Unit 7: Global Conflict

1910-1920: Mexican Revolution 

• Mexico under the rule of dictator Porfirio Díaz. It was relatively stable during this time but the wealth disparity was very high

  • In 1910, Día had Francisco Madero, the opposing candidate, jailed. This sparked greater opposition against Díaz’s policies starting the MExican Revolution.

  • Madero escaped and set up revolutionary offices in Texas.

• In 1911, revolutionary troops led by Francisco Villa defeated Mexican troops and they exiled Díaz. Emiliano Zapata, a leader of the revolution began to dole out land to peasants

  • Still suffered from political instability until 1920 but began to stabilize around 1930. 

  • Between 1910 the conflicts resulted in around 2 million deaths in a population of 15 million people. 

  • New constitution in 1917 redistributing land, giving suffrage, and education. 

  • Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) formed in 1929 and dominated Mexican politics (all presidents until 2000 were members of the PRI)

    • It’s criticized to be corrupt

1911: Chinese revolution

• China struggled with ethnic tensions between the Han and the Manchus even after 200 years.

  • China had a large population and famine was imminent. 

  • China had been very wealthy but as industrialization and imperialism occurred, they grew less powerful, especially compared to europe. 

  • After the opium war, China gave up Hong Kong and opened its ports to the Europeans. 

    • Sun Yat-Sen overthrew the Qing Dynasty in 1911.

      • Combined christian and confucian ideals

  • Yuan Shikai: Yuan Shikai, a chinese military/govt official aided in the ending of the Qing rule alongside Sun Yat-Sen. As a powerful military leader, he eventually became emperor of china.

  • Chiang Kai-shek: A chinese nationalist and politician who led the republic of China from 1928 until 1975.

•  Sun Yat-sen wanted China to have power from the people and redistribute taxes fairly as well as advocating for patriotism. 

  • He didn’t have enough military strength to rule all of China and he gave up his position to a military leader after two months in office.

• The Chinese nationalist party/Kuomintang, the party that Sun led, later regained power and ruled China for 20 years before losing a war to Chinese communists.

1914-1918: World War 1 

• Allied powers U.K, russia, france, (japan later)

  • Triple entente between UK Russia france and later all other countries

  • U.s. provided support but did not officially join

  • Italy was neutral first then joined allies in 1915

• Central powers

  • Germany, austria-hungary, bulgaria, ottoman empire (later)

• Causes: MAIN

  • Militarism

    • Strengthening armies, russia built up their armies and mobilized on austria-hungary border

    • Britain and france all built up militaries in response as defense

  • Alliances

    • Alliances between austria-hungary and germany caused the one month delay between the assassination of archduke franz ferdinand and the invasion of serbia because austria hungary wanted to determine safety from russian invasion

    • Alliances between allied powers: triple entente, mutual alliances between UK russia france to protect each other

  • Imperialism

    • Scramble for africa resulted in africa being colonized and imperialized by lots of european states

    • Imperialism in asia/SEA, india britain, indonesian colonies, french vietnam

    • Imperialism from japan, japan-russian war

      • Throughout asia and asian colonies in SEA

    • Tensions for colonial control (more colonies = more power)

  • Nationalism

    • Serbian nationalism led to assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand

      • Bosnian nationalist in serbia

    • Nationalism separated countries and pressured leaders to fight?

1915: Armenian genocide starts 

• Forced deportation or massacre of hundreds of thousands to 1.5 million christian armenians in the ottoman empire

  • Also assyrians and greeks (non “turks”)

  • Armenians forced out of homes and forced to march hundreds of miles to syria 

    • Most of them died on the trip

    • After WWI began ottomans moved armenians to labor camps 

      • They were suspected to “work with the russians” for their christian religion

  • Tehcir law in May 27 mandated that armenians be moved to other places for security

• Ottomans in WWI joined central powers and started process of Turkification

  • Intense Turkish nationalism and assimilation

• This sparked a genocide against the Armenian (Christian) minority

  • First genocide in 20th century

• 25 major concentration camps for armenians

  • Ottoman troops allowed others to rob, kill, and rape the armenians and sometimes participated themselves

• Treaty of Versailles

  • Leaders during genocide were tried for crimes against humanity 

1917: US joins WWI

• Joined to fight Germany

  • 1. Lusitania ship in 1915

    • British civilian submarine with 150 american passengers shot down in atlantic waters by german 

  • 2. Zimmerman Telegram (intercepted by british intelligence)

