European Power and Global Politics: The Scramble for Power and Colonies, 1901-1918, Appunti di Storia Moderna

Scarica European Power and Global Politics: The Scramble for Power and Colonies, 1901-1918 e più Appunti in PDF di Storia Moderna solo su Docsity! The penguin history of the twentieth century 1) By way of introduction The 20°" century is properly the name for 100 years which began on 1 January 1901 and ended on 31 December 2000. You can find ‘short or long’ centuries, for ex. Sometimes the twentieth century begins not with 1901 but with 1914. In that case ‘short’ century. History varies according to the position from which you view it. In looking at the record, some will seek guidance in something that seems best to crystallize a general trend, some will scrutinize the immense variety of particulars for something that best typifies or symbolizes that very abundance. Some will look at the past in search of clues for understanding their own present problems and preoccupations. Nothing in the past can be completely described or recorded; if we could do that, we should relive history. AIl pasts were, once upon a time, presents; all outcomes were, one upon a time, people's future. History is made by people confronting predicaments, and those people were always individuals. 1800 -> social classes could be identified by the clothes they wore. The idea of ancient regime may be helpful for understand this period. At the end of this century: monarchs, emperors, kings and queen etc. The death of Queen Victoria was a shock, there was a change in the atmosphere of the English court and aristocracy would have been all that was noticeable. Victoria's funeral became 1901 -> one of the most important ways in which the world was different in 1901 was in the ways its societies saw the past, and the ways that shaped their perception of their present. Industrialization. People accepted in 1901 more readily than we always do that a shared humanity should not be trusted very fast as guide to behavior and said so more frequently than we are brave enough to do. The past weights a little less obviously on most of the world than once it did. 1901: period of monotheistic religions. 1901 -> there was observable worldwide a crucial distinction between the shaping, manipulative, sometimes aggressive forces stemming from countries which came to be called ‘western’ or ‘westernized’ and the peoples upon which they played. The industrialization had confirmed its self-feeding capacity to open up and create new resources and the power generated by the new wealth. Wealth was shared in large measure and power to some extent by the second circle where peoples of European origin exercised hegemony. One half of humanity was in 1901 for the most part în thrall to the other half. Human communities and cultures were at that time so engineered as to give immense advantages to men. Different societies have for a long-time different way of treating women and most of them for most of history have left their major decisions, including those about women, to be taken by men. In 1899 a congress had been held in London to consider the problem of what was called the ‘white slave’ trade, the international traffic in women for purposes of prostitution; in many countries the question of sexual exploitation of women was raised by people whose primary concerns might not be those of the women's movements themselves, but sprang from general moral and social principles and the claim of justice and equality before the law] Begging of 1900 -> early feminism where there was the seed of something of explosive content. In the 20° century an important place was for the intellectual and mythological importance of science. Science is a ubiquitous, inescapable presence in modern history, century as no earlier one. lt was the most important part of the many creative legacies already in place in western societies as this century began. Science was built on investigation of the natural world and was always linked to aspirations to take more control of that world by understanding it. ‘scientist’ is someone who explored the positive and measurable, gradually acquiring more and more knowledge whose significance was cumulative. Examples of scientists: Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Hertz, Maxwell (electro-magnetic waves), Thomson (electron), the Curies (radium), Rutherford (atomic model), Planck, Einstein. The twentieth century humanity was to be more aware of the importance of science than its predecessors and to show more faith than ever before it, without any such hope of widespread understanding of it such as past generations had indulged. The history of this century has therefore to be approached with a ‘Eurocentric’ stance [MRENWGNA 2) Structures Growth was the predominant characteristic of global demography (of that period), thanks to the huge implications of the invention and spread of agricultural systems around the world. Period of emigrations, for example Italians tended to go to the USA or to South America. The diaspora caused by emigrations profoundly influenced Europeans’ ways of thinking about the world. There was a political domination of white people. There was also a migration of ideas: people took with them mental and cultural furniture. Besides emigration, Europe's rapid population growth had been buoyed up for a half-century or so by economic expansion and new employment. Even in poorer countries in the western world it seemed that the keys had been found to a growing prosperity that was more and more widely shared. There were a lot of innovations: * The arrival and the use of minerale (iron, bauxite) and vegetable products (hard-woods and plant cils) for manufacturing economies, coal and petroleum oil for the world's power Markets -> in 1901 there were already true global markets. They were predominantly in Europe. Sometimes the effects of involvement in the new patters of world trade could be bad for traditional occupations and interests: ex. The cultivation of indigo in India. States and government > RNA] sovereign state. History, as ever, set out the main lines of world politics and the structure within which the statesmen of the early twentieth century would have to work, but they were not the state 4)Shapes of things to come Societies have during this century tried to take control of births, with the aim of encourage them. The news is that governments are now putting resources and authority behind more humane means of population control; their aim is to achieve positive economic and social improvement, instead of just the avoidance of family and personal misfortune. There are too many difficulties in the way of consciously shaping population growth through human agency. This makes it possible to wonder whether population will ever stabilize without major disasters. For good or ill, growth, though worldwide, does not everywhere take the same form. In rich and developed countries, natality began to drop even before 1901, when it became more attractive to significant numbers of men and women to have smaller families. Complicated as it is, the long-term demographic perspective reveals another great change. As far back as we can go, human societies resembled pyramids with large numbers of young people at their bases and a few old at their pinnacles. Now, in the developed world at least, societies are beginning to look more like slowly tapering columns. The proportion of older people in them is much bigger than in the past. What government has done or can do to influence demography remains hard to say, but some poor countries have tried for examples propaganda and education in contraception, the western answer to over-population. In others tried to promote contraception and sterilization. carry larger non-agricultural populations. Yet the very existence of such possibilities and the hopes and aspirations they arouse should concern historians, for it says something about what is - the present and actual state of the