Sharif of Mecca, Emir Faisal. On
the Ottomans during the War. 9 December 1917, Lawrence and Faisal entered Jaffa Gate with the British General
Allenby, hence “reconquering” Jerusalem for Christianity for the first time since the
Crusades. Faisal, for his part, became Faisal I of Iraq after unsuccessfully vying for the
Syrian throne.
The three key early theaters of war of the Ottoman Empire: The Dardanelles Strait (Gallipoli), Mesopotamia (Basra, Kut Al-Amara, Bagdad), and the Hajiz region
of the Arabian Peninsula. British and French forces initially lost in Gallipoli, became stalled at Kut-Al Amara, but were then given a new opportunity when Sharif
Hussein of the Hajiz on the Arabian Peninsula rose up against the Ottoman Empire and allied with the Entente Powers in World War I.
British Conquest of the Ottoman Empire: By late 1917, the British Empire finally broke through and – with the help of its Arab allies – invaded Palestine,
Jordan, Syria, and Iraq in 1917 and marched into mainland Turkey in 1918.
On the left, the British General Robert Allenby, in the presence of Indian troops, enters Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem in 1917, conquering the city for “Christianity”
for the first time since the crusades.
On the right, the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916) between Britain and France (and Tsarist Russia) in which Britain and France agreed to divide the Arab and
Armenian territories of the Ottoman Empire among themselves. This “secret agreement” was made public toward the end of the war by Russian
revolutionaries.
 Wars of Independence

• Ireland:
• During WWI, leaders of Sinn Fein, the Irish Independence
movement, with help from Germany, seized government
buildings in Dublin on Easter Day, 24 April 1916. The British
put the Easter Rebellion down with imprisonments and
executions.
• In 1919, Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army declared
independence, resulting in the Anglo-Irish War or the War for
Irish Independence.
• Bloody Sunday: The British Army fired into a crowd in
supporters in a Gaelic Football match on 21 November 1920,
killing 31 civilians, in reprisal for an IRA operation early in the
day, which killed a number of British informants in Dublin.
Three IRA captives held in Dublin Castle were also killed. This
definitively turned public opinion against the British.
• Partition The War of Irish Independence ended in 1922 with a
peace agreement and and Act of Parliament that partitioned
Ireland into the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland (the six
of nine counties in the north, known as Ulster, which had a
protestant majority).
• The Riff War of Independence (1919-1926)
• From 1921 to 1926, Abd El-Krim led the first-ever African
War of Independence against both the Spanish
occupation of the Riff and against the Sovereignty of the
Sultan (protected by the French) of Morocco. Like the
Arab nationalists during World War I and Sinn Fein in
Ireland, he employed guerilla tactics. In 1921, the Riff
Tribes won an important victory over the Spanish at El
Annual.
• El Annual (1921): Spain lost 11,000 men, the
largest disaster in colonial history since Kabul
(1842) when the British had lost 16,000 men.
• Abd El-Krim was ultimately defeated by the French and
Spanish at Al-Hoceima Bay in 1925. The latter battle
featured battleships and a Blitzkrieg operation with tanks
and airplanes, a precursor to the tactics of WWII.
• The Rise of Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharl Nehru in
India (1919):

• More than a year before Bloody Sunday, a similar event

took place in India during Amritsar Massacre (April, Early Independence Leaders: Both Abd- El-Krim and Mohandas Gandhi
1919) in the Punjab. The British general Dyer shot into a represented a westernized elite, fluent in multiple languages, that
crowd killing hundreds of Indians who were using a came to lead movements of Independence. Gandhi was a British-
religious holiday as a form of peaceful protest, and then trained lawyer who began his activism by defending Indian rights in
declared martial law. South Africa, while Abd El-Krim initially worked for a Spanish paper in
Melilla. While Abd El-Krim adopted the “guerilla tactics” popularized
• India’s Congress Party send both Mahatma Gandhi and by Cuban, Boer, Arab, and Irish rebels, Gandhi came to advocate “civil
Jawaharlal Nehru to the Punjab to investigate the disobedience.”
matter, and, with much support among the masses, they
quickly began moving the party toward Indian
Independence.
 The Outcome of the War: National Self-Determination?

