CLASS 1: INTRODUCTION:

What is a world order? An arrangement of power relations in international affairs that is both
persistent and pervasive (dominante).
Persistent means that it lasts for a long period of time, so it is not transitory. What is, then, a long
period of time? In terms of what historians in international relations typically refer to when they talk
about world order in the XX century, they mean world orders that last for several decades.
Pervasive means that it directly shapes or at least indirectly influences all international (and many
domestic) developments.

How has the United States had interacted with the world in the past 120 years? How has it shaped the
world order and how the world order has shaped the United States? How has the world we live in
been shaped by the interactions between the United States and world order?

THE TRADITIONAL CHRONOLOGY OF WORLD ORDER SINCE 1900

● 1900-1914: A world of Empires.

● 1914-1918: World War I. Historians argue that WWI bringed about the collapse of the pre
war world order, bringing many ideas and many debates as to what order will replace the
world of Empires.
● 1919-1939: Interwar period. It was not a revolutionary change as a lot of people thought it
might be during the war. Some elements of the old order prove to be persistent into the post
WWI period despite the cataclysmic nature of the war.
● 1939-1945: World War II. Like WWI, WWII was a cataclysmic event and challenged the pre
existing world order and its ideas, leading to the Cold War Order. (It could be argued that
these dates are kind of Eurocentric, since the world started in Asia between Japan and China
in 1937).
● 1946-1991: Cold War Order.
● 1991-present:
- Post Cold War order? Unipolar moment? (The idea here was that the Cold War was
bipolar, centered in two powers. When one of those powers, the Soviet Union,
collapsed, one superpower remained and the unipolar moment began)
- Post 9/11 era? (it was then considered that the threat of Islamic Terrorism was going
to define the world order)
- Second Cold War between China and the United States?

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It is important to note that this chronology is traditional and there are many alternative chronologies to
define the evolution of the world order. For example, there are some historians who challenge the
traditional order considering the 1970s to be the real turning point because of the ensuing
globalization and its effects. (Also considered as the rise of neoliberalism).

SOME BASIC TERMS HISTORIANS USE

- Historical Actor: a person, group, organization or other entity that shapes, or can shape,
historical events. What defines actors is “agency”.
- Agency: the power of an actor to shape historical events.
- Structure: the constraints that limit the agency of a historical actor or set of actors. They can
be material or socio-cultural. Karl Marx referred to structure when starting: “humans don’t
make their own history” or “humans make their own history but they do not make them under
conditions of their own choosing, they make them under conditions that had been shaped by
the past ''.
Agency and structure are not separate, they are closely connected. The agency of past actors creates
the structure that constrain the agency of current and future actors. WWII is the clear example of the
interrelation of agency and structure. There are two ways in which the past structures the future: one
is in a material sense, as it creates the various structures and institutions that future agents have to
operate in, but it also creates their mental tools. For example, Roosvelt understanding of history, the
mistakes, challenges of past actions shaped and structured the way in which they think about their
options and how they use their agency.

COMPONENTS OF WORLD ORDER

1. Power: the ability of one actor to make another actor do what they want. How does that power
come to be? It can be:
- military: use of force
- economic
- 'Soft power '' or cultural influence (attractive version of American values through the film or
sport industry, specifically in the unipolar moment of the post CW order). One can argue that
the cultural power of the United States depended at least in part on the military and economic
power of the United States. American culture was attractive because the USA was powerful in
other ways. However, there are cases of countries with soft power that is independent from
other powers (South Korea culture is popular in China)

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2. Institutions:
- International organizations
- Treaties, agreements, international law…
3. Norms: Expectations and beliefs about what is just, right, acceptable and/or “civilized” conduct in
international affairs. In the 19th century, in the height of the age of empires, it was considered
acceptable and desirable for a strong naval power to intervene militarily in a place like China, Latin
America or Africa to bring civilization, law or order. By the mid 20th century, at least normatively,
that was going out of fashion. For example, during the 1956 Suez crisis, when the British and the
French intervened in Egypt to depose the Egyptian leader and gain control of the Suez canal, the
Eisenhower administration declared that it was not a normative behavior anymore. Eihenhower had a
sense of how the American power operated in the world, and he was operating in a Cold War order, in
which as a consequence of the British policies, the Egyptians could resort to Russian influence. The
Cold War order was pervasive and it was shaping American policy.

To sum up… WHAT IS WORLD ORDER?

- Power: Military, Economy, Soft / Cultural power (influence)

- Institutions: International organizations (NATO, UN, WTO, etc.) / Treaties, agreements, international
law
- Norms: Expectation and beliefs about what is just, right acceptable and / or civilized conduct

CAN INSTITUTIONS AND NORMS CONSTRAIN POWER?

Are institutions and norms merely expressions of power? Isn't it the case of the powerful simply
setting up institutions that channel their power in their convenient way and set up the norms that allow
their power to operate in the way they want? In which case are they just dependent variables of
power?

Do institutions and norms have independent influence? Yes, they do have influence independent of
power, and the way they do that is through its stickiness (pegajoso). Institutions and norms are often
devised by the most powerful actors, but once devised and put into place, they can gain their own
dynamic separate of those powers that set them into place. As such they can act as constraints on the
powers. The United Nations was designed by the agency of the United States elites after 1945, and yet
very quickly American elites became disillusioned because the UN developed in ways they did not
anticipate and they began to ignore the UN work. The most recent example is the Iraq War, when the
USA ignored the UN Security Council.
Neoliberalism is the project designed to protect capitalism from democracy in a global sense.

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THE 20TH CENTURY WORLD: THE PROLIFERATION OF SOVEREIGNTY.

In 1945 there were 51 independent sovereign nation states. By the XXI century, there were 190
sovereign nations. Each of these nations came to be as a result of the international order.

THE 20TH CENTURY WORLD: A CENTURY OF REVOLUTIONS:

- Ideological revolutions: nationalism (nationalism was the central ideology that brought about
the collapse of the imperial order and the proliferation of sovereignty), communism, fascism,
neoliberalism…
- Political revolutions: from Empire to Nations… and beyond?
- Scientific/technological revolutions: transport and communication. Up until the mid 19th
century, information could travel at the speed of human beings (horse, train). Around the mid
19th century there was a radical switch and information was capable of traveling at the speed
of light.
- Energy revolution: coal, oil, nuclear etc.
- Demographic revolution:
1. Growth: 1900 population was 1.9 billion and today population is 7.7 billion.
Completely unprecedented.
2. Urbanization: 15% of the population live in cities in 1900 / 55% of the population
lives in cities today.
3. Life expectancy: less than 35 years in 1900, to 72 today.

THE 20TH CENTURY WORLD: DEMOGRAPHIC SHIFTS BETWEEN REGIONS

It is important to highlight the significant decline of the European share of the world population. From
the quarter population living in Europe in 1800 to half that in 1900. Looking at those figures it is
logical to think that the role of Europe would decline, how the demographic factors have influenced
that is another issue.

THE WORLD IN 1900: A WORLD OF EMPIRES

All of the major contenders in WWI were empires. It was a multi-polar order with lots of major
actors. The greater Empire was the British, which being a tiny metropoly, had Canada, Australia, all
of South Asia (India, Pakistan Bangladesh and Myanmar), East Africa, West Africa, South Africa…

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15th century is the Portuguese Century
16th century is the Spanish Century
17th century is the Dutch Century
18th century is the French Century
19th century is the British Century
20th century is the American Century
21th century… let’s see

XXth CENTURY GREAT BRITAIN: FROM HEGEMONY TO COMPETITION.

This idea is represented by the succession

(and faces) of three British Prime
Ministers: Lord Palmerston (1855-1865),
Willliam Gladstone (1868-1894) from the
mid 19th century towards the end of the
nineteenth century and Lord Salisbury
(1895-1902) towards the turn of the
twentieth century. The British imperial
idea was based on their capitalist shift and
their need for raw material, particularly cotton (Egypt, India…). Another explanation of their imperial
need was the move of the British labor force from the countryside to the factories, which led to a
dependence on the colonies' food.

RELATIVE SHARE OF WORLD MANUFACTURING OUTPUT, 1750-1900

By the 1800, China made up a third of the world economy. Britain, where the industrial revolution has
already begun and despite its upswing, it was only 4%. However, by 1830 Britain was 10%, by 1860
Britain was 20% and it reached 25% by 1840 and then its GDP began to decline and by 1900 US
overtakes British GDP, starting the “American century”.

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FRANCE: QUEST FOR NATIONAL GLORY

Relative economic decline is one of the things that worries

British elites. Another major worry was the increasing
competition from other empires, like the French.
Napoleon III (1852-1870) was defeated by the Prussians,
which allowed them to unify Germany. The French
Empire fell and gave way to the III Republic of Jules
Ferry (1880-1881 / 1883-85). However, both Napoleon
and Ferry were imperialist. The idea of French expansion
was: if you want to show yourself to be a major power, a
civilized power, you have to have colonies. Colonies for France were a defining aspect of their status,
rather than suppliers for their economy as the British empire imperial idea was. They did not expand
to the Southeast for money, the motivating force was the civilizational quest.

GERMANY: FROM CONTINENTAL POWER TO WELTPOLITIK

Germany was created as a unitary state in 1871, primarily by the moves of Otto Von Bismarck (1871-
1890). The Kaiser in which name he did it was Wilhelm I. He died in 1890 and was replaced by
Wilhelm II (1888-1918), who was not happy with the idea of Germany being just a European empire,
which was Bismarck's idea (despite heading the Berlin Conference, he thought the out-Europe
imperial aim as a waste of money). Germany, as a growing industrial power on the heels of the United
Kingdom, had not yet had the opportunity to control extra-continental territories, mainly due to its late
unification, its fragmentation into several states, and its lack of experience in modern navigation.
Wilhelm II wanted colonies for the same motive that Ferry wanted them, for power. He got rid of
Bismarck and started the expansion of territories in Africa and the South Pacific. This competition led
to the transition (picture) of the European penetration of Africa. Europeans were involved in Africa
for centuries before 1900 (slave trade), but if we analyze the territorial aspect of the involvement, we
realized that the territorial penetration of europeans was minor (except the Argelia-France and the
Egypt-Britain because of the Suez Canal, most of the pentration was costal). However, with
Germany's new strategy of Weltpolitik, things quickly changed. The Berlin Conference of 1884,
which regulated European colonization and trade in Africa, is often considered the starting point for
the partitioning of the continent. The 10% of Africa that was under formal European control in 1870
increased to almost 90% by 1914, with only Ethiopia and Liberia being independent at that point. This
shift is explained, thus, by the competition between the Empires.

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READING 1: ON THE TROPIC OF CANCER, TRANSITIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS IN
THE U.S IMPERIAL STATE, MCCOY & SCARANO

* Empire is not an epithet. It is a form of global governance in which a dominant power exercises
control over the destiny of others through direct territorial rule (colonies) or indirect influence
(military, economic or cultural leverage).

* After counting seventy empires in world history, Niall Ferguson notes wryly, “To those who would
still insist on American ‘exceptionalism,’ the historian of empires can only retort: as exceptional as all
the other sixty-nine empires.”

By 1900, Britain’s empire covered a quarter of the earth’s entire surface; America skipped along a
string of small islands dotting the Tropic of Cancer from the Caribbean to the Western Pacific.
Europe’s empires expanded relentlessly for five centuries to rule a full third of humanity; the United
States held most of its larger colonies for just a few decades and governed only a few million people.
Yet the empire left an indelible imprint on the United States. Colonialism was a crucible that plunged
Washington’s raw bureaucracy into the white heat of nationalist revolution and great power rivalry,
forging new, heretofore unimagined state capacities.

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How could a fragmentary empire of island colonies have had such a profound impact upon this large
continental nation? Innovations in discrete areas of American colonial governance—from police and
prisons to education and environmental management—migrated homeward to influence U.S. state
formation in the early decades of the twentieth century. The transformative processes engendered by
American colonial rule in the Caribbean and Pacific after 1898 gradually radiated far beyond these
small islands at the edge of the empire, shaping the metropolitan American state and its society in
subtle yet profound ways.

Most empires over the past two millennia have grown, as Hannah Arendt famously observed, via
continental or overseas expansion. Continental empires (Habsburg Europe, Mughal India, China,
Russia, and pre-1867 United States) spread by conquest of contiguous territories that usually, though
not always, centralized imperial governance within a unitary state. By contrast, overseas or maritime
empires (ancient Rome, Great Britain, Spain, post-Napoleonic France, and post-1898 United States)
necessarily decentralized their rule through surrogate states called, variously, colonies, protectorates,
dominions, mandates, trust territories, military occupations, or even allies. Muddling this too tidy
typology, all empires engage in complex diplomacy with autonomous states, whose power
relationship ranges from ally to vassal, to forge alliances and coalitions against both rival empires and
rebels that threaten their world order. In that fusion of power and policy called statecraft, each empire
is distinct.

We begin with the shared, self-evident premise that the United States acquired an overseas
empire after 1898. We free ourselves to examine the nature of the state that Washington developed,
at the dawn of the twentieth century, to rule an empire of islands that reached halfway around the
globe. However, simultaneous with its emergence as a colonial power, the United States was, of
course, completing its continental expansion and flexing its influence as a rising global player via a
less formal hegemony known as “dollar diplomacy”, including the conquest of the western plains, the
subjugation of Native Americans, and the exercise of global commercial influence as a second tier
imperial power quite apart from the acquisition of a formal empire of island colonies. Indeed, for
most of the imperial age Washington generally avoided the pitfalls of conquest and operated
globally through episodic military incursions and economic influence. Direct colonial rule thus
represented something of an aberration within a distinctively indirect American hegemony.
Intense interactions with subjugated populations during these overseas occupations often stretch the
capacities of an occupying power’s statecraft to the breaking point, providing both the need and the
opportunity for new state forms and capabilities. By thrusting the United States suddenly into an alien
tropical terrain that spanned half the globe, colonial rule presented a host of unprecedented challenges
—devastating storms, virulent diseases, and armed revolutionaries. Yet the empire also allowed

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American expatriates unparalleled freedom to experiment with new ways to control both man and
nature, producing innovations with the potential for a profound impact on the metropole.

Washington, through its global expansion after 1898, created a unique imperial state that exercised
colonial rule with a comparatively light bureaucratic presence both at home and abroad. In contrast to
the ponderous administration and visible grandeur of the great European empires, the United States
ruled its disparate arc of islands through a nimble nexus of public-private alliances that relied on
secondment or subcontracting for expertise and a local administration only loosely articulated, in both
an institutional and a constitutional sense, within the U.S. system. Free from the gaze of far-off
Washington, the more ambitious colonial officials and their private-sector partners conducted bold
social experiments, which would have been difficult within domestic constraints, that later migrated
homeward to contribute to a more activist federal government across a broad spectrum of
administration. Innovations forged in the crucible of colonial rule contributed in significant ways to
the transformation of the U.S. government from a small bureaucracy with weak domestic capacities
and limited hemispheric reach into an expanded, empowered apparatus launched on a path to global
power.

No matter how limited in scale or duration, colonialism left a lasting imprint on all states and societies
somehow entangled in a power- fully Promethean experience that was, for colonizer and colonized,
separately empowering and eviscerating yet mutually traumatic and transformative.

READING 2: UNITED STATES INDIAN POLICY AND THE DEBATE OVER PHILIPPINE
ANNEXATION: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN IMPERIALISM

*Difference between conquest and colonialism: Most nation-states have been to some extent
expansionist, have spread into neighboring areas, and have taken political control over the inhabitants.
Because they share many basic similarities with neighboring societies, this expansionist process
usually results in the incorporation of the inhabitants into the body politic. / Colonialism involves the
conquest and control of culturally different peoples, who are so dissimilar that they cannot be easily
incorporated but must be ruled as subjects outside the political process. In the case of transplanted
settler nations like the United States, native occupants of adjoining lands were vastly different. These
peoples were not merely pushed aside as expansion occurred; they were enveloped under United
States control without being given citizenship status.

An examination of United States Indian policy during the nineteenth century reveals a clear pattern of
colonialism toward Native Americans. This essay will suggest that this policy served as a precedent
for imperialist domination over the Philippines and other islands occupied during the Spanish-
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American War. Historians are divided over the origins of United States imperialist sentiment-whether
the nation "stumbled" into empire, followed manifest destiny policies from the Mexican War, or
annexed islands in a search for commercial markets. However, there seems to be a mistaken
consensus, at least among many diplomatic historians, that the United States did not have a tradition
of holding alien peoples as colonial subjects before 1898. Rather than being considered as
independent peoples, Indians have been so closely associated with the early frontier that they have
been largely ignored as a factor in later American diplomatic history. There has been a tendency to
stereotype Indians as a "vanishing race."

United States treatment of Indian groups after the passage of the frontier slowly evolved from the
initial status of "nation," as represented by the treaty system. This form of international agreement
implicitly recognized native sovereignty and nationhood. After white settlement had surrounded a
native group, however, their status was seen by whites as something less than independant. Since the
Constitution did not deal with the legal status of individual Indians, the earliest comprehensive
attempt to define this status was by Chief Justice John Marshall. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia
(1831) Marshall admitted that the treaties did recognize the Cherokees as "a state," but he asserted
that they were not a foreign state: he provided the United States with a model for governing colonial
subjects.

The major hindrance to this evolving interpretation of Indians as subjects was the existence of the
treaties-with their guarantees of tribal self-rule. The treaties were inconsistent with attempts to enforce
federal control over internal reservation matters, and so in 1873 Commissioner of Indian Affairs
Edward P. Smith called for the abrogation of all Indian treaties and the end of sovereignty: "All
recognitions of Indians in any other relation than strictly as subjects of the Government should cease.”

The Supreme Court upheld the change and decided that Indians "were not a State or nation" but were
only "local dependent communities”. Furthermore, the Court declared that Indians born on
reservations were not granted citizenship by the Fourteenth Amendment. They could not become
citizens unless by naturalization or by explicit provisions of a treaty or statute. They were instead
defined as " 'nationals,' or persons owing allegiance to the United States but without those privileges
which go only with citizenship." Precisely the same status was conferred upon island subjects after the
Spanish-American War.

By 1898, while the United States was conquering overseas territories, the Court was characterizing
Indians as dependent wards under the "paramount authority" of Congress, which could alter or abolish
tribal governments without regard to treaty promises. . This process was remarkably similar to the
process by which the native government of Hawaii went unrecognized in favor of a white man's
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territorial government there. Likewise, a United States district court in Alaska decided that whites,
even of Russian and foreign extraction, were automatically recognized as naturalized citizens, while
Indians were not granted citizenship but were "subject to such laws and regulations as the United
States may from time to time enforce”.

The United States did not make the "mistake" of recognizing native governments in the Philippines
through treaties, as it had done earlier with Indians. By the end of the century the federal government
held virtually unlimited power over American Indians. This condition had not come about as suddenly
as the establishment of United States authority over its Filipino and other island subjects, but Indians
lived under a control as thoroughly colonial as any inhabitants of American overseas territories.

The most influential advisory group on Indian policy was the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of
the Indians. However, they had no respect for native cultures and believed that Indians should
abandon their traditional ways of life and merge onto the American melting pot. Thus, this influential
group of Indian policy advocates recognized the colonial-subject status of Native Americans and
proposed that the experience gained should be applied to the alien subject peoples of the new
territories beyond the seas.

In an 1893 report, Theodor Roosevelt declared that any claims about Indians owning their lands were
"nonsense." Agriculture, he felt, was the only thing that entitled people to own land (this argument
ignored the many Indian groups that were agricultural. The future president held a strong belief that a
clash between savagism and civilization was inevitable. That civilization would ultimately triumph,
he had no doubt, and in the process many of the Indians would be exterminated. But he warned his
readers not to be overcome with sympathy for the "decay" of the Indians because "the survivors will
come out American citizens" and be amalgamated into Western culture.

The stage was set for imperialists to argue that their program was one of continuity from the past. In a
speech before Congress, favoring the retention of the Philippines, Lodge stated that "the record of
American expansions which closes with Alaska has been a long one, and today we do but continue the
same movement. The same policy runs through them all. The imperialists argued that the western
territories were in fact "colonies" and no different from overseas territories.

Imperialist arguments were unapologetic about violating the consent doctrine with Native Americans,
because they were held to be "savage and barbarous tribes." Even though Indians were "rightful
owners of the soil”, whites were justified in conquering them "in flagrant disregard of the principle of
consent.' The reason given for this rather contradictory flouting of American ideology was that

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Jefferson's doctrine applied "only to our own race, and to those people whom we can as- similate
rapidly." Indians "are not men, within the meaning of the theory" that all men are created equal.

Most anti-imperialists agreed with this consensus about Indians, and so their only alternatives were to
deny the analogy or ignore Indians entirely. In the few times that they did mention Native Americans,
the argument that was usually made by anti-imperialists involved the Indians' small population size of
"a few hundred or thousand men" (ignoring the fact that even the low estimates of the 1980 census
reported 248,253 western Indians.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the concept of the world being divided between civilization and
barbarism was especially strong in western thought. To those who believed in the superiority of their
own form of civilization, it logically followed that this superior form should be spread to others.
Imperialists believed that such an expansion would be of ultimate benefit to mankind. This belief in
the need to govern Filipinos and other "barbarous" peoples similarly to Native Americans was also
held by congressmen. With only one exception, all of the Indian policy leaders were strong supporters
of imperialism.