world. This is because what is believed to be possibly helps to determine what does happen. That the world has been able to feed itself in this century is one of the most persuasive facts at work on our minds or ought to be. It should have broadened our notion of what is possible and stimulated our dreams of Utopia; perhaps it has done so even without many people being aware of it. Reasons of a better wealth and health: * Chemical fertilizers, ex. Herbicides and insecticides. * Electricity -> effects in lighting, transport, vacuum cleaner, domestic refrigerator (electricity changed the world). * Mass communication -> printed material, books and periodicals, cinemas (a film was a new fact changing social habits and ideas and sometimes politicians were using it to promote their wares. The first broadcast (BBC), television (1970). Many technological advances contributed to a growth in the coercive powers of the state during this century. Science changed people's mentalities. Some people have in this century found recent acceleration not exciting but appalling. They fear that it is now too rapid for mankind's habits of mind and standards of behavior to adapt to it. They can agree, nonetheless, on the fact: acceleration in historical change of all sorts has seemed to increase exponentially since this century began. Technology shows it most obviously. Such a technological change should remind us that the twentieth century brought to completion the integrating of the globe that began a few hundred years ago. Humanity truly now lives in one world. Technology, politics, economics and, more and more, culture have all tied it together, even if many people do not seem to recognize it or to behave accordingly. 5) European exceptionalism European nations were the leading players on the world stage. From Europe to all round the world. It had an immense role in the world's ideas and institutions. In this period (1901-1910), the history of Europe became the history of the world. Europe was ruled in 1901 by the powerful and rich Europe in 1901, it was shared by varying combinations of aristocracy and the higher bourgeoisie, and that meant people with a high degree of respect for private property. Over much of eastern Europe, quasi-patriarchal relationships and the traditional authority of the landowner over those who lived on his estates were still intact. Poland, Hungary, the Baltic lands still produced aristocratic conservatives who were opposed in spirit not merely to encroachments upon the material privilege rooted in often huge estates but also to the values and assumptions of any modern society. At the other extreme were examples such as could be found in the United Kingdom, where aristocracy was long used to the idea of legal equality. The European ruling classes of 1901 had lived through decades haunted by memories of a century of revolutions . Social Marxism had hardened into something of which he himself appears not wholly to have approved in his last years. Marxism was treated by many socialists as a set of dogmatic principles purporting to rest on a reading of history so as to give guidance about the way that history was going and would inevitably continue to go. Debate has raged about the role played in the development of Marx's ideas in this sense by his friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels. Of the Marxist articles of faith, the most important were that history was progressive, that it progressed by ‘dialectical' confrontation and conflicts, that such clashes were ultimately the expression of the economic interests of classes, that they were unavoidable and bound to take revolutionary forms. The confrontation between the bourgeois masters of capitalist society and the proletarian workforce and, once a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat' had been deployed to eliminate the last trace of class conflict a classless society would come into being in which economic exploitation would not exist. Some of them sought to restate social Marxism so as to take account of such trends; they were called ‘Revisionists’. This theoretical position and the conflict it provoked soon entangled itself with a practical issue of politics at the turn of the century: whether socialists should or should not sit as ministers in ‘capitalist@’ governments if the chance of doing so came up - as it did in France. The debate on revisionism took years and fizzled out ambiguously in the end. The Second International explicitly condemned it in theory and socialist rhetoric continued to be about revolution while national socialist parties, notably the German, continued to act as revisionists in practice, making deals with the existing system as suited them. Russian situation, where there was no opportunity at all for effective parliamentary activity before 1905 and a deep tradition of revolution and terrorism. lts adherents were called Bolshevik, from the Russian word meaning a majority. Socialists claimed to speak for the masses. Nationalism -> it encouraged the creation of notions of collective identity. The German empire -> 1. A federal structure of four kingdoms, five grand-duchies, six duchies, six principalities and three free cities, to say nothing of the ‘imperial territory’ of Alsace-Lorraine. No centralized imperial police. 3. The national Reichstag was elected by secret ballot based on universal male suffrage; 4. The courts upheld the rule of law. 5. The head of the government, the chancellor, was appointed by the emperor and was responsible solely to him. The Reichstag could not remove him or the ministry. Its role was unreal. 6. The ‘enemies of the empire’: Catholic Centre party and the Social Democrats (SPD, in the 1912 elections became the largest party in the Reichstag). 7. lt was not an efficient state, it had not by 1914 been able to deliver lasting solutions to national problems inevitably posed by its social and economic development. Dynasticism -> Germany may also be categorized as one of the three major European states embodying and based upon political principles of a bygone era. In constitutional states heads of state were in the last resort agents and representative of their peoples. National and social interests were never supposed to override the rights and interests of the ruling monarchs themselves. The dynastic states were still what most European states had been 300 years earlier, personal possessions, agglomerations of lands belonging to a family. Germany’s problems expressed themselves in different ways, in managing a foreign policy or in the growing difficulties of reconciling the economic and social forces spawned by rapid development with a conservative constitution which gave so much weight in imperial government to a semi-feudal agrarian aristocracy. Russia’s condition was hard to assess -> autocracy and terrorism. Russia might have a giant's potential but was still entangled with grievous handicaps. The general level of culture was low and unpromising; a civilized society and industrialization would both demand a better-educated people. The autocracy governed badly, reformed unwillingly and opposed most change. Liberal traditions were weak; the terrorist and absolutist traditions were strong. 1909 there had been an agreement confirming Moroccan independence (but French political and German economic interests). 1911 -> rebellion against the sultan -> French expedition to occupy the capital -> German government protested. A German warship was sent to the Moroccan port of Agadir to protect German nationals there. The real aim was to show that Germany meant business and to frighten France into agreeing to compensation for her. UK declared that she would support France but at the end Germany gave the protectorate of Morocco in change for other African's territories. 1911 -> Italian troops landed in Tripoli. For the first time since the Boer war, a European power had deliberately chosen war as a solution to its problems, and diplomats in several countries found this frightening. 