• The Paris Peace Conference and the Fourteen Points

•
The Paris Peace Conference – held in the Quai d’Orsay (the location of the
French Foreign Ministry) from January to June 1919 – culminated in the
Treaty of Versailles (June 1919), signed in the Hall of Mirrors.
• The leading leading figure at the Conference was President Woodrow
Wilson, the first US president to visit a foreign country while in office, and
the only world leader with moral authority after the war. He came to the
conference with an idealistic agenda that aimed to put an end to Europe’s
tragic statecraft and quasi-absolutist states that had been deemed to have
caused the war. This idealistic message had massive appeal in Europe
among the generation of the trenches.
• The goal was to found a new international moral order dedicated to peace
and based on the principle of national self-determination and democracy.
In Wilson’s words, the war was hence “the war to end all wars” and the
“war to make the world safe for democracy.” However, the practical
considerations of the other three major powers of the “Big four” (David
Lloyd George of Britain; George Clemenceau of France; and Vitorio Orland
of Italy) significantly watered down Wilson’s proposals, contained in his
Fourteen Points.
• The points – and national self-determination -- were never intended to be
applied outside Europe.
• Europe:
• The Slavic Countries: The Treaty of Versailles applied the
principle of national self determination to the Slavic
“oppressed nations” that had lived under the Austro-
Hungarian, German, and Russian empires that had
disappeared during the war:
• Poland – had been divided in the eighteenth
century between Prussia, Russia, and Austria –
became independent.
• Yugoslavia – A union of the Southern Slavs, under
the leadership of Serbia, included Serbia, Croatia,
Slovenia, Montenegro, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
They were unified by the shared language of
Serbo-Croatian (except for the Slovenians who
spoke Slovene).
• Czechoslovakia – The imperfect union of Czechs
and Slovaks (who did not speak the same
language) in Bohemia and Moravia. It was
thought that these countries (like Slovenia) were
too small to be viable as separate entities.
• The Baltic Countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and
Finland: In the aftermath of the German defeat and during
the Russian Civil War, these countries were protected by
the British Navy and gained independence.
• The Trans-Caucasian Countries: The Trans-Caucasian
countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia) were
functionally independent at the time of the Versailles
conference. However, in 1922, the Red Army crossed the
Caucasian mountains and attached them to the Soviet
Union.
• The Middle East
• The borders of Asia Minor and the Mid-East were not
decided in Versailles but were later settled by wars and
further peace conferences.
• Turkey:
• The Ottoman Empire disappeared and was replaced by
the nation-state of Turkey. Plans in Versailles to attach
Smyrna and Western Thrace to Greece, and create an
enlarged Armenia were changed following the Greco-
Turkish War (1922-23). They remained part of Turkey.
• Syria:
• Emir Faisal -- the leader of the pan-Arab resistance to
the Ottomans and an ally of the British – was one of the
few delegates not to sign the Treaty of Versailles (the
Japanese also walked out of the conference, and China
refused to sign as well). He was angered at the Sykes-
Picot Agreement between Britain and France, signed
which had agreed to divide up the “Middle East” into
spheres of influences.
• In May 1919, the Syrian National Congress in Damascus
proclaimed Emir Faisal King of Syria (“Greater Syria”),
which in theory was to include what is today Syria,
Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. However, in the Franco-
Syrian War (1920), the French overthrew Faisal and, in
conjunction with Britain, applied Sykes-Picot. The
British eventually gave him Iraq (and his brother
Jordan). His quarrel with the British also led them to Emir Faisal with his delegation at the Paris Peace Conference (including
eventually recognize the Ibn Saud family’s claim over Lawrence)
Saudi Arabia.
• In accordance with Sykes-Picot, Britain established
a “mandate” around Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, and
the Hijaz.
• Iraq: Emir Faisal, of the Hashemite Dynasty, after
being defeated in Damascus, was made King of
Iraq, a Sunni King in a majority Shia country.
• Jordan: Another son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca,
Abdullah, was given the territory of Transjordan.
• Saudi Arabia: Britain initially maintained Sharif
Hussain in the Hijaz, but, after the region was
conquered by the neighboring Ibn Saud family in
1926, Britain recognized the state of Saudi Arabia.
The Ibn Saud family practiced a fundamentalist
and orthodox version of Islam known as
Wahhabism.