Roosevelt contended, the civilization of the Philippines under American domination would be of
benefit to the Filipinos. As it had occurred with Indians, peace and order could only come about after
subjugation to civilization, "for the barbarian will yield only to force." Once this civilizing process
had occurred, and Indians had become "fit for self-government," they should be granted equality; but
until then, "There would be no justification whatsoever in treating this fact as a reason for abandoning
the wild tribes to work out their own destruction. Exactly the same reasoning applies in the case of the
Philippines”.

Given this philosophy of the savagery of Filipinos, with its analogies to Indians, the imperialists were
not surprised at the beginning of military resistance. While Halstead admired this nonservile quality,
he felt that it was inevitable that civilization advanced. When fighting broke out in the Philippines in
early 1899, anti-imperialists compared the rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo with George Washington.

The impact of imperialist rhetoric on actual events in the Philippines, especially during the 1899-1902
insurrection, influenced the feeling among United States troops that this was merely another Indian
war. Instead of seeing 1898 as a new departure, historians might view Philippine annexation as the
last episode of a nineteenth-century pattern of territorial acquisition and direct political rule of subject
peoples.

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The American empire of the twentieth century has moved in a different direction, more concerned
with commercial dominance than political annexation. But for the expansion- ists of 1898, the
precedents to govern colonial subjects were clear and exact, based on the long road from
independence to wardship for American Indians.

READING 3: EMPIRE AND AMBITIONS IN ASIA, CHINA AND THE PHILIPPINES

George Dewey’s victory over the Spanish flotilla in Manila Harbor in May 1898 propelled the United
States to great power status in Asia, just as an imperial drama unfolded in China. The Manchu dynasty
suffered a blow after Japan soundly defeated China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895.
Expansionist nations: France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and Russia joined Japan in imposing
unequal treaties and establishing spheres of influence, usually under China’s prosperous port cities.

However, the McKinley administration initially intended to minimize the U.S presence in both China
and the Philippines. The US did not participate in the rush for concessions in China. Nevertheless, by
October 1898 the president decided that the entire archipelago should be annexed and the Treaty of
Paris, signed by Spain in December 1898 ceded all the Philippines to the USA . In China, the
McKinley administration took a different approach. They respected China’s territorial integrity
and the principle of equal trade opportunity.

America's growing presence in Asia did not go uncontested. A popular anti colonial insurgency, led
by the Philippine patriot Emilio Aguinaldo, challenged US authority. Before the insurrection had been
crushed, more than 5.000 Americans and over 200.000 Filipinos were dead, victims of combat and
disease. Violence rocked China as well, when the anti-christian Boxer Rebellion killed missionaries
and their converts and attacked the diplomatic quarter in Beijing in 1900.

Theodore Roosbelt, who had become president after McKinley’s killing in 1901, formally declares
that the Philippine insurrection had been extinguished. To solidify US rule, the governor general of
the Philippines and future US president, William Howard Taft advanced a policy of limited Philippine
self-rule and enforced strong trade links to the United States. Washinghton boasted that American
colonialism in the Philippines, and the principle of the Open Door constituted a more benign policy
than they practiced by Europeans.

CLASS 2: THE US JOINS THE FRAY

IMPERIAL COMPETITION AND THE “SCRAMBLE FOR CHINA”

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Africa was not the only place in which, in the 19h century, imperialism was intensifying, and it was
not the place where the United States joined the fray. It
happened in Asia. Around the same time, in the 1880s/1890s,
at the turn of the 20th century, a very similar dynamic of
imperial competition was playing out in Asia.
Apart from the actors later seen in Africa (Britain, France and
Germany (beers!) There were new actors involved in the
scramble for China: Russia in the north and Japan in the East.

JAPAN BECAME A COLONIAL EMPIRE

- 1894-1895: Japan, which was becoming a modernizing power, defeated China in a Naval
War. This is taken by overservers from around the world as an indicator that the respective
modernization projects that both the Chinese and the Japanese have been engaged in over the
previous decades. The Chinese modernization project was a failure and the Japanese one was
a success. This was surprising, as for centuries China had been the dominant power in East
Asia and Japan has been a subsidiary power. However, by the late 19th century the Japanese
managed to overtake and defeat the Chinese. Japan instituted in the 1860s the “Meiji
Restoration”, as the general notion was that they were restoring the emperor to power. It was
a revolutionary change in Japanese society. They installed a whole set of reforms around the
idea that Japon must study the sources of power of the Western powers, and extract from each
example the most compelling elements: military, political, technological… With these
lessons, Japan must rebuild a new country in the modern age based on this knowledge. The
Meiji revolution bringed about military change, and the proof is the 1895 victory. As a result
of that war, the Japanese had territorial acquisitions.
Japan takes Taiwan, which had been part of the Chinese Empire, as a colony. Taiwan
remained as a Japanese colony until the Japanese defeat in WWII. If we want to understand
the situation of Taiwan today and its separaness identity, it is important to know the half
century of Japanese colonialism in the island.
Korea, which had been until then into the Chinese sphere of influence, falls into the
Japanese sphere. After 1905, Korea became a formal Japanese colony.
The Japanese gained territory influence in China itself (Manchuria region) and they came
into a clash with the Russians (Russian-Japanese War 1904-05), who were expanding in the
same region from the north.

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 - 1897-98: The Japanese victory in the 1895 war led to a sense among the various powers that
the Chinese empire might fall apart and the various powers were starting to compete for
territory.
- 1900: “The Boxer Rebellion'' in northern China against foreign encroachments. The
Boxer Rebellion was the culmination of Chinese discontent with the economic and political
interference of foreign powers, especially European and Japanese. This sentiment against
foreigners originated during the Opium Wars, which pitted China against Great Britain, and
during the first Sino-Japanese War. On June 20, 1900, the Boxers stormed the German
embassy in Peking and killed its ambassador. Boxers spread violence across Shandong and
the North China Plain, destroying foreign property such as railroads and attacking or
murdering Christian missionaries and foreing diplomacies (future US president Hoover was
under siege in Xinjiang). Given the siege on delegations, the armies of the Eight Nations
Alliance (signed by the governments of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the United States,
France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and Russia) started a combined military operation
to invade northern China and released the siege. Despite having a powerful army, the Boxers,
however, were unable to overcome the defenses of the diplomatic compound and in August
1900, the siege of the embassies was neutralized. Hostilities finally ended on September 7,
1901, when Empress Cixí agreed to sign the Treaty of Xinchou or "Boxer Protocol," a new
unequal treaty with the governments of the Eight Nations Alliance.

RUSSIA BECAME A COLONIAL EMPIRE

- 1904-1905: Russian Japanese War. In the 19th century, the Russians, as the Americas, had
a parallel manifest destiny of expanding eastward across Asia. By the late 19th century, the
Russian Empire had arrived in the Pacific Ocean and was also moving down into the
territories of the Chinese empire. This southern expansion through the Manchuria region
eventually led to a war between Russia and Japan (1904-1905). Thus, the Russo-Japanese
War was a conflict arising from the rival imperialist ambitions of the Russian Empire and the
Empire of Japan in Manchuria and Korea. The Russians sought a warm-water (not freezing in
winter) port in the Pacific Ocean for use by their Navy and for maritime trade. The port of
Vladivostok could only operate during the summer, but Port Arthur (China) would be able to
remain in operation all year round.After the first Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), Japan had
retained the island of Taiwan, as well as the protectorate over Korea. Japan was subsequently
forced to surrender Port Arthur to Russia. In 1903, negotiations between Russia and Japan
proved futile, so Japan decided to go to war to maintain its exclusive dominion over Korea.
Without prior declaration of war, on February 8, 1904, the Japanese attacked Port Arthur,

15
 sinking some warships and immobilizing the rest; in this way, the Japanese secured their
domination of the sea and their total control of the Korean peninsula.
The result of the clash was even more surprising than the Sino-Japanese war of 1985, as the
Japanese won again. The war was a huge shock to the international order, which was based on
the assumption of European supremacy. The 19th century had provided evidence in that
sense, but the beginning of the 20th century seemed to prove something different.

WHAT ABOUT THE USA?

The United States was not grabbing territories in China, as free trade was the preferred ideology of the
reigning economic powers. Thus, US policy was the one of Open Doors, they did not want exclusive
spheres of influence but to do business with any part of China. The US tried to prevent European
imperial powers from sharing out China's territory as they were doing in Africa, and advocated a
policy of equal trade with all countries. In 1899 and 1900 Secretary of State John Hay sent the
imperial powers two formal diplomatic notes requesting that they respect China’s territorial integrity
and the principle of equal trade opportunity. The Open Doors policy was a strategy designed to
protect US commerce in China and simultaneously disavow imperial intent. The great powers did not
reject the Open Door in principle, but they no made specific commitments to uphold it.
In the mid 19th century the British were the major advocates of free trade. However, by the late 19th
century the Americans had overtaken the British and became the major advocates of the Open Doors
policy. Although the United States did not have yet a territory, the Philippines were close to the arena
of competition in China. Indeed, as soon as they arrived in the Philippines in 1899, they were not only
fighting in the Philippines to suppress their resistance, but also sending out forces to mitigate the “The
Boxer Rebellion'' in northern China.

LET’S GO BACK A LITTLE BIT… HOW DID WE GET THERE?

Two forces defined the long 19th century globally:

- Transformation of material power: the Industrial Revolution. This factor explains the
advantage that the Western Powers had, as in military and economic were over other parts of
the world.
- Transformation of ideological and political power with the rise of the ideal of popular
sovereignty. Nationalism was above all of the ideologies, as it was the most fundamental in
the transformation of the international order. Its rise represented the shift from Empires to
Nation States.

EMPIRE VS NATION STATE (AS IDEAL TYPES)

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What’s the difference between an empire and a nation state?

Similarity: Both are types of states, their main job is to control their territory and their population, to
extract resources from those territories, and to do their best to monopolize violence.

Differences:
1. POPULATION:
- Empires are defined by the difference of their population. Empires are in the business of
making distinctions between different groups of population whether based on ethnicity, race
or class…
- Nation-states arrange their population based on their similarities. All of the population shares
some kind of characteristics: language, religion, race…
2. TERRITORY
- The territories of Empires are unbounded. Because empires are arranged hierarchically, they
can always add new groups and new territories.
- Nation-states, because they claim a similarity of their population, their territory is bounded by
the population they described as their own. For example, in the mid XX century example,
Germany claimed territory because it was populated by Germans, but not beyond that.
3. LEGITIMACY, SOVEREIGNTY:
- Empires derive legitimacy from an external source: God, mandate of heaven (Chinese
dynasty), civilization…
- Nation-states derive legitimacy from the people.

TO SUM UP… Empires are universalist and nation states are particularist.
HOWEVER… There are points in history in which the characteristics of both empire and nations are
combined: national empires. The British, the French or the German empires were colonial empires
that have the hierarchical arrangement typical of Empires but at their center they have nation states.

17
So, what’s the difference between the nation-empire and the “plain” empire?

1900 was a world formed mainly by national empires. The term national is important, as it distinguishes the type
of empires that predominated around the XX century and differentiate them from the traditional empires
(centered on a monarchy or a dynasty that have been there for centuries). National empires were uniquely
modern, particularly exemplified by the French and the British, but also at a smaller scale by the Dutch and
Portuguese Empires

If we take the British example and we look into the 16th and 17th century, we had a dynasty and a
nobility serving that dynasty. Below them, there were all sorts of subjects in India, the Caribbean but
even on the British territory. However, by the late 19th century democracy was emerging in the
British islands, within the nation-state. The expanded franchise with the 19th century Acts gave men
the right to vote in the British Islands, but all of British India was still subject to the British King.
There are two systems: equality in the metropol and hierarchy in the colonies.

AMÉRICA

1893: AMERICA ORDERS THE WORLD

The 1893 Columbian exposition is considered the debut of the United States as a major world power
(it was a universal exhibition that took place in Chicago to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the
arrival of Christopher Columbus to the New World in 1492). The idea of the expo was to present the
achievements, the technologies, the culture, the economic and success of the USA to the world.
Washinghton presented itself as a global power but at the same time is putting itself as superior from
all of the other nations.

RISE OF USA OVERSEAS EXPANSION: THE HAWAIIAN REVOLUTION OF 1893

For almost the entire 19th century Hawaii was an independent kingdom ruled by a dynasty. In the
course of the 19th century, there was significant immigration from North America to the independant
Hawaii kingdom. There were two types of immigrants: missionaries who wanted to convert
indigenous people, and white merchants who wanted to make money. White immigrants integrated
into the society and politics, and by 1893 they decided they did not want to be ruled by an indigenous
queen. The white elite, led by American businessmen, particularly sugar plantation owners, started a
revolution. They deposed the queen Liliuokalani and established a Hawaiian republic ruled by

18
Sanford B. Dole (first as the president and then as territorial governor). This was not planned by
Washigton, it was decided by the white minority of Hawaii, and in fact Washington opposed the
deposition of what his administration considered a legitimate monarch. However, when McKinley
came into power, he said yes to the annexation (in 1998). Dole’s cousin came to Hawaii and set up the
DOLE company of pineapple plantations and made a lot of money, as it was fashionable among
Europe elites.

Some episodes of imperial expansion are more guided by the metropol, and other episodes are pulled
in by the margin, as in the Hawaiian case. The idea of the Americans was that because of the imperial
sentiment that was going on, they feared other major powers would have taken Hawaii.
THE RISE OF US NAVAL POWER

Alfred Thayer Mahan was the leading naval strategist under the McKinley Administration. He exerted
great influence on Theodore Roosvelt, who by that time was the Assistant Secretary of the Marine.
Americans had resisted the logic of naval power for centuries, as they were centered in trade and did
not want to invest money in naval power. Naval power meant big military and military meant that the
big government needed taxes. It was difficult to convince the American public to invest in the navy,
but Mahan sorted it out and through the support of Roosvelt they built a strong naval power. The US
was then not just an economic but a military power.

In his books, Admiral Mahan tried to explain where the prestige and strength of the British Empire
came from, claiming that the answer could be found in the British acquisition of maritime supremacy,
thanks to which they secured the following: a thriving foreign trade, a very good and efficient
merchant navy, capable of supporting that trade, a powerful navy, which could go to the defense of
the trading ships wherever it was needed, a number of maritime bases, where ships could be
resupplied or repaired, a number of colonial territories, to provide the raw materials needed by the
industry of the metropolis, thus enabling it to meet the most demanding needs of the consumer
markets for fine and/or exotic products. Mahan believed that these five elements were indispensable
to ensure prosperity and supremacy, since without them or without some of them, a nation would
inevitably be left in inferior conditions, and without the possibility of obtaining the efficiency and
returns that were to be desired: the Americans learned the lesson well, and used this doctrine to their
advantage.

RISE OF U.S NAVAL POWER: THE MONROE DOCTRINE STIRS TO LIFE

The model under president Monroe was based on the idea that the United States was not willing to see
European powers intervene in western hemisphere. However, that statement had been empty rhetoric
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for most of the nineteenth century. Until the McKinley presidency, the USA had not had the naval
power to prevent the European powers from intervening in Latin America. This flips in the mid
1890s, as for the first time the USA had the naval power to enforce the Monroe notion.

THE DECLINE OF THE SPANISH EMPIRE

In the 16th and 17th century Spain was a huge Empire, but by the late 19th century Spanish Empire
had lost most of their territories except Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean and the Philippines in
the Pacific.

THE SPANISH EMPIRE AND ITS NATIONALISTS ENEMIES

Nationalism was rising in the 19th century all around the world, and the remaining territories of the
Spanish Empire were talking about independence. José Martí (Cuba) and José Rizal (Philippines) are
thought of as founders of the nation. Both were intellectuals which spent most of their lives abroad,
and they entrench the conception that the population of those nations were nationals in their own
right.

WHAT IS NATIONALISM?
An ideology that holds:

1. Common identity: “We” are a group that have common traits that bind “us” together
and distinguish us from others. For example, common territory, common history,
ideals, language, religion, race and ethnicity…
2. Demand for that identity to be expressed through self determination: “Our” common
identity must find a political expression in the form of “our”own state - a nation state
- in which legitimacy and sovereignty resides in the nation / the people.

Thus, nationalism is incompatible with imperialism. However, meanwhile nationalism was emerging,
colonialism was rising too. How is it possible that both of those ideologies were rising together?

How to resolve the contradiction between the idea of popular sovereignty and the reality of colonial
expansion in the context of the late XIX century?

The answer relies on the idea of RACIAL HIERARCHY, called the “white man’s burden” (the term
was coined by the imperialist poet Rudyard Kipling) from the British point of view and “the civilizing
mission” from the French point of view. The idea was based on the notion that humanity was divided
20
up into various groups. Some of those groups were considered competents of governing themselves
because of their innate characteristics and some groups were not considered competent. As stated by
Walter W. Williams in his article United States Indian Policy and the Debate over Philippine
Annexation, by the end of the nineteenth century, the concept of the world being divided between
civilization and barbarism was especially strong in western thought. To those who believed in the
superiority of their own form of civilization, it was logically followed that this superior form should
be spread to others. Imperialists believed that such an expansion would be of ultimate benefit to
mankind.

CLASS 3: AMERICANS AS COLONIZERS

In what ways the United States acquired its overseas colonial territories following the example and
adapting the practices of other overseas empires, and in what ways they tried to do things differently?

The United States did not design the order of National Empires but entered into it and took upon itself the norms
and institutions, introducing some innovations. The USA attempted to present itself as an exceptional empire,
supposedly rejecting the British model of “white’s man burden”, the French model of “civilizing mission” and
initiating in the Philippines an American model of democratic tutelage. They joined the fray to make the Pacific
an American Lake and the Caribbean an American pond, connecting them through the Panama Canal. This
project was completed with the Spanish American War of 1898, taking Puerto Rico and Cuba in the Caribbean
and Philippines and Gunam in the Pacific, and the annexation of Hawaii around the time. If we want to
understand American wars in the XX century, the Pacific War in WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam war…
All of them are partially about the preservation of the PAcific as an American lake.

SPANISH AMERICAN WAR IN CUBA

Spanish General Valeriano Wyler came to Cuba to try to stop the insurrection led by José Martí
against the Spanish rulers (Cuban Independent War 1895 - 1898. It had sugar as the main catalyst) His
strategies were portrayed brutally in American newspapers. Wayler designed a strategy of
“reconcentration” to deprive the rebels of the support of the peasantry. For that purpose, he placed
rural dwellers in concentration camps, plagued by diseases, in which a lot of people died. The
Americans presented its intervention in Cuba as humanitarian, to protect cubans from the oppressive
spaniards.

In January 1898, violence in Havana led U.S. authorities to order the battleship USS Maine to the
city’s port to protect American citizens. In February, a massive explosion of unknown origin sank the
Maine in Havana harbor, killing 260 American crewmembers. An official U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry
ruled in March, without much evidence, that the ship was blown up by a mine, but it did not directly
21
place the blame on Spain. Much of Congress and a majority of the American public expressed little
doubt that Spain was responsible, however, and called for a declaration of war. It had been long
thought that Cuba had to be naturally attached to the United States and not to Spain given its
proximity, but the USA did not have the naval power until the 1890s to do so.

SPANISH AMERICAN WAR, 1898

In April, the U.S. Congress prepared for war, adopting joint congressional resolutions demanding a
Spanish withdrawal from Cuba and authorizing President William McKinley to use force. On April
23, President McKinley asked for 125,000 volunteers to fight against Spain. The next day, Spain
issued a declaration of war. The United States declared war on April 25. On May 1, the U.S. Asiatic
Squadron under Commodore George Dewey destroyed the Spanish Pacific fleet at Manila Bay in the
first battle of the Spanish-American War. Dewey’s decisive victory cleared the way for the U.S.
occupation of Manila in August and the eventual transfer of the Philippines from Spanish to
American control.

The Spanish had valued the Philippines for centuries because of its privileged position, which made
possible trade from South America (silver) to Manila, and from Manila to China. From China, the
produced goods went the other direction round to Europe. However, the Spariards did not value the
Philippines themselves, it was mostly valued because of the transshipment point. The island was not
governed heavily, and the governance was left to catholic monks who wanted to christianize the
population.

The leader of the Filipino rebellion against Spanish colonialism was Emilio Aguinaldo. He exiled to
Hong Kong in exchange for a peace treaty with Spain (Pact of Biak-na-Bato), but was found by
Dewey, who was there leading the US Navy Asiatic Squadron, and taken back to Manila. Dewey is
thought to have told Aguinaldo that if help Americans to defeat Spaniards the Filipinos would have
their independence. Once the Spaniards surrendered, Aguinaldo claimed himself as the first President
of the Republic.

The Treaty of Paris (1898) ended the Spanish American War and granted the United States its first
overseas empire. The once-proud Spanish empire was virtually dissolved as the United States took
over much of Spain’s overseas holdings. Puerto Rico and Guam were ceded to the United States, the
Philippines were bought for $20 million, and Cuba became a U.S. protectorate. Philippine insurgents
who fought against Spanish rule during the war immediately turned their guns against the new
occupiers, and 10 times more U.S. troops died suppressing the Philippines than in defeating Spain.

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Aguinaldo lasted three years from the beginning of the Spanish-American until his surrender on April
1, 1901; despite the perseverance of isolated pockets of resistance, Aguinaldo's surrender ended the
revolutionary stage.

