Whereas Japan profited from the First Great War - it emerged as a major power with new territories and a permanent seat, on the Council of the League of Nations - the conflict left China in greater chaos than ever. In 1919, at the Treaty of Versailles, China lost its Shantung Province to Japan. In retaliation, the Chinese ordered their delegates home, boycotted western products and discarded western democratic ideas. The grossly unfair terms of the Peace Conference provoked a massive upsurge of nationalist feeling expressed in the May Fourth movement. So divided had China become (not least as a result of western and eastern oppression),1 so weak did it remain, that by 1923, 11 years after the Republic had been established, whatever unity it possessed had been shattered by the competing claims of warlords, nationalists and communists. In the resulting confusion, the Chinese provinces of Tibet and Outer Mongolia broke away.2
The collapse of order in China in the interwar years, coupled with the harsh terms meted out to China at Versailles, caused the one-time, liberal-minded leader, Sun Yat-sen,3 to advocate the adoption of Russian communism. He conceded that the liberal and democratic ideals espoused in the October Revolution of 1911 had proved impracticable. Out of necessity, China would have to return to its traditional way of life based on the collective rather than the individual; the controlled rather than the free; the hierarchic principle rather than the egalitarian. The authoritarian ideology of the state implied in Confucian doctrine must be exchanged for the parallel authoritarian ideology of communism. In contrast, the western historical pluralism upon which the West's liberal democracy depended, and upon which the Chinese experiment in western republicanism had been based, was largely alien to Chinese thought. Western republicanism had nothing in common with Chinese traditions, hence its failure.
In 1923 Sun Yat-sen allied himself with the Chinese Communist
Party founded three years earlier under the supervision of Moscow's agents. Soviet support was given to the re-arming and training of Sun's Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang. The aim of both the nationalists and the communists was to undermine the warlords and bring about national reunification. In 1924, coincident with the calls for industrialization being made in Turkey, Persia and India, Sun Yat-sen advocated the industrialization of his country. partly to the impulse provided by the Russian Revolution of 1905, industrialization was thought to be the alchemy of the modern age.
In 1925 Sun Yat-sen died. Replacing him as head of the Kuomintang was his deputy, Moscow-trained Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975).4 The struggle for power in China now lay between the warlords, the Russian-led communists and the Chinese nationalists (which included the remnants of Sun Yat-sen's republican movement), led by Chiang. After forming an alliance with the communists, Chiang carried out a successful expedition against the northern warlords. In 1927 he turned around and slaughtered his communist allies; 300 died in Shanghai alone. Chiang's Russian communist advisers fled to Moscow.
Having overcome his enemies, and having captured Peking, between 1928 and 1937 Chiang extended his rule to the whole of China. His nationalist government was quickly recognized by all the great powers except the USSR. His abolishing of the hated extra-territorial rights of westerners gained him support in his drive to create an independent, unified, progressive China. Foiling his efforts was widespread corruption,5 and Russian and Japanese intervention. The Russians invaded Manchuria in 1924 and directed communist insurrection within China itself. In an effort to prevent China becoming united under Chiang Kai-shek, the Japanese Army annexed Manchuria in 1931 and established the puppet state of Manchukuo.
Thenceforth China was divided between the nationalists led by Chiang (based on Nanking), the communists led by Mao Zedong,6 operating as guerrilla bands in the southern Kiangsi province, and the Japanese. In 1933 Chiang launched an offensive against the communists. By October 1934, the communist army's position had become critical and it was then that Mao, Chou En-lai (c.1898-1976) and others led it on its incredible 'Long March' from Kiangsi Province in southeast China to Yenan in the far northwest. It was on this march that Mao established his leadership. Of the 100,000 men and 35 women who left Kiangsi, barely 30,000 reached Yenan a year later. With a price of a quarter of a million dollars on his head, Mao stayed there for the next 11 years. In 1937 Japan dropped all pretence and began a general war, occupying north and central China. Chiang and the nationalists fled to Chungking (Chongqing) in the upper Yangtze valley.
As the Second World War approached in the West, Russia's influence in the struggle for power in China declined. With Japan's attack upon the western powers in December 1941, the Chinese nationalists and the communists made what proved to be largely unsuccessful efforts to form a common front to fight the Japanese. There matters rested until 1945 when - the Americans having forced the Japanese to surrender - the Chinese nationalists and communists began a fight to the death for supremacy.
