12.4 Old Empires and New Colonies

To the Victors Go the Spoils

Already beset by internal problems and increasing difficulty controlling its holdings throughout Arabia and the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire had signed the Armistice of Mudros on October 30, 1918, bringing its participation in World War I to an end. During the war, a number of proposals for dismembering the empire had been considered. In 1919, Allied forces seized areas in the former Ottoman Empire, Greece captured Western Anatolia, and other Allied forces moved into Istanbul. The Turkish National Movement that resisted these occupations was led by Mustafa Kemal, later renamed Atatürk (“father of the Turks”) and already a Turkish hero for his performance at the Battle of Gallipoli.

The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres partitioned the empire, leaving the Ottomans with control over only Istanbul and Thrace. The Turks led by Mustafa Kemal won battles on several fronts, however, and forced a renegotiation of the treaty. The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 provided for an independent Turkey to succeed the Ottoman government. It also established League of Nations mandates in the Middle East. Under the mandate system, the administration of territories once controlled by the Ottomans was transferred to France or Britain, which were expected to govern these regions until some unspecified point in the future when the people there were deemed ready to govern themselves. Among the mandated areas were modern Iraq, Israel, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine (Figure 12.14).

Figure 12.14 The Mandate System. This map shows the British and French mandates in the Middle East and their proximity to the new nation of Saudi Arabia. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)

Arabia was not easily controlled by the European powers. Warfare continued to break out over access to sites such as Mecca and Medina, both holy places in the Islamic faith. By the mid-1920s, the Saud family had taken control of areas of the Nejd (the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula) and the Hejaz (the peninsula’s western region), and soon after they consolidated that control by forming a new nation, Saudi Arabia, which came into being in 1932.

During the war, Britain and France had each begun to outline spheres of influence for themselves in the defunct Ottoman Empire. A French mandate covered Syria and Lebanon, and a British mandate the area of Iraq, Palestine, and the Transjordan (the East Bank). Despite their talk of self-determination, Europe’s surviving imperial powers clearly planned no deviation from the traditional course of empires in this region. Neither Britain nor France consulted the people who lived in the mandate areas about the decisions their governments would be making for them.

It soon became clear that the mandate system would not ensure full European control. For example, the British mandate over Mesopotamia, renamed Iraq, came under pressure from nationalists throughout the 1920s and 1930s. King Faisal (to whom the British had promised the rule of Syria) accepted being ruler of Iraq, but Britain controlled most of the government. The next king of Iraq had to accept similar conditions, but Iraqi nationalists became increasingly vocal about their frustration with the British presence.

The British complicated matters in another part of their mandate with the Balfour Declaration. This statement, one of many conflicting promises Britain made to various groups during the war, was issued by British foreign secretary Alfred Balfour in 1917. Balfour wrote that Britain supported a “national home” for Jewish people in Palestine. Ever since the nineteenth century, many European Jews had worked through Zionist organizations to encourage the return of Jews to their ancestral homeland in the Middle East. The Balfour Declaration marked the accomplishment of the goal that pro-Zionist groups had worked toward for years. Palestine was a British mandate after the war but mainly inhabited by Arab peoples; the move to introduce a substantial number of Jewish residents (with government support) promised to cause problems, and in fact it touched off religious and property disagreements that continue to this day.

The British began by summarily making an area of Palestine available to Jewish immigrants and, between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish population as a percentage of the total population increased threefold, from 9 percent to almost 27 percent. The Palestinians immediately complained of being treated as second-class citizens in their own land and about Britain’s failed promise to grant Arabs independence. Riots and protests became so common that Britain ultimately restricted immigration to Palestine, cutting off a route of escape for Jewish people fleeing the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazis.

The Asian and African holdings of the German Empire were also divided among the victors. Some of Germany’s Asian lands had been relinquished early in the war, such as Samoa, which New Zealand formally took over after the war. Australia took German New Guinea and Nauru. The Japanese Empire gained German-held islands north of the equator, such as the Marshall Islands and the Caroline Islands (Figure 12.15).

Figure 12.15 German Colonies in Asia. Most of Germany’s Asian colonies were occupied by the Allied nations early in the war. This 1915 map reflects those changes and foreshadows the way the Allied powers continued to control these regions after the war. (credit: “German Pacific Colonies 1915 Map” by Project Gutenberg/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

In Africa, Germany had held Kamerun (including modern Cameroon as well as areas of Chad, Gabon, Nigeria, and the Congo), German East Africa (Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania), Togoland (Togo and part of Ghana), and German Southwest Africa (present-day Namibia). These became mandates after the war. Both Britain and France gained land in Togo and Cameroon, South Africa took Southwest Africa, and the Belgians received land in Burundi and Rwanda. No one consulted the African peoples in making these divisions, and in fact the borders cut through ethnic groups, leaving some groups divided between two governments. Self-determination of nations was clearly not at work in Africa, and increasingly louder voices questioned whether Europe had any real moral authority over African colonies.

The Fight for Self-Determination in Africa

Most Africans were not considered citizens of the empires of which they were part. Imperial powers exploited the colonies for their mineral wealth and other resources. They did little to better the lives of Africans, and the rhetoric of “civilizing” the continent was based on ingrained assumptions of White superiority. However, participation in World War I changed things for many Africans. More than one million Africans had fought in the war. The sense that their contribution should be rewarded with new political power was one result. Another was their exposure to international issues and the recognition that the principle of self-determination applied directly to themselves.