THE “GREAT” DEBATE OVER THE PHILIPPINES

McKinley's argument was that because of the imperial competition, if they do not get the Philippines
and establish Manila as a naval base, other main Imperial States such as the UK or Germany would go
for it. In an interview, Mc Kinley said that when the Philippines came to the US as a “gift for the
gods”, he did not know what to do. However, he did not want to give it back to Spain, nor to turn
them over to France and Germany, nor to leave them to themselves, as he considered them as unfit for
self government. Thus, he considered that there was nothing left for his Administration other than to
take them all and educate and civilize them.
Once the Treaty of Paris (1898) was signed with Spain, it had to be ratified by the Senate. Then, a
whole debate both in the Senate and in the US public started, specifically the debate was focused on
the fact of the acquisition of the Philippines as a colony. US had not acquired until that date overseas
territories.

PRO ACQUISITION: Senator Albert J. Beveridge.

- Trade: “a base at the door of all of the East”. Access for manufactures.
- Geostrategically: “a fortress thrown up in the Pacific”. If they wanted to defend themselves
against threats in the Pacific (a rising Japan), they needed the Philippines”.
- Racial Difference: “Filipinos are “a barbarous race” unfit for the Anglo Saxon well
government”.
- Civilizing Mission: “We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee under
God, of the civilization of the world”.
Speech to Senate, Jan. 9, 1900

AGAINST ACQUISITION: Carl Schourz, journalist, politician and soldier.

The American Anti-Imperialist League was an organization established in June 1898 to battle the
American annexation of the Philippines as an insular area. They hold that the policy of imperialism
was extinguishing the spirit of 1776, and they embraced Lincoln's idea of “no man is good enough to
govern another man without the other’s consent”. Carl Schourz, one of the major advocates of anti
imperialism, asked for the cooperation of all men and women who remain loyal to the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution in the opposition for reelection of all who in the White House or in
23
the Congress was standing for forcible subjugation of people. Schourz rejection of imperialist policies
were summed up in these points:

- Trade: we need to advance in trade by commercial means, not military means

- Geostrategically: Taking the Philippines as a military outpost will only hasten war with other
powers, not deter it. It will make war more possible.
- Racial Difference: He agreed with Beveidge in the fact that there was a racial difference, but
just because it was, they should not impose the American ideals on them.
- Civilizing mission: yes, there are things which could be contributed to, but “without
subjugation and ruling them by criminal aggression”.
Speech at University of Chicago, Jan 4. 1898

However, the pro argument won and the Treaty of Paris was signed.

THEN… THE PACIFIC OCEAN BECOMES AN AMERICAN LAKE (AND THE CARIBBEAN
AN AMERICAN PAM)

The United States had been

expanded in the Pacific
throughout the last decades
of the 19th century. The
acquisition of the
The Philippines and Guam
completed what can be
considered the “Pacific
American Lake”. In fact,
one could argue that the
war against Japan in WWII
was a war over the
designation of the Pacific.
Moreover, the current tension with China can be also considered a contest in relation with the
territories of the Pacific.

The Pacific has become an American Lake, but most of the American population and its industry is
located in the East Coast. The country, thus, needed a link between the Caribbean and the Pacific.
Cuba and Puerto Rico were necessary to have that strategic connection. That is why the acquisition of
24
Cuba and the Philippines together, despite their distance, make strategic sense. However, America
needed a last piece, a connection (canal) between its Pacific Lake and its Caribbean pond. The
Panama Canal was built immediately after the acquisition of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, in
1903.

Theodore Roosevelt became the new president of the United States after the assassination of President
McKinley. He rejected McKinley's position, who had favored the Nicaragua route, as did the popular
and official sectors of the United States.

The canal was practical, vital and indispensable to the destiny of the United States as a world power
with supremacy in its two adjacent oceans. A timely incident clearly demonstrated this truth to
Roosevelt and to the world. As a result of the Spanish-American War, a naval base had been
established in Cuba. The battleship Maine, which was stationed there, was blown up on February 15,
1898, and 260 lives were lost. At that time, another battleship, the Oregon, had been on duty in San
Francisco. To remedy the situation, the Oregon was ordered to proceed immediately into the Atlantic.
Sixty-seven days later, but fortunately still in time, the ship sailed from Florida to join the Battle of
Santiago Bay. The experience clearly demonstrated the military importance of an isthmian channel.
The new treaty, which would later be known as the Treaty of Hay-Bunau-Varilla, was sent to Panama
for ratification in 1903. It granted the United States the canal concession in perpetuity for the
development of a 10-mile-wide canal zone - 5 miles at each end of the Canal line - over which it
would exercise its own sovereignty. Whether they liked it or not, Panama's founders could do nothing
but agree, for if they refused, the United States would have withdrawn all support for the newborn
republic and would have been forced to make future deals with Colombia.

THE US-PHILIPPINE WAR (1899-1902)

Aguinaldo, who had just a few months before became an American ally coming back from the
Philippines to Hong Kong to be a supporter of the US effort against Spain, realized that the US had
decided to remain in their territory and made the Philippines a colony. It was no longer a Spanish
American war, it was then an American Filipino war. It was a guerilla war very similar to the Vietnam
War.

There were tortures, massacres… The worst one was The Balangiga Massacre (Sept. 28, 1901).
Citizens from the Balangiga village launched a surprise attack against American soldiers under the
leadership of the local police chief. Some were dressed as women and killed the Americans while they
were having breakfast and totally unaware of what was going on. Around 50 American soldiers were
killed in what is considered the worst American defeat in the Philippines.
25
In retaliation, American general Jacob Smith ordered the killing and burning of all men above the age
of 10. The result was that more than 2000 men were killed.

THE US PHILIPPINE WAR - THE US PUBLIC DEBATE

It was a controversial war among the political class and the society. There was a substantial debate
from the pro war side and the against war side.

TH US AS AN “EXCEPTIONAL EMPIRE”?

By 1902 the administration switched from a military governor to a civilian governor and Americns
began to think about how they wanted to govern these new overseas colonies. The debate was about
to what extent was the United States going to be an exceptional Empire. The British, French and
Duchess had territories in SouthEast Asia.

How will the U.S govern its territories?

- The British model? (white man’s burden): The British point was that they were so good at
governing that if they left those territories their governments would not be as good as theirs.
- The French model? (civilizing mission): Their main argument was that they were a really
civilized society with a highly developed culture which everybody should learn and
appreciate. When they arrived in South East Asia they considered they were doing them a
favor in civilizing them.
- Or… An American model? (democratic tutelage): it combined elements from both. Our
institutions are the best in the world, so if we bring it to other places, that would be an
improvement. The difference from the British argument was that the British were not showing
off their institutions, it was about the quality of the British governing class and their ideas.
William McKinley: “The Philippines are not ours to exploit… but to civilize, to develop, to
educate, to train in the science of self government…”. The assumption was that Americans
were experts in the science of self government so they could train other people.

TO DO THE TRAINING… GOVERNING THE PHILIPPINES

As reported by Walter W. Williams in his article United States Indian Policy and the Debate over
Philippine Annexation, Roosevelt contended that the civilization of the Philippines under American
domination would be of benefit to the Filipinos. As it had occurred with American Indians, peace and
order could only come about after subjugation to civilization. Roosevelt made a parallelism with the
26
Indian policies, in which until the civilizing process had occurred, and Indians had become fit for self-
government, they should be granted equality; but until then, tere would be no justification in
abandoning the “wild” tribes to work out their own destruction. Exactly the same reasoning applies in
the case of the Philippines, he argued.
William Howard Taft, future US president, was sent to the Philippines as its governor. The then
president Theodore Roosevelt ordered him to do for them “what has never been done for any people
of the tropics… to make them fit for self government after the fashion of the really free nations”.

The difference from the British policies in their colonies was that Britons thought they had to be there
forever because there was something about their political class, something inherent in them that made
their government competent. On the other hand, Americans were posing that what was unique was
their institutions, and that if they could teach those people how to run them they would be free and
they could leave.
However, how did they actually rule the Philippines?

THE LEGAL / INSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURES

1. Elihu Root, Secretary of War (1898-1904), set up within his department a Bureau of Insular
Affairs (1898).
2. The “Organic Acts” were settled. Those acts organized the territories and how they were
going to be governed. (Hawaii and Puerto Rico in 1900, Philippines in 1902).
3. However, they were considered “unincorporated territories”. The Insular Cases came to the
Supreme Court in 1901:
“While in an international sense, Puerto Rico was not a foreign country, since it was subject
to the sovereignty of and was owned by the United States, it was foreign to the United States
in a domestic sense, because the island has not been incorporated into the United States, bt
was merely appurtenant thereto as a possession”.
The Supreme Court considered these territories are neither domestic nor foreign, are neither
part nor part of the US but as possessions of the United States. Legally, it was a significant
point as it meant that the US Constitution did not apply to these territories as it only applies to
territories that are really part of the USA. It was something that the USA was holding but was
not part of it. Thus, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, although under U.S. sovereignty, were
not part of the national territory of the United States. Since they had no diplomatic
representation, currency or defense of their own, they were not considered independent states
by the international community.

PUERTO RICO & PHILIPPINES WITH AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS

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The United States moved quickly compared to other Empires to put together a simulacra of their own
institutions in these territories.
PUERTO RICO
Puerto Rico in the 1900 Foraker Act:
- appointed a governor and an executive council (Senate)
- an Elected House with 35 members (Congress)
- A Judiciary

By 1917, with the Jones-Shafroth Act, Puerto Rico people got:

- An elected Senate
- Their own Bill of Rights, as they were not covered by American Constitution
- The US citizenship
- An Elected Resident Commissioner in Washington DC, which means a representative in the
US Congress with voice but no vote right.
Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory under the sovereignty of the U.S. Congress. Puerto Ricans
have been U.S. citizens since 1917, but do not have most of the political rights granted by the U.S.
Constitution. They elect a representative to Congress, with voice but no vote, and citizens residing in
Puerto Rico do not have the right to vote for the president of the United States. A Puerto Rican may
vote for president if he or she resides in the United States.

PHILIPPINES
1902 Organic Act:
- Appointed a civilian governor
- Appointed a Commission (senate)
- Appointed an Elected Assembly
- Had their own Bill of Rights
- The Catholic Church was disestablished
- They got, because of their population, two resident commissioners (no voting representatives
in Washington)

By 1916, with the Jones Act:

- Fully elected legislature

NATION, EMPIRE AND SYMBOL OF SOVEREIGNTY

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They printed money for the Philippines, but the face which was on the two pesos note was Jose
Rizal’s. On the ten pesos note, it was Wahinghton’s face, which later became the design of the US1
dollar notes, an example of how colonial measures later came back to the mainland.

READING 1: EMPIRES AT WAR 1911-1923 (Robert Gerwarth, Ere Manela)

The First World War formally ended in late 1918 with an Allied victory. In its wake, three vast and
centuries- old land empires—the Ottoman, Habsburg, and Romanov empires—vanished from the
map. A fourth—the Hohenzollern Empire, which had become a major land empire in the last year of
the war when it occupied enormous territories in East Central Europe—was significantly reduced in
size, stripped of its overseas colonies, and transformed into a parliamentary democracy.

The victorious West European empires, despite their significant territorial gains at the Paris Peace
Conference, were not unaffected by the cataclysm of war either: Ireland gained independence after a
bloody guerilla war against British forces, while, in Egypt, India, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Burma,
London responded to unrest with considerable force. France fought back resistance to its imperial
ambitions in Algeria, Syria, Indo-China, and Morocco. Even further from the main theaters of the
Great War, Japan did the same in Korea.

For centuries, European history, and indeed the history of the world, had been a history of empires,
both within the European continent and in terms of maritime exploration, expansion, and conquest of
overseas territories. Imperial players such as the United States, Japan, and the Ottoman Empire had
carved out their own respective spheres of influence and colonial domination. At the peak of such
unprecedented imperial expansion, on the eve of the Great War, much of the landmass of the
inhabited world was divided into formal empires or economically dependent territories. That world
unraveled dramatically in the twentieth century, as these vast empires either collapsed or came under
great strain in the cataclysm of the First World War.

The First World War is hardly a neglected subject of historical research, yet most of these histories
proceed within two main assumptions:

● that the war began with the sounding of the “guns of August” in 1914 and ended with the
Armistice of 11 November 1918;
● and that the war was primarily one of nation-states, and largely a European affair.

29
While the literature based on these assumptions has produced excellent results and vastly improved
our knowledge of the causes and consequences of that conflict, this volume proceeds from two
premises that diverge from these assumptions. The first, that it pays to examine the Great War
within a frame both longer (temporally) and wider (spatially) than it typically is. The second,
that we should see the war not merely as a war between nation-states, but as a war of empires.
TEMPORALLY LONGER

The focus on the period between August 1914 and November 1918 makes more sense for the
victorious Western Front powers (notably Britain and France) than it does for much of central- eastern
and south-eastern Europe or for those colonial troops whose demobilization did not begin in
November 1918.

The paroxysm of 1914–18 was the epicenter of a cycle of armed imperial conflict that in some parts
of Europe began in 1911, with the Italian attack on territories in Northern Africa and the
Mediterranean previously controlled by the Ottoman Empire, and the Balkan Wars, which broke out
the following year

Moreover, the massive waves of violence triggered by imperial collapse continued until 1923, when
the Treaty of Lausanne defined the territory of the new Turkish Republic and ended Greek territorial
ambitions in Asia Minor with the largest forced exchange of populations in history until the Second
World War. The end of the Irish Civil War in the same year, the restoration of a measure of
equilibrium in Germany after the end of the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr, the stabilization
of the Bolshevik regime in Russia with its decisive victory in that bloody civil war and the
confirmation of the New Economic Policy on Lenin’s death in 1924, and the reconfiguration of power
relations in East Asia at the Washington Conference two years earlier were all further indications that
the cycle of violence, for the time being, had run its course.

A WAR BETWEEN EMPIRES

The second contention of this book is that we should see the First World War not merely as a war
between European nation states, but primarily as a war of multi-ethnic, global empires. Charles Maier
has defined empires as supra-national entities characterized “by size, by ethnic hierarchization, and by
a regime that centralizes power but enlists diverse social and/or ethnic elites in its management.” In
this volume we use “empire” as an inclusive and open concept that describes a polity whose
territories and populations are arranged and governed hierarchically in relation to the imperial
center.

30
MOBILIZATION OF IMPERIAL SUBJECTS

The mobilization of millions of imperial subjects on both sides of the conflict proved essential for all
combatant states, from Germany to the Ottoman, Habsburg, and Romanov empires and, of course, the
Entente powers. Indian, African, Canadian, and Australian soldiers among others all served on the
Western Front. Non-combatant laborers—notably from China—also proved vital to the conduct of the
war, as did the involvement of the Japanese Empire, which used the war as an opportunity not only to
try to penetrate further into China but also to stage an extensive occupation of Siberia that lasted until
1922.

It is only when the war is viewed through this expansive set of lenses that its scope, significance, and
implications can be grasped in their fullest sense. Viewing the Great War as a war for imperial
survival and expansion helps to place the conflict into a broader spatial and chronological context:

BEGINNING OF THE WAR: one that began with the 1911 Italian invasion of Ottoman territories
in North Africa and the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 and that launched a process of imperial decline,
which would ultimately lead to the violent collapse of a global order based on territorial empires and
replace it by one predicated on the nation state as the only internationally legitimate form of political
organization

END OF THE WAR: The imperial frame also makes it easier to see that the mass violence of war
did not end with the Armistice of 1918. Large-scale violent conflict continued for years after 1918,
Revolutionary regimes came to power and then fell amidst great violence in the East and Central
European shatter zones of the dynastic land empires. The massive carnage of the Russian civil war
continued unabated and, of course, civil war accompanied by massacres and population transfer of
unprecedented scope raged in Anatolia. The large-scale violence did not come to an end until the
Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which stabilized, at least temporarily, the post-imperial conflict in
south-east Europe and Asia Minor.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE EMPIRES: But the convict had dealt a substantial blow
even to those empires that emerged victorious. As early as the spring of 1919 Britain was facing
major civil unrest in Egypt and the Punjab. By May, British forces were engaged in the opening stages
of the Third Afghan War, and Ireland was beginning its descent into an extended period of insurgency
that would lead to the establishment of the Irish Free State. The British Empire deployed extreme and
widespread violence, including civilian massacres and aerial bombardment to quell revolts in Ireland,
India, Iraq, and elsewhere, and they were not alone in doing so. The French fought viciously to beat
back resistance to their expanding rule in the Levant and Indochina; the Japanese struggled to contain
challenges to their empire on the Korean peninsula, even as they sought to expand their influence

31
deep into Siberia. Indeed, the entire structure of the imperial world order was convulsing violently in
the aftermath of the Armistice.

THE WAR BEGINNINGS IN 1911

When Europe went to war in 1914, it was—and had been for centuries—a continent dominated by
dynastic empires with vast territorial possessions both within and outside the continent. When the
cataclysm of industrial warfare ended, three of these empires had collapsed and faced territorial
dissolution, while others were confronted with major problems.

Conflicts in the North of Africa

Yet, some of the contestants had faced imperial decline for much longer, notably the Ottoman Empire.
Italy—a newcomer on the imperial stage—declared war on the Ottomans in September 1911.
Originally conceived as a war to occupy Ottoman provinces in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, in the
tradition of nineteenth-century European colonial conquests, the Italian campaign against the Ottoman
forces quickly escalated in intensity, ambition, and geographical scope, fueling racial and religious
hatred around the eastern Mediterranean and Balkan

Balkans Wars

Just over a year later, on 17 October 1912, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria declared war on
the Ottoman Empire and achieved a decisive victory. The Balkan Wars had an immediate knock-on
effect. When the Balkan League began its war against the Ottoman Empire, challenging the status quo
in the Balkans, the Danube Monarchy found itself forced to rethink its Balkan policy. Serbia was the
most victorious state with the greatest territorial expansion in both Balkan Wars. After the defeat and
withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire from Europe, Austria–Hungary, a multinational state with a slight
Slave majority, was concerned that it was the next “sick man” and a target of a future Serbian attack,
which helps to explain Vienna’s uncompromising position in the July crisis of 1914.

As soon as a wider European war was deemed inevitable, it was clear that all combatants would call
upon their imperial subjects to take up arms. For the entire course of the Great War on the Eastern
Front, the imperial belligerents fought with multi-ethnic armies in colonized spaces.

FRANCE: As the European land empires mobilized their multi-ethnic imperial troops in early August
1914, the British and French also called upon their empires to assist in the war effort. In 1914, London

32
and Paris controlled the two largest colonial empires in the world, and they would draw on them
extensively during the war for both human and material resources. For France, the empire played an
integral role in its efforts and ability to fight a war against Germany. The war was a testing ground for
General Manning's plea for the mobilization of “la force noire,” a large reserve of African troops to
counter France’s demographic disadvantage vis-à- vis Germany.20 In addition to the 90,000 troupes
indigènes already under arms when the war started, France recruited between 1914 and 1918 nearly
500,000 colonial troops, including 166,000 West Africans, 46,000 Madagascans, 50,000 Indochinese
(plus an additional 50,000 laborers from this French colony), 140,000 Algerians, 47,000 Tunisians,
and 24,300 Moroccans.21 Most of these French colonial troops served in Europe.

BRITAIN: Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Newfoundland contributed some 1.3
million men to the British war effort. In proportionate terms, New Zealand made one of the largest
contributions in the British Empire (with 5 percent of its men aged 15– 49 killed), while Australia
(with 300,000 troops sent overseas, of whom 60,000 were killed and 150,000 returned wounded,
disabled, ill, and psychologically scarred) suffered a casualty rate of nearly two-thirds— the highest
of any force serving the Allies. + INDIA

EUROPE BRING ABOUT THEIR OWN DEMISE

Mobilization in a colonial context was delicate. Though the British Empire had regularly used
colonial troops in the imperial realm, it had not done so in Europe against other white people. After
all, a war fought on both sides with native auxiliaries was likely to undermine the very principle on
which colonialism rested: the notion of white racial superiority. If a “colored” man was trained to kill
other Europeans, what guarantee was there that he would not one day attack his own colonial masters?

However, London broke with the revered English tradition of voluntary military service and
introduced universal conscription in Britain in March 1916, aiding more troops became paramount,
which led imperial strategists to reconsider their views on the military value of subject Africans. In
many of the colonies, there was a hope that their participation in the imperial war effort would place
India within the imperial structure on a par with the white dominions and advance its claim for home
rule.

Nor was this logic limited to formal colonial contexts. As Xu Guoqi shows in his chapter, newly
republican China also came to see support for the Allied war effort as the price for a seat at the table
in the post-war settlement and a place as an equal within international society. Beginning in summer
1915, Beijing allowed the Allies to recruit as many as 140,000 Chinese laborers to the European front,
and in 1917, despite weakness and internal division, the Chinese Republic socially joined the war on
the Allied side.

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DISMANTLING EMPIRES, EXPANDING EMPIRES

The announcement of the Armistice on 11 November 1918 augured a new world of sharp
contradictions. Empires both disintegrated and expanded, and, while violence ended on the Western
Front and in some other theaters, it continued unabated and sometimes even intensified elsewhere.
This was notably the case in the former lands of the Russian Empire, which conflict intensified with
the military defeats of 1915 and the massive anti- colonial rebellion that rocked all of tsarist Central
Asia the following year. Decolonization culminated in the revolutionary year of 1917. New plans for
the structure of the state proliferated, eventually leading to movements for autonomy and/or
independence in all of the imperial borderlands.

