Mr. Dostert's Domain
Remaking the Post-War World
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The Cold War
During World War II, the United States and Soviet Union had joined forces to fight against Germany. The Soviet Red Army marched west through Poland and Eastern Europe while the Americans and British marched through France and the Netherlands into Germany. When the Allied soldiers met at the Elbe River in Germany in 1945, they embraced each other warmly because they had defeated the Nazis. Their leaders, however, regarded each other much more suspiciously. Their mistrust and animosity caused by competing political philosophies would lead to a nearly half-century of conflict called the Cold War. This intense competition permeated all levels of society and reshaped world politics as former allies became set against one another, embrasing a system which promised mutually assured destruction.
Allies Become Enemies
Even before World War II ended, the U.S. alliance with the Soviet Union had begun to unravel. The United States was upset that Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, had signed a nonaggression pact with Germany in 1939. Later, Stalin blamed the Allies for not invading German-occupied Europe earlier than 1944. Driven by these and other disagreements, the two allies began to pursue opposing goals.
The war was not yet over in February 1945. But the leaders of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union met at the Soviet Black Sea resort of Yalta. There, they agreed to divide Germany into zones of occupation controlled by the Allied military forces. Germany also would have to pay the Soviet Union to compensate for its loss of life and property. Stalin agreed to join the war against Japan. He also promised that Eastern Europeans would have free elections. A skeptical Winston Churchill predicted that Stalin would keep his pledge only if the Eastern Europeans followed “a policy friendly to Russia.”
In June 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union temporarily set aside their differences. They joined 48 other countries in forming the United Nations (UN). This international organization was intended to protect the members against aggression. It was to be based in New York. The charter for the new peacekeeping organization established a large body called the General Assembly. There, each UN member nation could cast its vote on a broad range of issues. An 11-member body called the Security Council had the real power to investigate and settle disputes, though. Its five permanent members were Britain, China, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Each could veto any Security Council action. This provision was intended to prevent any members of the Council from voting as a bloc to override the others.
An Iron Curtain Descends Across Europe
Despite agreement at Yalta and their presence on the Security Council, the United States and the Soviet Union split sharply after the war. The war had affected them very differently. The United States, the world’s richest and most powerful country, suffered 400,000 deaths. But its cities and factories remained intact. The Soviet Union had at least 50 times as many fatalities. One in four Soviets was wounded or killed. Also, many Soviet cities were demolished.
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A major goal of the Soviet Union was to shield itself from another invasion from the west. Centuries of history had taught the Soviets to fear invasion. Because it lacked natural western borders, Russia fell victim to each of its neighbors in turn. In the 17th century, the Poles captured the Kremlin. During the next century, the Swedes attacked. Napoleon overran Moscow in 1812. The Germans invaded Russia during World Wars I and II. As World War II drew to a close, the Soviet troops pushed the Nazis back across Eastern Europe. At war’s end, these troops occupied a strip of countries along
the Soviet Union’s own western border. Stalin regarded these countries as a necessary buffer, or wall of protection. He ignored the Yalta agreement and installed or secured
Communist governments in Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, and Yugoslavia. These states became satellites of the Soviet Union, legally independent, but dominated by the Soviet government.
Stalin’s reluctance to allow free elections in Eastern European nations was a clear violation of those countries’ rights. Truman, Stalin, and Churchill met at Potsdam, Germany, in July 1945. There, Truman pressed Stalin to permit free elections in Eastern Europe. The Soviet leader refused. In a speech in early 1946, Stalin declared that communism and capitalism could not exist in the same world. Europe now lay divided between East and West.
Germany had been split into two sections. The Soviets controlled the eastern part, including half of the capital, Berlin. Under a Communist government, East Germany was named the German Democratic Republic. The western zones became the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949. Winston Churchill described this division of Europe as an "iron curtain" which had descended across Europe. Churchill’s phrase “iron curtain” came to represent Europe’s division into mostly democratic Western Europe and Communist Eastern Europe.
Containing Communism
U.S.-Soviet relations continued to worsen in 1946 and 1947. An increasingly worried United States tried to offset the growing Soviet threat to Eastern Europe. President Truman adopted a foreign policy called containment. It was a policy directed at blocking Soviet influence and stopping the expansion of communism. Containment policies included forming alliances and helping weak countries resist Soviet advances.
In a speech asking Congress for foreign aid for Turkey and Greece, Truman argued that democracies of the world must stand together against the Soviet threat, and the United States in particular must support them in their fight against Communism. This support would come both as financial aid for rebuilding economies as well as military aid to help fight against communist threats. Truman's support for countries that rejected communism became known as the Truman Doctrine. It caused great controversy. Some opponents objected to American interference in other nation's affairs. Others argued that the United States could not afford to carry on a global crusade against communism. Congress, however, immediately authorized more than $400 million in aid to Turkey and Greece.
Much of Western Europe lay in ruins after the war. There was also economic turmoil—a scarcity of jobs and food. In 1947, U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall proposed that the United States give aid to needy European countries. This assistance program, called the Marshall Plan, would provide food, machinery, and other materials to rebuild Western Europe. As Congress debated the $12.5 billion program in 1948, the Communists seized power in Czechoslovakia. Congress immediately voted approval. The plan was a spectacular success. Even Communist Yugoslavia received aid after it broke away from
Soviet domination.
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While Europe began rebuilding, the United States and its allies clashed with the Soviet Union over Germany. The Soviets wanted to keep their former enemy weak and divided. But in 1948, France, Britain, and the United States decided to withdraw their forces from Germany and allow their occupation zones to form one nation. The Soviet Union responded by holding West Berlin hostage.
Although Berlin lay well within the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, it too had been divided into four zones. The Soviet Union
cut off highway, water, and rail traffic into Berlin’s western zones. The city faced
starvation. Stalin gambled that the Allies would surrender West Berlin or give up their idea of reunifying Germany. But American and British officials flew food and supplies into West Berlin for nearly 11 months in what came to be known as the Berlin Airlift. In May 1949, the Soviet Union admitted defeat and lifted the blockade.
The Arms Race
These conflicts marked the start of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. A cold war is a struggle over political differences carried on by means short of military action or war. Beginning in 1949, the superpowers used espionage, propaganda, diplomacy, and secret operations in their dealings with each other. Much of the world allied with one side or the other. In fact, until the Soviet Union finally broke up in 1991, the Cold War dictated not only U.S. and Soviet foreign policy, but influenced world alliances as well.
The Berlin blockade heightened Western Europe’s fears of Soviet aggression. As a result, in 1949, ten western European nations joined with the United States and Canada to form a defensive military alliance. It was called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). An attack on any NATO member would be met with armed force by all member nations. The Soviet Union saw NATO as a threat and formed it’s own alliance in 1955. It
was called the Warsaw Pact and included the Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. In 1961, the East Germans built a wall to separate East and West Berlin. The Berlin Wall symbolized a world divided into rival camps. However, not every country joined the new alliances. Some, like India, chose not to align with either side. And China, the largest Communist country, came to distrust the Soviet Union. It remained nonaligned.
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As these alliances were forming, the Cold War threatened to heat up enough to destroy the world. The United States already had atomic bombs. In 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its own atomic weapon. President Truman was determined to develop a more deadly weapon before the Soviets did. He authorized work on a thermonuclear weapon in 1950. The hydrogen or H-bomb would be thousands of times more powerful than the A-bomb. Its power came from the fusion, or joining together, of atoms, rather than the splitting of atoms, as in the A-bomb. In 1952, the United States tested the first H-bomb. The Soviets exploded their own in 1953.
Dwight D. Eisenhower became the U.S. president in 1953. He appointed the firmly anti-Communist John Foster Dulles as his secretary of state. If the Soviet Union or its supporters attacked U.S. interests, Dulles threatened, the United States
would “retaliate instantly, by means and at places of our own choosing.” This willingness to go to the brink, or edge, of war became known as brinkmanship. Brinkmanship required a reliable source of nuclear weapons and airplanes to deliver them. So, the United States strengthened its air force and began producing stockpiles of nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union responded with its own military buildup, beginning an arms race that would go on for four decades.
The Cold War also affected the science and education programs of the two countries. In August 1957, the Soviets announced the development of a rocket that could travel great distances—an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. On October 4, the Soviets used an ICBM to push Sputnik, the first unmanned satellite, above the earth’s atmosphere. Americans felt they had fallen behind in science and technology, and the government poured money into science education. In 1958, the United States launched its own satellite. This competition to explore outer space became known as the "Space Race."