Between 1918 and 1941 Japan's conduct towards the rest of the world oscillated between peaceful and warlike intentions. For most of the 1920s it gave the other powers little to grumble about. At the Washington Naval Conference7 - a conference called by the US (November 1921-February 1922) to discuss political stability in East Asia and naval disarmament - it amicably accepted Britain's decision to terminate the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, an alliance never accepted by the US, China or Australia. Americans saw the Pacific as a sphere of American influence. Japan further agreed to substitute a Four Power Pacific Treaty (US, British Empire, France and Japan) for the 1902 alliance. It even became conciliatory towards China, handing back the Shantung Province. It cooperated with the US and Britain by scaling down its naval armaments, and by accepting a ratio of major warships favourable to the western powers. This decision resulted in anti-American and anti-British feeling in Japan. A spate of assassinations of Japanese political and industrial leaders followed: three cabinet members were assassinated. Japan cooperated with the western powers again on naval discussions at Geneva in 1927. With the London Naval Treaty of 1930, it extended to its heavy cruisers the 3:5 ratio it had accepted with the US and Great Britain at the earlier conferences. With Britain and the US, it pledged itself to maintain the status quo in the Pacific. The Americans and the British reciprocated by agreeing not to increase their bases at Pearl Harbor and Singapore - a decision the western powers, including
Australia and New Zealand, would later regret. Japan was also given a free hand in eastern waters.
Forces were at work, however, that would eventually undermine whatever goodwill was established between Japan and the West. Following the policies already introduced in the British Dominions, the United States Immigration Quota Acts of 1921-4 deliberately penalized Asians including the Japanese.8 The introduction of the measures was denounced in Japan as a 'Day of Shame'. Growing world autarchy resulted in the exclusion of Japanese products from American and other western markets. The commercial and financial crash in the US in 1929 led to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which caused the further decline of international trade upon which Japan greatly depended. Between 1929 and 1931 the value of Japanese exports was halved. Protective measures taken by the Dutch in 1932 and by the British in 1933 further restricted the sale of Japanese goods. With vastly increased numbers (between 1873 and 1918 Japanese population rose from 35 to 65 million), and with its population growing by a million a year, Japan had to find - either through the expansion of world commerce, or by territorial aggrandizement in Manchuria - a solution to its demographic and economic problems.
To the detriment of future world relations, the economic problems besetting Japan strengthened the hands of the Japanese militarists and ultra-nationalists. Condemned by the League of Nations for its occupation of Manchuria, Japan abandoned the League in 1933. In 1931 China had called for action against Japan by the League of Nations and the US (a signatory of the Kellogg-Briand Pact) without avail. The flouting of the League Covenant by Japan seriously undermined the League's authority. In 1936 Japan withdrew from the London Naval Treaty. From being a friend of the British, Japan became a potential enemy.
In the same year (1936) that Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany there were more political assassinations and attempted coups in Tokyo. In 1937, taking advantage of the fact that Europe was preoccupied with the Spanish Civil War (1936-9), Japan began its long-prepared invasion of central and southern China. By now the Japanese military were completely in charge of Japanese policy. In 1938 the League of Nations, prompted by the Americans, declared Japan an aggressor. In 1939 the US rescinded its Treaty of Commerce and Navigation with Japan. As a warning, the American Pacific Fleet - now the world's greatest - was moved from its base in San Diego to Pearl Harbor, 2,000 miles closer to the Japanese archipelago. In 1940 Japan signed a tripartite Pact of Mutual Assistance with Italy and Germany; it also signed a treaty of friendship with Thailand. Roosevelt responded with economic sanctions, including the cutting off of scrap iron and steel supplies. In September 1940 Japan began its expansion in the Pacific by occupying northern French Indochina. Roosevelt's answer was to ban vital oil shipments.
Denied oil supplies by America, Britain and the Netherlands, Japan faced a stark choice: it either had to abandon its stake in China (which the Americans demanded and which Japan could not possibly concede) or seize the oil of Indonesia, then called the Dutch East Indies. Oil was the critical issue. In 1941, though nominally still at peace with Japan, the US banned virtually all normal trade and froze all Japanese assets. Japan found itself in a corner from which, outside of war or humiliation, it could not escape. The only thing it could do was to try to neutralize the Soviet Union, which it did when it signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Moscow in April 1941.
By then the US had come to be regarded by many Japanese as their country's chief enemy. The only crime Japan was committing in expanding onto the land mass of Asia was to upset the division of world territory already settled in the West's favour. It was doing nothing the West had not done. What was the difference, the Japanese asked, between US actions in Central America and the Caribbean and their own idea of a Co-prosperity Sphere in Asia? Only the US - satiated with territory - prevented Japan from fulfilling its destiny as the leader of East Asia. In November 1941 (its last proposals having been rejected by the US) Japan made the fateful decision to attack all the major western powers in the Pacific.9 According to the Japanese General Staff, the war would have to be won in four months. The longer the war, the less likely it was that Japan would win it. As in its earlier contests with China (1894) and Russia (1904-5), war against the Americans had to be won quickly or not at all; time was the crucial element. The Japanese military had no illusions about America's far greater productive capacity. Although severely under-utilized in the 1930s, America's industrial might was still in a class by itself.