3. In Balkans -> In 1907 the revolutionary movement of the young Turks forced the sultan to renew the constitution-> demand for modernization. The Young Turks resented the way the great powers had interfered in Ottoman internal affairs and deplored the long and humiliating retreat of Ottoman rule in the Danube valley and the Balkans which they blamed on European bullying. Deposition of the sultan-> (it was by a triumvirate) -> When a Young Turk announced that there were no longer Bulgars, Greeks, Romanians, Jews and Muslims, a new, New Alliance -> Serbia+ Bulgaria (1912) + Montenegro + Greece. First Balkan war -> 18 October 1912, Turks made peace with Italy at the cost of their North Second Balkan war -> Serbia was attacked by Bulgaria with the aim of turning Serbian forces out of Macedonia, which they had invaded. Attacked on other parts though and ended up losing territories. 4. Russia -> . Russia- weaker than Germany and GB but she was growing at a faster pace. -> their self-interests increased productivity. Russia was still dependent on foreign capital. People were still ignorant and illiterate. Still a modernizing not modern state. 7)Challenges and challengers in the making ASIA > controlled by Europe (self-absorbed before 1914). Colonialism, cultural interplay and economic power were catalysts of modernization, channeled through local and Asian forces and beginning at last to speed up the pace of the Hundred Years War of East and West which had begun around 1840. Not all colonial regimes behaved in the same way + there were different imperial styles that shaped the history of colonial Asia and its future. India -> Indians were governed by white civil servants. We know that barely half a century of life was left to the European Asian empires and wonder that Europeans could feel so sure about the foundations of their world power; but things were changing -> Liberal certainties and claims that their values were Christian or universal had encouraged self-doubts among Europeans about their right to rule subject populations, even for their own good; democratic and nationalist ideology provided iother grounds for new reflexion on such matters. 1857 -> mutiny, it was an uncoordinatedì sequence of outbreaks against the authority of the East India Company, which then governedì British India, beginning with a mutiny of Hindu soldiers of the Company's army who feared the! polluting effect of using a new type of cartridge, greased with animal fat. It was a spontaneous and reactionary response to innovation, supplemented by the irritations of native rulers, both Muslimi ‘and Hindu, who regretted the loss of their privileges and thought that the chance might have come to recover their independence. -> The British response was nonetheless prompt and ruthlessi (spietata). -> new policies and discrimination -> 1877 Queen Victoria ‘empress of India’. Uapan -> the first Asian country whose rulers gave much thought to these matters, many startling ichoices had been made by 1901. After her victory over China in 1895, Americans and Europeans realized the new Japanese power. 1896 -> the Koreans had agreed to open three of their ports toj the Japanese and to exchange diplomatic representation with them. Yet national humiliationi followed when Russia, France and Germany forced Japan to go back on the advantageous terms ishe had imposed on the Chinese (which had included a declaration of Korea's independence andi the cession of the peninsula on which Port Arthur stood) and accept a much less triumphant treaty. Big changes with -> participation in the international anti-Boxer expedition + alliance with UK. Interest in Korea -> Japan vs Russia -> J won -> Japan's major war aim had been achieved: the Russian will to contest supremacy in the Far East had been broken. The tsarist monarchy turnedì ‘away to grapple with the problems presented by the revolution at home which the war had touched o and back towards old foreign policy concerns in south-eastern Europe -> Koreal controlled by Japan -> In 1909 the Japanese resident-general was assassinated by a Korean patriot,) ‘and less than a year later, in August 1910, Japan formally annexed the ancient kingdom, the ‘emperor and his family being incorporated into the lineage of the Japanese royal house. China -> the imperial regime had by then achieved virtually nothing by way of domestic modernization. With several ports in foreign hands and a British inspector general of customs the Chinese empire, though never formally a colony, was in effect semi-colonized. 1899-1901 -> There was the ‘Boxer rebellion’, it was an anti-imperialist uprising; slogan ‘Asia for ‘Asians’. 1905 -> the traditional imperial examination system was abolished -> crucial distinction between the mass of Chinese subjects and the privileged ruling class disappeared with it. The new/ iemperor was a child, on whose behalf there governed a reactionary prince regent, and the change! made little difference. The Manchu government introduced a lot of reforms -> reduction of opium,; railway centralization program, economic developments, reforms in the army, introduction of al national school system + new constitution (based on the Japanese one) -> not enough to save thel Manchu regime -> in October a revolutionary conspiracy was discovered at Hankow, when a bombi iwent o by accident in the Russian concession there -> revolts -> on 12 February 1912 the six-year- ‘old Manchu emperor abdicated -> Sun Yat-sen returned to be elected president of the ‘Unitedì Provinces’ of China at the end of 1911 by a provisional national assembly -> then he resigned the presidency to Yuan Shih-kai -> military power in the new republic. Ilndo-China -> it was controlled by French (end 19°" century). French law and notions of property meanwhile broke down the structure of village landholding and threw power into the hands of moneylenders and landlords. With a growing population in the rice-growing areas, this built-up a potential for future unrest. Paradoxically, modernization was being delivered by the French that encourage and promote he emergence of new pressures for change -> improvement of public health. Indonesia -> it was controlled by Dutch. Its population was large and Muslim. Their colonial government, which was confronted by a diversity of challenges to its rule and had to respond to economic pressures arising from the new importance of Indonesian markets to the Netherlands. This culminated in an important change of attitude -> 1901 a new ‘Ethical Policy' was announced that focused on the welfare of the native population as well as vigorous state action to promote economic expansion and efficiency. lt brought some administrative decentralization and a campaign to achieve improvement through village management. BUT there was a hostility by the first Indonesian nationalists -> 1908 they formed the first nationalist organization, the ‘Glorious Endeavour’ -> ask independence -> In 1916 the colonial government took the first step towards meeting some of its ambitions by authorizing an Indonesian representative assembly with limited powers. 