RUSSIA As a consequence of imperial collapse and the rise and clash of violent Bolshevik and anti-
Bolshevik movements, an extensive arc of post-war violence stretched from Finland and the Baltic
States through Russia and Ukraine, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Germany, all the way through the
Balkans into Anatolia, the Caucasus, and the Middle East, and even Czechoslovakia, long thought to
be an island of peace, experienced significant inter-ethnic tensions and violence. The death toll of the
period between the Great War’s official end in 1918 and the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 was
extraordinary: including those killed in the Russian Civil War, well over four million people lost their
lives as a result of civil wars or inter-ethnic struggles, not counting the millions of expellees and
refugees that ed the havoc unleashed in Eastern and Central Europe.

BRITISH COLONIES

EGYPT

In Egypt, the “1919 Revolution” that erupted against British influence in the spring following the
Armistice included mass street protests in the cities and widespread acts of sabotage in rural areas.
Egyptian nationalists, who saw the peace conference as an opportunity to be rid of British meddling,
grew frustrated as their hopes for a hearing evaporated. Though London managed to stave off the
internationalization of the Egyptian question, the continuing instability eventually led it to give Egypt
its independence unilaterally in 1922, while keeping for itself the “core interests” of defense and the
Suez Canal. But Egyptian nationalists grew increasingly assertive in the post-war years, and a tense
relationship persisted until the final liquidation of British power in Egypt in 1956.

INDIA: In India, too, the spring of 1919 saw widespread disturbances, as Gandhi and others
mobilized Indians against Westminster’s decision to extend wartime emergency measures into
peacetime, an imperial effort to stem resistance that begat greater resistance still. The killing of
hundreds of unarmed protesters who broke curfew in the Panjabi city of Amritsar became a rallying
cry and a focal point of nationalist resistance.
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NEW TERRITORIES ACQUIRED POST WAR:As Britain’s imperial managers strained to restore
order and contain cascading crises across their old domains, they also struggled to shape and control
the new territories they had acquired as a result of the war, especially those detached from the defunct
Ottoman Empire and awarded to the British Empire under the novel arrangement of the League of
Nations mandate. The question of Palestine seemed—for the time being—relatively manageable, but
efforts to reconcile the wartime commitments made to London’s French and Arab allies and the
concurrent need to nd an instrument of control for the newly acquired, oil-rich mandate territory of
Iraq, led to the ingenious idea of installing the Hijazi prince Faysal ibn Husayn, recently run out of his
homeland by the rival House of Sa’ud and shortly thereafter out of Syria by the French, as monarch
over Mesopotamia. That move, along with the brutal application of newly developed British airpower
to suppress restive tribal revolts, managed to stabilize the situation in the mandate by the early 1920s,
at least for a time.

FRENCH COLONIES

The French mandates proved even more troublesome in the interwar period, as did other parts of the
French Empire: serious uprisings against French colonial rule in the interwar period included the Rif
War (1925–6), the Syrian revolt (1925–30), the Kongo-Wara rebellion in French Equatorial Africa
(1928–31), and the Yen Bay mutiny in Indochina (1930–1).

Where rebellions did occur, they invariably met a ruthless response. The French army and colonial
authorities deployed overwhelming force against the four major rebellions of the interwar period,
making use, like the British, of the latest military technology, such as air power, gas, and tanks, as
well as superior numbers, repower, communications, and logistics

JAPAN

Japan’s leaders fought successfully in Paris to retain their wartime gains of territory and other
concessions in China, obtaining the recognition of the other Allied powers of their takeover of former
German territories in Shandong Province. At the same time they brutally suppressed the widespread
resistance associated with the March First Movement in their colony of Korea, a movement that
erupted in the spring of 1919, inspired in part by Wilsonian rhetoric of self- determination.

The Chinese Reformer Tsi C. Wang Recalls the Shandong Question and CHina’s May Fourteenth
Movement, 1927

Japan took possession of Kiaochow and Tsing-Tao in Shandong Province in 1914, and in 1915 she
sent the so-called Twenty-one Demands to China which China was forced to accept. The intellectuals
with high hopes believed that the principles of Woodrow WIlson would prevail at the Peace

35
Conference, and that Japan would be forced to withdraw. When on April, 30, 1919, the Peace
COnference decided the Shantung issue in favor of Japan, the alert in China was deeply stirred. The
famous parade of the Peking Students on May 4th was the outcome of this unrest.

AMERICAN EMPIRE

The United States itself, of course, possessed several colonies in this period, territorial legacies of its
victory in the Spanish–American War of 1898. Though Washington had already moved further than
other colonial powers in allowing native self-government in in the Philippines and Puerto Rico,
during the war years US forces occupied both Haiti and the Dominican Republic and also conducted
several incursions into Mexican territory, even as Washington consolidated quasi-protectorates in
Cuba, Nicaragua, and elsewhere in the Caribbean. As Christopher Capozzola shows in his chapter,
though the United States did not recruit many colonial troops to fight in Europe, it did develop during
those years an approach to policing its growing domains that would shape its relationships with
colonies and quasi-colonies for decades to come. At the same time, Woodrow Wilson and his
successors began to imagine a far more ambitious American imperium, a global imperium of nation
states interlocked in a system of international organizations and governed by the principles of free
trade. In this new order the United States would serve as first among equals, and within it US
economic (and later, military) preponderance would sustain Washington’s hegemony globally. Hence
the US pursuit of a new order in East Asia, a goal at least temporarily achieved with the Washington
Conference of 1922, which sought to stabilize the post-war order in the “Far East” in much the same
way that Lausanne would do in the “Near East'' the following year.

CONCLUSIÓN

The Great War was a war of empires, fought primarily by empires and for the survival or expansion of
empire. Ironically, perhaps, it delivered a debilitating blow to dynastic empires—for centuries the
preeminent type of state organization—and to imperial expansion and acquisition as the main logic of
relations between states in world affairs. None of the three dynastic empires on the side of the Central
Powers survived the war in its pre-war form, and all of them (and their constituent parts, at least
within Europe) were reorganized after the war into one republican form or another, even while
sometimes preserving the territorial forms and usually some form of the oppressive practices of their
imperial predecessors in new guises. The empires on the Allied side—with the notable and significant
exception of Russia—managed to survive and even expanded their imperial territories. A war fought
for the “rights of small nations'', however, could not but undermine severely the legitimacy of
imperial formations and strain the relations of imperial centers with even the most enthusiastic of
imperial peripheries—namely the British Crown’s “white dominions.” It was not simply that equality
in sacrifice implied equality in status and rights—after all, “peripheral” populations had been fighting

36
for empires for millennia without expecting, or receiving, such a reward. It was that the logic of
popular rule, which argued that political legitimacy derived not from divine sanction but from the
people, had finally, after a long and arduous process, achieved near universal recognition. The
argument from civilization, the imperial scoundrel’s last redoubt, drowned in the ocean of blood that
owed in the battlefields, even—especially—in the empires’ most “civilized '' European provinces.

READING 2: THE REVOLT AGAINST THE WEST, GEOFFREY BARRACLOUGH

The reaction of Asia and Africa to European Hegemony

The history of the twentieth century has been marked at one and the same time by the impact of the
West on Asia and Africa and by the revolt of Asia and Africa against the West. The impact was the
result, above all else, of Western science and industry, which, having transformed Western society,
began in an increasing tempo to have the same disruptive and creative effects on societies in other
continents; the revolt was a reaction against the imperialism which reached its peak in the fourth
quarter of the nineteenth century.

When the twentieth century opened, European power in Asia and Africa stood at its zenith; no nation,
it seemed, could withstand the superiority of European arms and commerce. Sixty years later only the
vestiges of European domination remained. Between 1945 and 1960 no less than forty countries with
a population of 800 millions – more than a quarter of the world’s inhabitants – revolted against
colonialism and won their independence.

Among the factors which facilitated the rise of independence movements in Asia andAfrica, we must
include the weakening of the grip of the European powers, largely as a consequence of their own
discords and rivalries and of the wastage of resources in which their wars resulted. From the time of
the First World War the incipient nationalist movements in the non- European world profited
substantially from the rivalries among the colonial powers, and the sudden collapse of the European
empires after 1947 was to a large extent a consequence of external pressures and of the impact of
world politics.

In Asia neither the British nor the French nor the Dutch ever recovered from the blows inflicted by
Japan between 1941 and 1945; while in Africa and the Middle East they were checked and forced into
retreat by pressures from the United States – acting directly and through the United Nations – which
had a strong anti-colonial tradition of its own and was unwilling to stand aside while colonialism
drove the peoples of Asia and Africa over to the side of the Soviet Union.

Nationalism came to Asia a century later than it came to Europe and to black Africa fifty years later
than to Asia. Two external events in the early years of the twentieth century were a powerful stimulus
in its rise.
37
NATIONALISM IN ASIA

1. The first was the victory of Japan over Russia in the war of 1904–5 – a victory hailed by
dependent peoples everywhere as a blow to European ascendancy and proof that European
arms were not invincible.
2. The second event was the Russian revolution of 1905 – a revolution which produced scarcely
an echo in Europe but which, seen as a struggle for liberation from despotism, had an
electrifying effect throughout Asia. The wave of unrest extended as far as Vietnam, and its
impact, in sparking off the Persian revolution of 1906, the Turkish revolution of 1908 and the
Chinese revolution of 1911, and in the new impetus it gave to the Indian Congress movement
in 1907, was such that its consequences in Asia have been compared with those of the French
revolution of 1789 in Europe.

The result was that, by 1914, in most countries of Asia and the Arab world, but not yet in tropical
Africa, there were radical or revolutionary groups ready to take advantage of the conflict between the
European powers to secure concessions by threats or pressure or bargaining.

After war broke out the European powers themselves encouraged nationalist movements in colonial
territories in order to embarrass their enemies. The Germans, for example, incited the nationalists of
the Maghreb to take up arms against France, while the British and French with greater success stirred
up Arab nationalism in Syria, in Mesopotamia and in the Arab peninsula against the Turks.

They were also forced by the pressure of events to make concessions to their own subject peoples. In
India, for example, the famous declaration by the British government on 20 August 1917, promising
‘the gradual develop- ment of self-governing institutions’, was a direct consequence of the Russian
revolution which threatened to open the way for a Turkish and German advance on India at a time
when the Bolsheviks were calling on the Asian peoples to overthrow the ‘robbers and enslavers’ of
their countries.

By the end of the First World War the cracks in the edifice of European imperialism in Asia and
Africa were already assuming serious proportions, and there were limits, as the British found in Egypt
after 1919, to what repression and military measures could achieve.

The world war also helped in the dissemination of Western ideas. War-aims propaganda could not be
confined to Europe. Wilson’s Fourteen Points, Lloyd George’s declaration in 1918 that the principle
of self-determination was as applicable to colonies as it was to occupied European territories, Lenin’s
denunciations of imperialism and the example of the Russian revolutionaries in declaring that the
subject peoples of the Czarist empire were free to secede, all set up a ferment that was world-wide.
Troops drafted to Europe from Indochina by the French and from India by the British returned home
with new notions of democracy, self-government, and national independence, and a firm resolve no

38
longer to accept the old status of inferiority; among them was the future Chinese communist leader,
Chou En-lai.

ÁFRICA

The year 1919 also witnessed the convening of the first Pan-African Congress, which met in Paris
with the object of impressing on members of the Peace Conference the right of Africans to participate
in government. Its practical results, it is hardly necessary to say, were nil, for in tropical and central
Africa, where most of the territories had only come under European domination after 1885, it was
many years before the effects of European intervention in the form of roads and railways, industrial
exploitation of mineral resources, the beginnings of Western education and the like, produced
substantial changes.

Every blow struck for independence reverberated over an ever-widening field, and there was a new
sensitivity in each part of the dependent world to political developments in the others. The
achievements of the Indian Congress were followed with lively attention. Gandhi’s strategy of passive
resistance was quickly adopted as a model, and similar organizations were built up in Africa and
elsewhere as the hard core of revolt. The Bolsheviks, who were aware of the revolutionary
potentialities of Asia, did their best to keep up the ferment, and the Congress of the Peoples of the
East, which they organized in Baku in 1920, brought together delegates from thirty-seven
nationalities. In the Moslem world, Pan-Islamic movements formed a link between countries as far
apart as the Dutch East Indies, French North Africa and India, and facilitated cooperation between
different nationalist groups.

In this way the national movements of Asia and Africa gradually developed into a universal revolt
against the West, a rejection of Western domination which found expression in the Afro-Asian
conference at Bandung in 1955. The Bandung Conference symbolized the new-found solidarity of
Asia and Africa against Europe; as Nehru said, it expressed the ‘new dynamism’ that had developed
in the two continents during the preceding half-century.

Even as late as 1950, experienced Western observers – Margery Perham, for example – were
expounding the comforting doctrine that, whatever the position might be in Asia, the day was still far
distant when the African peoples would be capable of organizing independent states and, by
implication, that imperial control and an enlightened, paternalistic colonial administration would
continue to be necessary for an indefinite period. No prediction could have been more fallacious.
When the victory of Indian nationalism in 1947 and the collapse of European empires in Asia were
followed by the failure of England and France in their war with Egypt, a new wave of nationalism
pierced the barrier of the Sahara and swept across tropical Africa. After the Suez war of 1956 it was

39
clear – to governments in Europe, if not to intransigent minorities of white colonies in Africa – that
the imperialist age had ended, and the European powers hastened, under pressure from outside and
from within, to disburden themselves of colonies which had become a liability rather than an asset.

More fundamental in the long run than the pressures resulting from the interplay of power politics
were two other factors. The first was the assimilation by Asians and Africans of Western ideas,
techniques and institutions, which could be turned against the occupying powers – a process in which
they proved far more adept than most Europeans had anticipated. The second was the vitality and
capacity for self-renewal of societies which Europeans had too easily dismissed as stagnant, decrepit
or moribund. It was these factors, together with the formation of an elite which knew how to exploit
them, that resulted in the ending of European rule.

READING 3: MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICA FOREIGN RELATIONS

NY Governor Theodore Roosvelt Champions the Manly Virtues of Overseas Expansion, 1899

“In 1898 we could not help being brought face to face with the problem of war with Spain. All we
could decide was whether we should shrink like cowards from the contest, or enter into it as brave and
high-spirited people… We cannot avoid the responsibilities that confront us in Hawaii, Cuba, Porto
Rico and the Philippines… IF we undertake the solution, there is, of course, always danger that we
may not solve it alight; but to refuse to undertake the solution simply renders it certain that we cannot
possibly solve it alright”. “The timid man, the lazy man, the man who distrusts his country…. all
these, of course, shrink from seeing the nation undertake its new duties; shrink from seeing us build a
navy and an army adequate to our need, shrink from seeing us do our share of the world's work, by
bringing order out of chaos in the great, fair tropic islands from which the valor of our soldiers and
sailor has driven the Spanish flag”.
“We cannot sit huddled within our own borders and avow ourselves merely an assemblage of well-to-
do hucksters who care nothing for what happens beyond. Such a policy would defeat even its own
end; for as the nations grow to have ever wider and wider interests, and are brought into closer and
closer contact, if we are to hold our own in the struggle for naval and commercial supremacy, we
must build up our power without our own borders.”
“so much for the commercial side. From the standpoint of international honor the argument is even
stronger. The guns that thundered off Manila and Santiago left us echoes of glory, but they also left us
a legacy of duty. If we drove out a medieval tyranny only to make room for savage anarchy, we had
better not have begun the task at all”.
“I have scant patience with those who fear to undertake the tasks of governing Philippines, and who
openly avow that they do fear to undertake it… but I have even scanter patience with those who make

40
a pretense of humanitarianism to hide and cover their timidity, and who cant about “liberty” and the
“consent of the governed” in order to excuse themselves for their willingness to play the part of men.
Their doctrines, if carried out, would make it incumbent upon us to leave the Apaches of Arizona to
work out their own salvation, and to decline to interfere in a single Indian reservation. Their doctrines
… your forefather and mine for ever having settled in these United States…

The Panama Canal Treaty Grants the United States a Zone of Occupation, 1903

Article I: the United States guarantees and will maintain the independence of the Republic of Panama.
Article III: The Republic of panama grants to the United States in perpetuity the use, occupation and
control of a zone of land and land under water for the construction, maintenance… of the canal

The Roosvelt corollary Asserts U.S police Power over the Western Hemisphere

It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger or entertains any projects as regards to other
nations of the Western Hemisphere save such as are for their welfare. All that this country desires is to
see the neighboring countries stable, orderly and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct
themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with
efficiency and decency … It needs no interference from the US. Chronic wrongdoing, or an
impotence with result in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in AMerica, as
elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western hemisphere
the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however
reclutaty, to the exercise of an international police power.

CLASS 4: EMPIRE, WAR AND REVOLUTION

In the early 20th century, the United States in its acquisitions of overseas colonies was coming into an
established world order of colonial Empires and adopting the rules of colonial Empires.
In WWI American leaders began to think that their job was not simply to participate in international
order as a major player, but rather to change or re conceptualize the international order in ways that
reflect American values and interests.

AND YET… HOW TO EXPLAIN THE DIVERGENT OUTCOMES

The divergence outcomes of the main territories of United States acquired during the late 1880s:

41
 - Hawaii: after its acquisition, it became a territorial government, until it acquired the US
statehood in 1959.
- Cuba - military government- US protectorate through the (1902) Platt Amendment, which
was a treaty between the U.S and Cuba that attempted to protect Cuba’s independence from
forein intervention but permitted extensive U.S involvement in Cuban international and
domestic affairs - the castrist revolution led by Fidel Castro to overthrow Fulgencio’s
dictatorship took place in 1953-59 and transformed Cuba and United States relations.

(It was expected, given the distance of both islands from the United States, that Cuba would have
been more inclined to be part of the U.S. than Hawaii.)

- Puerto Rico - 1898 John Broke became military governor of Puerto Rico - Spain ceded the
island to the United States by the Treaty of Paris - the military administration lasted until May
1900- the US Supreme Court ruled that Cuba was an insular territory with the Foraker Act of
1900- Commonwealth (1952) Spanish: Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico
- Philippines - military government - insular territory - Commonwealth (1934) - independence
(1946)

The Four territories, acquired around the same time, under similar circumstances, had a unique path.

SO… WHY THE DIVERGENCE:

- Nature of elites and their relations with U.S. Hawaii, despite the distance and despite white
people being a minority on the island, anglo-saxons elites had more power and established a
style of governing that was core to its subsequent path.
- The presence or absence of revolutionary movements prior to the US occupation. Puerto Rico
was portrayed as the benevolent child whereas Cuba was seen as the outrageous one.
- The distance from mainland and the strategic significance. The Philippines was important for
the USA in order to construct a bridge from the Pacific to the Caribbean.
- Economic consideration / competition: the major advocates of US colonialism were the ones
interested in sugar and chocolate plantations
- Population size: the Philippines was a much more populated territory. Ph- 6.5 million, Cuba
1.6 million, PR 1 million and Hawaii 150k.
- Racial perceptions / representations: who is like us?

THE OLD ORDER PRE WWI

The components of the pre world order were:

42
 1. Power: internationally speaking, the power was in the hands of great powers, most of which
were national empires.
2. Institutions:
- Fair treaties: there were treaties and alliances among the national empires which were
equal for everybody
- Unequal treaties with colonial or semicolonial states, for example, with China after
the Opium War or with the Ottoman Empire, considered the sick “man” of Europe.
Those treaties in which the colonial territory made all sorts of concessions, political,
economic and legal and gave away the power to control its own regime. For example,
extraterritoriality agreements in which certain people are free from the jurisdiction of
the location they are living.
- There was a formal imperial rule in places like India or most African countries, but
there was also an informal empire, especially in Latin America, which was
supposedly composed of independent nations which were in fact economically and to
some extent politically influenced by one or more national empires. The main reason
was because they were producers of primary commodities and the nation empires
were huge buyers. Another main reason was that some Latin American countries
were dependent on American or British loans.
3. Norms:
- Notions of racial hierarchy were central in ordering international affairs. The world is
organized in different races that are arranged hierarchically. North Americans and
British, the anglo saxons, were considered the most talented in all sorts of things that
defined modern societies. Anglo-saxons were considered superior to even southern
Europeans, perceived as less developed. Colonialism was perceived as the “white
man’s burden” (Kipling).... that involved things like “good governance” (in the British
justification), “civilizing mission” (in the French justification) or “democratic tutelage” (in the
American justification)
- “Gunboat diplomacy”: it is legitimate and normative for an imperial power to use
force against less developed states to resolve disputes often of an economic nature.
For example, if a country in the Caribbean or Latin America owes money to British
or French banks, and entered in default, it was considered normal to send a delegation
to pressure the government and even to invade the country and to replace the
government one more aligned with the central power.
- Is Japan a partial exception? Japan was, in the early 20th century, the one non
western, non white, non Christian power that was able to be admitted into the ranks of
great powers. It did that by building an army, a navy and showing itself to be

43
 powerful, winning the war against the Chinese in 1895, against the Russians in 1905
and starting a colonial Empire.