On 7 December 1941 the Japanese made their surprise attack against the US fleet at Pearl Harbor and installations in the
Philippines.10 The day after Pearl Harbor, Germany and Italy entered the war on Japan's side. The Japanese had reached the final stage of the great venture in aggression they had begun in Manchuria in 1931 - a venture which, if not beyond their motivation, proved beyond their means. More than two million Japanese perished.
The war ended with the atomic bombardments of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. With the use of nuclear weapons, a new era in warfare had begun.
'I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,' says Hindu scripture.
India's history in the interwar years is one of growing antagonism between the Indians and the British. The British clung to their rule over India, the Hindus and the Muslims demanded independence. The impasse was broken by Gandhi, who more than any other, won for India its freedom. Gandhi, who had returned to India from South Africa in 1915, tolerated British rule until the First World War was over. Indian troops had fought for Britain with distinction both on the western front and in the Middle East. Indian supplies sustained the Allies. Yet agitation for self-government in India during the war never ceased. In an attempt to appease the Indians, in 1917 the British promised 'the gradual development of self-governing institutions'. The Montagu-Chelmsford Proposals of 1918 granted partial self-government to the provinces; the Government of India Act (1919) made further concessions - all of which were regarded by the Indian National Congress (chiefly Hindu) and the All-India Muslim League as attempts to defer self-government. Subsequent disturbances, aggravated by severe crop failures and widespread famine, gave vent to the repressive British anti-sedition measures of 1919. These measures undid any good that might have resulted from the Montagu-Chelmsford Proposals, and brought Hindu, Muslim and Sikh discontent with Britain to a head.
It was at this point that Gandhi, shocked by the Amritsar massacre of 1919 in which 379 Indians had been killed by British troops, renewed his campaign of passive resistance which he had practised in South Africa. Between 1922 and 1924, with other members of the Indian Congress Party,11 he was jailed on charges of sedition.
From 1924, until his dramatic protest march to the sea in March-April 1930, Gandhi travelled extensively through the villages of
India, preaching his several gospels: the moral force of nonviolence, the acceptance of the 'untouchables', the unity of Hindus and Muslims and - in order to stem the corrupting influences of western modernization - the adoption of Swadeshi (the use of local, indigenous products, especially hand-spun and hand-woven cloth).
In the autumn of 1931, when Gandhi was representing the Indian Congress at the Second Round Table Conference in London, he became convinced that England was not serious about transferring power to the Indians. On his return to India in January 1932, he was again jailed for non-violent disobedience. It was then that he began his famous fasts.
Despite Gandhi's belief that the British would not yield until forced to do so, some gains were obtained. Positions in the armed forces and the civil services were thrown open to Indians. India was divided into 11 provinces, each with wide autonomy. By 1937, when the Government of India Act of 1935 took effect, the Congress Party had obtained control of nine of India's 14 provincial governments. The principle of equality of all before the law was introduced - a revolutionary change for the inhabitants of a caste-ridden land. In the 1930s women were given the vote. Long before political independence had been achieved in 1947, the Indians had extended their activities into industrial and business enterprises that had been the preserve of the British.
Indeed, Britain's problem became not how to hang on to power in India, but how to transfer it. It was only when the British gave a deadline for the peaceful transfer of power, that the Indians gave serious thought to its use. Gandhi and his followers had wrongly assumed that there was an Indian nation to which power could be transferred effectively. 'You start with the theory of an Indian nation that does not exist,' wrote Mohammed Ali Jinnah12 (1876-1948), to Gandhi in January 1940.
Western power was also challenged in other countries of southeast Asia during the interwar years. In obtaining its independence, Burma had to free itself from both western and eastern intrusion. Immigrant Indians brought in by the British controlled much of its land, immigrant Chinese much of its commerce. The outcome of foreign influence was the growth of a nationalist movement whose origins were more religious than political. Although a revolt by Burmese peasants in 1930 was crushed, by 1937, when Burma ceased to be a province of British India, the Burmese had managed to obtain a large measure of control over their internal affairs. The outbreak of war in late 1941 was the signal to Japan and Burmese patriots to overthrow British rule, which was never fully restored. Having rid Burma of British rule, the Japanese imposed their own. Following the Japanese defeat, and the initial efforts of the British to restore their power, in 1948 Burma declared itself an independent, democratic republic free of any ties with the British Commonwealth.
Malaya's importance in world affairs in the interwar years lay in its extraordinarily rich tin and rubber resources; also Singapore was the greatest British naval base in eastern waters. Yet the defence system there, strengthened piecemeal and only reluctantly by the British during the 1930s, was easily overrun by the Japanese in 1941. Calls for independence, either from the Malays or the Chinese in Singapore, were muted compared with those heard elsewhere. It was not until after the war that Malaya's independence from the British was finally obtained.