8) The great war and the beginning of the 20°" century revolution * 28June 1914 The Archduke Franz Ferdinand (heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne), to Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital and his wife were both shot dead by a young Bosnian Serb terrorist. The circumstances were strange. The assassin was one of a gang of conspirators who had failed earlier that day to carry out the deed in the manner they had planned (with a bomb). Serbian agents were presumed to be behind the affair and in touch with the terrorists (as indeed some were, though not necessarily with the authorization of the Serbian government). Wilhelm Il and his chancellor offered their support without consulting the German foreign minister. The German generals were ready to fight at Austria's side the war they had long thought necessary against Russia. * 23July 1914 The Austrians presented a humiliating ultimatum to Serbia which demanded action against South Slav terrorism on a scale amounting to detailed intervention in Serbia's internal government. Russia advised the Serbs not to resist; Great Britain had offered to act as a go between. Serbia accepted almost all the terms. * 28July - 06 August 1914 Dual Monarchy (Austria-Hungary) declared war to Serbia (because Serbia refused the ultimatum -> x questione indagini). Russia -> general mobilization x helps Serbians Germany -> general mobilization + request to Russia to suspend their -> refute -> G declared war to Russia. France -> mobilization x defends Russia. Germany -> Schlieffen plan: the aim was an Oriental battle with Russia. They wanted to pass through Belgium and France (Germans asked for a declaration of neutrality) and gave them a reparation -> Belgium refused -> Germany declared war to France and invaded Belgium. It was a neutral state, of which UK was a guarantor -> Great Britain declared war to Germany in sustain of France (the violation of Belgium neutrality excuse -> hate for Germany). A declaration of war on Russia at last came from Vienna. International communism -> Third Socialist International, had been set up in Moscow in March 1919 to provide leadership for the international socialist movement and prevent it rallying again to the old leaders whose lack of revolutionary zeal was blamed for a failure to exploit the opportunities of the war. March 1921 -> Polish-Russian war -> the peace treaty between the USSR and the Polish Republic provided frontiers between the two that would last until 1939. In 1922 new USSR. The new Russian empire > after 1917 Marxists at the power -> there was the idea that government was a brutal business. In tsarist days, only powerful individuals had ever expected to have their rights respected and such continuities as press censorship and secret police were accepted as part of the normal state of affairs under the new Soviet order. The winners of 1917 believed that history was on their side and this, in their view, justified using their power to crush opposition to the triumph of their party, which proclaimed itself the vanguard and guide of the industrial proletariat. But the proletariat was itself only a small part of the Russian masses. A step had been taken to win the support of those living in the countryside -> land was declared property of all people. Terrible food crisis Secret police called Cheka NEP (new economic policy): the aim was to encourage peasant producers to take their goods to market by allowing them to get market prices for them. Communist disliked NEP, but its liberalization of the economy brought big results. By 1927 both industrial and agricultural production were nearly back to pre-war levels. In 1928 they achieved them. Large industry had been nationalized but new private enterprises had emerged under NEP. Two viewpoints about the use of the state’s power: 1) One emphasized that the revolution depended on the goodwill of the masses, the peasants; they had first been allowed to take the land for themselves, then antagonized by the attempts of ‘war communism’ to feed the cities at their expense, then conciliated again by NEP and allowed to make profits. 2)The other viewpoint recognized similar facts but set them in a different perspective. Continuing to conciliate the peasants would slow down industrialization. Trotsky -> decided to enforce the industrialization program. 1927 expelled from the party. Stalin -> was to carry out the real revolution to which the Bolshevik seizure of power had opened the way and would create a new élite on which a new society could be based. INDUSTRIALIZATION was for him the key to the future -> collectivization on the land and the development of heavy industry -> ‘Five-year plans’ Kulaks -> poorer peasants -> they were denounced and killed. They starved because their grain was carried o to feed the industrial cities, where bread rationing was introduced in 1929. Famine, particularly in the Ukraine, followed massacres and mass deportations. 1929 -> labor camps. 1940 -> Russia was a great and industrial power. 10) Years of illusion Turkey -> new nation with the dictatorship of Mustafa Kemal (Kemal Ataturk). He was the first ruler who transform an Islamic state by modernization. Italy -> Benito Mussolini after serving in the army he formed in 1919 a new political movement based on the fascio di combattimento, which can be roughly translated as ‘union for combat’. 1922-> fascists had not only achieved important electoral success but had virtually made orderly government impossible in some areas by terrorizing their political enemies on the Left, driving out the communist municipal government of Bologna + March on Rome. 1926 -> dictatorship. Fascism's greatest domestic achievement was to make peace by diplomatic agreement with the papacy. In return for substantial concessions to the authority of the Church in Italian life (which persist to this day), the pope at last officially recognized the Italian state. For all Mussolini's revolutionary rhetoric, the Lateran treaties of 1929 which embodied this agreement were a concession to the greatest conservative force in Italy. Germany -> 1925 Locarno Treaties -> they were seven agreements negotiated at Locarno, in which the First World War Western European Allied powers and the new states of Central and Eastern Europe sought to secure the post-war territorial settlement, in return for normalizing relations with the defeated German Reich (the Weimar Republic). It also stated that Germany would never go to war with the other countries. After that Germany was admitted to the League of Nations. The Treaty of Rapallo -> was an international agreement (signed on 16 April 1922) between the German Republic and USSR. They were isolated from the international political scene: Germany because was considered the reason of the WW1 and the Russia because of its communism. With this treaty the isolation finished. 11) An emerging global history THE IMPACT OF WAR ONASIA : China -> 1911 was the end of history during which the Confucian state had held China together and Confucian ideals had dominated Chinese culture and society. The revolutionaries themselves had quickly split between Sun Yat-sen's Chinese National People's Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), established in 1912. and those who upheld the central government based on the parliamentary structure at Peking. Nationalist enthusiasm in China had been energized by anti-western feeling and dislike of western-inspired capitalism. For many Chinese, capitalism, an authentic expression of the civilization some modernizers urged them to adopt, was another name for foreign exploitation. The Chinese Revolution would only be assured success when it could activate the Chinese masses. Chinese were disappointed at western diplomatic support -> China was not free from tutelage to the foreigner. The ‘May 4th Movement' of 1919 stemmed from a student demonstration in Peking against the peace and the cession of former German rights in Shantung to the Japanese. The movement -> first Chinese revolutionary coalition. Reformers had for the first time, thanks to the students, broken through into the world of social action. This aroused enormous optimism and popular political awareness. Japan -> A European war was above all an opportunity for Japan to exploit the situation on the mainland of Asia at a moment when western powers were distracted [ANA a ao Ie POE een VIONEDEMANAS following it up with an ultimatum which amounted to a proposal for a Japanese protectorate over China. At the end, the Japanese got much Eee Ne EsiMiVISNERURA. he United States formally recognized the special interests of Japan in China in return for endorsement of the principle of the ‘Open Door’ and a Japanese promise to maintain Chinese integrity and independence. After the WWI1 Japan was recognised like a world power and became part of the League of Nations. Latin American government after WW1 1. Constitutional, semi-parliamentary regimes 2. Dictators holding power with the help of armed forces Both failed badly. Now urban masses entered politics. Roosevelt good neighbor policy stressed non-intervention by all American states in one another’s affairs. à helped to secure hemisphere security between 1941 and 1945. 