Asia

F

2

Responses to Imperialism

The education of an elite and the training of native armies encouraged internal forces that undermined the existing dynasties and prompted reform and modernization. In the Ottoman Empire and Iran, for example, foreign-trained army officers seized power, which aroused feelings of nationalism and promoted modernization.

Native participation in India’s colonial government broadened gradually. The pace never satisfied Indian aspirations, however, and Indian schools produced more graduates than there were jobs. Rising discontent found voice in several associations and political parties. Among these was the Indian National Congress, which first convened in 1885. Originally advocating democratic reforms under British rule, by 1929 the group was demanding total independence. The Muslim League, founded in 1906 and a rival of the Indian National Congress, was also influential.

In 1930 Britain refused to grant India dominion status, or self-government within the Commonwealth of Nations. This stimulated a Hindu independence movement led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and in 1935 the Muslim League, led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, demanded a separate Islamic state.

Nationalism and dissent also grew in Southeast Asia. Britain fully annexed Burma by the late 19th century. With British rule came Indian immigration and Buddhist social disintegration. Buddhist monks and students began agitating first for separation from India, then later for complete self-government. Although the Dutch ended crown rule in the East Indies in 1867 and granted reforms and increased autonomy, dissidence grew, stimulated by Muslim leaders and Dutch repression. In the Philippines, annexed by the United States in 1898, nationalistic activities paralleled growing self-government. France completed annexing or asserting protectorates over Indochina by 1885. Although Laos and Cambodia accepted French rule, Vietnamese nationalists agitated for independence.

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As foreign powers exploited China and the country suffered revolutions and natural disasters, many Chinese believed the Qing dynasty had lost its mandate to rule. They doubted, however, that any dynasty could cope with Western technology and ideologies without modifying or eliminating China’s Confucian system. China lost the first of the Sino-Japanese Wars in 1894, further exposing its helplessness and stimulating dissent. A revolution led by Sun Yat-sen ended the Qing dynasty in 1912. Sun and other republican leaders were pushed aside by military leaders, led by President Yüan Shi-k’ai. When Yüan died in 1916, China disintegrated into warlord rule, while Japan sought to gain supremacy over China in World War I (1914-1918). At the Treaty of Versailles, former German concessions in China’s Shandong Peninsula were given to Japan, and Chinese students erupted in protest. Some students became republican nationalists, while others looked to Communism and to the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). A long civil war followed between the Kuomintang (KMT) led by Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists under Mao Zedong. They were unable to permanently unite, even against Japanese invaders, who by 1941 had advanced well into China from their puppet state of Manchukuo in the northeastern part of the country. Japan’s threat to China was eliminated at the end of World War II in 1945 and the Communists gained control of the country by 1949. The KMT fled to Taiwan.

F

3

Maintaining Independence

Siam retained independence due to the efforts of two progressive kings, Mongkut (Rama IV) and his son Chulalongkorn (Rama V). Constitutional monarchy came in 1932, but subsequent coups brought military dictatorships and a new name, Thailand, symbolizing Thai nationalism.

Japan prevented foreign encroachment by rapid modernization. The government built factories and sold them to private companies. Universal conscription ended the military monopoly of the samurai warriors, and in the new army even peasants became officers. Under Emperor Meiji, constitutional monarchy and universal male suffrage were established in 1889, forcing elected leaders to seek popular support.

Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905 boosted its international prestige. With the annexation of Korea in 1910, Japan became a colonial power. European exports came to a halt during World War I, enabling Japan to expand its own foreign markets. When the world economic depression of the 1930s hit Japan, ambitious young officers pressed for ultranationalist policies. Japan initiated heavy arms expansion and the conquest of northeast China, and invaded China and Southeast Asia. In 1940 Japan formed an alliance with Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini, who accepted Japan’s plans for a new order in East Asia.

G

Independence and Conflict

Asia was catapulted into world prominence during World War II. Japan entered the war in 1941 and rapidly made conquests in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, exposing the vulnerability of the Western powers. India became a staging area for the Allied Powers, which included Britain, France, and the United States. In Southwest Asia, the Allies occupied strategic areas to protect supply routes. The eventual Allied victory in World War II further stimulated native expectations for independence and modernization in South and Southeast Asia.