Since 1914, the countries of Indo-China - Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia - had remained under French influence until the Japanese began their invasions in the autumn of 1940. Prior to 1940, the only challenge to French rule had come from the native independence movement founded by the Annamese peasant Ho Chi Minh13 (1890-1969). With the collapse of the Japanese in 1945, Ho Chi Minh, who by now had become the unquestioned leader of Vietnamese resistance, declared Vietnamese independence. Fighting with the French was renewed at the end of 1946.
Thailand is unique in that it was the only southeast Asian country to have escaped European colonial rule. It did so because its location precluded it from taking a leading role in world affairs, and also because the Thais have always proved adept at retaining their neutrality. In the interwar years they continued to exploit the rivalry between the British and the French. Occupied by the Japanese in 1941, Thailand subsequently declared war on Britain and the US.
Indonesian independence from the Dutch had been fought for bitterly since the end of the First World War. By the 1930s, the leading Indonesian nationalists and communists, who had grown in strength since the 1920s, were all in jail. It was Japanese intervention in 1942 and Japanese weapons that eventually allowed the Indonesians to break free of the Dutch.
Southwest Asia, like southeast Asia, was also concerned to rid itself of western tutelage once the First World War was over. For Turkey, the war had been a life-and-death struggle for its existence as a nation. Far from allowing Turkey to strengthen itself through a process of westernization, the chief Allied powers - Britain, France and Russia - had connived during the war to dismember the Ottoman Empire. On 30 October 1918, the defeated Turks were forced to sign an armistice at Mudros. The Ottoman Empire was formally dissolved, and Allied troops began a four-year occupation of Constantinople - the city which tsarist Russia had always hoped to control, if not obtain. In 1920 a demoralized sultan had accepted the terms of the Treaty of Sevres. Only Constantinople, a small part of Europe and Anatolia were now left to Turkey. Even Anatolia was to be divided into French and Italian spheres of influence. The Dardanelles were to be administered by an Allied commission. As a nation, Turkey had reached its nadir.
Following the Allied-backed Greek invasion of Anatolia in May 1919, in which British and American naval units took part, the Turks made a startling recovery. Allied aggression had provided Turkey with the will to live. Crucial in turning defeat into victory was the leadership of Mustafa Kemal14 (1881-1938), a Turkish infantry colonel who had won fame at Gallipoli. Communist Russia also helped the Turks to defeat the Allies because it preferred an independent Turkey on its borders to the Allied powers. After much bloodshed, by the summer of 1923 under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne (24 July), the Allies were compelled to come to very different terms with Turkey. By then, Turkey had won back whatever territory it had lost to Greece and the Allies. The demilitarized Dardanelle Straits were returned to Turkish control entirely in 1937. The western-supported Greeks were driven out of Asia Minor.
On 29 October 1923, the Turkish Republic, with Mustafa Kemal as president, was proclaimed. The earlier departure from Constantinople of Sultan Mohammed VI, in November 1922, had ended 500 years of Ottoman rule. In March 1924 the caliphate was abolished and the members of the House of Osman banished.
Having repulsed the western powers, the Turks proceeded to imitate their ways; westernization spread rapidly. The Islamic legal code, the Shari'a, was replaced by western laws. Polygamy was abolished and divorce introduced; civil marriages were made compulsory; women were given the vote and permitted to become members of the National Assembly (1934). Sunday was decreed a day of rest, instead of Islam's traditional Friday. Dress was also westernized: the use of the veil was made optional; the wearing of the fez was forbidden. Western-type family names were introduced in 1935 when Mustafa Kemal became Kemal Ataturk (Father of the Turks). Education was made compulsory for all; the metric system was introduced, and the Latin alphabet took the place of the Arabic and Persian; those under 40 years of age were obliged to learn it. English replaced French as the principal foreign language. The shift in emphasis in education away from classical Persian and Ottoman poetry to European history, literature and science, which had begun in the nineteenth century, was accelerated. As a result of Kurdish opposition to the secularization of the state, all religious orders were suppressed. In the new wave of Turkish nationalism (Turkism), many aspects of Islamic life were abandoned.
While Turkey showed itself eager to adopt western ways, it had no intention of sacrificing its exclusive character to western liberalism. Turkish nationalism was depicted as unique. Historical and linguistic theories appeared that purported to show the Turks as the originators of all civilizations. It was not so much the restoration of Islam that was needed, but the restoration of Turkism untainted by other nationalities. After 1934 all aliens were banned from professions and trades.
In order to increase its power as a nation, in 1934 Turkey undertook a five-year plan for the development of industry. Fear of foreign control, however, caused the government to discourage foreign investment and foreign ownership, particularly in those industries concerned with national defence. Turkey wanted to modernize, but on its own terms. One of the exceptions to this rule during the 1920s was the long-term credit negotiated with the Soviets for the acquisition of Russian cotton-spinning machinery. With the onset of the Great Depression of 1929-33 Turkey's development suffered a temporary halt, though agriculture, mining and transport continued to receive government aid.
