Transcription
Okay, I probably don't need to tell you by this point that the 20th century was chock-full of conflict and violence. But what we do need to consider in this video are the various responses to conflict that existed after 1900. And well, you know that's what we're about to do. So if you're ready to get them BR cow's milk, let's get to it.
Okay, so the first kind of response to conflict you need to know is nonviolent resistance. And there are three main figures you need to know in this category. But remember, you don't merely need to know their names and what they did; you also need to understand how their resistance movements affected political change in their respective environments. Oh, and if you want notes to follow along with this video and all my videos, check the link in the description.
Okay, so first let me introduce you to Mohandas Gandhi, who promoted nonviolence and civil disobedience in the cause of independence for India. Now, he began his political life as a member of the Indian National Congress, and he became its leader by 1921. And during the 1930s, he fully embodied nonviolent resistance against British imperial policies and the Indian cause of independence through several significant acts.
First, Gandhi and his followers participated in the Homespun movement in protest of Britain's economic dominance of India's cotton industry. Gandhi encouraged his followers to boycott British-made textiles and make their own clothes at home, and he himself did this by refusing to wear the western-style suits that he had worn in his earlier years as a lawyer and instead wore the traditional dhoti of Indian culture.
Second, a significant act of civil disobedience that Gandhi led his people into was the Salt March. And this was a reaction against the British salt monopoly. So the British colonial government, they made it illegal for Indians to harvest their own salt, which they had in abundance along their seashore. And so, in order to protest this injustice, Gandhi led his followers on a march to the sea where they bent down and harvested their own salt. And although an imperial police squad was waiting for them at the coast, and although they had already broken up the salt deposits and buried them in the mud, Gandhi dug them up and processed his own salt, and his followers began to do so as well. And for this defiance, Gandhi was arrested—one of multiple occasions in which he spent time in jail for his civil disobedience. And over time, though the British certainly retaliated against the movement, Gandhi's efforts began to break Britain's colonial hold on India. And after World War II, Britain no longer had the resources or overwhelming public support to continue to resist Indian independence. And thus, Gandhi and his actions were a key player in one of the most momentous political changes in Indian history—namely, its independence from British colonial rule.
Okay, the second figure who led a non-violent resistance movement was Martin Luther King Jr. He was a Black Baptist minister in the United States and took significant inspiration from Gandhi's methods in his own fight against America's racial segregation laws. And so, as the leader of the growing Civil Rights Movement, which aimed to secure equal rights for Black Americans, King and his followers also resisted unjust laws by means of civil disobedience. In Alabama, for example, which was deeply segregated according to race, King staged the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in which Black Americans boycotted the city's public transportation system. And the boycott caused the city significant economic distress in Montgomery and then in other places that the movement spread elsewhere. And like Gandhi, King was also arrested on several occasions for his acts of civil disobedience. But ultimately, the Civil Rights Movement affected political change as the United States Supreme Court outlawed racial discrimination in schools in the 1950s, and Congress passed anti-discrimination laws in the 1960s.
Then the third figure who resisted by means of nonviolence was our boy Nelson Mandela in South Africa. But here's where I tell you that Mandela doesn't fit as neatly in this category as Gandhi and King because, although he began promoting nonviolence, later he changed his tactics. And you know, just let me explain. So once South Africa had secured its independence from Great Britain, the minority white population rose to power and introduced legalized racial segregation under a group of policies known as apartheid. Therefore, Nelson Mandela, a prominent member of the African National Congress, led Black South Africans in acts of non-violent resistance that included boycotts and strikes. And so that's how it began. But a series of events caused Mandela to champion violence as the only way to achieve equality in South Africa. You see, while Mandela was standing trial for treason, a nonviolent protest was occurring in the town of Sharpeville. And in order to suppress it, the police began firing into the crowd, killing 69 people and injuring many more. So the treason trial combined with outrage over the Sharpeville massacre led Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists to abandon nonviolent approaches and adopt violence in their struggle for freedom. And although he was jailed for more than two decades for his connection to those violent acts, upon his release in 1994, he ran for president and won office, which was the final nail in the coffin of South African apartheid.
Okay, now I don't think it's too much to say that nonviolent responses to conflict were kind of the outliers; more frequent were violent responses to conflict. And by committing to force, some individuals and groups actually intensified violence and suffering. And I'll give you three examples.
First was Augusto Pinochet in Chile. So Pinochet led a military coup to overthrow the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, who happened to be a Marxist and had been implementing socialist policies. And don't forget, we're in the context of the Cold War here, so any Marxist rulers are going to get the United States a real twitchy. Therefore, with significant help from the United States, Pinochet assumed power and ruled over Chile as a dictator. And with that power, he violently suppressed opposition to his leadership; the military conducted raids and executions and torture against Pinochet's political enemies, including members of leftist political parties and labor unions in the Catholic Church.
Okay, a second example is Idi Amin in Uganda, who, after assuming power through a military coup in 1971, responded to ethnic conflict in Uganda with exceptional violence. He demonized the large South Asian population of Uganda, who had made significant contributions to the economy for centuries, claiming that they were responsible for taking jobs from Ugandans. And in the midst of his chaotic rule, Amin became known to the Western world as the Butcher of Uganda because of the frequent campaigns of violence that he carried out against his own people and his rivals. In some cases, the violence targeted ethnic groups; in others, it targeted political enemies; and still others had targeted seemingly random groups and individuals whom Amin deemed his enemies. And in the end, the manner in which Amin responded to conflict intensified violence in Uganda. And though a clear number of deaths has been difficult to assess, the estimates are somewhere between 880,000 up to half a million.
Okay, the third example is kind of different but definitely relates—namely, the rise of the military-industrial complex. So as fear and economic pressure caused some states to worry about the future, one response to this anxiety was to defend the future by building up their military. And the poster children for this kind of response were the United States and the Soviet Union, as they raced to stockpile enough nuclear weapons to destroy everything that exists. And this buildup was a self-feeding cycle: as military spending increased, so did the number of people who relied on this industry for their jobs. So that meant that if a policymaker did want to cut military spending, then they'd also be putting huge amounts of people out of work. Thus, this military-industrial complex served to increase violence throughout the world because it was economically profitable to produce and sell weapons.
Finally, we need to consider how some groups used violence against civilians in order to achieve political goals, and the word for that is terrorism. And here I'll just mention one of these groups—namely, Al-Qaeda, founded and led by Saudi Arabian billionaire Osama bin Laden. So Al-Qaeda was a militant Islamic group that had deep grievances concerning the involvement of the United States in Middle Eastern states—most notably Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia—and they responded with acts of terrorism against civilians in various parts of the world in order to pressure the United States to change their policies in the region. The most infamous of these terrorist acts was the September 11th attacks on the United States, which left more than 2,000 Americans dead. But that didn't really dissuade the United States from getting involved in the Middle East; in fact, it only intensified their involvement. But we'll save that for Unit 9.
Okay, click here to keep reviewing for Unit 8, 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. I'll catch you on the flip-flop. I'm out.