Transcription
So, yeah, World War one is over, and that's great and all. 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. So I reckon we ought to talk about it. And if you're ready to get them brain cows milked, let's get to it. Okay.
Now despite the fact that colonial people fought in World War one, 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. Now to be fair, 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. So at the Paris Peace Conference that ended World War one, victorious powers aimed to dismantle the Ottoman and German empires and divided those colonial territories among themselves as just spoils for war. Oh, and by the way, if you want no guides to follow along with this video and all my videos, check the link in the description. Anyway, the ultimate imperial party foul was committed by US president Woodrow Wilson, who kept insisting during the peace negotiations that self determination ought to be the guiding principle of a post war world. And by that, he meant that states should have the right to govern themselves.
And 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 sip from Wilson's idealistic rainbow milkshake and largely refused his ideas. However, they couldn't just tell Woodrow to shut up and go eat a sandwich in the corner. 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 the Japanese. Class b mandates had larger populations and were still considered underdeveloped and therefore would be ruled by the victorious powers because, you know, they weren't ready for self determination. And most of Germany's colonies in Africa fell under this heading and were divided among the victorious powers. And then class a mandates had large populations and sufficient levels of development so that they were deemed suitable for independence and self rule.
But come on. You know that's not how it actually played out. No. 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 imperial thumb descending upon them, that, not surprisingly, led to fierce anti colonial resistance. Okay. We'll get back to that, but first we need to consider the expansion of Japan's empire in the interwar years. Now remember that Japan was kind of an outlier in the World Imperial Party 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.
They got an empire, baby. And so in nineteen thirty one, Japan invaded Manchuria in order to expand its empire and gain access to valuable natural resources. And 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 wagons. So in response, Japan went ahead and quit the League of Nations and continued right on with its program of conquest in the Pacific. And so to that end, by nineteen thirty two, Japan had taken over a 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. Okay. Now I said before that the dashed hopes of colonial people everywhere with respect to independence after the war led to various anti imperial resistance movements, and I'll mention two. First was the creation of the Indian National Congress in, you know, India, which was a British colony. It was formed before the war in the late nineteenth century for the purpose of formally the British government for greater degrees of self rule in India.
But, you know, Britain beat Britain. And despite some weak concessions to the congress's request, British domination continued basically unchanged in India even after millions of Indian soldiers fought for the British cause in World War one. Now the tide would begin to turn in the nineteen twenties when Mohandas Gandhi became a significant leader in the congress and would lead Indians in various acts of potent but peaceful protest against British policy. Those acts of resistance would ultimately result in independence though not until after the second second World War. And then 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. And 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 in opposing especially imperial racial policies, but they wouldn't be fully successful until after World War two. Okay.
Click here to keep reviewing for unit seven, and click here to grab my video note guides, which will help you get all the contents of this course firmly crammed into your brain folds. I'm glad we got to hang out, and I'll catch you on the flip flop. Heimler out.