In its foreign relations Turkey was forced to compromise. Following the Treaty of Lausanne, it relinquished the district of Mosul to British-controlled Iraq (1926), made an alliance with Soviet Russia (1925), a non-aggression pact with Italy (1928) and a treaty with Greece, which settled outstanding Turkish-Greek problems. It also recognized the territorial status quo, and agreed to naval equality in the eastern Mediterranean (1930). In 1932 Turkey joined the League of Nations and in 1934 concluded the Balkan Pact with Greece, Romania and Yugoslavia which guaranteed the Balkan frontiers. Treaties of friendship were also signed with Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq.
By the eve of the Second World War. Turkey had come to be recognized as a crucial force in eastern Europe and southwest Asia. In May 1939 - following Italy's attack on Albania - it signed with Britain an agreement of mutual assistance in case of aggression or war in the Mediterranean area. In the following June it also signed a non-aggression pact with France. Turkey was now committed to the western cause. No such agreements were made with the Russians. Despite the help that Bolshevik Russia had given Turkey in the 1920s, Ataturk's relations with the Russians had always been cool. His suppression of communist activities in Turkey in 1929 had given notice to the Soviet Union that he intended to be master in his own house.
Until his death in 1938, despite his despotic ways, Ataturk's popularity grew. Like Napoleon, he was a soldier rather than a statesman, a dictator rather than a democrat. The Turkish people will always remember him as the man who saved Turkey in its hour of greatest need. Without him, the power relations of Turkey and southwest Asia with the rest of the world would have been very different from what they became.
With the outbreak of the First World War, Persia became the spoil of the Central Powers and the Allies. In conditions bordering on total anarchy, the Persians were in no position to argue. As a state with a will of its own Persia almost ceased to exist. Nor did the collapse of tsarist Russia in 1917, or of the Central Powers in 1918, bring any relief. The Persian delegation, which appealed to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 for the restoration of its territory, now in the hands of the Bolsheviks and the British, was turned away. Instead, the British drew up the Anglo-Persian Agreement of 1919 which was meant to guarantee Persian integrity as well as to ensure British ascendancy. The agreement was never ratified. Instead, in 1920 Persia sought security as a member of the League of Nations.
British ambitions in Persia set the scene for the coup d'etat of February 1921, as a result of which Zia ud-Din, a writer and publisher, became Prime Minister, and a Russian-trained Cossack officer, Reza Khan (1877-1944), became Minister of War and Commander-in-Chief. Almost at once, a treaty of non-intervention was concluded with the Bolsheviks, under which the Russians agreed to evacuate Persia, rescind any concessions and privileges, denounce past treaties, cancel all outstanding debts, and hand over to the Persians without indemnity all Russian property in Persia. By the end of 1921 the Russians had withdrawn their troops from northern Persia as they had promised. Understandably, with the Russians being so generous, it was hardly possible for the British to be grasping. The proposed Anglo-Persian Agreement was dropped. Diplomatically, the Russians had scored a victory.
Thenceforth, Reza Khan sought to make himself the military dictator of Persia. Three months after the coup d'etat, his copartner Zia ud-Din fled to British Haifa. In 1923 Reza Khan assumed the duties of Prime Minister. In 1925, having officially deposed the ineffectual Ahmad Shah, he ascended the peacock throne as the first of the Pahlavi line. The Qajar dynasty which had ruled Persia since the 1790s was ended.
Once in absolute control, the new monarch pressed on with reforms. His efforts were felt in education, in law, in religion, in social relations and in the arts. He was responsible for the introduction of civil marriage, for compulsory primary education and for the abolition of the Islamic veil. For usurping some of the clergy's powers he would pay dearly later on. He enlarged the armed forces, which he brought under the command of Persian rather than European officers. By 1928 he felt strong enough to revoke all restrictions and privileges held by foreigners in Persia (which the Bolsheviks had done voluntarily seven years earlier). After 1931 foreigners could no longer own agricultural land; foreign trade was more closely controlled; and the Persian sections of the Indo-European system of communications were nationalized. In 1931 Persia had put down a major rising of the Kurds on the Turkish frontier. In 1937 Reza Khan increased Persia's cooperation with Turkey, Iraq and Afghanistan through the Saadabad Pact. Yet Persia was neither westernized nor modernized on the same scale as Turkey. It never became a republic; Islam's power though infringed remained largely intact. Moreover, under Reza Khan's regime, legislation dealing with alcohol, drugs and corruption retained its own peculiar Persian puritanical streak.
On the financial side, Reza Khan was forced to compromise.