A number of groups had begun to argue for more African involvement in colonial governments beginning in the late 1800s. In 1918, the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA) was formed to pressure the British government to turn legislative work over to elected assemblies in its West African colonies. This initiative marked a political awakening in the four British colonies of West Africa. The NCBWA sought to have them work as a cohesive political unit. The war itself had caused many European officials to depart Africa, turning a number of services over to Africans to administer and thus providing new roles for them to play in the running of their countries. Many imperial powers also squeezed their African colonies to produce more for the war effort but failed to pay fair prices for these items. This clear exploitation, along with a growing sense of their power, led many Africans to embrace nationalist movements after the war.

With the Great Depression came increasing pressure to “do more” with African colonies, as a way for imperial countries to deal with their economic problems. Those that could cultivate greater economic development in the colonies would benefit from increased resources and develop a colonial population with greater buying power for its own goods. Such development was a slow process in the 1930s, however (Figure 12.16). The British government enacted a Colonial Development Act at the end of the 1920s that funneled small amounts of money into its African colonies. But larger investments did not flow into Africa until after World War II.

Figure 12.16 Colonial Africa. This map shows European nations’ colonial holdings in Africa during the 1920s and 1930s. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY 4.0 license)

A growing Pan-African movement also developed in the early twentieth century, with the goal of uniting African peoples to achieve greater independence. The first Pan-African Congress met in 1918 in Paris, organized by African American activist W. E. B. Du Bois. Its goal was to influence the Paris Peace Conference to support self-determination for the African colonies. Its impact was minimal, but it did contribute to the ideas of African nationalism that were growing at the time.

Another influence on the growth of African nationalism was the work of Marcus Garvey. Garvey was born in Jamaica and lived in the United States for many years. He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which hoped to unite all people of African descent into one body with one government. Garvey’s work was focused on specific plans for a migration of African Americans from North America to the West African country of Liberia. These “Back to Africa” plans fell apart, however. Sufficient funds did not exist to make the migration possible. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the largest African American civil rights organization in the United States, also refused to endorse Garvey’s ideas, and the migration never materialized.

One way people in Africa expressed their independence of thought was by developing an African-based church system. Christianity in Africa had been inextricably tied to the missionary model, in which Europeans came to Africa and established church missions to spread the Christian faith. The independent African churches that began emerging in the late 1800s were formed in places like Ethiopia and Nigeria with the idea that Africans should be in charge of them rather than Europeans, whose churches were often seen as simply an extension of colonialism. The independence that African-led churches advocated in religious matters soon evolved into support for independence in political matters as well.

An Independent India

The significant role their troops in the British Army had played in World War I offered Indians some hope that Britain might now extend them more rights than before. Indians were also anxious to have the British government’s restrictive wartime measures lifted. However, it soon became clear that Britain had no plans for change. So, as in many other countries, in India a growing nationalist movement now advocated independence from colonial rule. The clash between Indian Nationalists and British rulers began almost immediately after the end of World War I.

In early April 1919, Indians began to gather in a walled square in Amritsar, a city in Punjab that was sacred to the Sikh population. They were protesting the passage of the Rowlatt Act, which allowed Indians suspected of engaging in revolutionary activities to be detained for two years without trial. At times the protests turned violent. Then, on April 13, the British Indian Army opened fire on the protestors, who had little chance of escape from the closed-in space. Hundreds were killed and more than a thousand wounded. The British commander of the unit ultimately resigned after an investigation. The massacre prompted the British government to make some legislative changes in India regarding who was eligible to vote and how many Indian representatives could sit in the national assembly. However, this small concession did not quell the continued criticism from Indian nationalists, who urged independence and self-rule. The Indian National Congress argued that India should be ruled by Indians. Its members proposed continued nonviolent disobedience and boycotts against British goods, along with a refusal to pay certain taxes.

In this chaotic and emotional situation, a lawyer named Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi began to take center stage. Gandhi adopted and advocated the practice of civil disobedience and nonviolence, wore traditional modes of dress, and renounced material possessions. In the 1920s, the movement for self-rule became a grassroots operation preaching civil disobedience to people throughout India. Gandhi became head of the Indian National Congress in 1921, and it soon became the party of the masses.

Many British rules flew in the face of Indian traditions, such as those regarding the collection of salt, a common element of the Indian diet. Under the colonial system, Indians could not gather or sell salt; instead, they had to purchase it from the British and pay a heavy tax. On March 12, 1930, Gandhi began a protest known as the Salt March, in which he led his supporters on a two-hundred-mile, twenty-four-day march to the Arabian Sea to collect salt from the seawater. Despite British efforts to obscure the salt deposits at the beaches, Gandhi and his followers did collect salt, in violation of British law (Figure 12.17Figure B12_04_GandhiSalt). He and approximately sixty thousand others were arrested for these acts of civil disobedience. In numerous locations over the next several weeks, other nationalists similarly began collecting salt at coastlines in defiance of the law. Gandhi was not released from jail until the following year and agreed to suspend the mass act of civil disobedience.

Figure 12.17 The Salt March. Mahatma Gandhi collects salt at the shore of the Arabian Sea in 1930, in defiance of British law. (credit: “Salt March” by Unknown/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

While the British were not inclined to embrace India’s independence movement, within a few years they did begin to relent on the question of self-rule. While retaining control of the military and foreign policy functions, they turned other government operations over to Indians via the Government of India Act in 1935. This was an important step toward more autonomy for India. Muslim representation in India remained an issue, however. For example, the Indian National Congress was dominated by the Hindu majority, but rather than recognizing that body as representing all those living in India, the British recognized the separate Muslim League as the representatives of the Muslim population. The Indian National Congress had achieved a measure of its agenda in favor of self-rule, but India was still clearly under British control.