12) The path to world war Germany These forces and circumstances were to be exploited by Adolf Hitler. He was born in Austria, frustrated artist before became a soldier; he was soon promoted corporal and was twice decorated. For him ‘the war was a godsend’. After a period of training as a political agent by the army, he discovered his greatest talent, an astonishing ability to captivate mass audiences. Hitler entered politics as a nationalist agitator, denouncing Versailles with “* He became leader of the Nazis in 1921. He joined in an attempt to overthrow the government of Bavaria in November 1923; this failed, and he was locked up for a time. In prison he began to write a rambling political bible, Mein Kampf. In the 1924 elections the Nazis won fourteen seats in parliament. In 1928 they had won less than 3 per cent of the votes cast in the Reichstag elections, and only twelve seats; in 1930 they won 107 seats and became the second largest party in the Reichstag. «In July 1932, new elections made the Nazis the biggest party in parliament. The president of the republic, Field Marshal Hindenburg, long distrustful of Hitler, was at last persuaded by right-wing advisers that the Nazis must be given a chance to show whether they could deal with Germany's problems. He asked Hitler to be chancellor and in so doing made what must be reckoned one of the momentous political decisions of the century. around the world in military and naval operations. 14) post WW2 15) The cold war The world was divided into two groups of states, one led by the United States and one by the USSR, each striving to achieve their own security by all means short of war between the principal contenders. In some countries (Yugoslavia and Greece) the Cold War appeared first masked as civil Mar. In other countries it broke out in moral and political debate about values such as freedom, social justice and individualism. The USA and USSR always stopped short of fighting one another, for they would have to do so with nuclear weapons whose increasing power made the notion of a tolerable outcome more and more unrealistic. During this tense time, there was also an economic competition between them, conducted by example and by offers of aid to satellites and uncommitted nations. The Cold War was a seeping source of crime, corruption and suffering for more than thirty years. The exact origins of antagonism between the USA and USSR have been much debated, and not only by propagandists. In part, identifying them depends on definitions of ‘Cold War?. In the most abstract sense, after all, it was only a late and spectacular manifestation of a rupture in ideological and diplomatic history that had opened in 1917. Soviet diplomacy after Stalin's accession to power often reflected historic Russian great power ambitions. Russian national interest, shaped by geography and history, was to be inseparable from ideological struggle; communists and those who sympathized with them everywhere believed that it was their first duty to safeguard the Soviet Union, the champion of the international working class and, indeed (true believers armed), the guardian of the destinies of the whole human race. The Berlin crisis -> first battle of the Cold War -> the USA was prepared to fight (they tried to avoid the re-emergence of a reunited and economically powerful Germany which would not be under their control). The western powers had a different interest -> Germany was important for the recovery of Europe. At the end of June there was a block -> the Soviet authorities cut road and rail links with Berlin -> the Soviet aim was to demonstrate to the people of Berlin that the western powers could not assure their supply. They hoped thus to remove the obstacle which the presence of elected non- communist municipal authorities presented to secure Soviet control of Berlin. To supply West Berlin, the British and Americans organized an airlift to the city. By that time, the western powers had in April 1949 signed a treaty setting up a new alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The United States and Canada were members, as well as most European states outside the eastern bloc (only Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal and Spain had not joined). It was a recognition that Europe could not expect to defend itself if war with the USSR broke out. As its first secretary-general allegedly put it, it was ‘to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down’. 1954 -> the Soviet authorities announced that the German Democratic Republic possessed full sovereignty and the west German president signed a consist. amendment permitting the rearmament of his country. 1955 -> the federal republic entered NATO -> Warsaw pact. The Indian independence -> the Indian movement was a mass-based movement that was Contended by various sections of society. It also underwent a process of constant ideological evolution. Although the underlying ideology of the campaign was anti-colonial, it was supported by a vision of independent capitalist economic development coupled with a secular, democratic, republican, and civil-libertarian political structure. After the 19305, the movement took on a strong socialist orientation. The work of these various movements ultimately led to the Indian Independence Act 1947, which ended the sovereignty in India, and the creation of Pakistan. India remained a Dominion of the Crown until 26 January 1950, when the Constitution of India came into force, establishing the Republic of India; Pakistan was a dominion until 1956 when it adopted its first republican constitution. In 1971, East Pakistan declared independence as the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The ottoman succession -> “The Arab states that emerged nonetheless survived the Second World War. In May 1948, though, the fragility of the pre-war settlement was once more revealed when another new national state, Israel, came into existence in Palestine® Its creation marked the end of nearly thirty years of UK from control over middle east. UK had to give concession to nationalists in order to avoid they would help Germany. “Where British influence was paramount, anti-British sentiment was still a splendid rallying cry for dissidents. In both Egypt and Iraq there was much hostility to British occupation forces. Bythisttime the whole question of the future of the Near East had been transformed by the Zionist decision to Establish a national state in Palestine: Jews already hated by Arabs. With the Belfour treaty USA hoped a peace btw them but Hitler changed the course. “From the beginning of the Nazi persecution the numbers of those who wished to come to Palestine rose rapidly. So, in synchrony, did Palestinian Arab hostility to Jewish immigration.” The issue was dramatized as soon as the war was over when a World Zionist Congress demanded that a million Jews should be admitted at once to Palestine. The other new factor was the Cold War -> Israel always defended by ONU plus USA and Russia separately. In 1949 the Israeli government moved to Jerusalem, which became a Jewish capital city Again for the first time since the days of imperial Rome. The disappointment and humiliation of the Arab states assured their continuing hostility to Israel. Exodustof Arabs started and first Israel president wanted his scientists to work on atomic bomb. “Victims for centuries, the Jews were in their turn now seen by Arabs as persecutors.” KOREA -> In 1945 liberation from the Japanese had left Korea divided along the 38th Parallel -> USSR in the north, USA in the south. UN recognized a government set up