The American financial advisers who had helped the country a decade earlier were allowed to return. While these officials had no control over army funds, between 1922 and 1927 they succeeded in sorting out the chaotic conditions of the Persian treasury. On their heels came American oil company executives seeking concessions. In 1933 Persia was able to obtain better terms with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Government-run enterprises were also started in the textile, sugar, glass, match and metals industries. A special project of the Shah's was the Trans-Persian Railway built between 1933 and 1939. Planned and built with the help of Scandinavian engineers, it was paid for out of taxes levied on the consumption of sugar, tea, opium and oil. Ironically, this railway, linking the Caspian with the Gulf, became indispensable to the Allies in the Second World War and one of the chief causes of their invasion, and Reza Khan's subsequent abdication and flight in 1941 to Haifa. In 1935 the name 'Persia' was changed to the ancient name of 'Iran'.
Although courted by the Turks (who had religious affinity) and the Germans, Afghanistan managed to remain neutral during the First World War. Subsidies from British India undoubtedly encouraged the Amir to take a neutral stance. Afghanistan's call for independence from the British in 1919, and its sending of an emissary to Moscow, soon embroiled it in war with British India. In 1921, after an inconclusive struggle, the British granted full independence. From that time onwards Afghanistan's destiny rested with itself. Under King Amanullah (reigned 1919-29), relations with Russia were improved and attempts were made to modernize Afghanistan along European lines. But Amanullah proved unpopular with the military and the traditional element of Afghan society, who encouraged the brigand chief Habibullah Ghazi to attack him. Without allies Amanullah was eventually driven into exile. With British connivance, the throne was then seized by his cousin General Mohammed Nadir Khan, who executed Habibullah and his accomplices and turned Afghanistan once more in the direction of western modernization. A constitution was introduced in 1930 providing for a bicameral legislature; education was encouraged, and Russian technical instructors were welcomed. Regardless of the constitution promulgated in 1931, power remained in the hands of the King. Islam remained supreme in religion and law.
In 1933 Nadir Khan was assassinated by those who opposed his reforms. His heir, Mohammed Zahir Shah, continued his father's work. Peace was maintained, and modernization - however slow the process - was continued. In 1934 Afghanistan joined the League of Nations. In 1937, with Turkey, Iraq and Iran, it formed the Oriental Entente designed to withstand pressure from the European powers. In the Second World War, as in the First, Afghanistan remained neutral.
For the Arab world, the years 1914-39 were turbulent. Prompted by the Manifesto of Arab Nationalism of 1914, Arab demands for independence from East and West grew throughout the Great War. Only by throwing off the Turkish yoke and by asserting Arab nationalism (Pan-Arabism) could the Arabs and Islam be restored to their former power and glory.
The western powers had other intentions. In dismembering the Ottoman Empire they had made no allowance for Arab independence. Allied treachery to the Arabs, revealed by the Bolsheviks in 1918, had so aroused the Arab world that in 1919 Woodrow Wilson sent the King-Crane Commission of Inquiry to Syria and Palestine to investigate Arab aims and policies. The subsequent report left no doubt about the Arabs' desire to govern themselves, and their opposition to Jewish immigration in Palestine which 'should be definitely limited'.
Considering the attention the report received it might never have been prepared. Because it was almost entirely pro-Arab and anti-imperialist, it was not made public for another three years; by which time the important decisions regarding these countries had been made. France and Britain did not want America interfering in their imperial affairs.
Meanwhile, at an Allied conference in Italy in 1920, the fate of the Arab states was decided in a manner contrary to what the King-Crane Commission had recommended: Iraq and all of Palestine were given to Britain; France obtained Syria. The only gesture made to Wilson's principle of national self-determination was to speak of the Arab countries not as colonies, but as mandates. The mandates were approved by the League of Nations in 1922; the US agreed to them in 1924. Earlier promises made by Britain to the Arabs were disregarded. Thus began a long trail of sorrow in the Arab world.
Syria was to be the first test of strength between European imperial ambitions and the Arab nationalist movements. Occupied by the Arabs under Faisal (1885-1933), son of Hussein of Mecca, immediately after the First World War, it was also claimed by the French who saw no reason why they should not repossess their imperial domains. By 1920, by which time France had extended its claim to the whole country from its bridgehead in Beirut (Lebanon), Faisal had been elected by a national congress to rule Syria (which included Lebanon) from Damascus. As far as the Arabs were concerned, Syria was independent.
In the summer of 1920 the Arab and French differences were settled by a resort to arms in which the French won an overwhelming victory. Following the principle of divide and conquer, Syria was at once split into the states of Damascus, Lebanon, Aleppo, Jebel Druse and the area around the port of Alexandretta in the north (which Turkey claimed and in 1939 obtained from France).
Yet the French failed to stifle Syrian claims to independence. French action in shelling Damascus for two days in 1925, during which 1,200 people were killed, was censured by the League of Nations. Only in 1936, after years of conflict, did France promise that Syria would be granted independence within three years and become a member of the League of Nations. Before two years had passed, however, France was on the point of war with Germany. By the end of 1938 Syria's existing constitution had been suspended. By June 1940 the country had been invaded and was under Allied control. Independence seemed further away than ever. In fact, many more Syrians were to die at French hands before independence was gained.