In 1960, the skies again provided the arena for a superpower conflict. Five years earlier, Eisenhower had proposed that the United States and the Soviet Union be able to fly over each other’s territory to guard against surprise nuclear attacks. The Soviet Union said no. In response, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) started secret high-altitude spy flights over Soviet territory in planes called U-2s. In May 1960, the Soviets shot down a U-2 plane, and its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured. The U-2 incident was a great embarrassment for the United States and heightened Cold War tensions.
Proxy Wars in Asia
When World War II ended, Korea became a divided nation. North of the 38th parallel, a line that crosses Korea at 38 degrees north latitude, Japanese troops surrendered to Soviet forces. South of this line, the Japanese surrendered to American troops. As in Germany, two nations developed. One was the Communist industrial north, whose government had been set up by the Soviets. The other was the non-Communist rural south, supported by the Western powers. By 1949, both the United States and the Soviet Union had withdrawn most of their troops from Korea. The Soviets gambled that the United States would not defend South Korea. So they supplied North Korea with tanks, airplanes, and money in an attempt to take over the peninsula.
On June 25, 1950, North Koreans swept across the 38th parallel in a surprise attack on South Korea. Within days, North Korean troops had penetrated deep into the south. President Truman was convinced that the North Korean aggressors were repeating what Hitler, Mussolini, and the
Japanese had done in the 1930s. Truman’s policy of containment was being put to the test and Truman resolved to help South Korea resist communism. South Korea also asked the United Nations to intervene. When the matter came to a vote in the Security Council, the Soviets were absent. They had refused to take part in the Council to protest admission of Nationalist China (Taiwan), rather than Communist China, into the UN. As a result, the Soviet Union could not veto the UN’s plan to send an international force to Korea to stop the invasion. A total of 15 nations, including the United States and Britain, participated under the command of General Douglas MacArthur.
Meanwhile, the North Koreans continued to advance. By September 1950, they controlled the entire Korean peninsula except for a tiny area around Pusan in the far southeast. That month, however, MacArthur launched a surprise attack. Troops moving north from Pusan met with forces that had made an amphibious landing at Inchon.
Caught in this “pincer action,” about half of the North Koreans surrendered. The rest retreated.
The UN troops pursued the retreating North Koreans across the 38th parallel into North Korea. They pushed them almost to the Yalu River at the Chinese border. The UN forces were mostly from the United States. The Chinese felt threatened by these troops and by an American fleet off their coast. In October 1950, they sent 300,000 troops into North Korea. The Chinese greatly outnumbered the UN forces. By January 1951, they had pushed UN and South Korean troops out of North Korea. The Chinese then moved into South Korea and captured the capital of Seoul. “We face an entirely new war,” declared MacArthur. He called for a nuclear attack against China. Truman viewed MacArthur’s proposals as reckless. “We are trying to prevent a world war, not start one,” he said. MacArthur tried to go over the President’s head by taking his case to Congress and the press. In response, Truman removed him.
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Over the next two years, UN forces fought to drive the Chinese and North Koreans back. By 1952, UN troops had regained control of South Korea. Finally, in July 1953, the UN forces and North Korea signed a cease-fire agreement. The border between the two Koreas was set near the 38th parallel, almost where it had been before the war. In the meantime, 4 million soldiers and civilians had died.
After the war, Korea remained divided. A demilitarized zone, which still exists, separated the two countries. In North Korea, the Communist dictator Kim Il Sung established collective farms, developed heavy industry, and built up the military. At Kim’s death in 1994, his son Kim Jong Il took power. Under his rule, Communist North Korea developed nuclear weapons but had serious economic problems. On the other hand, South Korea prospered, thanks partly to massive aid from the United States and other countries. In the 1960s, South Korea concentrated on developing its industry and expanding foreign trade. A succession of dictatorships ruled the rapidly developing country. With the 1987 adoption of a democratic constitution, however, South Korea established free elections.
During the 1980s and 1990s, South Korea had one of the highest economic growth rates in the world.
Political differences have kept the two Koreas apart, despite periodic discussions of reuniting the country. North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons is a major obstacle. The United States still keeps troops in South Korea.
Soviet Policy in Eastern Europe
In the postwar years, the Soviet Union kept a firm grip on its satellite countries in Eastern Europe. These countries were Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and East Germany. The Soviet Union did not allow them to direct and develop their own economies. Instead, it insisted that they develop industries to meet Soviet needs. These policies greatly hampered Eastern Europe’s economic recovery. More moderate Soviet leaders came to power after Stalin’s death. They allowed satellite countries somewhat more independence, as long as they remained allied with the Soviet Union. During the 1950s and 1960s, however, growing protest movements in Eastern Europe threatened the Soviet grip on the region. Increasing tensions with China also diverted Soviet attention and forces.
After Stalin died in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev became the dominant Soviet leader. In 1956, the shrewd, tough Khrushchev denounced Stalin for jailing and killing loyal Soviet citizens. His speech signaled the start of a policy called destalinization, or purging the country of Stalin’s memory. Workers destroyed monuments of the former dictator. Khrushchev called for “peaceful competition” with capitalist states. But this new Soviet outlook did not change life in satellite countries. Their resentment at times turned to active protest. In October 1956, for example, the Hungarian army joined protesters to overthrow Hungary’s Soviet-controlled government. Storming through the capital, Budapest, mobs waved Hungarian flags with the Communist hammer-and-sickle emblem cut out. “From the youngest child to the oldest man,” one protester declared, “no one wants communism.”
A popular and liberal Hungarian Communist leader named Imre Nagy formed a new government. Nagy promised free elections and demanded Soviet troops leave. In response, Soviet tanks and infantry entered Budapest in November. Thousands of Hungarian freedom fighters armed themselves with pistols and bottles, but were overwhelmed. A pro-Soviet government was installed, and Nagy was eventually executed.
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Despite the show of force in Hungary, Khrushchev lost prestige in his country as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. In 1964, party leaders voted to remove him from power. His replacement, Leonid Brezhnev, quickly adopted repressive domestic policies. The party enforced laws to limit such basic human rights as freedom of speech and worship. Government censors controlled what writers could publish. Brezhnev clamped down on those who dared to protest his policies. For example, the secret police arrested many dissidents, including Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for literature. They then expelled him from the Soviet Union.
Brezhnev made clear that he would not tolerate dissent in Eastern Europe either. His policy was put to the test in early 1968. At that time, Czech Communist leader Alexander Dubcvek loosened controls on censorship to offer his country socialism with “a human face.” This period of reform, when Czechoslovakia’s capital bloomed with new ideas, became known as Prague Spring. However, it did not survive the summer. On August 20, armed forces from the Warsaw Pact nations invaded Czechoslovakia. Brezhnev justified this invasion by claiming the Soviet Union had the right to prevent its satellites from rejecting communism, a policy known as the Brezhnev Doctrine.
An Ongoing Conflict
Despite the mutual animosity between the Cold War superpowers, the Cold War never escalated to open warfare. The threat of nuclear war largely forced the opposing sides to compete peacefully or fight smaller proxy wars that never expanded into another World War. However, the threat of nuclear war was very real and the people of the era lived in a world constantly on the brink, fearful of what could happen if the conflict ever broke out. The clash of ideologies between Communism and Democracy came to dominate the political landscape for nearly 50 years as each nation positioned themselves in opposition to one another preparing for a war that never came. The hostility and fear the Cold War brought to the world continued for decades, until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 finally brought the conflict to an end.
Suplemental Videos
The Marshall Plan
The Berlin Airlift
The Arms Race
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Crash Course: Soviet Bloc
Partition of India
After World War II, dramatic political changes began to take place across the world. This was especially the case with regard to the policy of colonialism. Countries that held colonies began to question the practice. After the world struggle against dictatorship, many leaders argued that no country should control another nation. Others questioned the high cost and commitment of holding colonies. Meanwhile, the people of India continued to press even harder for their freedom. Although most Indians agreed that India should be independent, there was extreme disagreement as to what would happen next. Ultimately independence did not solve its problems. Instead it brought uncertainty, violence, and ongoing conflict. The peaceful message of Gandhi became untenable as the political realities of independence remade India into a modern and divided state.