    • German gov’t told Mexican gov’t to join forces to take back land from Mexican-American War losses 

1917: Russian Revolution

• How did the bolsheviks meet/meetings and ideas

• Lenin led ideals of marxism and socialism to have the proletariat lead

• Lenin led the Russian party of bolsheviks to take over St. Petersburg in 1917 winter

• More info about what happened

1919-1923: Greek Attacks on Ottoman Empire, Ataturk establishes Turkey and presidency

• Greeks saw their chance to attack in midst of Ottoman turmoil and territory loss

  • Attacked in 1919

• Ataturk (Mustafa Kemal; father of the Turks) led attacks against Greeks

  • Successful

• 1923: Ataturk overthrew the sultanate and became the first president of modern day Turkey

1919: World War 1 ends, postwar negotiations in the Paris Peace Conferences 

• World war 1 ends

  • U.S. entered causing higher amounts of fighting

  • U.S. had superior military forces resulting in germany’s surrender in 1918

• Germany surrendered 1918 and agreed to sign treaty of versailles in paris

• Treaty of versailles blamed germany for all of the war resulting in heavy debt, military limitations, lose territories/colonies, and full blame for war

• Germany felt that was unfair because they were not the sole cause for the war

1920: League of Nations founded… and disbanded later on 

• 14 Points Address by Wilson inspired creation of the league of nations; but U.S. didn’t join originally

  • Isolationism of U.S. congress members, voted against joining which embarrassed woodrow wilson→ they didn’t want to give more power to europe nations

• League of nations worked to keep peace (main goal) 

• League of nations had goals but couldn’t stop hitler or other groups because they had no military forces

• Mandate System

  • Took over Ottoman territory esp. in Middle East 

• Ottoman territory collapse

  • Failed to modernize

    • “Sick man of Europe”

  • Corruption, increasing taxes, inflation

    • Tanzimat reforms in 19th century tried to fix this but inefficient

  • Young Turks Movement

    • Established multi-party democracy

• How did the league of nations disband

  • Dissolution of league of nations after being replaced by united nations which was created in 1946

1927-1945: Chinese Civil War

• Between CCP and Sun Yat-sen’s Republic of China

• Sun Yat-sen took power after Chinese Revolution of 1911 which dissolved the Manchu/Qing Dynasty

  • Became more westernized

  • Three Principles of the People: nationalism, socialism, and democracy

  • Created democratic system and Kuomintang (KMT) party

• Yuan Shikai took power from Sun and tried to create monarchy but failed and died in 1916 resulting in large power struggle

• Power was split among china in a turbulent state

• Sun Yat-sen created new government in Guangzhou to create central power away from all warlords

  • No aid from western nations, looked to soviet union for help 

  • Sun - Joffe Manifesto was a declaration of cooperation between Comintern (soviet organization), KMT, and CCP

    • Reorganized KMT and CCP to align with soviet union

    • Provided military training to ccp

• KMT and CCP alliances fell apart during northern expedition with nationalists controlling most of china (KMT for, CCP against)

  • Military movement by KMT against local warlords to reunify china

  • After the 1911 revolution, there was a big political vacuum. KMT kept most of the power, but a lot of it was also spread between local warlords who seized power during the vacuum

  • Sun Yat-sen did not have the military expertise to control all of china. 

    • Chang kai shek, originally lieutenant of Sun during the invasion of the beiyang (other government led by local lords), succeeded sun yat sen in order to reunify china

      • Two issues for Chang

        • 1) Japanese imperialism invading Manchuria in 1931

        • 2) Communist influence growing in Northern China

      • Because imperialism for japan, hostilities halted in order to fight a common enemy

        • Even then hostilities were high and lots of fighting

        • Once japan was defeated, civil war “really” started from 1945-1949

    • CCP took control of mainland China and established PRC in 1949

      • Republic of China (KMT) fled to island of taiwan in 1949, still led by chiang kai-shek

      • 1950s standoff between china and PRC

      • Both claim to be legitimate government of china

        • No official treaty but ceasefire in 1979

• They had a long march to avoid fighting 

  • While battling CCP was losing and they really needed to run so they took a very long walk and a lot of people died (Majority of people died)

    • Really bad for them

  • CCP later used this as propaganda and glorified this event to pretend like they were persevering

• Originally ccp was very small but became large from support from peasants

1928: Stalin initiates his first Five Year Plan within Soviet Russia 

• Originally lenin instituted partly democratic economic policies allowing farmers to sell their goods

• Instated government owned collectives which took land from people and moved them under government control to have peasants work under