in the south as the only lawful government of the new Republic of Korea. Korea became the only country in the post-war world where the United States and the USSR faced one another directly and alone, without the presence of any other Allied power. After Soviet and American forces had both withdrawn from the peninsula, North Korean forces invaded the south on 25 June 1950, with Stalin's foreknowledge and approval, and with some material Soviet support -> President Truman sent American forces to fight them. The Security Council voted to resist aggression and restore peace to the area, and as the Russians were at that moment boycotting it they could not veto United Nations action. The United States government sought to keep its military commanders on a close rein, and the USSR only allowed its pilots to operate in the extreme north and in the support of their nominal allies' ground forces. When the fighting approached the Yalu River (the border with Manchuria), though, Chinese communist forces intervened and drove back the UN army. China was the second largest communist state in the world, and North Korean units had taken part with the communists in her civil war. ine war ended on American terms -> 1953 Korean armistice was signed -> new administration Republican and anticommunist. Americans had won the first battles of the Cold War. 21) The cold war The death of Stalin brought no obvious or immediate change în Soviet foreign policy, though a few domestic differences were quickly visible. A duumvirate of Malenkov and Beria, the head of the security service, which took over almost at once was soon followed by a collective reassertion of its authority by other members of the Politburo. Beria’s arrest -> execution -> several small relaxations led a few western Kremlin-watchers to speculate about the possibility of ‘liberalization’. Molotov, Stalin's old henchman and veteran of Soviet diplomacy, was removed from his post as foreign minister. Bulganin was made prime minister. Strategic position - > e had been an American naval base on the island since 1901. lt was dependent on USA, they invested in urban property and utilities -> ex. Holiday resort -> Cubans showed a strong anti- American and nationalist feelings. and to denounce those Americanophile elements in Cuba that had supported the old regime. Cubans responded to anti-Americanism by uniting behind the revolution. The island's nationalism found a focus in Castro. One of the first acts of the new revolutionary government was an agrarian reform law that appeared to threaten United States sugar companies with the loss of over a million and a half acres of land. . 1961 the United States broke diplomatic relations with his government; the administration had begun to believe that Castro's increasingly obvious dependence on known communists meant that the island was about to fall into their hands. Thus, the Cold War arrived in the western hemisphere. Covertly financed and directed by the U.S. government, the operation took place at the height of the Cold War, and its failure led to major shifts in international relations between Cuba, the United States, and the Soviet Union -> Soviet ships were closely observed and photographed. The American nuclear striking force was made ready for war with the Soviet Union and forces were assembled in Florida for an attack on Cuba. After a few days and an exchange of personal letters between Kennedy and Khrushchev, it was agreed on 28 October that the Soviet missiles should be withdrawn, assurance being given that there would be no American invasion of Cuba once this had been done. On both sides it was important that the credibility of the will and power of their own superpower patron should be confirmed without a nuclear war. With hindsight's advantage, the faced and found unacceptable by the Soviet Union. the Cuban confrontation had probably helped to achieve the first international agreement on restricting the testing of nuclear weapons in space, the atmosphere or underwater, between Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union. Disarmament would still be pursued for many years without further success, but this was a positive beginning to dealing with the problems of nuclear weapons through diplomacy, and an encouragement to the pursuit of further negotiations. The changing _USSR -> with Khrushchev -> ‘de-Stalinization’ of personnel, a huge failure over agriculture, and a change in the emphasis of the armed services. Khrushchev's alarming personal initiatives in foreign policy (above all the Cuban adventure) may have been the fundamental cause of his removal. Freedom of expression had been allowed to writers and artists. USSR became a developed country/economy. Russian agriculture was a continuing failure, paradoxically the USSR often had to buy American grain. One big achievement was the creation of a scientific and industrial base in the Soviet Union -> exploration of space. All Soviet citizens continued to live in a state where the limits of freedom and the rights of the individual were defined in practice by a police apparatus backed up by administrative decisions and prisons. There were still thousands of political prisoners in 1970. Foreign radio broadcasts were still jammed, at enormous cost. The real difference between the Soviet Union and the United States (or any west European nation) was still best shown by such yardsticks. The changing USA -> improvement in public health, in military potential. Negro question. 22) Vietnam and after In 1971 the American secretary of state was sent secretly to China to meet its prime minister. Later that year, China had been admitted to the UN and Taiwan had been cast out: a step formally ‘approved by the United States. Formally, full diplomatic relations with the United States were not opened until 1979 when American relations with Taiwan were officially closed but even before Mao's death in 1976 one of the greatest changes in post-war diplomacy had taken place. When Nixon followed his Chinese trip by becoming also the first American president to visit Moscow (in May 1972) and this was followed by an interim agreement on arms limitation, it seemed that another milestone had passed. what happened in Vietnam (and then spread to Cambodia) had become more and more evidently an Indo-Chinese civil war. The North Vietnamese had not waited long before resuming operations. When a political scandal forced Nixon's resignation, in August 1974, his successor (and formerly vice-president), Gerald Ford, faced a Congress now suspicious of what it saw as dangerous foreign adventures and ready to thwart them. Distrust of the executive power was in the air. OIL AND THE ISRAEL PROBLEM -> Politics and economics in the Middle East were already by 1970 being shaped by more than the Cold War and Arab-Jew antagonism. In the 1950s two important developments had owed nothing to ideology or regional rivalries: 1. One was a much-increased rate of oil discovery, particularly on the southern shores of the Persian Gulf, in the small sheikdoms then still under British influence and in Saudi Arabia. 