Towards Revolution in China

China in the Early 1900s

• Qing Dynasty in power

• Foreign countries controlled trade and economic resources

• People divided between those who wanted to modernize and those who wanted to go back to traditional ways

Nationalists Overthrow Qing Dynasty

• Kuomintang- Nationalist Party wanted modernization

• They overthrew the last emperor of the Qing dynasty in 1912

• Sun Yixian ruled for six weeks because he didn’t have popular support

• Yuan Shikai took over and began ruling as a dictator, which people resented

• Shikai died in 1916 and chaos erupted

• Peasants suffered most in uneasy times in China

World War I and the May Fourth Movement

• China joined the allies during the war but didn’t get anything from it

• Treaty of Versailles gave Japan former German territory in China

• May 4, 1919 demonstrations against the Treaty of Versailles and Europeans

• Demonstrations spread to other cities and is named the May Fourth Movement

• Many people turn against the nationalists and join the communists

Communist Party in China

• Young intellectuals viewed Soviet Union under Lenin a model for political and economic change

• 1921 Chinese Communist Party formed. Mao Zedong one of its founders

• Lenin helps the communist party

• Kuomintang under Sun Yixian allies itself with the communists out of frustration with the west

Chiang Kai-shek

• Sun Yixian died in 1925 and Chiang Kai-shek took over

• 1927 moved against the communists in the Shanghai Massacre

• 1928 Kai-shek became president of the Nationalist Republic of China

• Kai-shek not good to the peasants, who began to turn to the communists for help

Civil War

• 1930 Nationalists and Communists in bloody civil war

• 1934 Long March- communists march 6,000 miles north and regroup

• 1937 Japan invaded China and the Nationalists needed the help of the Communists, so war between them suspended

Indian Nationalism

• 1885 Indian Congress Party led way for Indian independence

• Indian participation in WW1 led them to demand more from British but British didn’t keep their promises

• Amritsar Massacre- 400 Indians killed and 1200 wounded- prompted calls for revolution all over India

Mohandas Ghandi and Nonviolence

• Satyagraha- “truth force”- civil disobedience

• 1920 Congress Party endorses civil disobedience approach to weaken British authority and economic power

• 1930 demonstration against Salt Acts covered widely by journalists

Great Britain Grants India Self-Rule

• 1935 Government of India Act• Disagreement between Hindus and

Muslims about the type of country India should be

Nationalism in Southwest Asia

• Turkey-1922- Mustafa Kemal overthrew last Ottoman Sultan and in 1923 became president of New Republic of Turkey

• Persia became Iran – 1921 revolt led Reza Shah Pahlavi to come to power and he began to modernize

• 1932 Saudi Arabia under Ibn Saud also modernized but within Islamic structure

• Oil resources in southwest Asia spur competition between western powers