THE OLD ORDER… CHALLENGED: The crisis of empire and the road to war

1. First challenge: Imperial competition:

As stated by Sun Yat Sen in The Three Principles of the People, one of the major motives behind the
eruption of WWI was the struggle between white races for supremacy, and consequently, their struggle
for more territory. The rivalry between the Saxon and Teutonic (Germany) races for control of the seas
and the competition to grab territory in Turkey, considered the“sick man of Europe”, made the war
almost inevitable.

- East Asia (Russo - Japanese War 1904-1905)

- África
● The Moroccan Crisis of 1906-07. In 1904 France had concluded a secret treaty
with Spain partitioning Morocco and had also agreed not to oppose Britain’s
moves in Egypt in exchange for a free hand in Morocco. Germany, however,
insisted upon an open-door policy in the area; and, in a dramatic show of
imperial power, the emperor Willhem II visited Tangier and, from his yacht on
March 31, 1905, declared Morocco’s independence and integrity. The resultant
international panic, the First Moroccan Crisis, was resolved in January–April
1906 at the Algeciras Conference, where German and other national economic
rights were upheld and where the French and Spanish were entrusted with the
policing of Morocco.
● Italy invasion of Libya: the Berlin Conference of 1884 had organized the
colonial partitioning of Africa, leaving what were considered the best areas
under the control of the first-rate powers. The Kingdom of Italy, which did not
enjoy this status, had been left out of the colonial partition. Italy procured itself
a colonial empire in Libyan territory by invading it in 1912, thus taking
advantage of its proximity to the Italian peninsula and the weakness of the
Ottoman Empire. Libya had remained, until then, and due to the ignorance of its
potential resources on the part of the European colonial nations, under the more
or less direct control of the Ottoman Empire.

Germany and Italy acts were a way of challenging the order, but NOT THE FOUNDATIONS of that
order, which were still based on the notion of white supremacy and racial hierarchy. However, those

44
countries started to vindicate that every European nation should have the same number of possessions,
with sea access, with the same amount of resources... And tensions started to erupt.

2. Second challenge: resistance of the imperial “periphery”

Nationalism was happening all around the globe, from the South in the Philippines and Cuba, to
places like Africa, India… But it was also happening in the center of Europe itself. Examples:

- Outside Europe: Second Bower war (South Africa, 1899-1902). The Napoleonic wars
between the French and the British gave the latter control of the Cape, but the Boers
(peasants of Dutch origin who had settled in today South Africa in the first decades of
the 19th century), were unwilling to submit to any power. Guided by their nationalist
spirit, the Boers, committed to their independent cause, launched an offensive to prevent
further British incursions (who were interested in the precious metals of their
territories). Half a million British soldiers against some 80,000 Dutch farmers. The war
resulted in the victory of the British Empire and the extinction of the two independent
republics that the Boers had founded in the mid-19th century: the Orange Free State and
the Transvaal Republic. Even Though the British won, it was a shock as they considered
it was going to be a short war and it resulted in a long, expensive conflict.
- Inside Europe: Balkan Wars (1912-13)

The Balkan Wars had their origin in the discontent produced in Serbia, Bulgaria, and
Greece by disorder in Macedonia. The Young TurkRevolution of 1908 brought into
power in Constantinople (now Istanbul) a ministry determined on reform but insisting
on the principle of centralized control. There were, therefore, no concessions to the
Christian nationalities of Macedonia, which consisted not only of Macedonians but also
of Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Vlachs. The Albanians, whose growing sense of
nationalism had been awakened by the Albanian League, were likewise discontented
with the Young Turks’ centrist policy.

The First Balkan War was fought between the members of the Balkan League and the
Ottoman Empire. The Balkan League was formed under Russian auspices in the spring
of 1912 to take Macedonia away from Turkey, which was already involved in a war
with Italy. 17 October 1912, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria declared war on
the Ottoman Empire and achieved a decisive victory. The Balkan Wars had an
immediate knock-on effect. When the Balkan League began its war against the Ottoman
Empire, challenging the status quo in the Balkans, the Danube Monarchy found itself

45
 forced to rethink its Balkan policy. Serbia was the most victorious state with the greatest
territorial expansion in both Balkan Wars. After the defeat and withdrawal of the
Ottoman Empire from Europe, Austria–Hungary, a multinational state with a slight
Slave majority, was concerned that it was the next “sick man” and a target of a future
Serbian attack.

The Second Balkan War began when Serbia, Greece, and Romania quarreled with
Bulgaria over the division of their joint conquests in Macedonia. On June 1, 1913,
Serbia and Greece formed an alliance against Bulgaria, and the war began on the night
of June 29–30, 1913, when King Ferdinand of Bulgaria ordered his troops to attack
Serbian and Greek forces in Macedonia.

The most alarming aspect of the war was the growth of tension between Austria-
Hungary and Serbia. Serbia had extensive claims upon Albanian territory. Having
obtained an assurance of German support, Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum on
October 17, 1913, to compel Serbia to withdraw from the Albanian borderlands. This,
however, did not solve for Austria-Hungary the Southern Slav question, which emerged
again in an acute form with the assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand
by a Serb on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

Russia, which seemed itself as slavs, mobilized its armed forces in late July ostensibly
to defend Serbia, but also to maintain status as a Great Power, gain influence in the
Balkans and deter Austria-Hungary and Germany. This led Germany to declare war on
Russia on 1 August, ultimately expanding the local conflict into a world war.

3. Third challenge: revolutions

- Russia, 1905 Defeat by Japan brought revolution in Russia. On January 22 1905, more
than 100 workers were killed and hundreds were wounded when police fired on a
peaceful demonstration in front of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. The massacre
became known as Bloody Sunday, and it was followed by a wave of strikes and
uprisings throughout Russia. Delegates of strike committees in St. Petersburg formed a
soviet (“council”) of workers’ deputies, which for a time looked as if it might develop
into a revolutionary government of Russia. With extreme reluctance, Nicholas II agreed
to issue a manifesto to the people on October 30 (October 17, Old Style). Drafted by
Witte, the October Manifesto promised to set up an elected legislature (duma) and to
grant political and civil liberties.
- México, 1910

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 - China, 1911-1912 La Revolución de Xinhai, o Revolución de 1911, puso fin al mandato
imperial en China y difundió la idea de democracia e igualdad. Tras múltiples derrotas
en guerras contra fuerzas extranjeras desde la Primera Guerra del Opio, el poder de la
dinastía Qing estaba debilitándose, al mismo tiempo que varios movimientos buscaban
el fin del mandato imperial dentro del país.Uno de esos movimientos estaba encabezado
por un joven revolucionario llamado Sun Yat-sen. En 1905 fundó la Tongmenghui, la
Liga Unida, con el objetivo de derrocar al emperador y fundar una república. El 10 de
octubre de 1911, los miembros de la Liga Unida se enfrentaron al ejército Qing en
Wuchang, en el centro del país. Finalmente tomaron toda la ciudad, y eligieron a un
líder temporal.Cuatro semanas más tarde, Sun fue elegido primer presidente provisional.
En esos momentos, Beijing seguía siendo la capital del gobierno Qing.

THE MONROE DOCTRINE, IMPLEMENTED: US INTERVENTIONS IN THE CIRCUM-

CARIBBEAN

Empires were falling apart in Europe, meanwhile, the United States was expanding its own Empire in
the Western Hemisphere.

Cuba, Platt Amendment, 1901-1934: the Platt Amendment was a treaty between the U.S. and Cuba
that attempted to protect Cuba's independence from foreign intervention. It permitted extensive U.S.
involvement in Cuban international and domestic affairs for the enforcement of Cuban independence. It
stipulated seven conditions for the withdrawal of United States troops remaining in Cuba at the end of
the Spanish–American War, and an eighth condition that Cuba signs a treaty accepting these seven
conditions. It defined the terms of Cuban–U.S. relations essentially to be an unequal one of U.S.
dominance over Cuba. On June 12, 1901, Cuba amended its constitution to contain, word for word, the
seven applicable demands of the Platt Amendment.

Artículo III. That the government of Cuba consents that the United States may exercise the right to
intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for
the protection of life, property, and individual liberty, and for discharging the obligations with respect
to Cuba imposed by the treaty of Paris on the United States, now to be assumed and undertaken by the
government of Cuba.

Panama Canal Zone: 1903-1979: In 1904, the Isthmian Canal Convention was proclaimed. In it, the
Republic of Panama granted to the United States in perpetuity the use, occupation, and control of a zone
of land and land underwater for the construction, maintenance, operation, sanitation, and protection of
the canal. From 1903 to 1979, the territory was controlled by the United States, which had purchased the
land from its private and public owners, built the canal and financed its construction. The Canal Zone

47
was abolished in 1979.

Venezuela Crisis (1902-03): The Venezuela debt crisis began in 1901 when Cipriano Castro,
Venezuela’s president, defaulted on millions of dollars in bonds owed to European nations. Initially,
President Theodore Roosevelt believed that the European nations were justified in intervening in
Venezuela in order to protect their citizens and property.

Later, Castro ignored a final ultimatum demanding payment of the debt. In response, German, British,
and Italian forces seized several Venezuelan vessels, bombarded coastal forts, and established a naval
blockade of the country in December 1902. President Roosevelt became leery of continued European
intervention in the region. He responded to the crisis by pressuring all parties to reach a settlement.

By January 1903, the boycott had devastated Venezuela’s economy. A desperate Castro asked President
Roosevelt to negotiate a settlement. Not surprisingly, Roosevelt jumped at the opportunity to restore
order in the western hemisphere. The British were eager to get out of Venezuela and endorsed the
proposal. The crisis abated in February 1903 when Venezuelan leaders agreed to reserve 30% of the
country’s customs duties until all of the debt claims had been settled. Theodore Roosevelt did not wish
to see European intervention in the western hemisphere again so he announced the Roosevelt Corollary
to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904.

Roosevelt Corollary (1904): The United States became the policeman of the Western Hemisphere In the
history of United States foreign policy, the Roosevelt Corollary was an addition to the Monroe Doctrine
articulated by President Theodore Roosevelt in his State of the Union address in 1904 after the
Venezuelan crisis of 1902–1903. The corollary states that the United States could intervene in the
internal affairs of Latin American countries if they committed flagrant and chronic wrongdoings.

Dominican Republic

Cuba (1906-07) In August 1906, after a large increase in the U. S. investment in the island, Cuba’s
president Estrada Palma requested intervention because of the outbreak of an insurrection against his
own government. Therefore, theAmericans appointed William Taft as auditor. This intervention lasted
until1909, when, after the local elections, Cuba’s second president, MajorGeneral José Miguel Gómez,
came topower.

Nicaragua (1910-2): The U.S. Government intervened more directly in Nicaraguan affairs in two
separate, but related, incidents in 1911 and 1912, with the objective of ensuring the rule of a government
friendly to U.S. political and commercial interests and preserving political stability in Central America.

48
Haití (1915-1934): Following the assassination of the Haitian President in July of 1915, President
Woodrow Wilson sent the United States Marines into Haiti to restore order and maintain political and
economic stability in the Caribbean. This occupation continued until 1934.

Dominican Republic (1916-1924): Triggered by concerns about possible German use of the Dominican
Republic as a base for attacks on the United States during World War I, the U.S. Government began a
military occupation and administration of that country in 1916, which would last until 1924.

IMPERIAL CRISIS: JULY 1914, THE CONFLICT, Imperialism vs Nationalism

The war is happening not just in the Western Front but across the Middle East and other places.

CLASS 5: ENVISIONING A NEW WORLD ORDER

Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela argued in their book Empires At War that we should see the First
World war not merely as a war between European nation states, but primarily as a war of multi-ethnic,
global empires. The mobilization of millions of imperial subjects on both sides of the conflict proved
essential for all the states in war. Viewing the Great War as a war for imperial survival and expansion
helps to place the conflict into a broader spatial and chronological context.

Thus, we should analyze WWI not simply as a massive European world that happened in the context of
Europe. It was a world of Empires: the Romanov, the Ottoman, the British, the emergent American
colonial Empire… The only Empire that had disappeared by the time the war broke out, the Chinese,
had fallen apart in the 1911 Revolution (led by Sun Yat Sen), becoming a Chinese Republic.

49
 For example, one way in
which the war was Imperial
was through the British
Dominions. British white
colonies, (Canada, New
Zealand, Australia and South
Africa) made major
contributions to the war effort.
There was another great
contribution of the British
colonies: the recruitment of 1.5 million Indian troops, especially from the Indian Raj.

INDIA AND INDIANS IN WWI

In 1914, when the Great World War was about to begin, the nationalist movement in India was in
crescendo, demanding, at least, a Dominion Status (a semi independent state status, which is technically
under the rule of the British crown, but some steps up from being a colony, which was what India was at
the time).

The British, on the other hand, were on the verge of the global war and they needed soldiers. They
decided to strike a deal with the Indian nationalists. They tell them that they are considering giving them
the Dominion Status in exchange of support to Britain in WWI. Even Gandhi, who just returned from
South Africa in 1915, supported Britain during the WWI, and in 1918 joined a government campaign for
Indians to volunteer for the British Army. The British decided to enlist members of a community that
they considered a Martial race, the peasant warrior class of Punjab. There were pressures of colonial
masculinity and martial honor that made them loyal.

AFRICA AND AFRICANS IN WWI

All the Imperial powers that had colonies in Africa in WWI used them as soldiers. The ones that used
them the most were the Frenchs, who were concerned about their demographic deficit versus Germany
and wanted to revert the situation by recruiting colonial troops, specially from Senegal (France recruited
between 1914 and 1918 500.000 colonial troops). For that reason, the Frenchs were the ones that used
larger numbers of African troops in Europe, as the Germans and British used them more in the battles of
Africa itself. The racial perspectives of the early XX century, based on the notion of white supremacy,

50
involved the French being constantly accused by German propaganda of bringing black men to kill
white men in Europe, which was entirely unacceptable from their perspective. Moreover, the “native
auxiliaries”, as noted by Manela and Gerwarth, undermined the very principle on which colonialism
rested: the notion of white supremacy.

The Armistice that put an end to WWI was signed on November 11th. However, the surrender in Africa
happened two weeks after, on November the 25th. The picture is illustrative in the sense that we can see
that on both sides, the British and the German’s, only the officers are white and all of the soldiers
fighting in the British and the German side on the African campaign were black.

CHINA

Newly republic China also came to see support for the Allied war efforts, allowing the Allied recruit of
more than 100.000 laborers, as the price for a seat at the table in the post war settlement and a place as
an equal within international society.

THE RESULT OF THE WAR: THE FALL OF EMPIRES

51
As Gerwarth and Manela stated in Empires At War, European history had been a history of empires for
centuries. More recently, new imperial players such as the United States, Japan, and the Ottoman
Empire had carved out their own respective spheres of influence and colonial domination. At the peak of
such unprecedented imperial expansion, on the eve of the Great War, much of the territory of the world
was divided into formal empires or economically dependent territories. That world unraveled
dramatically in the twentieth century, as these vast empires either collapsed on the Axis side or came
under great strain on the West European side. The Ottoman, Austrian and German Empire collapsed,
and the Russian Empire was overthrown by the 1917 revolution. The British empire broke up with the
independence of Ireland and independence movements were multiplying in India, Egypt, Afghanistan,
Iraq and the rest of the colonies... France was also fighting back resistance to its imperial ambitions in
Algeria, Indo China, Morocco…

When the peacemakers gathered at the Paris Peace Conference in late 1918, they had to deal with the
cataclysm effect that the First World War had on all of the fallen Empires. None of the three dynastic
Empires on the side of the Central Powers survived the war in its pre-war form, nor did Russia on the
Allied side. Thus, it was not just a government or even a regime falling apart, it was the entire structure
of those States, their rule, their government, and their legitimacy that disappeared with the war. The
conversations did not prove easy, and continued until the Versailles Treaty was reached in 1919. They
had to decide not only who would govern these formal empires but how to redraw the borders and
reestablish legitimacy to give a chance to law and order. The peacemakers in Paris had the job of
deciding what the right questions were to be asked in that chaotic situation.

HOW TO ANSWER THE QUESTION MARKS ON THE MAP?

52
The most important participant in the Conference was Woodrow Wilson. His visit to France was
surprising, as never before an American president had left the country, especially for such a long period
of time (he spent 6 months abroad, which was an imaginable thing at the time). Wilson advisers
recommend him not to go, to send a delegation and remain in contact with them by telegraph. However,
Wilson was conscious about the importance of his figure, and he thought he needed to be there.

ORÍGENES DEL PENSAMIENTO WILSONIANO. WHAT IS THE BASIS FOR WILSON’S IDEAS
ABOUT HOW WORLD ORDER HAS TO CHANGE?

Wilson was never meant to be an international affairs manager. He had been focused on national affairs
throughout his entire career. His intellectual pattern of thought was that of modernization.. He saw himself, in
the domestic context, between two equally dangerous and competing extremes: anarchism vs concentrating
powers. The extremes are defined by the acute concentration of power, on the one hand, and the resulting popular
revolution, on the other. If you have too much power concentrated in a few hands (political power, military power
or a combination of those) you will inevitably have an uprising against that. As a reformist, Wilson wanted to
prevent revolution by instituting reforms that would lead to less power in a way that would allow a peaceful
transition.

PROLOGUE: THE GILDED AGE

Wilson was born in 1856. By 1900 he was the president of Princeton. Thus, he experienced the
American Gilded Age, which was defined by:
- Sweeping technological changes in communications and transportation: when Wilson was born,
information traveled by the speed of humans, by the time he was president, information traveled
at the speed of light.
- Rapid industrialization, urbanization…
- Recurring financial panic and labor unrest
- Massive social dislocations and urbanization
- Large-scale immigration: south and east Europe

As a result of these economical, technological and demographic changes, the Gilded Age saw the rise of
social and economic inequalities. A relative minority of people were rich, meanwhile the majority of
people in American society were buffeted by financial panics and poor labor conditions. From Wilson's
progressive perspective the problem was related to the rapid growth of power concentrated in the hands
of the few. That situation had resulted in huge economic gaps between classes and the control of politics
of the higher ones. Those new rich were choosing their representatives by founding people close to their

53
interests.

WILSON VIEW OF THE US: TWO THREATS TO DEMOCRACY

Thus, Wilson saw two big threats to democracy, represented by two individuals:
- John Pierpot Morgan: he was a capitalist.
- Leon Czoigosz: he called himself an anarchist. He killed president Mc Kinley arguing that he
was the enemy of the working people.

From Wilson's perspective, the concentration of power and the resultant inequality represented by
Morgan was bound to bring about the revolution represented by Czoisgosz. Wilson’s idea was that if the
higher class oppressed working classes so outrageously, the working class would not have another
option but revolution. There were previous examples in the last decade, such as the Russian Revolution
of 1905 and the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Both of these popular revolts came from the
contradictions Wilson was thinking about.

Wilson saw himself in the middle of these equations.

Wilson thought that what was needed was a contra revolutionary reform designed to avoid revolution. It
ment, for example, cutting down the power of the bigger corporations by forcing them to divide their
assets, or the enforcement of labor legislation: limited hours, not child labor, holidays…
In conclusion, the bottom line of progressive reformism of the Wilson era was:

1. Capitalism is in danger because of people like Morgan and Czolgosz.

2. We have to reform capitalism to save it from itself.

Race relations:. he did not improve the status of African Americans, and he even set them back allowing

54
some members of their federal government to introduce segregation legislation.

OW WILSON’S VIEW BECAME TO BE TRANSLATED INTO INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS?

We have focused on his education and scholarship and his experience as president before WWI, but
what about Wilson's skills in international affairs?

REVOLUTION IN MEXICO (1910-1920)

How does it figure in Willson education in international affairs?

Porifiro Diaz was an autocrat who ruled Mexico for 35 years. He was a capitalist who thought that
foreing investment from the USA was really beneficial for the Mexican economy. He and his closest
environment became really wealthy thanks to the US-Mexican relations, but the population was
suffering the consequences of his policies, which led to sharp inequalities.

Francisco Madero, who was a centrish intellectual, shared some of Wilson's concerns about revolution.
He wrote a book urging on the need of avoiding Porfirio Diaz to be reelected. The book had the
expected effect as Diaz was removed from power in the 1910 elections and Madero became president.
However, there were more radical progressive factions in Mexican policy, represented by Emiliano
Zapata and Pancho Villa, who wanted more radical changes than the ones Madero was enforcing. Both
politicians embraced populist claims, endorsing that Madero’s policies were not going far enough and
that he just wanted to be reelected. Zapata and Villa advocated, for example, measures to redistribute

55
wealth and land reforms (the land regime in Mexico was still based on the “Haciendas systems”, an
inheritance of Spanish colonialism). Madero supported their advice at the beginning, but their
relationship deteriorated quickly.
Victoriano Huerta, who was the head of the Constitutional Army, supported Madero. He sent the army
to fight against Zapata, who was the most active opposition leader. However, it would not take long for
him to conspire against Madero. Another important actor in the revolution was Henry Lane Wilson, the
American Ambassador in Mexico at that time. Wilson was a conservative, nostalgic of the Porfirio Diaz
government, who thought that that kind of leader was the best for America and their relations with
Mexico.

MADERO’S FATE: “The storm that swant Mexico”

Things quickly turned ugly. On February 18th 1913, president Madero and vice president Suarez were
arrested in a coup arranged by Huerta, who had the blessing of Henry Lane Wilson. They were both
assassinated, and Huerta became president of Mexico. When the Administration of Washington
changed, and Woodrow Wilson became president, he dismissed Wilson from the Embassy and came to
support the revolutionary faction of Pancho Diaz.