A Movement Toward Independence
The British had ruled India for almost two centuries. Indian resistance to Britain, which had existed from the beginning, intensified in 1939, when Britain committed India’s armed forces to World War II without first consulting the colony’s elected representatives. The move left Indian nationalists stunned and humiliated. Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi launched a nonviolent campaign of noncooperation with the British. Officials imprisoned numerous nationalists for this action. In 1942, the British tried to gain the support of the nationalists by promising governmental changes after the war. But the offer did not include Indian independence.
As they intensified their struggle against the British, Indians also struggled with each other. India has long been home to two main religious groups. In the 1940s, India had approximately 350 million Hindus and about 100 million Muslims. The Indian National Congress, or the Congress Party, was India’s national political party. Most members of the Congress Party were Hindus, but the party at times had many Muslim members.
In competition with the Congress Party was the Muslim League, an organization founded in 1906 in India to protect Muslim interests. Members of the league felt that the mainly Hindu Congress Party looked out primarily for Hindu interests. The leader of the Muslim League, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, insisted that all Muslims resign from the
Congress Party. The Muslim League stated that it would never accept Indian independence if it meant rule by the Hindu-dominated Congress Party. Jinnah stated, “The only thing the Muslim has in common with the Hindu is his slavery to the British.”
Indepence Brings Turmoil
When World War II ended, Britain found itself faced with enormous war debts. As
a result, British leaders began to rethink the expense of maintaining and governing
distant colonies. With India continuing to push for independence, the stage was set
for the British to hand over power. However, a key problem emerged: Who should
receive the power—Hindus or Muslims?
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Muslims resisted attempts to include them in an Indian government dominated by Hindus. Rioting between the two groups broke out in several Indian cities. In August 1946, four days of clashes in Calcutta left more than 5,000 people dead and more than 15,000 hurt.
British officials soon became convinced that partition, an idea first proposed by India’s Muslims, would be the only way to ensure a safe and secure region. Partition was the term given to the division of India into separate Hindu and Muslim nations. The northwest and eastern regions of India, where most Muslims lived, would become the new nation of Pakistan.
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The British House of Commons passed an act on July 16, 1947, that granted two nations, India and Pakistan, independence in one month’s time. In that short period, more than 500 independent native princes had to decide which nation they would join. The administration of the courts, the military, the railways, and the police—the whole of the civil service—had to be divided down to the last paper clip. Most difficult of all, millions of Indian citizens—Hindus, Muslims, and yet another significant religious group, the Sikhs—had to decide where to go.
During the summer of 1947, 10 million people were on the move in the Indian subcontinent. As people scrambled to relocate, violence among the different religious groups erupted. Muslims killed Sikhs who were moving into India. Hindus and Sikhs killed Muslims who were headed into Pakistan. In all, an estimated 1 million died. “What is there to celebrate?” Gandhi mourned. “I see nothing but rivers of blood.” Gandhi personally went to the Indian capital of Delhi to plead for fair treatment of Muslim refugees. While there, he himself became a victim of the nation’s violence.
A Hindu extremist who thought Gandhi too protective of Muslims shot and killed him on January 30, 1948.
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As if partition itself didn’t result in enough bloodshed between India’s Muslims and Hindus,the two groups quickly squared off over the small region of Kashmir. Kashmir lay at the northern point of India next to Pakistan. Although its ruler was Hindu, Kashmir had a majority Muslim population. Shortly after independence, India and Pakistan began battling each other for control of the region. The fighting continued until the United Nations arranged a ceasefire in 1949. The cease-fire left a third of Kashmir under Pakistani control and the rest under Indian control. The two countries continue to fight over the region today.
The Modern Subcontinent
With the granting of its independence on August 15, 1947, India became the world’s largest democracy. Jawaharlal Nehru became India's first prime minister. Nehru served as India’s leader for its first 17 years of independence. He had been one of Gandhi’s most devoted followers. Educated in Britain, Nehru won popularity among all groups in India. He emphasized democracy, unity, and economic modernization.
Nehru used his leadership to move India forward. He led other newly independent nations of the world in forming an alliance of countries that were neutral in the Cold War conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union. On the home front, Nehru called for a reorganization of the states by language. He also pushed for industrialization and sponsored social reforms. He tried to elevate the status of the lower castes, or those at the bottom of society, and help women gain the rights promised by the constitution.
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Nehru died in 1964. Since his death India has struggled with political factions which have developed within India creating political instability. Nehru's daughter Indira Gandhi was chosen to be prime minister but was assassinated by Sikh extremists who wanted an independent Sikh state. Since the death of Indira Gandhi, India has been led primarily by the Hindu Nationalist Party which faces challenges brought on by an increasing
population that is expected to push India past China as the world’s most populous nation by 2035. In addition, the country is racked with social inequality and constantly threatened by religious strife.
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Even more troubling are India’s tense relations with its neighbor Pakistan, and the fact that both have become nuclear powers. In 1974, India exploded a “peaceful”nuclear device. For the next 24 years, the nation quietly worked on building up its nuclear capability. In 1998, Indian officials conducted five underground nuclear tests. Meanwhile, the Pakistanis had been building their own nuclear program. Shortly after India conducted its nuclear tests, Pakistan demonstrated that it, too, had nuclear weapons. The presence of these weapons in the hands of such bitter enemies and neighbors has become a matter of great international concern, especially in light of their continuing struggle over Kashmir. In 2002, the two nations came close to war over Kashmir, but a 2003 peace process eased tensions once again.
The history of Pakistan since independence has been no less turbulent than that of India. Pakistan actually began as two separate and divided states, East Pakistan and West Pakistan. East Pakistan lay to the east of India, West Pakistan to the northwest. These regions were separated by more than 1,000 miles of Indian territory. In culture, language, history, geography, economics, and ethnic background, the two
regions were very different. Only the Islamic religion united them.
From the beginning, the two regions of Pakistan experienced strained relations. While East Pakistan had the larger population, it was often ignored by West Pakistan, home to the central government. In 1970, a giant cyclone and tidal wave struck East Pakistan and killed an estimated 266,000 residents. While international aid poured into Pakistan, the government in West Pakistan did not quickly transfer that aid to East Pakistan. Demonstrations broke out in East Pakistan, and protesters called for an end to all ties with West Pakistan. On March 26, 1971, East Pakistan declared itself an independent nation called Bangladesh. A civil war followed between Bangladesh and Pakistan. Eventually, Indian forces stepped in and sided with Bangladesh. Pakistan forces surrendered. More than 1 million people died in the war. Pakistan lost about one-seventh of its area and about one-half of its population to Bangladesh.
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Suplemental Videos
Partition Explained
Communist China
Following the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, China descended into chaos when the new government of the Republic of China proved incapable of bringing peace and stability to the country. A series of warlords seized the opportunity and took control of the many regions of China, ruling through force and intimidation, frequently attacking one another in an attempt to dominate all of China. Out of this chaos two distinctly different leaders emerged, one nationalist and one communist, fighting to reunite China and make it powerful once again. This long running civil war and ultimate communist victory reshaped the nation as it was purged of its ancient history and Confucian culture, modernizing through the Stalin model. Through brutality and forced conformity China was re-molded into a world power, able to shed foreign domination and challenge the West for better or worse.
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Communists Take Power in China
In World War II, China fought on the side of the victorious Allies. But the victory proved to be a hollow one for China. During the war, Japan’s armies had occupied and devastated most of China’s cities. China’s civilian death toll alone was estimated between 10 to 22 million persons. This vast country suffered casualties second only to those of the Soviet Union. However, conflict did not end with the defeat of the Japanese. In 1945, opposing Chinese armies faced one another.
The bitter civil war which was raging between the Nationalists and the Communists when the Japanese invaded China in 1937 resumed almost immediately following the Japanese surrender . Under their leader, Mao Zedong, the Communists had a stronghold in northwestern China. From there, they mobilized peasants for guerrilla war against the Japanese in the northeast. Thanks to their efforts to promote literacy and improve food production, the Communists won the peasants’ loyalty. By 1945, they controlled much of northern China. Meanwhile, the Nationalist forces under Chiang Kai-Shek dominated southwestern China. Protected from the Japanese by rugged mountain ranges, Chiang gathered an army of 2.5 million men. From 1942 to 1945, the United States sent the Nationalists at least $1.5 billion in aid to fight the Japanese. Instead of benefiting the army, however, these supplies and money often ended up in the hands of a few corrupt officers. Chiang’s army actually fought few battles against the Japanese. Instead, the Nationalist army saved its strength for the coming battle against Mao’s Red Army. After Japan surrendered, the Nationalists and Communists resumed fighting.