G

1

Intensified Nationalism

Fueled by intensified nationalism, militant independence movements had largely ended colonial rule in Asia by the end of the 1950s. But major differences persisted. On the Indian subcontinent, religious separatism created Muslim Pakistan alongside India. Pakistan was itself subdivided in 1971 when its eastern section broke away and formed Bangladesh. Border disputes embittered Pakistani-Indian relations as Pakistan produced a series of autocratic military rulers, while India maintained a parliamentary democracy.

In Southwest Asia, religious and territorial nationalism created the Jewish state of Israel in 1948. Hostilities between Israel and its Arab neighbors—Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan—disrupted world trade when the Suez Canal was closed in 1956 and 1957, and again from 1967 to 1975. Meanwhile, Israel occupied large tracts of Arab land. Palestinian Arab refugees from Israel formed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and demanded return of their homeland. Peace efforts led to a treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979, but a solution to the Israeli-Arab differences remained elusive. Following the Persian Gulf War of 1991, Israel and other Middle East countries met in Madrid, Spain, in November. Although initial conferences there and in Washington, D.C., in 1992 failed to resolve major issues, for many countries these meetings represented their first direct contact with Israel. Subsequent meetings in the 1990s led to limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with Israeli control over Jewish settlements there.

The Middle East was divided into numerous states, each subject to internal stresses. Iran, for example, experienced a nationalistic outburst in the 1950s under its charismatic prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, who nationalized the oil industry. Twenty-five years later, in 1979, a religious and political nationalistic surge deposed the U.S.-supported Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (see Islamic Revolution of Iran). As the conservative Islamic government floundered, militants seized the U.S. embassy and initiated a long international crisis. Iraq, meanwhile, seized the opportunity to launch a bloody, costly, and ultimately inconclusive border war (see Iran-Iraq War). Iraq occupied Kuwait in 1990, but the Persian Gulf War of 1991 restored Kuwaiti independence.

G

2

Ideological Confrontation

Postwar rivalry between Communist and non-Communist ideologies was part of the global contest between the USSR and the United States. Communism appealed to many Asians eager for independence, participatory government, and social reforms. An important Communist triumph was the victory of the Soviet-supported People’s Republic of China in 1949 and the retreat of the U.S.-backed Nationalists to Taiwan. It was tempered, however, by continued United Nations (UN) recognition of the Republic of China on Taiwan. Under Mao Zedong the Chinese Communists experimented with radical socialist programs, ending in the destructive Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). As differences between China and the USSR grew, the United States began diplomatic contacts with Communist China. The People’s Republic was given China’s seat at the UN in 1971, and in 1979 the United States recognized it as China’s only government.

Communist forces also won in Vietnam when North Vietnam, aided by the USSR and China, defeated U.S.-supported South Vietnam in 1975. The Communist victory in Vietnam, as well as victories in Cambodia and Laos, caused a mass migration of refugees to other countries of Asia, Europe, North America, and Australia. In other locations, Communist forces lost. The new independent government of the Republic of the Philippines crushed the Communist Hukbalahaps. The Malays, with British help, contained their Communist guerrillas. Indonesia’s Communist Party, which thrived under independence leader Sukarno, was suppressed in 1965. The resulting massacre mingled ideological with nationalistic motivations, for many Indonesian Communists were ethnic Chinese.

In Korea, which had been divided by Soviet and American occupation forces, the Communist north invaded the south in 1950. As UN forces repulsed the North Korean troops, Communist Chinese intervention brought a stalemate and an uneasy truce. See Korean War.

The strategic position and resources of the Middle East thrust the area into the ideological contest. An early Soviet attempt to occupy northern Iran failed, but the USSR later gained influence in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. The Arab-Israeli conflict also inclined many Arab nationalists to favor the USSR. From 1979 to 1989, Soviet troops occupied Afghanistan, sending some 3 million Afghan refugees into Pakistan.

No Asian country was untouched by the confrontation between Communist and non-Communist ideologies. The failure of Turkey’s government to curb inflation and to stop leftist-inspired riots and assassinations brought about a military coup in 1980. During most of the 1970s and 1980s, India sided with the Soviets on many foreign policy issues, and Pakistan looked toward China and the United States. While postwar Japan maintained the democratic reforms of the U.S. occupation, Communists gained power in labor unions and student groups.

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