Woodrow Wilson, which until then had been focused only in US internal affairs, changed US
international policy. Wislon saw Huerta as representing the same interests as JP Morgan in the
American political Arena. Furthermore, he wanted to prevent Huerta from getting arm shipments from
the Germans. Wilson, who wanted the constitutionalist faction that Madero had represented to come
back to power, decided to invade Veracruz. 3000 US Marines were sent to the city. In the days that
follow, dozens of women and children were killed in the crossfire. Furthermore, Huerta’s popularity
rose, because he was seen as a leader of the fight against the American invasion. Wilson's first move in
international affairs was highly criticized in Mexico, as they did not like to see Americans on Mexican
soil. However, Wilson got with this movement the fall of Huerta and the rise to power of Venustiano
Carranza, which was part of the constitutionalist Madero’s coalition.

Huerta’s removal happened a week before the outbreak of WWI.

SAN MIN CHU I: THE THREE PRINCIPLES OF THE PEOPLE

SUN YAT-SEN: Although Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925) never got the chance to occupy the presidency of
the Chinese Republic (1912–49; he served as the provisional president for a few weeks), he is widely
known as the ‘father of modern China’. While Sun developed a devastating critique of Western

56
imperialism in China, he was also keenly interested – perhaps more so than the other leaders presented
here – in understanding how the West came to gain such enormous power in the world. Partly because
of the prevalence of Social Darwinist ideas in East Asia from the late nineteenth century until the end of
World War I, and partly because he represented a somewhat earlier generation of leaders who took this
ideology more seriously, Sun saw the plight of the colonized and semi colonized peoples of Asia and
Africa in Social Darwinist terms. His lecture blends three kinds of language:
- That of Social Darwinism
- the idea of a morally superior Chinese civilization
- and the emergent idealism of the anti imperialist movement. Like Nehru, Sun too emphasizes
cosmopolitanism that grows out of nationalism.

(1927) The population of the world today is approximately a billion and a half. One fourth of this
number live in China, which means that one out of every four persons in the world is Chinese. The total
population of the white races of Europe also amounts to 400 million. The white division of mankind,
which is now the most flourishing, includes four races: in central and northern Europe, the Teutons, who
have founded many states, the largest of which is Germany, others being Austria, Sweden, Norway,
Holland, and Denmark; in eastern Europe, the Slavs, who also have founded a number of states, the
largest being Russia, and, after the European War, the new countries of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia;
in western Europe, the Saxons or Anglo-Saxons, who have founded two large states – England and the
United States of America; in southern Europe, the Latins, who have founded several states, the largest
being France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, and who have migrated to South America forming states there
just as the Anglo-Saxons migrated to North America and built up Canada and the United States.

The white peoples of Europe, now numbering only 400 million persons, are divided into four great
stocks which have established many states. Because the national spirit of the white race was highly
developed, when they had filled up the European continent they expanded to North and South America
in the Western Hemisphere and to Africa an AUSTRALIA IN SOUTHERN AND EASTERN PARTS
OF THE EASTERN Hemisphere.

The Anglo-Saxons at present occupy more space on the globe than any other race. Although this race
originated in Europe, the only European soil it holds are the British Isles: England, Scotland, and
Ireland, which occupy about the same position in the Atlantic that Japan occupied in the Pacific. The
Anglo-Saxons have extended their territory westward to North America, eastward to Australia and New
Zealand, and southward to Africa until they possess more land and are wealthier and stronger than any
other race.

Before the European War the Teutons and the Slavs were the strongest races; moreover, by reason of the

57
sagacity and ability of the Teutonic peoples, Germany was able to unite more than twenty small states
into a great German confederation. At the beginning an agricultural nation, it developed into an
industrial nation and through industrial prosperity its army and navy became exceedingly powerful.

Before the European War all the European nations had been poisoned by imperialism. What is
imperialism? It is the policy of aggression against other countries by means of political force, or, in the
Chinese phrase, ‘long-range aggression’.

The causes of the European War were,

1. First, THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN WHITE RACES FOR SUPREMACY: the rivalry between
the Saxon and Teutonic races for control of the sea. Germany in her rise to greatness had
developed her navy until she was the second sea power in the world; Great Britain wanted her
own navy to rule the seas so she tried to destroy Germany, whose sea power was next to hers.
From this struggle for first place on the sea came the war.
2. A second cause was each nation’s struggle for more territory. In eastern Europe there is a weak
state called Turkey. For the past hundred years the people of the world have called it the ‘sick
man of Europe’. Because the government was unenlightened and the sultan was despotic, it
became extremely helpless and the European nations wanted to partition it. Because the Turkish
question had not been solved for a century and every nation of Europe was trying to solve it,
war resulted.

WILSON PRINCIPLE OF “SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEOPLE”

During the war there was a great phrase, used by President Wilson and warmly received everywhere –
‘self-determination of peoples’. Because Germany was striving by military force to crush the peoples of
the European Entente, Wilson proposed destroying Germany’s power and giving autonomy henceforth
to the weaker and smaller peoples. His idea met a worldwide welcome, and although the common
people of India still opposed Great Britain, their destroyer, yet many small peoples, when they heard
Wilson say that the war was for the freedom of the weak and small peoples, gladly gave aid to Great
Britain. Although Annam had been subjugated by France and the common people hated the French
tyranny, yet during the war they still helped France to fight, also because they had heard of Wilson’s just
proposition. And the reason why other small peoples of Europe, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and
Romania, all enlisted on the side of the Entente against the Allied Powers, was because of the self-
determination principle enunciated by President Wilson. China, too, under the inspiration of the United
States, entered the war; although she sent no armies, yet she did contribute hundreds of thousands of

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laborers to dig trenches and to work behind the lines.

PEACE TREATY / WILSON’S 14 POINTS

At the same time Wilson proposed, to guard the future peace of the world, fourteen points, of which the
most important was that each people should have the right of self-determination. When victory and
defeat still hung in the balance, England and France heartily endorsed these points, but when victory
was won and the Peace Conference was opened, England, France, and Italy realized that Wilson’s
proposal of freedom for nations conflicted too seriously with the interests of imperialism; and so, during
the conference, they used all kinds of methods to explain away Wilson’s principles. The result was a
peace treaty with most unjust terms; the weaker, smaller nations not only did not secure self-
determination and freedom but found themselves under an oppression more terrible than before. This
shows that the strong states and the powerful races have already forced possession of the globe and that
the rights and privileges of other states and nations are monopolized by them. Hoping to make
themselves forever secure in their exclusive position and to prevent the smaller and weaker peoples from
again reviving, they sing praises to cosmopolitanism, saying that nationalism is too narrow;

BUT THE PRINCIPLE OF SELF DETERMINATION WAS ALREADY THERE / EUROPE

BROUGHT ABOUT THEIR OWN DEMISE

But Wilson’s proposals, once set forth, could not be recalled; each one of the weaker, smaller nations
who had helped the Entente to defeat the Allied Powers and had hoped to attain freedom as a fruit of the
victory was doomed to bitter disappointment by the results of the Peace Conference. Then Annam,
Burma, Java, India, the Malay Archipelago, Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, Egypt, and the scores of weak
nations in Europe, were stirred with a great, new consciousness; they saw how completely they had been
deceived by the Great Powers’ advocacy of self-determination, and began independently and separately
to carry out the principle of the ‘self-determination of peoples’.

THE PRECEDENTS OF THE RUSSIAN BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION

Many years of fierce warfare had not been able to destroy imperialism because this war was a conflict of
imperialisms between states, not a struggle between savagery and civilization or between Might and
Right. So the effect of the war was merely the overthrow of one imperialism by another imperialism;
what survived was still imperialism. But from the war there was unconsciously born in the heart of
mankind a great hope – the Russian Revolution.

THE PRECEDENTS OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

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The Russian Revolution had begun much earlier, as far back as 1905, but had not accomplished its
purpose. Now during the European War the efforts of the revolutionists were crowned with success. The
reason for the outbreak of revolution again at this time was the great awakening of the people as a result
of their war experience. Russia was formerly one of the Entente nations; when the Entente Powers were
fighting Germany, Russia sent over 10 million soldiers into the field – not a puny force. Without
Russia’s part in the war, the Entente’s line on the Western Front would long before have been
smashed by Germany; because Russia was embarrassing the Germans on the Eastern Front, the Entente
Powers were able to break even with Germany for two or three years and finally turn defeat into victory.
Just halfway through the war, Russia began to reflect, and she realized that in helping the Entente to
fight Germany she was merely helping several brute forces to fight one brute force and that no good
results would come of it in the end. A group of soldiers and citizens awoke, broke away from the
Entente, and concluded a separate peace with Germany.

¿QUÉ SIGNIFICÓ LA BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION PARA EL RESTO DE LAS WEAK AND

SMALL NATIONS? UNBALANCED DARWINISM

Of the billion and a half people in the world, the most powerful are the 400 million whites on the
European and American continents; from this base the white races have started out to swallow up other
races. The American red aborigines are gone, the African blacks will soon be exter- minated, the brown
race of India is in the process of dissolution, the yellow races of Asia are now being subjected to the
white man’s oppression and may, before long, be wiped out.

But the 150 million Russians, when their revolution succeeded, broke with the other white races and
condemned the white man’s imperialistic behavior; now they are thinking of throwing in their lot with
the weaker, smaller peoples of Asia in a struggle against the tyrannical races. So only 250 million of the
tyrannical races are left, but they are still trying by inhuman methods and military force to subjugate
the other 1,250 million. So hereafter mankind will be divided into two camps: on one side will be the
1,250 million; on the other side, the 250 million.

THE ROLE OF CHINA: NO TO COSMOPOLITANISM, YES TO NATIONALISM

Now we want to revive China’s lost nationalism and use the strength of our 400 millions to fight for
mankind against injustice; this is our divine mission. The Powers are afraid that we will have such
thoughts and are setting forth a specious doctrine. They are now advocating cosmopolitanism to inflame
us, declaring that, as the civilization of the world advances and as mankind’s vision enlarges,
nationalism becomes too narrow, unsuited to the present age, and hence that we should espouse
cosmopolitanism. In recent years some of China’s youth, devotees of the new culture, have been

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opposing nationalism, led astray by this doctrine. But it is not a doctrine which wronged races should
talk about. We, the wronged races, must first recover our position of national freedom and equality
before we are fit to discuss cosmopolitanism. We must understand that cosmopolitanism grows out of
nationalism; if we want to extend cosmopolitanism we must first strongly establish our own nationalism.

According to history, our 400 millions of Chinese have also come down the road of imperialism. Our
forefathers constantly employed political force to encroach upon weaker and smaller nations; but
economic force in those days was not a serious thing, so we were not guilty of economic oppression of
other peoples. Then compare China’s culture with Europe’s ancient culture. The Golden Age of
European culture was in the time of Greece and Rome, yet Rome at the height of its power was
contemporaneous with as late a dynasty in China as the Han. At that time China’s political thinking was
very profound; many orators were earnestly opposing imperialism and much anti-imperialist literature
was produced, the most famous being ‘Discussions on abandoning the Pearl Cliffs’. Such writings
opposed China’s efforts to expand her territory and her struggle over land with the southern barbarians,
which shows that as early as the Han dynasty, China already discouraged war against outsiders and had
developed the peace idea to broad proportions.

CHINA’S SHORT IMPERIALIST HISTORY

In the Sung dynasty, China was not only ceasing to encroach upon other peoples, but she was even
being herself invaded by foreigners. The Sung dynasty was overthrown by the Mongols and the nation
did not again revive until the Ming dynasty. After this restoration, China became much less aggressive.
However, many small states in the South China Sea wanted to bring tribute and to adopt Chinese
culture, giving voluntary adherence because of their admiration for our culture and not because of
military pressure from China. The small countries in the Malay Archipelago and the South China Sea
considered it a great honor for China to annex them and receive their tribute; China’s refusal would have
brought them disgrace. ÚLTIMA DINASTIA CHINA, DINASTÍA MING QUE LLEVA A LA
REPÚBLICA DE CHINA.

THE PROBLEM OF AMERICAN IMPERIALISM?

The strongest powers in the world today have not succeeded in calling forth praise like this. Take
America’s treatment of the Philippines: allowing the Filipinos to organize their own Assembly and to
have a share in the government; allowing them to appoint delegates to the Congress in Washington; not
only not requiring a money tribute but subsidizing their main items of expenditure, building roads, and
providing education for them. Such benevolent and magnanimous treatment can be considered the limit
of generosity, yet the Filipinos even now do not consider it an honor to be Americanized and are every

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day asking for independence. Or take Nepal in India. The people of Nepal are called Gurkhalis, a very
brave and warlike race; although England has conquered India she still fears the Gurkhas. She treats
them very generously, sending them money each year, just as the Sung dynasty in China, fearing the Kin
Tartars, sent them funds, with this difference, that what the Song gave to the Kin Tartars was called a
tribute, while England’s gift to the Gurkhalis is probably called a gratuity. But up to the first year of our
Republic, the Gurkhalis were still bringing their tribute to China, which proves that the small nations
around China have not yet lost their hope for or faith in her.

CHINA’S OLD IDEAS OF COMMUNISM AND ANARCHISM

The Chinese are really the greatest lovers of peace in the world. I have constantly urged the people of
the world to follow China’s example; now the Slavic people of Russia are keeping pace with us and
espousing the cause of peace after us, and their 100 million want to cooperate with us.

Our 400 millions are not only the most peaceful but also the most civilized race. The new cultures which
have flourished of late in Europe and which are called anarchism and communism are old things in
China. For instance, Hwang-Lao’s2 political philosophy is really anarchism, and what is Lieh-tze’s3
dream of the land of the Hua-hsü people who lived in a natural state without ruler or laws but another
theory of anarchism? What Russia has been putting into practice is not pure communism but
Marxism; Marxism is not real communism. What Proudhon and Bakunin advocated is the only real
communism.

Communism in other countries is still in the stage of discussion; it has not been fully tried out
anywhere. But it was applied in China in the time of Hung Hsiu-chuan; his economic system was the
real thing in communism and not mere theory.

MATERIAL CIVILIZATION VS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

European superiority to China is not in political philosophy but altogether in the field of material
civilization. With the progress of European material civilization, all the daily provisions for clothing,
food, housing and communication have become extremely convenient and timesaving, and the weapons
of war – poison, gas and such – have become extraordinarily perfected and deadly. All these new
inventions and weapons have come since the development of science. It was after the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries when Bacon, Newton and other great scholars advocated the use of observation,
experiment and investigation of all things, that science came into being. So when we speak of Europe’s
scientific progress and of the advance of European material civilization, we are talking about something
which has only 200 years’ history. A few hundred years ago, Europe could not compare with China, so
now if we want to learn from Europe we should learn what we ourselves lack – science – but not

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political philosophy.

Cosmopolitanism has just flowered in Europe during this genera- tion, but it was talked of 2,000 years
ago in China. Europeans cannot yet discern our ancient civilization, yet many of our race have imagined
a polit- ical world civilization; and as for international morality, our 400 millions have been devoted to
the principle of world peace. But because of the loss of our nationalism, our ancient morality and
civilization have not been able to manifest themselves and are now even declining.

The cosmopolitanism which Europeans are talking about today is really a principle supported by force
without justice. The English expression ‘might is right’ means that fighting for acquisition is just. The
Chinese mind has never regarded acquisition by war as right; it considers aggressive warfare barbarous.
This pacifist morality is the true spirit of cosmopolitanism. Upon what foundation can we defend and
build up this spirit? – Upon nationalism. Russia’s 150 million are the foundation of Europe’s
cosmopolitanism, and China’s 400 million is the foundation of Asia’s cosmopolitanism. As a foun-
dation is essential to expansion, so we must talk about nationalism first if we want to talk about
cosmopolitanism. ‘Those desiring to pacify the world must first govern their own state’. Let us revive
our lost nationalism and make it shine with greater splendor, then we will have some ground for
discussing inter- nationalism.

THE PATH THAT LED ME TO LENINISM, HO CHI MINH

The short piece by Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969), Vietnamese nationalist leader and President of North
Vietnam from 1954–69, reveals the influence of Parisian intellectual life on his thinking. It tracks his
development from patriotism to socialism and communism and the manner in which he saw these
ideologies as quite inseparable.

READING 2: EMPIRES AT WAR (30-65)

THE FIRST LUSITANIA NOTE DEMANDS THAT GERMANY HALT SUBMARINE WARFARE,
1915

The Government of the United States has been apprised that the Imperial German Government
considered themselves to be obliged by extraordinary circumstances of the present war and the measures
adopted by their adversaries in seeking to cut Germany off from commerce, to adopt methods of
retaliation which go much beyond the ordinary methods of warfare at sea, in the proclamation of a war
zone from which they have warned neutral ships to keep away. (...) Thes government assumes, on
contrary, that the Imperial Government accepts the rule that the lives of noncombatants, whether they be
of neutral citizenship or citizens of one of the nations at war, can not lawfully or rightfully be put in

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jeopardy by the capture or destruction of an unarmed merchantman.

The Government of the US desires to call the attention of the Imperial German Government (...) to the
fact that the objection to their present method of attack against the trade of their enemies lies in the
practical impossibility of employing submarines in the destruction of commerce without disregarding
those rules of fairness, reason justice and humanity, which all modern opinion regards as imperative. (...)
However, we are informed that, … , time enough for even that poor measure of safety was not given, …
and not so much as a warning was received.

American citizens act within their indisputable rights in taking their ships and in traveling wherever their
legitimate business calls them upon the high seas, and exercise those rights in what should be the well
justified confidence that their lives will not be endangered.

PRESIDENT WOODRW WILSON ASKS CONGRESS TO DECLARE WAR AGAINST GERMANY

, APRIL 6TH 1917

On the third of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial
German Government that on and after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside all
restrains of law of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either
the ports of Great Britain and Irealnd or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by
the enemies of Germany.

(...) The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their
character, their chargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without
warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along
with those of belligerents. (...)

I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any government that
had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. (:..) I am not now thinking of the
loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale
destruction of the lives of noncombatants, men, women and children… The present German submarine
warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.

It is a war against all nations, American ships have been sunk. American lives were taken, in ways
which have stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly
nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. (...) Each nation must decide
for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of
counsel…. We must put the excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious

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assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right…

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave
responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I
advice that the Congress declare the recent cause of the Imperial German Government to be in fact
nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States, that it formally accept the
status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put
the country in a more though state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources
to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end h wae..

ZIMMERMAN TELEGRAM One of the things that has served to convince us that the Prussian
autocracy was not and could never be our friends is that from the very outset of the present war it has
filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies (..) That it means to
stir up enemies against us at our very doors. The intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico city
(the Zimmerman telegram) is eloquent evidence.

SENATOR ROBERT M. LA FOLLETE VOICES HIS DISSENT, 1917 “WILSON’S

CONTRADICTIONS AND HYPOCRISY…

Just a word of comment more upon the points in the President’s address. He says that this is a war “for
the things which we have always carried nearest to our heart: for democracy, for the right of those who
submit to authority to have a voice in their own government”. …

But the President proposes alliances with Great Britain, which, however liberty loving its people, is a
hereditary monarchy, with a hereditary ruler, with a hereditary House of Lard, with a hereditary landed
systems, with a limited and restricted suffrage for one class and a multiplied suffrage power for
nother…. The President has not suggested that we make our support of Great Britain conditional to her
granting home rule to Ireland, or Egypt, or India. We rejoice in the establishment of a democracy in
RUssia, but it will hardly be contended that if Russia was still an autocratic GOvernment, we would not
be asked to enter this alliance with her just the same. Italy and the lesser powers of europe. Japan in the
Orient: in fact all of the countries with whom we are to enter into alliance, except France and newly
revolutionized RUssia, are still of the old order . ….

WILSON PROCLAIMS U.S WAR AIMS: THE FOURTEEN POINTS, 8 JANUARY 1918

The Fourteen Points was a statement of principles for peace that was to be used for peace negotiations
in order to end World War I. The principles were outlined in a January 8, 1918 speech on war aims and
peace terms to the United States Congress by President Woodrow Wilson. However, his main Allied

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colleagues (Georges Clemenceau of France, David Lloyd George of the United Kingdom, and Vittorio
Orlando of Italy) were skeptical of the applicability of Wilsonian idealism.

I. No private international understandings but diplomacy shall proceed

always frankly and in the public view
II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, alike in peace and in
war
III. Establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations
consenting to the peace
IV. Guarantees that national armaments will be reduced
V. A free, open minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all
colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in
determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the
populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable
government whose title is to be determined.
VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all
questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest
cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an
unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent
determination of her own political development and national policy
and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations
VII. VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and
restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys
in common with all other free nations
VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored,
and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of
Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly
fifty years, should be righted
IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly
recognizable lines of nationality.
X. The people of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we
wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest
opportunity to autonomous development.
XI. Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied
territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea;
and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another

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 determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of
allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the
political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the
several Balkan states should be entered into.
XII. The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured
a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under
Ottoman rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an
absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development,
XIII. XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should
include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations,
which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea
XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific
covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political
independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

WILSON DEFENDS THE PEACE TREATY AND LEAGUE, 1919

ABOUT ARTICLE X OF THE COVENANT You have heard a great deal about article 10 of the
covenant of the league of nations. … Article 10 is the article which goes to the heart of this whole bad
business, for that article says that the member of this league, that is intended to me all the great nations
of the world, engage to respect and to preserve against all external aggression the territorial integrity and
political independence of the nations concerned. That promise is necessary in order to prevent this sort
of war from recurring, and we would be absolutely disaccredited if we fought this war and then
neglected the essential safeguard against it.(...) My fellow citizens, no competent student of international
law would dream of maintaining that there were anything but exclusively domestic questions, and the
covenant of the league expressly provides that the league can take no action whatsoever about matters
which are in the practice of international law regarded as domestic questions. For many Republicans in
the Senate, by ratifying such a document, the United States would be bound by an international contract
to defend a League of Nations member if it was attacked.

