three roads: transformations in asia

Three Roads:Transformations in Asia

China:• In 1911, the Qing Dynasty had been overthrown• A Republic was established and governed by the

Nationalist (Kuomintang) Party• Sun Yat-sen (Sun Yixian) became president• But the Republic quickly disintegrated and military

officers began to govern Beijing but by the early 1920s, there was anarchy in the land

The May Fourth Movement:• On May 4, 1919, thousands of students came to

Tiananmen Square to protest against the military government

• Causes of protest: Government’s willingness to allow Japan to annex Shantung Province, Germany’s former concession in China (Remember Treaty of Versailles)

• After the death of Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) became leader of the Kuomintang (Guomindang)

• Chiang Kai-shek purged the communists from the Nationalist Party and a civil war ensued

• Chiang Kai-shek proclaimed allegiance to Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People (nationalism, democracy, people’s livelihood or socialism) but not fully

• Chiang Kai-shek was further to the right of Sun

• And Mao Zedong kept the CCP alive by leading it on a Long March (1934-1935) to the north to avoid total annihilation at the hands of the nationalist forces

• While the civil war temporarily stopped during the Japanese invasion, it immediately resumed upon Japan’s surrender

• Mao’s strategy had succeeded: making communism appealing to China’s vast peasant masses rather than concentrating on the small industrial working class in cities

• In 1949, the communist People’s Republic of China was formed while the nationalist leaders fled to Taiwan

Japan:• In the 1920s, the power of the Diet (Japanese

Parliament) increased

• Universal male suffrage and a bill of rights was granted in 1925

• But Japan’s upper-class retained its oligarchical outlook and nationalism ran high

Most of Japan’s industrial might was concentrated in hands of a small number of corporate conglomerates called zaibatsu

But imperial aggression and the Great Depression derailed Japan’s democratization

Kita Ikki, a right-wing nationalist

Asia for the

Asians!

• In 1931, Japan seized Manchuria from China, turning it into puppet kingdom, Manchukuo, ruled by Henry Pu-yi, China’s last emperor before 1911

• Shortly afterward, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations

• By 1941, Hideki Tojo, had gained control of the parliamentary government

• The military was able to dominate the young emperor, Hirohito

The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere:

The Rape of Nanjing:

December 1937 included the massacre of 200,000 to 300,000 noncombatants, including women and children

• But Japan was eventually defeated in the Second World War (atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki)

• The U.S.A. occupied Japan from 1945-1952 a democratic constitution and women’s suffrage

India:

• The Indian National Congress (later the Congress Party) was founded in 1885

And then the Amritsar Massacre:

• In 1919, at Amritsar, British troops fired on unarmed Indian protestors, killing 379 and wounding 1,137

• Mohandas K. Gandhi (called Mahatma or “Great Soul) preached a policy of nonviolent resistance to British authority

- Based partly on Hindu religious principles, this policy was called satyagraha, or “hold to truth”

The Boycott of British Cloth: 1920s

• When the British imposed a tax on salt in India, Gandhi led 50,000 people on a 200-mile march to sea and began to make salt illegally by drying out seawater

- Civil disobedience is the breaking of an unjust law and the willingness to face consequences

• In 1937, Gandhi and Nehru began “Quit India” campaign, trying to convince the British to leave altogether

- The advent of World War II delayed the British withdrawal, but India would gain its freedom in 1947, soon after the war

• During World War I, with the Lucknow Pact of 1916, Muslims and Hindus pledged to work together for greater autonomy from the British

• However, they began to go separate ways during the 1920s

By 1930, a Muslim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, had formed

- The Muslim League called for the creation of a separate Muslim state called Pakistan, or “land of the pure”

• The British agreed to partition the subcontinent into a Muslim-dominated Pakistan in the subcontinent’s northwest corner and a Hindu-dominated India

- But rioting and violence often ensued