• The Persian Gulf Region after Versailles

• Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain :
Maintained as an independent hereditary sheikdoms
under British control. The UAE was actually seven
small entities, seeking protection from one another
and from Iran, under British protection, until the it
was formed as an independent entity in 1971. The
others became independent in that year as well.
• Yemen and Oman. Technically, they were also
independent sheikdoms (and not protectorates), but
also came under the umbrage of British informal
imperial power. Unlike the Persian Gulf States, no oil
was discovered in this regions.
In the “Holy Land”:
Palestine: In the rest of the “British Mandate,” the British ruled indirectly chiefly in collaboration with the Hashemite family in Jordan and
Iraq. In Palestine the British chose to rule directly, establishing the capital of their “mandate” in Jerusalem. The reason for direct rule was the
Balfour Declaration (technically a letter from the Foreign Secretary to Baron Rothchild) of November 1917, promising Jewish Zionist a
homeland in Palestine.
Summary: The Middle East in the Aftermath of the Breakdown
of the Ottoman Empire (1919), the Greco-Turkish War (1919-
22), The Iranian Coup (1925), and the Discovery of Oil on the
Arabian Peninsula (1930s)
• Turkey: An independent nation state on the Anatolian
Peninsula with its capital in Ankara that embraced
“Westernization” under the leadership of Atatürk.
• Iran: An independent – and relatively ethnic homogenous
nation state – in Persia that embraced “Westernization”
under the leadership of Reza Shah of the newly founded
Pahlavi dynasty. Although it attempted to maintain a
relatively independent foreign policy, British Petroleum held
important oil reserves in the south.
• Arab States
• Lebanon and Syria: Under French mandate who
shunned monarchism.
• Egypt: In 1922, Egypt became formally independent
but remained under the military occupation and
control of Britain.
• Iraq, Jordan: Under the British mandate, but ruled
“indirectly” through the Hashemite Dynasty.
• Saudi Arabia: Ruled by the Ibn Saud family who
practiced a fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam. In 1933,
the House of Saud loosened its ties with Britain,
shunned British Petroleum, and signed a deal with
four US oil companies – Chevron, Texaco, Exxon, and
Mobile – for the exploitation of its reserves.
American Oil Company Surveyors, Geologists and Engineers in the
• Palestine: Governed directly by Britain with a majority Arab Arabian Peninsula during the 1930s.
population, although reserved as a homeland for the Jewish
people.
• Africa and Asia
• The Paris Peace Conference did not enter
discussions over national self-determination in the
Middle East nor the African or Asian colonies.
• Africa
• The First Pan-African Congress was held in
Versailles in 1919 for three days, paralleling the
Paris Peace Conference. It was led by Blaise
Diagne (pictured to the right), mayor of Dakar
(Senegal) and first black political leader elected by
the Chamber of Deputies. The Vice-President was
W.E.B. Dubois, the black US civil-rights activist.
Although opinions varied, most African leaders
pressured to extend metropolitan citizenship
rights to the colonies and some degree of home
rule rather than to press for independence.
• Asia
• Interestingly, the Vietnamese independentist Ho-
Chi Minh, then twenty-six years old, came to Paris
for the Peace Conference under an assumed name
and unsuccessfully sought an audience with On the left, a photo of Blaise Diagne. On the right, a famous photo of Ho Chi
President Wilson to convince him to apply the Minh in his youth, attending a meeting of French socialists in Marseilles in
principle of national self-determination to the which he tried to convince them to support Vietnamese independence.
colonies.
 Unexpected Outcomes from the War

• Native Peoples
• Indigenous Peoples of Eastern Siberia:
Suffered a new round of oppression during the
Russian civil war, first by the White Army and
later by the Red Army.
• Maori: In New Zealand, many Maori soldiers
were recruited for the war. Their experience
and positive contributions with their
commanding officers (and shared experiences
in the fiasco of Gallipoli) led Maori minorities
to gain a sense of national cohesion in the
1920s after decades of persecution.
• Women:
• Women entered factories in Britain and
France, replacing men who left for the front,
and lent impetus to feminist and women’s In the 1920s, the French “bob” (garçon) became a sign of women’s
suffrage movements. Women increasingly had empowerment and new-found independent sexuality. It originated in
disposal incomes, created working-class French factories where women, who were previously encouraged to wear
cultures among themselves, and increasingly long hair as a sign of motherhood, cut their hair short so that it did not
took part in singles culture. get caught in the machines. Above, the American actress Louise Brooks in
1927.
• Women’s Suffrage

• Pre-war
• New Zealand (1893) and Australia (1894)
• Finland(1906),
• Norway (1913)
• Denmark, Iceland (1915)

• Inter-War:
• Holland, Russia (1917),
• Czechoslovakia, Britain (1918), Canada (1918)
• Germany (1919)
• Austria, United States (1920),
• Poland (1921)
• Hungary (1925)
• Spain (1934)

• Postwar:
• Italy (1945), Japanese suffragettes carrying petitions to the Imperial Diet in the
• France (1946) 1920s. They were not successful. Japanese women did not get the
right to vote until 1947.