You have heard it said, my fellow citizens, that we are robbed of some degree of our sovereign
independent choice by articles of that sort. Every man who makes a choice to respect the rights of his
neighbors deprives himself of absolute sovereignty, but he does it by promising never to do wrong…
(...)

I want to call your attention, if you will turn it up when you go home, to article 11, following article 10
of the covenant of the league of nations. That article, let me say, is my favorite article in the treaty (...).
It says that every matter which is likely to affect the peace of the world is everybody’s business; that it
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shall be the friendly right of any nation to call attention in the league to anything that is likely to affect
the peace of the world or the good understanding between nations, upon which the peace of the world
depends. (...)

ARTICLE I There can hereafter be no secret treaties. (...) The provision of the covenant is that every
treaty of international understanding shall be registered. (...) until they are registered in this office of the
league nobody, not even the parties themselves, can insist upon their execution. (...)

ARTICLE 2 AND 3 LEAGUE OF NATIONS IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS: We are trying to make a
society instead of a set of barbarians out of the governments of the world. (...) America can stay out, but
I want to call you to witness that the peace of the world can not be established without America.
America is necessary to the peace of the world, And reverse the preposition. The peace and good will of
the world are necessary to AMerica. Disappoint the world, center its suspicion upon you, make it feel
that you are hot and jealous rivals of the other nations, and do you think you are going to do as much
business with them as you would otherwise do? (...) You can make more money out of men who trust
you than out of men who fear you.

MONROE DOCTRINE: The Monroe doctrine means that if any outside power, any power outside this
hemisphere, tries to impose its will upon any portion of the Western Hemisphere, the United States is at
liberty to act independently and alone in repelling the aggression; that it does not have to wait for
anything but the action of its own administration and its own COngress.

LEAGUE OF NATIONS WOULD NOT INTERFERE WITH DOMESTIC QUESTIONS: They

(critics) are nervous about domestic questions. They say: “It is intolerable to think that the league of
nations should interfere with domestic questions”... My fellow citizens, no competent student of
international law would dream of maintaining that there were anything but exclusively domestic
questions, and the covenant of the league expressly provides that the league can take no action
whatsoever about matters which are in the practice of international law regarded as domestic questions.

FIGURES OF THE WWI FOR THE BUSINESSMEN: Here is the cost of war in money, exclusive of
what we loan one another: Great Britain and her dominions 38 billion, France 26, United States 22,
Russia 18, Italy 13…

DEATH TOLLS: Russia lost in dead 1,7 million men, poor Russia that got nothing but terror and
despair out of it all; Germany 1,6 million, France 1,3, Great Britain 900.000, Autria 800.000, Italy
364.000, the United States 50.300 dead. The total for all the belligerents, 7.450.200 men - just about
seven and a half million killed because we could not have arbitration and discussion, because the world
had never had the courage to propose the conciliatory methods which some of us are now doubting

68
whether we ought to accept or not.

THE RIGHT TO VOTE OF BRITISH COLONIES IN THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: It is feared that
our delegate will be outvoted, because I am constantly hearing it said that the British Empire has six
votes and we have one. I am perfectly content to have only one when the one counts six, and that is
exactly the arrangement under the league. (...) Besides the vote of Great Britain herself, the other five
votes are the votes of Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and INdia. We ourselves were
champions and advocates of giving a vote to Panama, of giving a vote to CUba, could it reasonably be
denied to the great Dominion of Canada? COuld it be denied to that stout Republic in South Africa, that
is now living under a nation which did, indeed, overcome it at one time, but which did not dare retain its
governments in its hands, but turned it over to the very men whom it had fought? COuld we deny it to
Australia, that independent little republic in the Pacific, which has led the world in so many liberal
reforms? Could it be denied by New Zealand? Could we deny it to the hundred of millions who live in
India?

CLASS 6: THE WILSONIAN MOMENT

The Wilsonian moment suggests a period in international history between the middle of 1918 - as the
war was moving toward conclusion and the United States had been able to bring troops into the
European battlefields to turn the tides against the Axis Powers - until the middle of 1919, when the
Versailles Treaty was signed. By 1918 the United States was entrenching itself as the most important
factor in the war and in the post war reconstruction. The Wilsonian moment is, thus, the period of time
since Wilson arrived in Europe in December 1918, until the middle of 1919, when the first phase of the
Peace Conference was completed.

This moment is considered “Wilsonian” because Woodrow Wilson, by popular consent, was the most
prominent political figure not just in the US political arena, but worldwide. He was seen by many to be
the person who had the greatest amount of power to shape the postwar world. People at the time,
especially in Europe, and even those who had not gone to the battle, had what was known as “the shell
shocked syndrome”. Many of them expected something very big to come up in world affairs in order to
ensure that nothing as terrible as that could happen again.

FROM MEXICAN REVOLUTION TO THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

The next major revolution Wilson had to deal with after the Mexican Revolution was the Russian
Revolution of 1917. It was divided in two phases: the democratic revolution, which led to the setup of a

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Republic led by Alexander Kerensky, and the second revolution, which was led by the Bolsheviks..

The trench warfare on the Western Front was particularly hard for Russian troops, which did not have
rifles and were suffering from pestilence and disease. At home, there was poverty and starvation.
Finally, in March 1917, a demonstration for increased bread rations got out of hand and included a
new demand: transfer of power from the Zar to an elected power. The Zar reacted by turning his troops
on the demonstration. Russian troops defect and join demands for the transfer of power from the Zar to
an elected parliament. Alexander Kerensky became the Minister of Justice in the Provisional
Government. Czar Nicholas II, who had abdicated, was arrested.

Free elections were to be held. Political prisoners were freed from prisons. But in a country without
experience in self government, elements of all political shades were trying to convince people that their
road was the unique one which would lead to salvation. WWi was unpopular in Russia, and when
Kerensky’s ideas of continuing in it were made clear, the German General Staff arranged for the return
of Lenin, who had been in exile.

Leon Trotsky returns from exile in Canada. Kerensky became Head of the Provisional Government and
proclaimed Russia a republic. Lenin and Trotsky called for the members of the Farmer Worker Army
Union Soviet to work against the Kerensky Republic. Lenin's Bolsheviks seize the railroad stations,
telegraph lines, and government offices.

On November 25 after elections were called by Kerensky, Lenin's Bolshevik lost. The elected assembly
met under the protection of Trotsky's Red Army and refused to turn power over to the Lenin Soviet. The
members of the elected assembly finally left. A crowd protested against the dismissal of the elected
assembly, to no avail.. Lenin spoke to a large crowd about the power won and maintained by violence.
(VIDEO)

For Lenin and the Bolsheviks, democracy was not the way of deciding political issues, it was rather
class conflict and war. Those ideas were antagonic to Wilson’s ideological frame, which advocated
order and self-government.

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WILSON VIEW OF THE WORLD: TWO THREATS TO DEMOCRACY

In 1917, three years after the beginning of WWI, the United States was considering entering in the
conflict to help their Allies in the battlefield. Then, the Russian Revolution erupted, and it became the
definitive turning point that prompted American involvement in the war. In April of 1917, one month
after the revolution started, the United States entered the war. It was not coincidental.
When Wilson was analyzing the prospect of joining the Allies, and assuming that from his point of view
France and Britain were democracies (only in the Metropoly, but democracies anyway), he was puzzled
by Russia’s autocratic system. He felt uncomfortable joining the Allies in that situation. Only when the
revolution that led to Kerensky's government took place, Wilson decided to join the Allies. Robert W.
Tucker stated: “Wilson convinced himself that the war he once viewed as a sordid blood feud
represented a noble battle between democracy and autocracy”.

We know from Wilson statements that the revolution made it much easier to make the decision to take
the US into the war, as since then, all of the Allies were people who he can work with.

“Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the
world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in
Russia? (...) The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and
terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin (...) and now it has been shaken
off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in their native majesty and might to the
forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a
League of Honor”.

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Evidently, the Russian Revolution of March 1917 was only a small push for the United States to decide
to enter the war. But what was really decisive were the German provocations that followed one after the
other since 1915, which made the American entry into the war inevitable. In early 1915, Germany
declared the area around the British Isles a war zone, in which all merchant ships, including those from
neutral countries, would be attacked by the German navy. When a German U-boat sank the British liner
Lusitania on May, 1915, killing hundreds of people (and including more than 100 US citizens)
Woodrow Wilson sent a strong note to Berlin demanding that Germany should disavow submarine
warfare and respect the rights of Americans.

In January 1917 the Zimmermann telegram, sent from Berlin to Mexico City (which was a proposal of
alliance in which the German government in exchange of Mexican involvement in the war, the joint
reconquer of the lost territory of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona), was intercepted by British
intelligence and represented another serious German challenge to US security. Those major events led
Wilson before the Senate in January 1917 to appeal for a “peace without victory”. Soon Germany
declared unrestricted submarine warfare, and Wilson declaration of war became inevitable. It happened
on April 2, 1917.

As the United States was entering into the war, Wilson saw himself in the middle of two major threats of
democracy. One was represented by the Central Powers, led by Kaiser Wihelm II, who was an autocrat
similar to Diaz or Huerta in the Mexican Revolution, or even similar to JP Morgan in the USA domestic
stage. The other major threat was the Bolshevik revolution, which was represented by Lenin’s
revolutionary spirit, the one that Czolgosz, the assassin of McKinley, represented in the US domestic
scenario.

THE FOURTEEN POINTS ADDRESS, July 1918

It is important to outline that Wilson's decision to enter the war was difficult mainly because he was

72
breaking with America's international traditional position of avoiding entanglements in the European
arena. Taking the US to a European war was a totally unprecedented thing. Americans had fought
against the Spanish in the Caribbean and in the Pacific, but they were not involved directly in European
conflicts. In fact, Wilson won the 1916 reelection because he promised not to enter into the War, on the
assumption that it was what the American public wanted.

Thus, why did the United States go to war? Historians had usually outlined the importance of the
German U boat which violated neutral rights, endangered the freedom and the lives of passengers and
sank American merchant ships. From this perspective, Germany forced the United States into the war.
However, some other scholars have asked if Germany adopted policies considering that the United
States was not truly neutral. Washington was aiding their British allies and their economic interests were
aligned with their involvement in the war (more trade and loans). Wilson's decision to enter the war
could be seen from the realist perspective; he was focused on protecting the US economy and strategic
interests, or from the idealistic perspective; Wilson entered the war to be aligned with his principles and
to save humanity.

In his war address to Congress on April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson spoke of the need for the
United States to enter the war in part to “make the world safe for democracy.” Almost a year later, this
sentiment remained strong, articulated in a speech to Congress on January 8, 1918, where he introduced
his Fourteen Point, famously advocating the principle of self determination and urging the creation of an
association of nations to deter war.

Designed as a guideline for the rebuilding of the postwar world, the points included Wilson’s ideas
regarding nations’ conduct of foreign policy, including freedom of the seas and free trade and the
concept of national self-determination, with the achievement of this through the dismantling of
European empires and the creation of new states. Of equal importance, however, was Point 14, which
called for a “general association of nations” that would offer “mutual guarantees of political
independence and territorial integrity to great and small nations alike.” When Wilson left for Paris in
December 1918, he was determined that the Fourteen Points, and his League of Nations (as the
association of nations was known), be incorporated into the peace settlements.

1. Open diplomacy: “diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view”.
2. Freedom of the seas “alike in peace and in war”
3. Free trade “the removal … of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of
trade conditions…”

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Even Though it can be considered from these 3 first points, if analyzed isolated from the others, that
Wison was thinking from the business point of view, it is worth remembering his position in the
Mexican Revolution. He did not support Diaz and Huertas because, although profits for the USA were
great with them in the government, a Revolution could break out because of the unrest produced by
these concentrated profits. Therefore, it did not make sense if analyzed in the long term. In the same
way, what Wilson proposed in the 14 points was not only analyzed from the particular American
interest, but he considered that a free trade policy would really lead to a stability between groups of
countries.

4. Reduction of armaments

Denver, Colorado, September 25

The adoption of the treaty means disarmament. Think of the economic burden and the restraint of
liberty in the development of professional and mechanical life that resulted from the maintenance of
great armies, not only in Germany but in France and in Italy, and, to some extent, in Great Britain. If
the United States should stand off from this thing we would have the biggest army in the world. There
would be nobody else that cared for our fortunes.

5. Adjustment of all colonial claims, giving “the interests of the populations concerned equal
weight with those of colonial governments”.
There are interesting points to make:
- It was surprising that Wilson even mentioned the colonial question at all, as the
American public was not interested. The American public did not care about the
colonies in Africa, as it was not their issue.
- Another thing that we know from the archives is that most of the other points were
made by his advisors. Wilson agreed with most of them, but a draft was given to him in
order to guide him. However, it is really significant that Article 5 was introduced by
Wilson himself. Thus, among Wilson’s understanding was the idea that one of the
causes of the war was the colonial / imperial competition.

Points VI to XIII: Specific territorial adjustments.

6. The evacuation of all Russian territory … cooperation of the other nations of the world in
obtaining for her an unhamepered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent

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 determination of her own political development”
7. Belgium … must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which
she enjoys in common with other free nations.
8. All French territory should be freed … and the wrong done to France By Prussia in 1871 in the
matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years,
should be righted, in order the peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.
11. Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored,
Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; …
12. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure
sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an
undoubted security of libre and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous
development…
13. An independent Polish state should be erected, which should include the territories
inhabited by the indisputably Polish populations...
14. A general association of nations “affording mutual guarantees of political independence
and territorial integrity to great and small states alike”.

Wilson’s mantra was that small states deserved the same rights as those of the bigger states. Many of the
Allied states saw the attack on Belgium the first violation that made WWI explode into a huge major
global war. From his perspective, if they were able to make sure that small states have rights, they will
reduce the likelihood of big states attacking them, and they will be able to maintain peace.

The argument of the rights of the small states combined with the inclusion of the colonial issue in the 14
points, make lot of people around the world to think that colonies could be defined as small states (even
though some of them were not small in size or population, but they were small in power), and that those
small states had to had territorial and political integrity. Colonialism did not have space in the Wilsonian
vision.

In the year from the 14 points to the Armistice Willson made even more specific statements about the
right of self determination.
In February 1818 he addressed:
- “National aspirations must be respected: people may now be dominated and governed only by
their own consent”.
- “Self determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action, which statesmen
will henceforth ignore at their peril”. He is analyzing where he thought they were in that period
of history.

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4th of July speech:
- He called for the “settlement of every question… upon the basis of the free acceptance of that
settlement by the people immediately concerned, and not upon the basis of the material interest
or advantage of any other nation”. He was encouraged to solve the puzzle created by the ending
of the war taking into account the views of the people’s concerns, not just the views of the
elites.

BATTLE FOR WORLD OPINION

These words were echoed worldwide by the US propaganda machinery. The Committee on Public
Information and his chief, the journalist George Creel, considered that Wilson’s words had to be heard
all over the world. He strove to “fight for mankind” and “convince the world that hope for the future lay
in Wilson alone”.

Creel put a lot of resources into making sure that Wilson speeches got into newspapers in China, East
Asia, Latin America… His speeches were in fact translated into a lot of languages. He was successful
because, in that turbulent moment in history, a lot of people around the world were looking for answers,
for a kind of savior that was represented by the figure of Wilson.

A GLOBAL MOMENT

H.G Wells, a prolific writer, stated: “For a brief interval, Wilson stood alone for mankind. And in that
brief interval there was a very extraordinary and significant wave of response to him THROUGHOUT
THE EARTH… He ceased to be a common statesman and he became a Messiah”.

INDIA

WHILE THE BIG THREE MEET IN PARIS to decide the fate of the world, INDIAN
NATIONALISTS, led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, wrote to Wilson:
“The world’s hope for peace and justice is centered in you as the author of the great principle of self-
determination”.

1,5 million Indians fight for the British Empire. Ghandi was one of the supporters of that recruitment
effort because he and other nationalists leaders considered that if India proved their value and their
loyalty to the British Empire, they would receive a certain degree of independence.

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IT WAS NOT WILSON CREATING THESE EXPECTATIONS. THE BRITISH EMPIRE WAS
IMPLYING TO INDIANS THAT IF THEY WERE LOYAL THEN, THEY WOULD HAVE
REWARDS LATER.

The Young India group presented a really clarifying map. “Here are the oppressed nations of the world,
what will the peace conference do for them?”. Those oppressed nations were all around the world, and
not just in Europe. They marked China as “normally
independent, but really dependent” because of the unequal
treaties. The map also included Ireland as a dependent
country, as they were fighting for their independence as the
Indians.

MEANWHILE IN INDIA… AMRITSAR MASSACRE

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In January 1919, the Imperial Government in India proposed extending its war time emergency powers
indefinitely under the Rowlatt Act. The result was a popular and massive protest. In a few short months
cities were revolutionized, local martial law was being imposed… In Punjab, sweeping preventative
arrest under the Rowlatt Act led to peaceful demonstrations. As a result of the Act, gatherings of more
than five Hindus were forbidden under suspicions of an upcoming revolution Thousands of unarmed
men, women and children gathered in a garden for the New Year festival in April, 1919..In response to
the public gathering, the temporary Brigadier general Dyer opened fire with his troops. After 10 minutes
379 men, women and children were dead. The Amirstar massacre transformed the Indian national
movement, both for the older previously loyal generation and for the younger national radicals, which
felt that they could no longer be loyal to the British Imperial call. They wanted total independence.

(PICTURE) India has a ticket but Prime Minister, David Loyd George, does not let her enter. All other
different ethnicities were allowed to enter in the Self Determination ship, captained by Wilson, except
India.

THE 1919 REVOLUTION IN EGYPT

Saad Zaghloul, just as Tilak in India, wrote a telegram to Wilson:

“No people more than Egyptian people have strongly felt the joyous emotion of the birth of a new era,
which, thanks to your virile action, is soon going to impose itself upon the universe and to spread
everywhere all the benefits of a peace… no longer troubled by the ambitions of hypocrisy or the old
fashioned policy of hegemony…”

They demanded the abolition of the protectorate and that it be replaced by a treaty of alliance. They
also asked to be authorized to negotiate directly with the British government. Prime Minister Hussein
Rushdi resigned, and after Windgate's refusal to consider the demands made by Zaghloul political
party, Wafd, the country plunged into a great political disorder, clandestinely orchestrated by Zaghloul
and his collaborators, to the point of provoking an insurrectionary state with the formation of
autonomous "republics'' in different rural and urban areas of lower Egypt, like that of Zifteh, near
Cairo,and which would provoke violent repression by the occupiers. In this context Zaghloul and three
of his collaborators were arrested and deported to Malta on March 8, 1919, a fact that further
increased the climate of political tension. (Wikipedia)

Zhagul wrote to the representatives of the Paris Peace Conference to fight for the Egypt independence,
but he was arrested and sent to exile to Malta. This led to big demonstrations in Cairo against Britain not
agreeing to allow Egyptian representatives to go to Paris to make their case. The ship of self

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determination was sailing, and if Egyptians did not get into it then, it would depart without them.

The 1919 Revolution included mass street protests and acts of sabotage. The continuing instability led
Britain to give Egypt its independence in 1922, while keeping for itself the core interests of defense of
the Suez Canal. However, the tensions persisted until the final liquidation of British power in Egypt in
1956.

KOREANS DECLARE INDEPENDENCE FROM JAPAN, MARCH 1ST 1919

The Declaration of Independence is the declaration adopted by the 33 ethnic representatives gathered
at Seoul on March 1, 1919, after World War I, in which it was announced that Korea would no longer
tolerate Japanese rule.

This was the beginning of the March 1 Movement, which was violently suppressed by the Japanese
authorities, as well as the cornerstone of the establishment of the Korean Provisional Government a
month later. Nearly thirty years later, Korea's true independence came after the defeat of the Empire of
Japan in World War II. (Wikipedia)

“Since the American President proclaimed the Fourteen Points, the voice of national self-determination
has swept the world. ... How could we, the people of the great Korean nation, miss this opportunity?”
(from the “March First Manifesto”)

THE “SHANDONG QUESTION” AND THE “MAY FOURTH MOVEMENT”

In the spring of 1919, people were worried about Shandong, which was a German territory in China’s
mainland before the war. Because the Germans lost the war and the Japanese occupied the concession,
Japanese leaders in Paris considered it a fair conquest. China’s argument was that because of the new
era of self determination, the main point then was to take into account what people living there wanted,
and they wanted the territory to be restored to China.

However, the decision that was made in Paris is that the territory must remain, at least for a while, in
Japanese hands. When people in China heard about the Paris news, they went out to the streets to
demonstrate (in Tiananmen Square), in the May 4th movement.