The French applied the same principle of divide and conquer to the state of Lebanon. Under French direction, Lebanon, which had formerly been an autonomous Ottoman Christian region, was now occupied by equal numbers of Christians and Muslims. Given a constitution in 1926 as 'The Great Lebanon', the French continued to foil Lebanese national aspirations. Two decades of agitation had to pass before the Lebanese were able to rid themselves of French control. By that time, as a result of foreign intrusion, Lebanon had become so divided between Christians and Muslims that nothing could save it from the dreadful civil conflict that lay ahead.
Of Britain's three mandates in the Middle East - Iraq, Palestine and Trans-Jordan - Iraq was the first to be given a semblance of independence in 1930. It was admitted to the League of Nations in 1932. The British seem to have been content to exercise their influence through Faisal, who had been installed by them as King of Iraq in 1921. Thus they repayed their debt to Hussein of Mecca who had led the Arab revolt in 1916 against the Turks. So successful was this relation between the Iraqis and the British that in 1922 the British changed the mandate into an alliance. Yet Britain did not sacrifice its vital interests. It obtained Iraq's agreement to the construction of three airfields, which it promptly occupied. It also retained control of foreign affairs, military matters and finance. By obtaining oil-rich Mosul in the north from the Turks in 1926, its oil interests in the Middle East were further strengthened. Oil pipelines from Mosul reached Tripoli and Haifa on the Mediterranean coast by 1935. As a result, British supplies of oil as well as Iraq's revenues were greatly increased.
In 1933 Faisal died and was succeeded by his son Ghazi, who ruled until his death in 1939. It was during Ghazi's reign that German and Italian influence grew. German trade increased rapidly, and the Italians came to predominate in the shipping of the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, anti-British voices were heard more and more - particularly as passions had been aroused over the Jewish question in Palestine, where Iraq's influence was cast in favour of the Palestinian Arabs against the Jews. As a protest, in 1936 the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem fled from British-controlled Palestine to Baghdad. It was British conduct in Palestine which partly explains why, on the death of King Ghazi on 4 April 1939, the mob turned against the British and stoned Britain's consul to death.
From the moment the British had assumed responsibility in Palestine in 1920, they found themselves involved in a never-ending dispute between Jews and Arabs. The Jews based their claim to Palestine on the historical and religious associations of their people with the area; in returning to Palestine they were returning to their spiritual home. The Balfour Declaration had promised the establishment of a Jewish national home there. Wilson, Lloyd George and South Africa's Jan Christian Smuts - among others - had all held out the hope of a Jewish state. Since the Zionist15 movement had been founded in the late 1890s by the Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), who in 1896 had published Judenstaat (Jewish State), growing numbers of eastern and central European Jews had become persuaded that a meaningful
Jewish life could only be lived in Palestine, which they called Israel. Outside, they would be torn by spiritual and cultural annihilation. The Nazi persecution during the 1930s confirmed the Zionists' worst fears. Of crucial importance were the US Quota Acts of the early 1920s, which reduced the flood of Jewish immigrants to America to one-fifth of what it had been after the First World War. With the American door almost closed to the Jews, Palestine became their only option.
The problem of creating a national home did not become acute until the holocaust of European Jewry resulted in an unparalleled increase of Jewish refugees. Between 1920 and 1927 only about 77,000 Jewish immigrants had entered Palestine. The latter made up 17 per cent of the population.16 In 1930, out of a total population of one million, three-quarters were Muslim Arabs - some of whom had migrated from Syria and Lebanon - the rest were Christians and Jews. In 1940, out of a total population of one and a half million, the Jews numbered about half a million or about one-third of Palestine's population. The right of Jews to enter Palestine was being interpreted as the right to create a Jewish majority.
According to the Jews, it was pointless for the Arabs to argue that it was Zionist ambitions or European imperial interests that had caused their misfortunes. It was the British who had broken Ottoman power; it was western geologists who had recently added to the mineral wealth of Arab lands. It was western not Arab initiative that had permitted the Arabs to move towards national independence.
The Palestinian Arabs' response was that they were being gradually deprived of a land which their forebears had cultivated for a thousand years. Palestine never was a separate province to be administered by the western powers and gradually to be taken over by the Jews. Palestine was an Arab holy land and an integral part of Syria. The Arabs had been tricked and deceived at every turn. They had fought during the First Great War with Britain against the Ottoman Turks to gain their independence. Instead, they had had to endure British rule. No room could be made for a second nation in Palestine except by dislodging the Arabs, who were already in possession.
