Academy College Problems Experienced Following Decolonization Paper Write an essay on the following questions Most of the Latin American countries gained

Academy College Problems Experienced Following Decolonization Paper Write an essay on the following questions

Most of the Latin American countries gained their independence in the early 19th century, yet 150 years later they were still experiencing many of the same problems as the portions of Africa and Asia that only became free in the late 20th century. How do you account for these similarities?

Compare the problems faced by Latin American countries in the 20th century with those experienced in Africa and Asia following decolonization. In what ways are they similar? In what ways are they different?

The empires created by European powers during the nineteenth century were weakened but not lost as a result of World War I. The territories and colonies lost by Germany and the Ottoman Empire were redistributed to the victors through the mandate system as laid out in Article 22 of the League of Nations Charter. But the costs of rebuilding their economies after World War II made it increasingly impossible for European powers to maintain their empires. In 1945, only a dozen of the charter members of the United Nations were located in Africa and Asia. By 2003, those two continents boasted the majority of the UN’s 191 member states. The course of this transformation and the forces it unleashed is the subject of our remaining chapters. This chapter concentrates on revolution and decolonization within the main geographic regions of Asia: the Indian Subcontinent, the Far East, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. The Decolonization of the Indian Subcontinent

? Independence for India The great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), the first Indian to receive the Nobel Prize for literature, always held Western civilization in enormous respect. Tagore believed in the ideals espoused by Western liberals, but he was extremely critical of the British Raj that dominated India since 1858 and its attendant racism. So it was not surprising that early in the 1930s Tagore praised Japan for breaking the colonial “spell under which (Asians) lay in torpor for ages.” It was a position he maintained until the very end of his life, when he found himself repelled by Japan’s own imperial ambitions, authoritarian government, and denial of individual rights. Tagore’s literary artistry earned him the admiration of his compatriots, but his constantly shifting and finely modulated positions made him an unlikely candidate for the moral leadership of the campaign for independence. That role fell to his contemporary, Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948), called the Mahatma (Great Soul) by his devoted followers. Building on his successes in gaining some civil rights for the Indian community in South Africa, Gandhi launched a nationalist crusade in India for which he would spend 2,338 days in jail. The leaders of the Indian independence movement had cooperated with the British during World War I. When that cooperation did not get them the concessions they sought, they were determined not to be let down a second time. With Japanese forces marching across neighboring British Burma, Gandhi launched a “Quit India” campaign that undermined Britain’s ability to defend its Asian colonies. The British responded by putting Gandhi and his Congress Party allies behind bars for the duration.

With India needed as a supply base and staging area for Allied efforts against Japan, the British could only ensure India’s cooperation against the Japanese with a promise of postwar independence. Given the amount of mistrust that had built up between ruler and ruler during the British Raj, however, several thousand Indian soldiers in the British colonial forces deserted to the Axis cause after being taken prisoner by the Japanese who also promised India independence. Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, wanted to keep the Empire intact, but when British voters rejected his leadership in 1945, the new Labour government of Clement Attlee (1883–1967) decided to fulfill the pledge to grant India independence. Lord Louis Mountbatten (1900–1979) was dispatched to New Delhi to oversee the end of the British Raj. When Mountbatten began his mission late in 1946, the British Empire consisted of over 300 territories scattered across the globe. India, its greatest single treasure, had a population of almost 450 million people, 90 percent of whom were illiterate. Although nationalists like Gandhi spoke in the name of a single people, the population was in fact deeply divided between the Hindu majority, a large (100 million) Muslim minority, and many smaller minorities, such as the Sikhs, who feared for their ways of life in a largely Hindu state. Economic, ethnic, and caste divisions within the Hindu majority further splintered the population.

