UNIT 7 TOPIC 5

Unresolved Tensions after WWI

THEME : Governance
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain the continuities and changes in territorial holdings from 1900 to the present.

World War I is over, but as it turns out the end of the war created the conditions for all kinds of tension
throughout the world, especially with respect to colonial peoples and their desire to expunge imperial
powers from their lands.

THE MANDATE SYSTEM

Despite the fact that colonial people fought in World War I, the victorious powers did not see fit to
reward those sacrifices with independence and self-rule. In fact, on the whole, European powers
and the Japanese maintained their colonial holdings in the interwar period, and in some cases, states
gained colonial territory as a result of the war. Some new states did emerge after the war, most
notably the Republic of Turkey under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, better known as Ataturk .

But, and I cannot emphasize this enough, in many places, colonial territory just switched hands
from one imperial power to another, and here’s where I introduce you to the mandate system in the
Middle East. At the Paris Peace Conference that ended World War I, victorious powers aimed to
dismantle the Ottoman and German empires and divided those colonial territories among themselves as just
spoils of war.

The ultimate imperial party foul was committed by U.S. president Woodrow Wilson , who kept insisting
during the peace negotiations that self-determination ought to be the guiding principle of a post -
war world. By that he meant that states should have the right to govern themselves. Many
colonial peoples around the world took this to mean that the outcome of the peace conference would lead
to the freedom and independence of colonial holdings everywhere. But as it turns out, the French
and the British were in no mood to follow Wilson’s idealism, and largely refused his ideas.

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Unresolved Tensions after WWI

THE MANDATE SYSTEM cont’d.

However, they couldn’t just ignore Woodrow. So the compromise they made in the Middle East
was known as the mandate system. And under this system, Middle Eastern territories would become
mandates administered by the League of Nations , and they created a three-tiered structure to
classify these territorial holdings. Class C mandates had the smallest populations and were
considered the least developed, and thus they were treated essentially as colonies. Several islands
in the Pacific fit this category and were taken over by the British and Japanese .

Class B mandates had larger populations but were still considered underdeveloped and therefore
would be ruled by the victorious powers because it was believed they weren’t ready for self-determination.
Most of Germany’s colonies in Africa fell under this heading and were divided among various
victorious powers.

And then, Class A mandates had large populations and sufficient levels of development that they
were deemed suitable for independence and self-rule. However, that’s not how it actually played
out. The British occupied Israel and Iraq while the French occupied Syria and Lebanon, treating
them no different than colonies. And remember, many of the people in these colonial holdings
interpreted the end of the war to be their ticket to freedom. So when they got out from one imperial
thumb only to find a different thumb descending upon them, that, not surprisingly, led to fierce anti-
colonial resistance .

SUMMARIZE the previous section in your own words. (2-4 sentences)

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Unresolved Tensions after WWI

JAPAN EXPANDS
We also need to consider the expansion of Japan’s empire in the interwar years. Remember that
Japan was the outlier in the imperial world since it was the only non-western state to make
themselves equal to western power. And now that Japan had a place at the table of power, they did
what powerful industrial nations did: get an empire.

In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria in order to expand its empire and gain access to valuable natural
resources. That was a flagrant violation of the rules established by the League of Nations ,
but unfortunately the League didn’t have much power to enforce its rules and just resorted to some heavy
finger wagging.

In response, Japan went ahead and quit the League of Nations and continued right on with its
program of conquest in the Pacific. To that end, by 1932, Japan had taken over part of China
and created a puppet state called Manchukuo . And then throughout the interwar period Japan
would continue to seize territory throughout the Pacific, and dubbed its area of influence the
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere .

SUMMARIZE the previous section in your own words. (2-4 sentences)

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Unresolved Tensions after WWI

ANTI-IMPERIAL RESISTANCE
I said before that the dashed hopes of colonial people everywhere with respect to their independence after
the war led to various anit-imperial resistance movements, and I’ll mention two.

First was the creation of the Indian National Congress in India which was a British colony. It was
formed before the war in the late 19th century for the purpose of formally petitioning the
British government for greater degrees of self- rule in India. But, despite some weak concessions
to the Congress’s requests, British domination continued basically unchanged in India, even after millions
of Indian soldiers fought for the British cause in World War I. Now, the tide would begin to turn in the
1920s when Mohandas Gandhi became a significant leader in the Congress and would lead Indians in
various acts of potent but peaceful protest against British policies. Those acts of resistance would ultimately
result in independence, though not until after the second world war.

The second example of anti-imperial resistance was the formation of the

African National Congress . It was founded in South Africa by western-educated lawyers and
journalists and dedicated itself to obtaining equal rights for colonial subjects in South Africa. It was
influenced by the ideas of Pan-Africanism which aimed for the equality and unity of all black
people across the world. And again, same story here, the African National Congress did admirable work
opposing especially imperial racial policies, but they wouldn’t be fully successful until after World
War II.

SUMMARIZE the previous section in your own words. (2-4 sentences)

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Unresolved Tensions after WWI

RESPOND to the learning objective with an evidence-based, argumentative thesis.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain the continuities and changes in territorial holdings from 1900 to the present.

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