In trying to give the same piece of territory to two contesting parties, the British came to be distrusted by Jews and Arabs. To Arab charges of duplicity, the British argued that they had never intended that the Arabs should have unconditional independence. To Jewish charges of perfidy, they pleaded that to give the Jews the whole of Palestine could not have been further from their thoughts. What they had promised was that the Jews should have a national home in Palestine, not that Palestine should become the national home of the Jews. To the British, the idea that the Jews should predominate over the larger Arab community was untenable. Granted the desperate circumstances in which the British found themselves in 1917, their fault lay not in obtaining help wherever they could, but in believing that it was possible to satisfy the totally incompatible demands of both Jews and Arabs.
In 1922 the British published a White Paper in which they reiterated that it was not Britain's intention that Jewish nationalism should be imposed on the inhabitants of Palestine. There followed in 1930 the report by Sir John Hope-Simpson, which was conciliatory towards the Arabs, and which again stressed British obligations to the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine.
By the 1930s uprisings in Palestine were endemic. Following widespread violence in 1936, the British established a Royal Commission under William Robert Wellesley Peel, whose plan of partition, like all previous plans, was refused. As Europe moved closer to war, British attitudes underwent a subtle change. Increasingly, the British became more anxious about future Arab cooperation than about pacifying the Zionists. In 1939 a new White Paper was issued in which the British proposed that all further Jewish immigration should cease except with Arab approval. It also recommended that Jewish land purchases should be restricted, and that, as the British intended to abrogate their mandate, Jews and Arabs should begin to work out some scheme whereby they could live together peacefully. With the outbreak of the Second World War, the Arab-Jewish problem entered a new phase.
The interwar years were equally decisive in determining the present-day political reality of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. In June 1916, Hussein Ibn Ali, head of the Hashemites of western Arabia, proclaimed the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Yet Hussein had always been a staunch supporter of the Ottomans. Moreover, Arab nationalism in the years 1906-16 had not developed among the Hashemites at all, but among the more sophisticated, western-educated Syrians. It was with Ottoman support that Hussein had been able to control his Arab rivals. Hussein's about-face can only be explained by the fact that the war had provided him with an opportunity that he had sought for some time. The decision having been made to side with Britain rather than Turkey, Hussein proclaimed himself King of the Arabs; to Britain, France and Russia, however, he remained King only of the Hejaz. With Arab help British forces were able to defeat the Turks in the Middle East. In September 1918 they entered Damascus.
In 1919 a bitter, disillusioned Hussein refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles with its proposed mandatory regimes for Syria, Palestine, and Iraq (Map XII). The real threat against him, however, came not from British duplicity but from his Arab rival, Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud (1902-53) of eastern Arabia. With the help of the British, Saud had risen from a landless exile to become the successful ruler of the Nejd with his capital at Riyadh. By 1924, leading a puritanical sect of Muslims - the Wahabi - he had routed Hussein. The Wahabi movement, founded in the eighteenth century, was meant to purify the preponderant and, by their lights, increasingly decadent Sunni sect of Islam. As the British felt they had less to fear from ibn Saud than from Hussein, they chose not to intervene. In 1927 London recognized ibn Saud's conquests.
By 1932 the kingdoms of Hejaz and Nejd had been renamed Saudi Arabia. By then, ibn Saud had come to terms with Britain, Turkey, Persia, Iraq, Trans-Jordan and Egypt. Because the British were not prepared to see Yemen's independence extinguished as Nejd's had been, ibn Saud's attempts to seize Yemen (also founded by a revolt against the Ottomans) were foiled by them. Having won the territory in battle, ibn Saud was compelled to settle for a slight rectification of frontiers. To protect itself further from Saudi attacks, Yemen also turned for help to Iraq, Japan and Russia - states which, hitherto, had had almost no influence in this region.
In 1933 ibn Saud's desperate need for money caused him to grant to Standard Oil of California the right to explore and develop his country's oil resources. In 1938 oil was discovered in commercial quantities. With hindsight, the sum paid by Standard Oil was trifling.
Deprived of his kingdom, ibn Saud's rival Hussein continued to have influence in the Arab world. One of his sons, Faisal, having been driven from Syria by the French, was elected King of Iraq; another son, Abdullah, while on his way in 1920 to attack the French in Syria, had been persuaded by the British to take over the government of the British mandated territory of Trans-Jordan, which included part of Palestine west of the Jordan River. In 1923, under pressure from Abdullah, Trans-Jordan was expressly excluded from the Balfour Declaration and given a status of semiautonomy. In 1928 (when Trans-Jordan obtained its formal independence from Britain), Abdullah's powers as emir were increased.
Throughout the interwar years, the British continued to assist Abdullah. They did so primarily because of Trans-Jordan's strategic position, which had caused the British to thwart the attempt made by ibn Saud in 1924 to seize the country. Abdullah continued to receive British arms and money until the Second World War brought fundamental change to the Middle East.
In 1945, partly as a result of British efforts, the Arab League was formed.
World History