2. The second was a huge acceleration of energy consumption in western countries (especially in the United States) and in Japan. The prime beneficiaries of the oil boom were Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Libya and, some way behind, Iran and Iraq, the established major Middle Eastern producers. This had two important consequences: Industrial countries dependent upon Middle Eastern oil - the United States, Great Britain, Germany and soon, Japan - had to give even greater weight to Arab views in their diplomacy. It also meant big changes in the relative wealth and standing of Arab states. None of the three leading oil producers was either heavily populated or traditionally of much weight in international affairs. Amore remote consequence, too, was a new vigor in searching for oil in other parts of the world. New campaign against Israel -> The king of Jordan was threatened if he did not support the Palestinian guerrillas on Jordanian territory and Jordanian forces began to prepare to join Egypt and Syria in an attack on Israel. . In a brilliant campaign they destroyed the Egyptian air force and army in Sinai and hurled back the Jordanians, occupying Arab Jerusalem and winning new borders on the Suez Canal, the Golan Heights, and the Jordan in six days of fighting. For defense, these were far superior to their former boundaries and the Israelis announced that they would keep them. This was not all. Defeat ensured the eclipse of the glamorous Nasser, who had briefly looked like a plausible leader of pan-Arabism, but now had a decade of sterility and failure behind him -> dependent on Russian power. For the first time the Israelis seemed in danger of defeat by the much improved and Soviet-armed forces of their opponents. Nonetheless, they beat o the onslaught successfully, though only after the Russians were reported to have sent nuclear weapons to Egypt and the Americans had put their forces on the alert around the world. This background, like the possibility that the Israelis, too, had nuclear weapons which they might use in extremity, was not fully discernible to the public, perhaps, but clearly, the Middle East retained all its alarming potential to detonate crises which went far beyond it. Terrorist activity then continued Israel's border with Lebanon, provoking strong Israeli countermeasures. . Tension was high when the UN General Assembly agreed in 1974 to receive a delegation from the PLO, and to be addressed by Arafat; subsequently a large majority voted that Israel be not allowed to present its case in a debate on the Middle East. Israeli annexation_of Jerusalem -> Another called for Israel's withdrawal from Arab lands in exchange for recognition by her neighbors. . The most immediate and obvious outcome of the 1973 war on world history had been economic: the impact of the announcement by other Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, that they would restrict oil supplies to Europe, Japan and the United States. There had long been talk of an ‘energy crises’ on the way, in the sense that demand would outrun supply. This was something different, a very large rise in the world price of oil. Now the tensions of Arab- Israeli relations were brought home to the man in the street all over the world except the communist bloc. Oil prices quadrupled in a single year. The developed world was overwhelmingly oil dependent. The Iranian revolution -> In 1978 Israel invaded southem Lebanon in the hope of ending the PLO in place twenty years later. President Carter threw himself vigorously into the cause of negotiating peace between Israel and Egypt. He was successful. Two years later the Egyptian was to pay the price of assassination by those who felt he had betrayed the Palestinian cause by making peace. Nonetheless, this settlement looked for a moment like a sign of recovery in the American position in the Middle East when one was badly needed by Mr. Carter. In 1978 the Shah of Iran, long the 24) A world in evolution (China) Shanghai newspaper criticizing a play about a Wicked emperof! The play had been written by a deputy mayor of Beijing and it was thought to contain allusions to Mao's autocratic style of rule. In what followed, millions were killed, imprisoned, universities were closed, and physical labor was demanded of all citizens in order to change traditional attitudes. In a conscious imitation of May Fourth Movement attitudes, Chinese youth was mobilized to conduct the persecution. By 1968 the country had been turned upside down by these ‘Red Guards’, who were terrorizing their seniors in every walk of life. Mao himself at last began to show signs that he thought things had gone too far. A substantial delegation and decentralization of power had taken place, probably unintentionally. New party cadres were installed, and a Party Congress confirmed Mao's leadership. The Red Guards' enthusiasm had been real, though, and the ostentatious moral preoccupations which surfaced in this in some ways still mysterious episodes remain striking. The notion of opposition other than in extremity was distasteful to the Chinese; it suggested social disruption. The Chinese revolution required a rejection of the kind of revolution involved in the adoption of western individualism, and the evolution of a conception related more closely to indigenous culture. Mao benefited from this past though he turned against much of it, because he was easily comprehensible within its idea of authority. He was presented as a ruler-sage. Mao was the spokesman of a moral doctrine that was to provide a core for society, just as Confucianism had done. Mao's actions could long be presented and read in such a way, not least during the Cultural Revolution. From 1978 “social modernization”: O Mao was considered a great proletarian revolutionary, whose contributions to the Chinese revolution. Best member of the Chinese Communist Party. O China was admitted to the UN in 1971 and in 1978 Sino-American agreement in which USA made the crucial concession that its forces should be withdraw from Taiwan + the official diplomatic relations with island’s KMT gov should be ended. 25) Crumbling certainties Why did Israelian government backed terrorists and kidnappers? It was the best or worst it could do in an unfavorable international environment. Could not get back the Shah to face Islamic justice. (He died in exile in 1980). In 1980 President Carter declared the Persian Gulf as an area of interests. In the 1970s USSR was already facing some difficulties. (Had to pay to help Cuba, Vietnam, Afghanistan and for all the armaments). US -> Reagan new president Republican, he engineered a remarkable recovery in American confidence increase of Soviet anxiety. 1981 on the day Reagan was elected Iran released American hostages. The last phase of cold war a: He understood that the prices of modernization were too heavy to bear for the USSR. Another goal was to avoid the collapse of a communist system by opening it to his own vision of Leninism, a more pluralist system, involving the intelligentsia in the political nation. His starting point had been his recognition that without radical change the Soviet economy had not been and would not be able to provide the USSR with its former military might, sustain its commitments to allies abroad, improve (however slowly) living standards at home, and assure continuing self-generated technological innovation. Essentiall . Neither material well-being nor freedom had been forthcoming. And now the costs of modernization were becoming too heavy to bear. Mr. Reagan was in the end to draw great dividends on the change in Soviet leadership, but it took almost all his two presidential terms to do so. There were several meetings between Reagan and Gorbachev -> arm reduction + control over nuclear missiles. Two years later the soviet forces were withdrawn from Afghanistan. In 1991 new agreements on the reduction in weapon stocks. Many differences between communist countries themselves. By 1980 all the countries of the -> an economic transformation was needed. USSR saw all internal dissent among its allies as a potential threat to its own security. Clear sign that an eastern European change was happening -> in Poland emerged many self- Changing attitudes of Moscow. Foundation of “solidarity” (it was a broad anti-bureaucratic social movement, using methods of civil resistance to advance the causes of workers' rights and social change). In 1989 the regime accepted that solidarity and other organization and political parties had to share in the political process. A coalition of Solidarity + led by the first non-communist prime minister -> in any eastern European country since 1945 took office as the government of Poland. Freedom + justice x past actions (x example the German-Soviet agreement 1939 was denounced). The crumbling of soviet system -> In January 1987 Gorbachev announced that democratization in the USSR was to be a part of his program. Democracy was it essence and free elections were required. He wanted to delimit the authority of the party and the state + separation of executive and legislative power -> speeches -> start of revolution -> he undermined his own authority. A new Germany -> august 1989 Hungary and Czechoslovakia opened frontiers -> it was the begging of the end -> anti-gov demonstrators and riots -> 9 November the berlin wall was taken down, it was a springtime of nations. Chancellor Kohl, the Christian Democrat leader of Federal Republic, Wanted the reunification of the two Germanies -> In 1990 the process of reunification began with a treaty for monetary and economic reunification of the 2 Germanies. Other treaties united them politically under only one constitution. Mr. Kohl became the first chancellor of the united Germany. Gorbachev compensation was a treaty promising German economic help for Soviet modernization. 