The renewed civil war lasted from 1946 to 1949. At first, the Nationalists had the advantage. Their army outnumbered the Communists’ army by as much as three to one. And the United States continued its support by providing nearly $2 billion in aid. The Nationalist forces, however, did little to win popular support. With China’s economy collapsing, thousands of Nationalist
soldiers deserted to the Communists. In spring 1949, China’s major cities fell to the well-trained Red forces. Mao’s troops were also enthusiastic about his promise to return land to the peasants. The remnants of Chiang’s shattered army fled south. In October 1949, Mao Zedong gained control of the country. He proclaimed it the People’s Republic of China. Chiang and other Nationalist leaders retreated to the island of Taiwan, which Westerners called Formosa.
Mao Zedong’s victory fueled U.S. anti-Communist feelings. Those feelings only grew after the Chinese and Soviets signed a treaty of friendship in 1950. Many people in the United States viewed the takeover of China as another step in a Communist campaign to conquer the world.
The Great Leap Forward
For decades, China had been in turmoil, engaged in civil war or fighting with Japan. So, when the Communists took power, they moved rapidly to strengthen their rule over
China’s 550 million people and restore China as a powerful nation. Mao was determined to reshape China’s economy based on Marxist socialism. Eighty percent of the people lived in rural areas, but most owned no land. Instead, 10 percent of the rural population controlled 70 percent of the farmland. Under the Agrarian Reform Law of 1950, Mao seized the holdings of these landlords. His forces killed more than a million landlords who resisted. He then divided the land among the peasants. Later, to further Mao’s socialist principles, the government forced peasants to join collective farms. Each of these farms was comprised of 200 to 300 households.
Mao’s changes also transformed industry and business. Gradually, private companies were nationalized, or brought under government ownership. In 1953, Mao launched a five-year plan that set high production goals for industry. By 1957, China’s output of coal, cement, steel, and electricity had increased dramatically.
To expand the success of the first Five-Year Plan, Mao proclaimed the “Great Leap Forward” in early 1958. This plan called for still larger collective farms, or communes. By the end of 1958, about
26,000 communes had been created. The average commune sprawled over 15,000 acres and supported over 25,000 people. In the strictly controlled life of the communes, peasants worked the land together. They ate in communal dining rooms, slept in communal dormitories, and raised children in communal nurseries. And they owned nothing. The peasants had no incentive to work hard when only the state profited from their labor.
The Great Leap Forward was a giant step backward. Poor planning and inefficient “backyard,” or home, industries hampered growth. The program was ended in 1961 after crop failures caused a famine that killed about 20 million people.
The Cultural Revolution
After the failure of the Great Leap Forward and the split with the Soviet Union, Mao reduced his role in government. Other leaders moved away from Mao’s strict socialist ideas. For example, farm families could live in their own homes and could sell crops they grew on small private plots. Factory workers could compete for wage increases and promotions. Mao thought China’s new economic policies weakened the Communist goal of social equality. He was determined to revive the revolution. In 1966, he urged China’s young people to “learn revolution by making revolution.” Millions of high school and college students responded. They left their classrooms and formed militia units called Red Guards.
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The Red Guards led a major uprising known as the Cultural Revolution. Its goal was to establish a society of peasants and workers in which all were equal. The new hero was the peasant who worked with his hands. The life of the mind—intellectual and artistic activity—was considered useless and dangerous. To stamp out this threat, the Red Guards shut down colleges and schools. They targeted anyone who resisted the regime by clinging to what they called the "Four Olds." The Four Olds included: old ideas, old culture, old habits, and old customs. Intellectuals had to “purify” themselves by doing hard labor in remote villages. Thousands were executed or imprisoned as Red Guards went from town to town hunting down those people who were accused of resisting Mao's new communist state.
Chaos threatened farm production and closed down factories. Civil war seemed possible. By 1968, even Mao admitted that the Cultural Revolution had to stop. The army was ordered to put down the Red Guards. Thousands of Chinese youth were sent "down to the countryside" to be reeducated through labor. Zhou Enlai, Chinese Communist party founder and premier since 1949, began to restore order.
China After Mao
Throughout the Cultural Revolution, China played almost no role in world affairs. In the early 1960s, China had split with the Soviet Union over the leadership of world communism. In addition, China displayed hostility toward the United States because of U.S. support for the government on Taiwan. Both Mao and Zhou died in 1976. Shortly afterward, moderates took control of the Communist Party. They jailed several of the radicals who became known as the "Gang of Four" who had led the Cultural Revolution. The "Gang of Four" were labeled as counterrevolutionaries by CCP and sentenced to life in prison, effectively ending the Cultural Revolution. By 1980, Deng Xiaoping had emerged as the most powerful leader in China. He was the last of the “old revolutionaries” who had ruled China since 1949.
Although a lifelong Communist, Deng boldly supported moderate economic policies. Unlike Mao, he was willing to use capitalist ideas to help China’s economy. He embraced a set of goals known as the Four Modernizations. These called for progress in agriculture, industry, defense, and science and technology. Deng launched an ambitious program of economic reforms.
First, Deng eliminated Mao’s communes and leased the land to individual farmers. The farmers paid rent by delivering a fixed quota of food to the government. They could then grow crops and sell them for a profit. Under this system, food production increased by 50 percent in the years 1978 to 1984. Deng extended his program to industry. The government permitted private businesses to operate. It gave the managers of state-owned industries more freedom to set production goals. Deng also welcomed foreign technology and investment.
Deng’s economic policies produced striking changes in Chinese life. As incomes increased, people began to buy appliances and televisions. Chinese youths now wore stylish clothes and listened to Western music. Gleaming hotels filled with foreign tourists symbolized China’s new policy of openness. Deng’s economic reforms produced a number of unexpected problems. As living standards improved, the gap between the rich and poor widened. Increasingly, the public believed that party officials profited from their positions. Furthermore, the new policies admitted not only Western investments and tourists but also Western political ideas. Increasing numbers of Chinese students studied abroad and learned about the West. In Deng’s view, the benefits of opening the economy exceeded the risks. Nevertheless, as Chinese students learned more about democracy, they began to question China’s lack of political freedom.
In 1989, students sparked a popular uprising that stunned China’s leaders. Beginning in April of that year, more than 100,000 students occupied Tiananmen Square, a huge public space in the heart of Beijing. The students mounted a protest for democracy. The student protest won widespread popular support. When thousands of students began a hunger strike to highlight their cause, people poured into Tiananmen Square to support them. Many students called for Deng Xiaoping to resign.
Instead of considering political reform, Deng declared martial law. He ordered about 100,000 troops to surround Beijing. Although many students left the square after martial law was declared, about 5,000 chose to remain and continue their protest. The students revived their spirits by defiantly erecting a 33-foot statue that they named the “Goddess of Democracy.” On June 4, 1989, the standoff came to an end. Thousands of heavily armed soldiers stormed Tiananmen Square. Tanks smashed through barricades and crushed the Goddess of Democracy. Soldiers sprayed gunfire into crowds of frightened students. They also attacked protesters elsewhere in Beijing. The assault killed hundreds and wounded thousands.
China in the 21st Century
Although many have dismissed the development schemes of the communist states as misguided failures, the achievements of the communist regime in China during the late 20th and early 21st centuries have been impressive. Despite economic setbacks, political turmoil, and a low level of foreign assistance, the communists have managed a truly revolutionary redistribution of wealth in the country. China's very large population remains poor by western standards, but in education, healthcare, housing, working conditions, and the availability of food, most of it is far better off than it was in the prerevolutionary era. The Chinese have managed to provide a decent standard of living for a higher proportion of their people than perhaps any other large developing country. They have also achieved higher rates of industrial and agricultural growth than neighboring India, with its mixed state-capitalist economy and democratic polity.