  • Many people didn’t like this and called it a return to serfdom

  • Established necessary quotas for the collectives

  • Peasants rebelled by burning and destroying their property as to not give to government

  • Plan was to heavily industrialize moving farms to factories and decrease consumption

  • Ukrainian genocide

    • Famines throughout ukraine and government sent no support even though they could

• Failed because lack of motivation/incentive and because industrial labor was dull with low reward

  • Inspired CCP to follow with their own five year plans

1929-1933: Great Depression 

• Caused in part by germany’s economic troubles after the war

  • Germany was heavily in debt and had lots of colonies and territories which they depended on to make money. They couldn’t keep up making money so they overprinted money resulting in heavy inflation. This led to a global market crash

• Other causes of GD

• Made people realize that capitalism wasn’t perfect as governments had to step in and control the economy

• FDR New Deal established to help economy

  • Public service jobs, government jobs to help develop infrastructure and recover economy

• Ended from WW2

  • Need for weapons and mobilization helped recover economy

1939-1945: World War 2 

• Germany was angry about their conditions after the war after being heavily in debt with a poor economy

  • People wanted change and also partly blamed their government

  • Hitler became chancellor (how did he get power?) and he took power after the leader (president? What was former government) died and established nazi party

  • Hitler made the jews and slavs in germany a scapegoat for the troubles which resulted in ethnic persecution from people in germany

• Hitler moved to invade other areas of europe and redeveloped military beyond what was allowed

  • Other countries watched warily but did little as to not exacerbate conflict

  • Moved to appease hitler by giving him areas such as sudetenland in czechoslovakia and other territories

  • Where else did hitler go / take territory from?

  • Molotov-ribbentrop pact between germany and russia to not attack each other as both had powerful militaries

    • Russia was wary as it was clear germany planned to backstab them but agreed

    • War officially started with invasion of poland from both sides, russia and germany

    • Poland fell and countries moved to mobilize into war because they could not let hitler take more land

  • Hitler continued to fight throughout europe, taking all of europe and france besides GB and Russia

  • Powers during WWII

    • Axis: germany, italy (fascist but weaker military), japan (later in war because wanted to imperialize too)

    • Allied: GB, france (taken over by germany), Russia, USA 

  • Heavy fighting between two forces

    • Review all battles → notes from mr headley and oversimplified video

  • Bombing of britain → airships bombed britain from germany

    • Part of Operation Sea Lion (Germany invasion of UK)

    • luftwaffe: German airforce that carried this out

    • Germany believed that britain was weak because it was isolated

    • British air force (raf140) fought back and won

    • British weapons were destroyed but factories worked very hard, especially many women employed in factories 

  • Major battles → D-day, dunkirk? Stalingrad?

  • AFter cold russian winter the nazi troops were forced back by russian military, all the way to germany

    • From the other side allied forces were doing the same, pushing back hitler who in a last ditch effort tried to capture a unit in the battle of the bulge but failed and was pushed back to berlin

    • Berlin was taken, dresden firebombing

      • Japan also firebombing

  • Hitler’s suicide

  • Yalta conference / what was the other conference?

    • Meetings between allied forces (GB, France, Russia, USA) to discuss matters after war

      • Germany was split into areas, west germany for GB, france, USA and east for russia

        • Also berlin in east russia was split between USA/west side and Russia side

1941: Attack on Pearl Harbor/ war in the pacific

• Germany's occupation of europe allowed Japan to take the colonies of the asian countries

  • Created a pact with germany in 1940 and occupied french indochina (vietnam) in 1941 and took oil and rubber from dutch east indies

  • Their only obstacle in the pacific was the United States

    • To strike them before they could pose a threat, japanese attacked pearl harbor on dec 7, 1941

  • US responded by launching doolittle raids, air raids against japan

  • Japanese battle of midway, midway islands were key islands the U.S. held 

    • U.S. won and destroyed key japanese carriers

  • Pacific fighting

    • Island hopping → taking key islands and recuperating before attacking next island

    • Iwo jima very bloody, last one okinawa

  • Japan wanted to take philippines and dutch east indies which they took in 1942

    • Used military to take a large area of British-ruled Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya, and Burma 

    • Threatened India too

    • Japan said they were anticolonial in these movements to justify their imperialism to drive out europeans and create “Asia for Asians”

    • However, they continued to oppress the colonies and continued ideas of Japanese racial superiority

1941-1945: The Holocaust

• During war atrocities from nazi party called holocaust (Destruction through fire)

  • Jewish and other ethnic minorities as well as homosexuals and disabled were sent to forced labor camps known as concentration camps and were killed, through labor or through weaponry

  • Were first transported to cities known as ghettos and then transported to camps

  • Statistics of jewish people that died? 50%?