Despite the best efforts of Mountbatten and Congress Party leader Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), India’s freedom became a negotiating nightmare. So deep was the mistrust between the Hindu and Muslim communities that not even Gandhi’s influence could bring them together within a single state. Muslim leader Mohammed Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) adamantly demanded the simultaneous creation of an independent Islamic state to be called Pakistan. A British-trained attorney, Jinnah had originally joined the Indian National Congress. But he was also a member of India’s Muslim minority. Amidst rising fears that Congress sought a Hindu state rather an inclusive one, an All-India Muslim League had been founded in 1906. At first Jinnah rejected its sectarianism and worked for Hindu-Muslim cooperation in a united India, but the Hindu-Muslim alliance proved increasingly rocky. When Congress won an absolute majority in the 1937 elections (held under a new Government of India Act, 1935), it refused to include the League in the formation of provincial governments. This convinced Jinnah that cooperation with the Hindu majority was fatal to Muslim interests. On March 22–23, 1940, Jinnah’s League adopted a resolution calling for the formation of a separate Muslim state, Pakistan. So, in the summer of 1947, teams of lawyers divided the wealth and resources of the subcontinent between the two rival religions. On August 15, India and Pakistan attained freedom in a blaze of fireworks that could not hide their mutual distrust. The Muslim population was spread throughout British India, although there were very large concentrations of Muslims at the very eastern and western extremes of the territory. In order to contain these two regions within one nation, Pakistan began its existence as a country whose two halves were separated by almost a thousand miles of Indian territory. More than ten million people took to the road across northern India as panicked Hindus and Muslims relocated to live among their fellow co-religionists. Riots and massacres followed as local majorities practiced what would later be called “ethnic cleansing.” At least half a million people died in the civil-religious conflict. No area suffered more intensely than Kashmir, a border province located physically and spiritually between the two new nations. While most of India had been formally incorporated into one British colony since 1858, there were still a few semi-independent states within the colony’s boundaries. These states were controlled by Britain under treaties signed before the Sepoy Rebellion; in 1947 Britain decided to let the rulers of those states choose whether to join India or Pakistan. As 77 percent of the population of Kashmir was Muslim, most people expected it to become Pakistan. But as its ruler negotiated for the best terms from both sides, Pakistani troops entered Kashmir in a pre-emptive strike. Needing India’s help to defend his position, the Maharajah of Kashmir decided to join India. The province has been a battleground ever since. The United Nations halted the first bloodshed (1948–1949) and awarded India two-thirds of the disputed territory. UN intervention brought two more border wars (in 1965–1966 and 1971–1972) to a cease-fire, but no permanent settlement was made. An attack on India’s Parliament on December 13, 1999, set off a fourth round of fighting because India blamed the attack on Pakistan-based militants supported by Pakistan’s intelligence service. The fact that almost 50 percent of the population of Indian Kashmir is Muslim and up to 25 percent of Pakistan’s Kashmir is Hindu makes for a difficult peace.

The empires created by European powers during the nineteenth century were weakened but not lost as a result of World War I. The territories and colonies lost by Germany and the Ottoman Empire were redistributed to the victors through the mandate system as laid out in Article 22 of the League of Nations Charter. But the costs of rebuilding their economies after World War II made it increasingly impossible for European powers to maintain their empires. In 1945, only a dozen of the charter members of the United Nations were located in Africa and Asia. By 2003, those two continents boasted the majority of the UN’s 191 member states. The course of this transformation and the forces it unleashed is the subject of our remaining chapters. This chapter concentrates on revolution and decolonization within the main geographic regions of Asia: the Indian Subcontinent, the Far East, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. The Decolonization of the Indian Subcontinent

? Independence for India The great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), the first Indian to receive the Nobel Prize for literature, always held Western civilization in enormous respect. Tagore believed in the ideals espoused by Western liberals, but he was extremely critical of the British Raj that dominated India since 1858 and its attendant racism. So it was not surprising that early in the 1930s Tagore praised Japan for breaking the colonial “spell under which (Asians) lay in torpor for ages.” It was a position he maintained until the very end of his life, when he found himself repelled by Japan’s own imperial ambitions, authoritarian government, and denial of individual rights. Tagore’s literary artistry earned him the admiration of his compatriots, but his constantly shifting and finely modulated positions made him an unlikely candidate for the moral leadership of the campaign for independence. That role fell to his contemporary, Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948), called the Mahatma (Great Soul) by his devoted followers. Building on his successes in gaining some civil rights for the Indian community in South Africa, Gandhi launched a nationalist crusade in India for which he would spend 2,338 days in jail. The leaders of the Indian independence movement had cooperated with the British during World War I. When that cooperation did not get them the concessions they sought, they were determined not to be let down a second time. With Japanese forces marching across neighboring British Burma, Gandhi launched a “Quit India” campaign that undermined Britain’s ability to defend its Asian colonies. The British responded by putting Gandhi and his Congress Party allies behind bars for the duration.