26) Post-cold war The Gulf war -> In 1990, after making peace with Iran, Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, ordered to his forces to cross the border into Kuwait. Why did happen? -> the protracted Iran Iraq war had exhausted Iraq's economy. He asked Kuwait to forgive the debt -> they refused. Context -> Though the long-running Iran-Iraq War had ended in a United Nations-brokered ceasefire in August 1988, by mid-1990 the two states had yet to begin negotiating a permanent peace treaty. When their foreign ministers met in Geneva that July, prospects for peace suddenly seemed bright, as it appeared that Iragi leader Saddam Hussein was prepared to dissolve that conflict and return territory that his forces had long occupied. Two weeks later, however, Hussein delivered a speech in which he accused neighboring nation Kuwait of siphoning crude oil from the Ar-Rumaylah oil fields located along their common border. He insisted that Kuwait and Saudi Arabia cancel out $30 billion of Irag's foreign debt and accused them of conspiring to keep oil prices low to pander to Western oil-buying nations. In addition to Hussein's incendiary speech, Iraq had begun amassing troops on Kuwait's border. Alarmed by these actions, the President of Egypt initiated negotiations between Iraq and Kuwait to avoid intervention by the United States or other powers from outside the Gulf region. Hussein broke off the negotiations after only two hours, and ©on August 2 1990, ordered the invasion of Kuwait. Alarmed by these actions, fellow Arab powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt called on the United States and other Western nations to intervene. Hussein defied United Nations Security Council demands to withdraw from Kuwait by mid-January 1991, and the Persian Gulf War began with a massive U.S.-led air offensive known as Operation Desert Storm. After 42 days of relentless attacks by the allied coalition in the air and on the ground, U.S. President George H.W. Bush declared a cease-fire on February 28; by that time, most Iragi forces in Kuwait had either surrendered or fled. Though the Persian Gulf War was initially considered an unqualified success for the international coalition, simmering conflict in the troubled region led to a second Gulf War-known as the Iraq War-that began in 2003. Saddam Hussein sought to play the card of Arab unity and to confuse the pursuit of his own predatory ambitions with Arab hatred for Israel, but though this provoked tumultuous demonstrations in his favor in the souks in several Muslim countries, it did not work. Iraq gave in and withdrew from Kuwait after suffering heavy losses. The humiliation of defeat did not appear to endanger Hussein's survival, or his dictatorial power. Another war of the Ottoman RIASSUNTO DELLA GUERRA FREDDA 1946 After WW2 in the world remain two superpowers: the USA and the USSR. They fought together to defeat Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. > USSR -> federal state under a communist regime, it consists of 15 republics headed by a single party. They wanted to organise the world revolution. > USA -> liberal democracy based on capitalism. It has nuclear weapons and the world's strongest industry and economy. Churchill -> speech iron curtain. They both have influence over Europe: > USSR -> wants to protect its borders and set up pro-Soviet governments in liberated countries. 3 USA -> its Marshall Plan offers loans to European countries to revive economy -> best economy in Europe means richer USA. They wanted to become an example and world power. 1949 In Germany the allies unite their territories in violation with the agreements signed with the Soviets. In response the USSR imposes a blockade on West Berlin and an airlift is set up to bring supplies to the area. USA and USSR also fight over influence on the fields on science, industry, space, sports and military. "> USSR invests in industry and arms and achieves its first atomic bomb > USA sets up a military alliance between countries of the eastern block (NATO) The first (indirect) confrontation between the powers happens in Greece where a rebel communist militia from WWZ2 supported by Soviets and armed by Yugoslavia, enters into a civil war vs the traditional monarchist party supported by GB and USA. Following tensions the USSR breaks its alliance with Yugoslavia and the communists in Greece have to lay down their arms -> Greece becomes part of the western bloc. In China the communists (ruled by Mao) prevail over the nationalists who retreat to Taiwan and the USSR wins an important ally. 1950 - 1953 Korean war + Stalin death 1954 > China intervenes in French Indochina where it supports a rebel communist militia vs France which is forced to leave the region. > Vietnam is divided in 2 with Communists in the north and nationalists in the south supported by the USA. This marks the beginning of the Vietnam war. 1955 In response to NATO the USSR organizes its own military alliance through the Warsaw Pact. 1956 France and Britain unite with Israel in a surprise war vs Egypt to regain control of the Suez Canal. USA and USSR both oppose this war and impose a ceasefire, marking the end of European dominance in the region to the benefit of the USSR. 1960 USA -> Kennedy was elected The USSR installs hundreds of long-range missiles pointed at Western Europe 1961 In response the US points its missiles towards Soviet territories. China breaks her alliance with USSR, as the country wants to distance itself and become a new world power. Many countries create a NonAligned Movement and decide to stay neutral. In Latin America USA want to fight the communist movements. But she fails to militarily overthrow the new communist government in Cuba. 1962 The USSR starts to diplomatically influence Cuba and it sends soldiers and military ships to the island and missiles are installed and pointed at the USA. The whole world starts preparing for WW3 but after negotiations the USSR removes its military facilities in return for a promise of the USA not to attack Cuba and removing US missiles in Europe. Kennedy was willed. 1965 A Military invasion is organized in Vietnam by the USA 1966 France prefers to find a peaceful solution in Vietnam -> France decides to leave NATO 1975 Communists win the war in Vietnam, inflicting a heavy defeat for the USA 1976-81 The USSR revives its political influence in the world. It supports communist militias in Africa and it sends its army to Afghanistan in support of the Communist regime fighting a group of Islamists supported and funded by the USA 1982 The USSR upgrades and replaces its missiles directed towards Europe with more precise ones. Europe feels threatened and the USA installs new missiles. 1988 USA and USSR meet to begin disarmament negotiations 1989 The USSR withdraws from Afghanistan and stops funding communist militias in Africa The Berlin Wall is destroyed and Germany is reunited 1991 End of the USSR, the 15 republics become independent states. It is the end of the cold war.