  • Started with kristallnacht

    • Night of broken glass where nazi forces destroyed jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues

• Nuremberg trials convicted members who participated in the holocaust of crimes and they were punished

1945-1950: Chinese Communist Revolution 

• Led by Mao zedong? What happened? Explain clearly

• Ccp gained influence from many working class people and reached #s in the millions

1945: Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings 

• Once got close to japan they realized that they would not be able to attack japan without significant casualties

• Manhattan project created nuclear bombs → with oppenheimer 

  • Two bombs, little boy out of uranium and fat man out of plutonium

  • Little boy dropped on hiroshima, fat man on nagasaki

    • Devastating results.. How many deaths?

    • Japan surrendered

1945: United Nations created 

• Done in un9

• Inspiration from league of nations and enlightenment thought

1975

• Pol Pot took power in 1975 with Khmer Rouge in Cambodia

  • Wanted to create communist utopia

  • Removed all traces of western influence for communism

  • Everything foreign was banned including medicine, radios, bicycles, money, education, etc.

  • Pol Pot evacuated cambodian cities killing 20,000 people on the way

  • Slave labor in Pol Pot’s killing fields killed millions

  • Anyone suspected of disloyalty was killed 

• Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979 taking Cambodia and establishing a puppet government

1994: Rwandan genocide

• Beginning April 6, 1994 800,000 Tutsis were killed by Hutu militia

• Rwanda has 2 ethnic main groups, Hutu and Tutsi

  • In the past Tutsis were minority rulers despite Hutu being 90% of the population

  • Tutsi dominated Hutu especially under Belgian rule

• Independence in 1962

  • Hutu majority took power oppressing the Tutsi minority

    • 200,000 Tutsis fled to create Rwandan Patriotic Front

• 1990 rebel army returned forcing Hutu president to sign power sharing agreement

• Tensions were very high and fighting started when a jet carrying the Rwandan President was shot down 

  • Killings spread around country as Hutu militia indiscriminately killed Tutsi civilians

    • Tribal cards identifying ethnic background meant life/death

    • UN forces fled out of fear leaving Rwanda by itself

      • Voted to leave by UN security council unanimously

  • Hutu was not opposed and massacre of Tutsi people spread 

  • Hate propaganda through radio spreading violence

• U.N. sent 5,000 soldiers to Rwanda after pressure from media

  • Didn’t send in time to stop the massacre and only stopped after Hutu defeat by Tutsi rebels in July, 1994

2003: The War in Darfur

• Genocide in western sedan begining in 2003, still continuing today

  • Darfur is in west sudan, around the size of spain

    • 6,000,000 people in population

    • Refugees go around to neighboring countries to avoid conflict

  • Government funded arab militias called Janjaweed destroy Darfurian homes and civilians

    • Take resources, homes, pollute water, murdering, torturing

    • Rivals of liberation movements

• Ceasefire between Sudanese government and JEM in Feb. 2010

• September 2016 sudanese government allegedly killed at least 250 people, mostly children with mustard gas

Major Trends Between 1900 to Present

• Industrialization transforms the world 

  • New weapons → drastic increase in death tolls

    • Planes with weaponry, submarines, machine guns, flame throwers, atomic bombs, What new weapons?

  • Telegraph & radio networks → communication in battlefields and between people spreading culture and ideas around the world

• MAIN → global conflicts

  • Militarism ⇒  arms race between nations → destructive firepower

  • Alliances ⇒ nations fighting → allies jump in → multinational conflict

  • Imperialism ⇒ nations competing over control in territories

  • Nationalism ⇒ nations want to demonstrate military & political might

• Wartime production → overproduction → lower demand & prices → unemployment → Great Depression → increase in government involvement in economy

  • European loans to US → weaker economies than before WWI

  • “Failure of capitalism” → rise of socialism & fascism

• Postwar agreements → division of colonies among winners 

  • Local nationalism → anti-imperialist movements → decolonization

  • Ethnic prejudice → genocides and violence against minorities 

• New global entities 🌎

  • Organizations (i.e. League of Nations, UN)  enforced rules over nations

  • Treaties & alliances (i.e. Marshall Plan, NATO, Warsaw Pact) → capitalism vs. socialism → Cold War