With India needed as a supply base and staging area for Allied efforts against Japan, the British could only ensure India’s cooperation against the Japanese with a promise of postwar independence. Given the amount of mistrust that had built up between ruler and ruler during the British Raj, however, several thousand Indian soldiers in the British colonial forces deserted to the Axis cause after being taken prisoner by the Japanese who also promised India independence. Britain’s wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, wanted to keep the Empire intact, but when British voters rejected his leadership in 1945, the new Labour government of Clement Attlee (1883–1967) decided to fulfill the pledge to grant India independence. Lord Louis Mountbatten (1900–1979) was dispatched to New Delhi to oversee the end of the British Raj. When Mountbatten began his mission late in 1946, the British Empire consisted of over 300 territories scattered across the globe. India, its greatest single treasure, had a population of almost 450 million people, 90 percent of whom were illiterate. Although nationalists like Gandhi spoke in the name of a single people, the population was in fact deeply divided between the Hindu majority, a large (100 million) Muslim minority, and many smaller minorities, such as the Sikhs, who feared for their ways of life in a largely Hindu state. Economic, ethnic, and caste divisions within the Hindu majority further splintered the population.

Despite the best efforts of Mountbatten and Congress Party leader Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), India’s freedom became a negotiating nightmare. So deep was the mistrust between the Hindu and Muslim communities that not even Gandhi’s influence could bring them together within a single state. Muslim leader Mohammed Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) adamantly demanded the simultaneous creation of an independent Islamic state to be called Pakistan. A British-trained attorney, Jinnah had originally joined the Indian National Congress. But he was also a member of India’s Muslim minority. Amidst rising fears that Congress sought a Hindu state rather an inclusive one, an All-India Muslim League had been founded in 1906. At first Jinnah rejected its sectarianism and worked for Hindu-Muslim cooperation in a united India, but the Hindu-Muslim alliance proved increasingly rocky. When Congress won an absolute majority in the 1937 elections (held under a new Government of India Act, 1935), it refused to include the League in the formation of provincial governments. This convinced Jinnah that cooperation with the Hindu majority was fatal to Muslim interests. On March 22–23, 1940, Jinnah’s League adopted a resolution calling for the formation of a separate Muslim state, Pakistan. So, in the summer of 1947, teams of lawyers divided the wealth and resources of the subcontinent between the two rival religions. On August 15, India and Pakistan attained freedom in a blaze of fireworks that could not hide their mutual distrust. The Muslim population was spread throughout British India, although there were very large concentrations of Muslims at the very eastern and western extremes of the territory. In order to contain these two regions within one nation, Pakistan began its existence as a country whose two halves were separated by almost a thousand miles of Indian territory. More than ten million people took to the road across northern India as panicked Hindus and Muslims relocated to live among their fellow co-religionists. Riots and massacres followed as local majorities practiced what would later be called “ethnic cleansing.” At least half a million people died in the civil-religious conflict. No area suffered more intensely than Kashmir, a border province located physically and spiritually between the two new nations. While most of India had been formally incorporated into one British colony since 1858, there were still a few semi-independent states within the colony’s boundaries. These states were controlled by Britain under treaties signed before the Sepoy Rebellion; in 1947 Britain decided to let the rulers of those states choose whether to join India or Pakistan. As 77 percent of the population of Kashmir was Muslim, most people expected it to become Pakistan. But as its ruler negotiated for the best terms from both sides, Pakistani troops entered Kashmir in a pre-emptive strike. Needing India’s help to defend his position, the Maharajah of Kashmir decided to join India. The province has been a battleground ever since. The United Nations halted the first bloodshed (1948–1949) and awarded India two-thirds of the disputed territory. UN intervention brought two more border wars (in 1965–1966 and 1971–1972) to a cease-fire, but no permanent settlement was made. An attack on India’s Parliament on December 13, 1999, set off a fourth round of fighting because India blamed the attack on Pakistan-based militants supported by Pakistan’s intelligence service. The fact that almost 50 percent of the population of Indian Kashmir is Muslim and up to 25 percent of Pakistan’s Kashmir is Hindu makes for a difficult peace.