China's economic prosperity has caused a massive rebalancing of power in the world. China's adoption of a more flexible and conventional industrialization strategy has made China a leader in the World economy. This prosperity has allowed China to reassert itself as a preeminent military power. President Xi Jinping has taken steps to modernize the Chinese military and taken aggressive steps in foreign policy to make China a major player on the world stage. This frequently brings China into conflict with the United States as a chief rival, as China attempts to dislodge American hegemony and global dominance.
Despite its economic prosperity and growing foreign influence, China has remained committed to communism's state planning and fiercely authoritarian government. President Xi Jinping has cracked down on political dissent by restricting personal freedoms through strict censorship on the internet and in daily life. People who criticize the government too much are often arrested without trial. In cities citizens are monitored and movement is tracked. Human rights groups have even accused the government of committing a genocide against the Uyghur people of Western China.
The future of China remains uncertain, but it is clear that China will continue to be a major player in international affairs for the foreseeable future. China's modernization and rapid industrialization has come at a cost. Pollution has become a major issue with Chinese cities becoming choked with industrial gases and considerable chemical pollution of water resources. By 2000 China's industrial advance, combined with its huge population, placed China in second position as a world contributor to chemical emissions causing global warming. The growing use of coal for fuel promised a further Chinese advance on this dubious achievement, as Chinese policy has placed economic growth ahead of environmental concerns. Furthermore, China has struggled to reconcile its authoritarian principles with the democratic values of the people in Hong Kong since its handover in 1997. Despite these challenges, China's history, its size and the feeling of strength brought on by the astonishing growth of the past two decades push it to want to be something more, and to take back its position that foreigners stole from it nearly two centuries ago. China’s people and leaders feel their nation’s time has come once again, and this ambition will help shape the 21st century.
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The Modern Middle East
In the years following World War II, the Middle East entered a period of upheaval as the European imperial powers began to withdraw from the region. Arabs, clinging to nationalism hoped to build their own states in the region after centuries of foreign rule. Complicating matters, Zionists had been settling in Palestine in hopes of creating a home of their own. Furthermore, much of the world supported Zionist ambitions following the revelations of the horrors of the holocaust. The gaining of their homeland along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, however, came at a heavy price. A Jewish state was unwelcome in this mostly Arab region, and the resulting hostility led to a series of wars. These two groups have waged a bloody battle that goes on today.
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Israel Becomes a State
The land called Palestine now consists of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. To Jews, their claim to the land dates back 3,000 years, when Jewish kings ruled the region from Jerusalem. To Palestinians (both Muslim and Christian), the land has belonged to them since the Jews were driven out around A.D. 135. To Arabs, the land has belonged to them since their conquest of the area in the 7th century.
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After being forced out of Palestine during the second century, the Jewish people were not able to establish their own state and lived in different countries throughout the world. The global dispersal of the Jews is known as the Diaspora. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a group of Jews began returning to the region their ancestors had fled so long ago. They were known as Zionists, people who favored a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. At this time, Palestine was still part of the Ottoman Empire, ruled by Islamic Turks. After the defeat of the Ottomans in World War I, the League of Nations asked Britain to oversee Palestine until it was ready for independence.
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By this time, the Jews had become a growing presence in Palestine, and were already pressing for their own nation in the territory. The Arabs living in the region strongly opposed such a move. In a 1917 letter to Zionist leaders, British Foreign Secretary Sir Arthur Balfour promoted the idea of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine while protecting the “rights of existing non-Jewish communities.” Despite the Balfour Declaration, however, efforts to create a Jewish state failed—and hostility between Palestinian Arabs and Jews continued to grow.
At the end of World War II, the United Nations took action. In 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into an Arab Palestinian state anda Jewish state. Jerusalem was to be an international city owned by neither side. The terms of the partition gave Jews 55 percent of the area even though they made up only 34% of the population. In the wake of the war and the Holocaust, the United States and many European nations felt great sympathy for the Jews.
All of the Islamic countries voted against partition, and the Palestinians rejected it outright. They argued that the UN did not have the right to partition a territory without considering the wishes of the majority of its people. Finally, the date was set for the formation of Israel, May 14, 1948. On that date, David Ben Gurion, long-time leader of the Jews residing in Palestine, announced the creation of an independent Israel.
Israel and Arab States in Conflict
The new nation of Israel got a hostile greeting from its neighbors. The day after it proclaimed itself a state, six Islamic states—Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria—invaded Israel. The first of many Arab-Israeli wars, this one ended within months in a victory for Israel. Full-scale war broke out again in 1956, 1967, and 1973. Because of Arab-Israeli tensions, several hundred thousand Jews living in Arab lands moved to Israel.
Largely as a result of this fighting, the state that the UN had set aside for Arabs never came into being. Israel seized half the land in the 1948–1949 fighting. While the fighting raged, at least 600,000 Palestinians fled, migrating from the areas under Israeli control. They settled in UN-sponsored refugee camps that ringed the borders of their former homeland. Meanwhile, various Arab nations seized other Palestinian lands. Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip, while Jordan annexed the West Bank of the Jordan River.
The second Arab-Israeli war followed in 1956. That year, Egypt seized control of the Suez Canal, which ran along Egypt’s eastern border between the Gulf of Suez and the Mediterranean Sea. Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser sent in troops to take the canal, which was controlled by British interests. The military action was prompted in large part by Nasser’s anger over the loss of U.S. and British financial support for the building of Egypt’s Aswan Dam. Outraged, the British made an agreement with France and Israel to retake the canal. With air support provided by their European allies, the Israelis marched on the Suez Canal and quickly defeated the Egyptians. However, pressure from the world community, including the United States and the Soviet Union, forced Israel and the Europeans to withdraw from Egypt. This left Egypt in charge of the canal and thus ended the Suez Crisis.
Tensions between Israel and the Arab states began to build again in the years following the resolution of the Suez Crisis. By early 1967, Nasser and his Arab allies, equipped with Soviet tanks and aircraft, felt ready to confront Israel. He moved to close off the Gulf of Aqaba, Israel’s outlet to the Red Sea. Soon after the strikes on Arab airfields began, the Israelis struck airfields in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Syria. Safe from air attack, Israeli ground forces struck like lightning on three fronts. Israel defeated the Arab states in what became known as the Six-Day War, because it was over in six days. Israel lost 800 troops in the fighting, while Arab losses exceeded 15,000.
As a consequence of the Six-Day War, Israel gained control of the old city of Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank. Israelis saw these new holdings along their southern, eastern, and western borders as a key buffer zone against further Arab attacks. Arabs who lived in Jerusalem were given the choice of Israeli or Jordanian citizenship. Most chose the latter. People who lived in the other areas were not offered Israeli citizenship and simply came under Jewish control.
A fourth Arab-Israeli conflict erupted in October 1973. Nasser’s successor, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, planned a joint Arab attack on the date of Yom Kippur, the holiest of Jewish holidays. This time the Israelis were caught by surprise. Arab forces inflicted heavy casualties and recaptured some of the territory lost in 1967. The Israelis, under their prime minister, Golda Meir, launched a counterattack and regained most of the lost territory. Both sides agreed to a truce after several weeks of fighting, and the Yom Kippur war came to an end.
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Efforts at Peace
As Israel and its Arab neighbors battled each other, Arab Palestinians struggled for recognition. While the United Nations had granted the Palestinians their own homeland, the Israelis had seized much of that land, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip, during its various wars. Israel insisted that such a move was vital to its national security. In 1964, Palestinian officials formed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to push for the formation of an Arab Palestinian state that would include land claimed by Israel. In 1969 Yasir Arafat became chairman of the PLO. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the group carried out numerous terrorist attacks against Israel. Some of Israel’s Arab neighbors supported the PLO’s goals by allowing PLO guerrillas to operate from their lands.
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In November 1977, just four years after the Yom Kippur war, Anwar Sadat stunned the world by extending a hand to Israel. No Arab country up to this point had recognized Israel’s right to exist. In a dramatic gesture, Sadat went before the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, and invited his one-time enemies to join him in a quest for peace Sadat emphasized that in exchange for peace Israel would have to recognize the rights of Palestinians. Furthermore, it would have to withdraw from territory seized in 1967 from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
U.S. president Jimmy Carter recognized that Sadat had created a historic opportunity for peace. In 1978, Carter invited Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to Camp David, the presidential retreat in rural Maryland. Isolated from the press and from domestic political pressures, Sadat and Begin worked to reach an agreement. After 13 days of negotiations, Carter triumphantly announced that Egypt recognized Israel as a legitimate state. In exchange, Israel agreed to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Signed in 1979, the Camp David Accords ended 30 years of hostilities between Egypt and Israel and became the first signed agreement between Israel and an Arab country. While world leaders praised Sadat, his peace initiative enraged many Arab countries. In 1981, a group of Muslim extremists assassinated him. However, Egypt’s new leader, Hosni Mubarak, has worked to maintain peace with Israel.
In 1987, Palestinians began to express their frustrations in a widespread campaign of civil disobedience called the intifada, or “uprising.” The intifada took the form of boycotts, demonstrations, attacks on Israeli soldiers, and rock throwing by unarmed teenagers. The intifada continued into the 1990s, with little progress made toward a solution. However, the civil disobedience affected world opinion, which, in turn, put pressure on Israel to seek negotiations with the Palestinians. Finally, in October 1991, Israeli and Palestinian delegates met for a series of peace talks.
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Negotiations between the two sides made little progress, as the status of the Palestinian territories proved to be a bitterly divisive issue. In 1993, however, secret talks held in Oslo, Norway, produced a surprise agreement: a document called the Declaration of Principles, also known as the Oslo Peace Accords. Israel, under the leadership of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, agreed to grant the Palestinians self-rule in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, beginning with the town of Jericho. Rabin and Arafat signed the agreement on September 13, 1993. The difficulty of making the agreement work was demonstrated by the assassination of Rabin in 1995. He was killed by a right-wing Jewish extremist who opposed concessions to the Palestinians. Rabin was succeeded as prime minister by Benjamin Netanyahu, who had opposed the Oslo Accords. Still, Netanyahu made efforts to keep to the agreement. In January 1997, Netanyahu met with Arafat to work out plans for a partial Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.
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In July of 2000, U.S. president Bill Clinton hosted a 15-day summit meeting at Camp David between Ehud Barak and Yasir Arafat. The two men, however, could not reach a compromise, and the peace plan once again stalled. Just two months later, riots broke out in Jerusalem and the West Bank, and a second intifada, sometimes called the Al-Aqsa intifada, was launched. The second intifada began much like the first with demonstrations, attacks on Israeli soldiers, and rock throwing by unarmed teenagers. But this time the Palestinian militant groups began using a new weapon—suicide bombers. Their attacks on Jewish settlements in occupied territories and on civilian locations throughout Israel significantly raised the level of bloodshed. As the second intifada continued through 2007, thousands of Israelis and Palestinians had died in the conflict.
In response to the uprising, Israeli forces moved into Palestinian refugee camps and clamped down on terrorists. Troops destroyed buildings in which they suspected extremists were hiding and bulldozed entire
areas of Palestinian towns and camps. The Israeli army bombed Arafat’s headquarters, trapping him inside his compound for many days. Arab-Israeli relations did not improve with Israel’s next prime minister, Ariel Sharon. Sharon, a former military leader, refused to negotiate with the Palestinians until attacks on Israelis stopped.
In early 2003, the Palestinian Authority appointed its first-ever prime minister, PLO official Mahmoud Abbas. Shortly afterward, U.S. president George W. Bush brought together Sharon and Abbas to begin working on a new peace plan known as the “road map.” But violence increased again in 2003, and talks stalled. In the summer of 2005, Israel unilaterally evacuated all its settlers and military from the Gaza Strip. Then in 2006, Hamas, a militant terrorist group won majority control in Palestinian Authority elections. Israel refused to recognize the new Hamas government. After many years of violence, hope remains that harmony will
one day come to this region.
Religious & Secular Values Clash in Iran
Throughout the Middle East, oil industry wealth fueled a growing clash between traditional Islamic values and modern Western materialism. In no country was this cultural conflict more dramatically shown than in Iran (Persia before 1935). After World War II, Iran’s leader, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, embraced Western governments and wealthy Western oil companies. Iranian nationalists resented these foreign alliances and united under Prime Minister Muhammed Mossadeq. They nationalized a British-owned oil company and, in 1953, forced the shah to flee. Fearing Iran might turn to the Soviets for support, the United States helped restore the shah to power.
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With U.S. support, the shah westernized his country. By the end of the 1950s, Iran’s capital, Tehran, featured gleaming skyscrapers, foreign banks, and modern factories. Millions of Iranians, however, still lived in extreme poverty. The shah tried to weaken the political influence of Iran’s conservative Muslim leaders, known as ayatollahs, who
opposed Western influences. The leader of this religious opposition, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was living in exile. Spurred by his tape-recorded messages, Iranians rioted in every major city in late 1978. Faced with overwhelming opposition, the shah fled Iran in 1979. A triumphant Khomeini returned to establish an Islamic state and to export Iran’s militant form of Islam.
Strict adherence to Islam ruled Khomeini’s domestic policies. But hatred of the United States, because of U.S. support for the shah, was at the heart of his foreign policy. In 1979, with the ayatollah’s blessing, young Islamic revolutionaries seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They took more than 60 Americans hostage and demanded the United States force the shah to face trial. Most hostages remained prisoners for 444 days before being released in 1981. Khomeini encouraged Muslim radicals elsewhere to overthrow their secular governments. Intended to unify Muslims, this policy heightened tensions between Iran and its neighbor and territorial rival, Iraq. A military leader, Saddam Hussein, governed Iraq as a secular state.
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War broke out between Iran and Iraq in 1980. The United States secretly gave aid to both sides because it did not want the balance of power in the region to change. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, had long been a supporter of Iraq. A million Iranians and Iraqis died in the war before the UN negotiated a ceasefire in 1988.
The Iran-Iraq War ended as a bloody stalemate, killing more than 1 million people over the eight years it was fought. For Iran, the war served as a unifying force that fueled nationalism and propped up the new regime following the revolution. In Iraq, Arab nationalism was a powerful force in the war but it was ultimately unable to overcome the Iranian revolutionary spirit. The war also left Iraq in extreme debt that it was unable to repay. In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait and seized the Kuwaiti oil fields. Fears began to mount that Iraq would also invade Saudi Arabia, another major source of oil. This would have put most of the world’s petroleum supplies under Iraqi control. Economic sanctions imposed by the UN failed to persuade Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. Then, in early 1991, a coalition of some 39 nations declared war on Iraq. After several weeks of fighting, the Iraqis left Kuwait and accepted a cease-fire. This Persian Gulf War showed the extent to which the economies of nations are globally linked.
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The Iran–Iraq War is regarded as being a major trigger for rising sectarianism in the region, as it was viewed by many as a clash between Sunni Muslims (Iraq and other Arab States) and the Shia revolutionaries that had recently taken power in Iran. There remains lingering animosity however; despite the pragmatic alliance that has been formed as multiple government declarations from Iran have stated that the war will "affect every issue of internal and foreign policy" for decades to come.
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Decolonization in Africa
Following World War II, dramatic political changes began to take place across the world. This was especially the case in regard to the policy of colonialism. Countries which held colonies were forced to reassess the costly practice at a time when they were rebuilding their devastated cities and broken economies. Furthermore, After the long struggle against the oppression of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, many leaders began to argue that no country should control another nation. Meanwhile, the people of colonized regions continued to press even harder for their freedom. These forces combined in the second half of the twentieth century to forge a new birth of nationalism and independence as one colony after another broke ties with Europe and won their freedom. Tragically, nationalism and independence brought hardship for many new nations as war, poverty, oppression, and instability dominated Africa and Asia for decades.
Achieving Independence
The African push for independence actually began in the decades before World War II. French-speaking Africans and West Indians began to express their growing sense of black consciousness and pride in traditional Africa. They formed the Negritude movement, a movement to celebrate African culture, heritage, and values. When World War II erupted, African soldiers fought alongside Europeans to “defend freedom.” This experience made them unwilling to accept colonial domination when they returned home. The war had changed the thinking of Europeans too. Many began to question the cost, as well as the morality, of maintaining colonies abroad. These and other factors helped African colonies gain their freedom throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
The ways in which African nations achieved independence, however, differed across the continent. Under indirect rule, local officials did much of the governing and colonists enjoyed limited self-rule. As a result, these colonies generally experienced an easier transition to independence. For colonies under direct rule, in which foreigners governed at all levels and no self-rule existed, independence came with more difficulty. Some colonies even had to fight wars of liberation, as European settlers refused to surrender power to African nationalist groups.
No matter how they gained their freedom, however, most new African nations found the road to a strong and stable nation to be difficult. They had to deal with everything from creating a new government to establishing a postcolonial economy. Many new countries were also plagued by great ethnic strife. In colonizing Africa, the Europeans had created artificial borders that had little to do with the areas where ethnic groups actually lived. While national borders separated people with similar cultures, they also enclosed traditional enemies who began fighting each other soon after the Europeans left. For many African nations, all of this led to instability, violence, and an overall struggle to deal with their newly gained independence.
Ghana Leads the Way
The British colony of the Gold Coast became the first African colony south of the Sahara to achieve independence. Following World War II, the British in the Gold Coast began making preparations. For example, they allowed more Africans to be nominated to the Legislative Council. However, the Africans wanted full freedom. The leader of their largely nonviolent movement was Kwame Nkrumah. Starting in 1947, he worked to liberate the Gold Coast from the British. Nkrumah organized strikes and boycotts and was often imprisoned by the British government. Ultimately, his efforts were successful.
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On receiving its independence in 1957, the Gold Coast took the name Ghana. This name honored a famous West African kingdom of the past. Nkrumah became Ghana’s first prime minister and later its president-for-life. Nkrumah pushed through new roads, new schools, and
expanded health facilities. These costly projects soon crippled the country. His programs for industrialization, health and welfare, and expanded educational facilities showed good intentions. However, the expense of the programs undermined the economy and strengthened his opposition.
In addition, Nkrumah was often criticized for spending too much time on Pan-African efforts and neglecting economic problems in his own country. He dreamed of a “United States of Africa.” In 1966, while Nkrumah was in China, the army and police in Ghana seized power. Since then, the country has shifted back and forth between civilian and military rule and
has struggled for economic stability. In 2000, Ghana held its first open elections.
Fighting for Freedom
In contrast to Ghana, nations such as Kenya and Algeria had to take up arms against their European rulers in order to ultimately win their freedom. The British ruled Kenya, and many British settlers resisted Kenyan independence—especially those who had taken over prize farmland in the northern highlands of the country. They were forced to accept African self-government as a result of two developments. One was the strong leadership of Kenyan nationalist Jomo Kenyatta. The second was the rise of a group known as the Mau Mau. This was a secret society made up mostly of native Kenyan farmers forced out of the highlands by the British.
Using guerrilla war tactics, the Mau Mau sought to push the white farmers into leaving the highlands. Kenyatta claimed to have no connection to the Mau Mau. However, he refused to condemn the organization. As a result, the British imprisoned him for nearly a decade. By the time the British granted Kenya independence in 1963, more than 10,000 Africans and 100 settlers had been killed.
Kenyatta became president of the new nation. He worked hard to unite the country’s various ethnic and language groups. Kenyatta died in 1978. His successor, Daniel arap Moi, was less successful in governing the country. Moi faced
increasing opposition to his one-party rule. Adding to the nation’s woes were corruption in Moi’s government and ethnic conflicts that killed hundreds and left thousands homeless. Moi stepped down in 2002, and a new party gained power through free elections.
Civil War and the Failure of Democracy
When Britain and France gave up their colonies, they left fragile democratic governments in place. Soon problems threatened those governments. Rival ethnic groups often fought for power. Strong militaries became tools for ambitious leaders. In many cases, a military dictatorship replaced democracy.
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Nigeria, a former British colony, won its independence peacefully in 1960. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and one of its richest. However, the country was ethnically divided. This soon created problems that led to war. A Land of Many Peoples Three major ethnic groups live within Nigeria’s borders. In the north are the Hausa-Fulani, who are mostly Muslim. In the south are the Yoruba and the Igbo, who are mostly Christians, Muslims, or animists, who believe that spirits are present in animals, plants, and natural objects. The Yoruba, a farming people with a tradition of kings, live to the west. The Igbo, a farming people who have a democratic tradition, live to the east. After independence, Nigeria adopted a federal system. In a federal system, power is shared between state governments and a central authority. The Nigerians set up three states, one for each region and ethnic group, with a political party in each.
Although one group dominated each state, the states also had ethnic minorities. In the Western Region, non-Yoruba minorities began to resent Yoruba control. In 1963, they tried to break away and form their own region. This led to fighting. The Hausa-Fulani, who did not trust the Igbo, launched an attack from the north. They persecuted and killed many Igbo. The survivors fled east. In 1967, the Eastern Region seceded from Nigeria, declaring itself the new nation of Biafra. The Nigerian government then went to war to reunite the country. The Igbo were badly outnumbered and outgunned. In 1970, Biafra surrendered. Nigeria was reunited, but perhaps more than a million Igbo died, most from starvation.
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After the war, Nigerians returned to the process of nation-building. The Nigerian government did not punish the Igbo. It used federal money to rebuild the Igbo region. The military governed Nigeria for most of the 1970s. During this time, Nigerian leaders tried to create a more stable federal system, with a strong central government and a number of regional units. The government also tried to build a more modern economy, based on oil income.
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In 1979, the military handed power back to civilian rulers. Nigerians were cheered by the return to democracy. Some people, however, remained concerned about ethnic divisions in the nation. Nigerian democracy was short-lived. In 1983, the military overthrew the civilian government, charging it with corruption. A new military regime, dominated by the Hausa-Fulani, took charge. This military dictatorship remained in power until 1998. In 1999, Nigerians elected their first civilian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, in nearly 20 years.
Ending Apartheid in South Africa
In South Africa, racial conflict was the result of colonial rule. From its beginnings under Dutch and British control, South Africa was racially divided. A small white minority ruled a large black majority. In 1910, South Africa gained self-rule as a dominion of the British Empire. In 1931, it became an independent member of the British Commonwealth. Although South Africa had a constitutional government, the constitution gave whites power and denied the black majority its rights.
In 1948, the National Party came to power in South Africa. This party promoted Afrikaner, or Dutch South African, nationalism. It also instituted a policy of apartheid, complete separation of the races. The minority government banned social contacts between whites and blacks. It established segregated schools, hospitals, and neighborhoods. In 1959, the minority government set up reserves, called homelands, for the country’s major black groups. Blacks were forbidden to live in white areas unless they worked as servants or laborers for whites. The homelands policy was totally unbalanced. Although blacks made up about 75 percent of the population, the government set aside only 13 percent of the land for them. Whites kept the best land.
The blacks of South Africa resisted the controls imposed by the white minority. In 1912, they formed the African National Congress (ANC) to fight for their rights. The ANC organized strikes and boycotts to protest racist policies. The government banned the ANC and imprisoned many of its members. One was ANC leader Nelson Mandela. The troubles continued. In 1976, riots over school policies broke out in the black township of Soweto, leaving about 600 students dead. In 1977, police beat popular protest leader Stephen Biko to death while he was in custody. As protests mounted, the government declared a nationwide state of emergency in 1986.
By the late 1980s, South Africa was under great pressure to change. For years, a black South African bishop, Desmond Tutu, had led an economic campaign against apartheid. He asked foreign nations not to do business with South Africa. In response, many nations imposed trade restrictions. They also isolated South Africa in other ways, for example, by banning South Africa from the Olympic Games. The First Steps In 1989, white South Africans elected a new president, F. W. de Klerk. His goal was to transform South Africa and end its isolation. In February 1990, he legalized the ANC and also released Nelson Mandela from prison.
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​These dramatic actions marked the beginning of a new era in South Africa. Over the next 18 months, the South African parliament repealed apartheid laws that had segregated public facilities and restricted land ownership by blacks. World leaders welcomed these changes and began to ease restrictions on South Africa. Although some legal barriers had fallen, others would remain until a new constitution was in place. First, the country needed to form a multiracial government. After lengthy negotiations, President de Klerk agreed to hold South Africa’s first universal elections, in which people of all races could vote, in April 1994.
Among the candidates for president were F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela. South Africans of all races peacefully waited at the polls in long lines. To no one’s surprise, the ANC won 63 percent of the vote. They won 252 of 400 seats in the National Assembly.
Mandela was elected president. Mandela stepped down in 1999, but the nation’s democratic government continued.
In 1996, after much debate, South African lawmakers passed a new, more democratic constitution. It guaranteed equal rights for all citizens. The constitution included a bill of rights modeled on the U.S. Bill of Rights. The political changes that South Africa had achieved gave other peoples around the world great hope for the future of democracy.
In 1999, ANC official Thabo Mbeki won election as president in a peaceful transition of power. As Mbeki assumed office, he faced a number of serious challenges. These included high crime rates—South Africa’s rape and murder rates were among the highest in the world. Unemployment stood at about 40 percent among South Africa’s blacks, and about 60 percent lived below the poverty level. In addition, an economic downturn discouraged foreign investment.
Mbeki promoted a free-market economic policy to repair South Africa’s infrastructure and to encourage foreign investors. In 2002, South Africa was engaged in negotiations to establish free-trade agreements with a number of countries around the world, including those of the European Union as well as Japan, Canada, and the United States. This was an attempt at opening the South African economy to foreign competition and investment, and promoting growth and employment. One of the biggest problems facing South Africa was the AIDS epidemic. Some estimates concluded that 6 million South Africans were likely to die of AIDS by 2010. Mbeki disputed that AIDS was caused by HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). His opinion put South Africa at odds with the scientific consensus throughout the world. The New York Times stated that Mbeki was in danger of undermining “all his good work with his stance on AIDS.”
The Post-Colonial World
The dissolution of European imperial empires has ushered in a global age which connects the world like never before. Greater access to the ideas and customs of different cultures led to cultural blending in which cultural ideas were shared with people among the different cultures of the world. In the 20th century, ideas from the West have been very dominant in shaping cultures in many parts of the globe.
Western domination of the worldwide mass media helps explain the huge influence the West has on many different cultures today. However, heavy Western influence on the rest of the world’s cultures is actually rooted in the 19th century. Western domination of areas all over the globe left behind a legacy of Western customs and ideas. Western languages are spoken throughout the world, mainly because of Europe’s history of colonization in the Americas, Asia, and Africa.
Despite the fear and uncertainty accompanying global interdependence, economic, political, and environmental issues do bring all nations closer together. Nations have begun to recognize that they are dependent on other nations and deeply affected by the actions of others far away. As elements of everyday life and expressions of culture become more international in scope, people across the world gain a sense of connectedness with people in other areas of the world. For example, the response to the events of September 11, 2001, was international in scope. People from around the world expressed their concern and support for the United States. It was as if this act of terrorism had struck their own countries.
Throughout history, human beings have faced challenges to survive and to live better. In the 21st century, these challenges will be faced by people who are in increasing contact with one another. They have a greater stake in learning to live in harmony together and with the physical planet.
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The End of the Cold War
After World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States engaged in a Cold War. Each superpower tried to increase its worldwide influence. The Soviet Union extended its power over much of Eastern Europe. By the 1960s, it appeared that communism was permanently established in the region. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviet Union’s Communist leadership kept tight control over the Soviet people. The standoff took a turn in the 1970s, when the United States and the Soviet Union finally backed away from the aggressive policies of brinkmanship that they had followed during the early postwar years. The superpowers slowly moved to lower tensions. No one could have known, but big changes including democratic reforms, were on the horizon.
The Domino Theory Leads to War in Vietnam
The brinkmanship policy followed during the presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson led to one terrifying crisis after another. Though these crises erupted all over the world, they were united by a common fear. Nuclear war seemed possible. In 1960, the U-2 incident prevented a meeting between the United States and the Soviet Union to discuss the buildup of arms on both sides. Then, during the administration of John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s, the Cuban Missile Crisis made the superpowers’ use of nuclear weapons a real possibility. The crisis ended when Soviet ships turned back to avoid a confrontation at sea. “We’re eyeball to eyeball,” the relieved U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk said, “and I think the other fellow just blinked.”
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Tensions remained high. After the assassination of Kennedy in 1963, Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency. Committed to stopping the spread of communism, President Johnson escalated U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam. Much like its involvement in the Korean War, the involvement of the United States in Vietnam stemmed from its Cold War containment policy. After World War II, stopping the spread of communism was the principal goal of U.S. foreign policy.
In the early 1900s, France controlled most of resource-rich Southeast Asia. But nationalist independence movements had begun to develop. A young Vietnamese nationalist, Ho Chi Minh, turned to the Communists for help in his struggle. Following World War II, Ho Chi Minh believed that independence would follow, but France intended to regain its colony. Vietnamese Nationalists and Communists joined to fight the French armies. The French held most major cities, but the Vietminh had widespread support in the countryside. The Vietminh used hit-and-run tactics to confine the French to the cities. In France the people began to doubt that their colony was worth the lives and money the struggle cost. In 1954, the French suffered a major military defeat at Dien Bien Phu. They surrendered to Ho.
The United States had supported France in Vietnam. With the defeat of the French, the United States saw a rising threat to the rest of Asia. President Eisenhower described this threat in terms of the domino theory. The Southeast Asian nations were like a row of dominos, he said. The fall of one to communism would lead to the fall of its neighbors. This theory became a major justification for U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War era. After France’s defeat, an international peace conference met in Geneva to discuss the future of Indochina. Based on these talks, Vietnam was divided at 17° north latitude. North of that line, Ho Chi Minh’s Communist forces governed. To the south, the United States and France set up an anti-Communist government under the leadership of Ngo Dinh Diem
Diem ruled the south as a dictator and opposition to his government grew. Communist guerrillas, called Vietcong, began to gain strength in the south. Gradually, the Vietcong won control of large areas of the countryside. In 1963, a group of South Vietnamese generals had Diem assassinated. But the new leaders were no more popular than he had been. It appeared that a takeover by the Communist Vietcong, backed by North Vietnam, was inevitable. Faced with the possibility of a Communist victory, the United States decided to escalate, or increase, its involvement.
In August 1964, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson told Congress that North Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. As a result, Congress authorized the president to send U.S. troops to fight in Vietnam. By late 1965, more than 185,000 U.S. soldiers were in combat on Vietnamese soil. U.S. planes had also begun to bomb North Vietnam. By 1968, more than half a million U.S. soldiers were in combat there.
During the late 1960s, the war grew increasingly unpopular in the United States. Dissatisfied young people began to protest the tremendous loss of life in a conflict on the other side of the world. Bowing to intense public pressure, President Richard Nixon began withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam in 1969. Nixon had a plan called Vietnamization. It allowed for U.S. troops to gradually pull out, while the South Vietnamese increased their combat role. To pursue Vietnamization while preserving the South Vietnamese government, Nixon authorized a massive bombing campaign against North Vietnamese bases and supply routes. He also authorized bombings in neighboring Laos and Cambodia to destroy Vietcong hiding places.
In response to protests and political pressure at home, Nixon kept withdrawing U.S. troops. The last left in 1973. Two years later, the North Vietnamese overran South Vietnam. The war ended, but more than 1.5 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans lost their lives.
From Brinkmanship to Détente
Widespread popular protests wracked the United States during the Vietnam War. And the turmoil did not end with U.S. withdrawal. As it tried to heal its internal wounds, the United States backed away from its policy of direct confrontation with the Soviet Union. Détente, a policy of lessening Cold War tensions, replaced brinkmanship under Richard M. Nixon. President Nixon’s move toward détente grew out of the philosophy realpolitik originally pioneered by Otto von Bismarck in the nineteenth century. This term comes from the In practice, realpolitik meant dealing with other nations in a practical and flexible manner. While the United States continued to try to contain the spread of communism, Nixon took a pragmatic approach to Soviet relations. His administration engaged the Soviet government diplomatically and initiated efforts to working with the Soviets to find common goals which could be pursued cooperatively, thereby reducing tensions between the superpowers.
Nixon’s new policy represented a personal reversal as well as a political shift for the country. His rise in politics in the 1950s was largely due to his strong anti-Communist position. Twenty years later, he became the first U.S. president to visit Communist China. The visit made sense in a world in which three, not just two, superpowers eyed each other suspiciously. “We want the Chinese with us when we sit down and negotiate with the Russians,” Nixon explained. Three months after visiting Beijing in February 1972, Nixon visited the Soviet Union. After a series of meetings called the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), Nixon and Brezhnev signed the SALT I Treaty. This five-year agreement, limited to 1972 levels the number of intercontinental ballistic
and submarine-launched missiles each country could have. In 1975, 33 nations joined the United States and the Soviet Union in signing a commitment to détente and cooperation, the Helsinki Accords.