Salt Lake City, Utah, September 23

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At the beginning of the war and during the war Great Britain and France engaged by solemn treaty
with Japan that if she would come into the war and continue in the war, she could have, provided she in
the meantime took it by force of arms, what Germany had in CHina. Those are treaties already in force.
They are not waiting for ratification. France and England can not withdraw from the Shantung
arrangement; but by being parties to that arrangement we can insist upon the promise of Japan- the
promise which the other Governments have not matched, that she will return to China immediately all
sovereign rights within the Province of Shantung. We have got that for her now, and under the
operations of Article 11 and Article 10 it will be impossible for any nation to make any further inroads
either upon the territorial integrity or upon the political independence of China

IN HUNAN PROVINCE, CHINA, MAO ZEDONG…

Mao Zedung, even though he was a really young man, he was already interested in political affairs. In
the summer of 1919 he published his first article. In these, he described what he sees in Paris Peace
Conference:

“India has earned herself a clown wearing a flaming red turban as representative to the Peace
Conference [but] the demands of the Indian people have not been granted.”
Allied leaders were “a bunch of robbers bent on securing territories..." Wilson was “surrounded by
thieves like Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Makino and Orlando” and “could not speak his mind. I felt
sorry for him. Poor Wilson!”. But, “the Russian Bolshevik party” had made headway in spreading
revolution. “Each of us should examine this [party] very carefully.”

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST… HO CHI MIN & HIS PETITION TO THE PEACE CONFERENCE

Nguyen ai Quoc was in Paris making petitions not for independence but at least for better treatment by
French Authorities in Indochina.

TO SUM UP..

Wilson's arrival in Europe and the set of ideas he spread, combined with the concurrent Russian Revolution, had
repercussions across the colonial world, leading to historical events in India, Egypt, China, Korea… We call this
phenomenon the Wilsonian Moment. Caught up in this moment were people like the young Ho Chi Minh, who
petitioned the peace conference, and the young Mao Zedong, who was following events from China. Both of them,
by the end of the process, thought that the failure of wilsonianism had turned towards the promise of the Russian
Revolution instead. Both of them turned to the Russian Revolution not so much because they were already
followers of the marxist ideas about the rise of proletarian against the bourgeois, but because they saw the

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revolution as a path of national rejuvenation and the removal of colonial influence in their countries.

Erez Manela analyzed the impact of WIlsonianism on the colonial world and finds the U.S president less
supportive of self-determination than his rhetoric indicated. Initially inspired by the president’s crusade
for international justice, nationalists in colonial societies experienced deep disillusionment when
Wilson turned down their peas for national self determination at Versailles. Manela attributes the
double standard that championed the notion of state status for Europeans but not for Afro-Assians to
Wilson’s conviction that non-European peoples lacked the capacity for self-government and would be
best off under a League of Nations trusteeship imposed by more civilized powers. The disappointment
that accompanied the WIlsonian moment led anticolonial patriots in CHina, Egypt, India, Indochina
and Korea to embrace revolutionary ideologies in their struggles for sovereignty, thus transforming
international history. (p.45 American Foreign Relations)

CLASS 7: REMAKING WORLD ORDER

The world in the 1920s saw an imperial order still in place, but now under triple pressures from the United States,
the Russian Revolution and from rising anti colonial movements in the colonial south. Thus, the transition from
one world order to another in the immediate aftermath of WWI can be considered transitional, but in
fact the disillusionment generated by the wilsonian perspectives in the colonies continued. The
expectations that some of those ‘small states' had generated through the war, such as India or Egypt,
were not fulfilled.

Why didn't things turn out the way a lot of people thought they might when the peace conference
convened?

When people talk about the Versailles Treaty as the peace treaty that ended WWI it’s with symbolism,
as it was just a part of the Treaty, the one signed with Germany, but the peace was achieved with other
treaties arranged with all the defeated powers. The Treaty with Germany was signed in Versailles in
1919, because that was also the place where the Prussians defeated the French in 1871.

There is a disagreement between historians about how badly things went in those negotiations. There
used to be a historical line that said that the failure in the Versailles Treaty led to the rise of Nazism and
WWII. More recent interpretations tend to emphasize the successes the peace makers had, as well as the
failures that they actually did.

1. They did a lot of things that have remained until now, such as the map of East Central Europe.

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 2. The failures were not all related to the failures of the main actors there, there were structural
factors (agency) that were limiting what they could do. Paraphrasing Karl Marx: “They were
making their own history, but they were not making it under circumstances of their own
choosing”.
3. There were still 20 years between 1919 and 1939 and a lot of choices were made in that period
by lots of agents that were influenced by the decisions made in the Peace Treaty, but were not
fully and necessarily shaped by them.

THE BIG THREE:

Although representatives from nearly 30 nations attended, the terms were set by the "Big Four" -David
Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, Woodrow Wilson of the United States,
and Vittorio Orlando of Italy- who had won the war over Germany and its allies in Austria-Hungary. As
stated by David Lloyd George: “As long as America, England and France stand together, we can keep
the world from going to pieces”.
At Paris, big three deal with three main topics:

1. Territory (what to do with lands of fallen empires?): Empires had to be reconstructed not just in
the material sense, economically, but also politically.
2. Economics (how to revive struggling economies?): The war significantly damaged most
economies in Europe. Britain itself was not significantly damaged because even though lots of
British soldiers died, most of them died in France. Central Eastern Europe was economically
devastated.
3. International institutions (how to prevent future war?): International institutions were
particularly important to the US president Woodrow Wilson. He came to Europe with the idea
that there was no possibility of making a perfect peace in 1919. His idea was that whatever
solution they came up with, it was going to be imperfect. Moreover, he was conscious of the
short-term nature of the issue, as different arguments were going to be settled in 20 years. His
intuition was that a permanent international institution was needed in order to look at the
continuous changes in the international context and to adjust the relationships between nations.

Their goals were:

- Guarantee future security
- Extract retribution from defeated powers (esp. Germany: they thought that Germany needed to
be punished in one way or another. In the Versailles treaty there is a “guilty clause”).

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Limitations in building a new world order:
● Disunity among allies
● They decided that the conference needed to deal only with issues resulting directly from the
war. For example, when the Indians, Koreans or Egyptians representatives came with their
freedom claim, the Peace Conference answered that the independence issue was not in the peace
agenda, as those issues preceded the war. The British and French did not want to talk about their
colonies, and from Wilson point of view it was also beneficial, as there was much more to deal
with. It took the Allies so long to solve their own internal differences that by the time they got
around in May of 1919, Europe was falling apart and they were worried about the fact that if
they lasted much in the preliminary part of the Peace Conference, a revolution was going to
erupt. They brought the Germans and made them sign the Versailles Treaty without further
discussion. This issue allowed German nacionalist, included the nazis, to claim that Germans
were betrayed. A seat at the peace conference was promised to the Germans and all that was
given was a treaty to sign without any voice in it.
The Germans got rid of the Kaiser and the entire aristocratic elites and set up the Weimar
Republic in order to prepare for the peace conference and cleanse their conscience. However,
the Allies decided to put the blame for the war on the German nation as a whole to demand
reparations.
● Continued influence of perceptions of racial hierarchy (“the global color line”): the principles
that were applied in Europe for the peace settlement were applied in a different way outside
Europe. The perception was that people outside Europe were less capable of governing
themselves and exercising self determination.

FIRST ISSUE OF THE PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE: TERRITORY

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Remembering Wilson’s fourteen points:
9. The evacuation of all Russian territory … cooperation of the other nations of the world in
obtaining for her an unhamepered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent
determination of her own political development”
10. Belgium … must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which
she enjoys in common with other free nations.
11. All French territory should be freed … and the wrong done to France By Prussia in 1871 in the
matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years,
should be righted, in order the peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.
11. Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored,
Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; …
12. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure
sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an
undoubted security of libre and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous
development…
13. An independent Polish state should be erected, which should include the territories
inhabited by the indisputably Polish population.

When we talk about territory, we talk about the territory of the four fallen empires: the Ottoman, the
Austrian, the Russian and the German. However, they had a different status in the peace conference, as
only three of them, the German, the Ottoman and the Austrian were defeated powers, so their territories
were “fair game”. However, the Russian empire had been an ally of the British, the French and then,
when it became a republic, of the Americans. The question was: is Russia a defeated power or is it a
winner, an ally?

It was a really complicated question. The revolution of 1917 was in the middle of the war, and the
Keresnky Republic was committed to continue in it. However, when Lenin came to power, things
changed. The Bolshevik revolution succeeded and gained the support of the peasantry and the
proletarian partially because Lenin and Trosky promised them “bread and peace”. The Blosheviks
finally fulfilled their promise and negotiated with the Germans in a separate peace treaty called the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March,1918).

The Bolsheviks pulled Russia out of the war when the war was still going on and made it easier for the
Germans to focus on the Western front. Germany was in bad shape and Americans came in. They were
losing anyway but at that time the Bolshevik decision was seen as tremendously dangerous for the

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Allies. Thus, when the Allied powers gathered in Paris, the question was difficult to answer as the
Bolsheviks had betrayed them, but on the other hand there was an internal civil war of anti bolsheviks
(reds vs whites). How should they treat Russia, as the Russia of the bolsheviks or as the possible anti
bolshevik upcoming Russia?

In any case, the only possible people they could invite were Lenin and Trosky, as they controlled
the traditional centers of powers. In the end, they decided not to invite Russia, because of the
revolutionary nature of their bolsheviks movement. They represented anarchy.

The Brest-Litovsk treaty was agreed upon by the Russians to stop further invasion. As a result of the
treaty, Soviet Russia defaulted on all of Imperial Russia's commitments to the Allies and eleven nations
became independent in eastern Europe and western Asia. Under the treaty, Russia lost nearly all of
Ukraine, and the three Baltic republics were ceded to Germany. In the treaty, thus, Russia ceded to
Germany hegemony over Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (so called Baltic governorates in Russian
Empire); these countries were meant to become German vassal states under German princelings.
Russia also ceded its province of Kars in the South Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire, and recognized
the independence of Ukraine.

THE DIVISION OF THE TERRITORY AND THE DIFFERENT CONCEPTION OF THE

PRINCIPLE OF SELF DETERMINATION

The division of Europe contained negative population anomalies that would inevitably lead to
destabilization. For example, only 65% of Poland's population was Polish, 51% of Czechoslovaks were
Czech, and only 44% of Yugoslavs belonged to the ruling and dominant Serbia. The thirteenth point of
Wilson's fourteen points stipulated that Poland should have free access to the sea, which could only be
achieved by dividing East Prussia from the rest of Germany. Hungary lost 75% of its territory and 3
million of its population with the Versailles treaty. Austria lost an empire and Bulgaria was punished
and lost a million of its population.

WHAT DID SELF DETERMINATION MEANT FOR COLONIES: For Indians and Egyptians, self
determination meant getting rid of British rule, for Koreans meant getting rid of Japoneses and for
Chinese meant getting rid of foreign concessions and foreign presence. In the case of Europe there are
different kinds of juxtaposition.

WHAT DID SELF DETERMINATION MEANT FOR AMERICANS?: When Wilson started to use the
term of self determination, he did not invent it, he used it because the movement was there in different

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parts of the world. When he started adopting this phrase as his own he basically thought of it as
synonymous with the phrase self government in American political thought. For Americans it meant
deliberative democracy, it meant legislative bodies that are elected and have procedures of making laws.
The Universal Man franchise already existed in the USA and that was what Wilson was talking about.

WHAT DID SELF DETERMINATION MEANT FOR EUROPEANS? When this term comes to
Europe, however, the way that Europeans think about it, interests with the concept of nationalism, which
says that the political state has to overlap with the ehtnic nation. Maybe there is democracy or maybe
not, but for the Europeans unlike the Americans, self determination meant ethnic homogeneity. For
Europeans, thus, the point was that they did not only have to have people involved in their own
government, which was for Wilson the main point, but to have states ethnically homogenous. The
problem was that having stated that the populations in Europe were arranged in such a way that it was
impossible to draw a line to have ethnically homogenous people, they were mixed.

THE TERRITORIAL SETTLEMENT IN EUROPE

Before the war:

After the war:

In the development of World War I, since the summer of 1915, Germany and Austria-Hungary had
occupied all historically Polish territories. With the signing of the Armistice of Compiègne, Governor
Von Beseler ceded power to Polish General Józef Piłsudski on November 11, 1918. This migration of

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power signified the establishment of the first independent Polish state in more than twelve decades.
After a Polish uprising in German territories, Poland gained more ground. In the Treaty of Versailles,
Polish independence was internationally recognized, and its western border was defined, with the
creation of a Polish corridor being one of the most controversial innovations. Although Poland was at
peace with Germany, its territorial integrity was far from secure.

However, defining Polish borders was not easy, and they decided to draw a line roughly around areas
that they thought had a majority Polish speaking population. The best they could do was to create a state
of 60% Polish. They took a chunk of the former Russian Empire, a sliver of the former German Empire
and a piece of the former Austro Hungarian Empire.

Territorial changes
• Poland (from territories of Russian, German, & Austrian empires)
• Baltic states (from territories of Russian empire)
• Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia (from Austrian Empire)
• Yugoslavia (from parts of Austrian empire plus pre war Serbia)
• Romania gets large chuck of Hungarian territory
• France reclaims Alsace-Lorraine and occupies Ruhr

In sum: The border changes with respect to the Europe of 1914 were important: France regained Alsace
and Lorraine; Italy took South Tyrol; Poland was reborn at the expense of Austrian, Russian and
German territory; Romania annexed a good part of Hungarian territory; Serbia took a significant part of
Austro-Hungarian territory, plus Montenegro, which would give rise to Yugoslavia; Greece took
southern Bulgaria and parts of Turkey, although it later lost itr; Austria and Hungary seceded;
Czechoslovakia was born, as well as a series of brief republics in the former Russian Empire that would
end up being annexed by the USSR, with the exception of Finland.

What they did not do was take population exchange measures in East Central Europe (it did happen in
WWII, 3 million Germans were expelled from Poland), except in Turkey. However, even in the Turkish
case, population exchange was not the result of what the big three wanted, it was the result of the claims
of the Turkish, that decided that no muslims citizens could not be considered loyal (that led to the
Armeninan Genocide and the Chritian Greek’s expulsion) and they expelled them. In this particular
case, the nation was defined by religion. The result was relatively weak states between Germany and
Russia, based (more or less) on the European conception of national self determination but rife with
demographic and political divisions.

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BUT… WHAT ABOUT THE GERMAN COLONIES? (Togoland, Cameroon, German South West
Africa and German East Africa)

One possible question to the answer above could

have been: we can do the same as what we have
done in Europe with the former empires territories:
do plebiscites, dividing or creating countries to put
together populations of the same ethnicity
centering in the process of self determination.
However, they did not do that. They did what is
known as the “Mandate System”.
Woodrow Wilson had attached great importance to
the idea of self-determination, but there was a
dilemma. What to do with the former German
colonies?

THE ANSWER IS IN THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATE SYSTEM

One of the most extraordinary consequences of the 1919 settlement was the Mandate System, where the
League of Nations mandated the major powers to take over areas of the Ottoman Empires and former
German colonies. On January 30, 1919, the Supreme Council of the League agreed to the
administration, by what were considered advanced nations, of those places inhabited by people who
could not yet “found themselves under the strenuous consideration of the modern world, whose welfare
was a sacred duty of civilization”. And so was self-determination, a promise of Woodrow Wilson
agenda, accommodated. The British expected it to mean that the child races could choose whose they
rushed into and they were alarmed. The British Foreign Minister even said: “we cannot hope to take into
the British sphere all the peoples of the world who would doubtless like to enter into it”. On the other
hand, the Chinese expected it to mean that they would get back Germany’s Chinese territory of
Shandong, but they did not and it was given to Japan. (In fact, one of the consequences of the Paris
Peace Conference was the rise of nationalism in China and the rise of a youth movement, which gave
rise to the creation of the Chinese Communist Party).

Basically, what the mandate system was, was a kind of effort to gather the British and French desire to
expand their imperial possessions, more or less along the lines that they had done before, and Wilson’s
desire to have the principle of self determination applied. They met in the middle and have the

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Mandates, which gave those countries control of those areas with the purpose of giving those people the
right of self determination. It ended up, or at least it was supposed to be really similar to the American
system of “democratic tutelage” applied in the Philippines. Finally it did not work out to be that because
the Americans withdrew from the League of Nations and the British and French used the mandates to do
what they wanted. The historian Suzann Pettersen described the Leagues Mandate System as a “program
perfectly tailored to the task of rehabilitating the Imperial Order as its moment of greatest disarray”.

To sum up, the intention of the Mandate System was that the former German colonies were supposed to
have a mandatory power which wouldn't just rule the territory but would also be responsible to report
back to the League of Nations how those territories were making progress toward some kind of self
government.

CONTEXT

In 1884, pursuant to the Berlin Conference, colonies were officially established. The six principal
colonies of German Africa, along with native kingdoms and politics, were the legal precedents of the
modern states of Burundi, Cameroon, Namibia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Togo.

During WWI there was an East African Campaign, where a series of battles and guerilla actions took
place starting in German East Africa. The main objective was to divert Allied forces from the Western
Front to Africa. The Germans in East Africa fought for the whole of the war, receiving word of the
armistice on 14 November 1918. Both sides waited for confirmation, with the Germans formally
surrendering on 25 de November. German East Africa became two League of Nations Mandates :
Tanganyika Territory went for the United Kingdom and Ruanda-Urundi went from Belgium while the
Kionga Triangle was ceded to Portugal.

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To sum up, the newly-formed League of Nations granted the victorious Allies mandates over the
colonies they had conquered from the Germans. South West Africa was designated a Class C Mandate
—to be administered as an integral territory—and assigned to South Africa in December 1920. The
other former German territories in Africa were designated as Class B Mandates—to be administered
with regard to local culture and religion—and assigned to Britain, France, and Belgium in July 1922.

MAIN EVENTS
17 Dec 1920 South West Africa Mandate▲
The League of Nations declared the former German colony of South West Africa as a Class C Mandate,
granting the Union of South Africa responsibility for its administration.in wikipedia

28 Feb 1922 Egyptian Independence▲

The government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland issued the Unilateral Declaration of
Egyptian Independence, ending its protectorate over Egypt and granting the country nominal
independence with the exception of four “reserved” areas: foreign relations, communications, the
military, and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.in wikipedia

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20 Jul 1922 Tanganyika Mandate▲
The League of Nations declared the bulk of former German East Africa as the Class B Mandate of
Tanganyika, granting Britain responsibility for its administration. Some relatively small parts of German
East Africa had already been assigned to Belgium (Rwanda and Burundi) and Portugal (the Kionga
Triangle).in wikipedia

20 Jul 1922 Ruanda-Urundi Mandate▲

The League of Nations confirmed the separation of Ruanda-Urundi from German East Africa, declaring
the territory as a Class B Mandate and granting Belgium responsibility for its administration.in
wikipedia

20 Jul 1922 Cameroons Mandates▲

The League of Nations declared the former German colony of Kamerun as a Class B Mandate. The
administration of the territory was divided between Britain and France, in the process creating British
Cameroons in the northwest and much larger French Cameroon in the southeast.in wikipedia

20 Jul 1922 Togoland Mandates▲

The League of Nations declared the former German protectorate of Togoland as a Class B Mandate. The
administration of the territory was divided between Britain and France, forming British Togoland in the
west and the larger French Territory of Togo in the east.

UNITED STATES AND THE AFRICAN MANDATES

When Wilson originally conceived the idea of mandatories, he wanted the United States to take over
Armenia. He considered that because the Armeninan Genocide, it could be beneficial to the
Armeninan population to be under USA protection. That never happened because the Senate
refused to go to the League of Nations, but also because Wilson later thought that mandatory
powers should be small European powers such as Sweden or Denmark, which were advanced but
not colonial and would have more credibility. It did not end up being that way and the British, French
and Japan got most of the mandate territories.

MANDATES AFTER THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE: MAKING THE MIDDLE EAST

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 Map from the 1916 Sykes Picot agreement.

In the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, the

reconstructed Turkish military government
managed to hold on the Turkish heartlands, which
were known as Anatolia, but lost all of the Arab
majority lands from there to the south. All of those
Arab territories became mandates.

The story begins in 1916, when the British and the

French have a sense that the Ottoman Empire
might fall apart or at least lose its Arab provinces.
They sent a couple of diplomats in 1916 to have
negotiations to discuss and set agreements around what to do with those territories if they fell apart from
the Ottoman Empire. It is called the Sykes Picot agreement. (It was a 1916 secret treaty between the
United Kingdom and France, with assent from the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy, to define
their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire.)

Wartime plans (Sykes Picot agreement, 1916)

• France and Great Britain will “recognize and protect an independent Arab state” or states “under the
suzerainty (not fully sovereign but almost and protected by English or French) of an Arab chief” in areas
A and B.
Territorial arrangements:
• In colored areas, direct or indirect rule as arranged with the Arab state(s)
• International administration in Palestine because of its religious importance
Economic arrangements:
• Rail lines connecting Baghdad with Aleppo and Haifa
• Free ports in Haifa and Alexandretta
• No increase in tariffs, no internal customs

What the Sykes Picot agreement meant was:

1. They agreed to divide the territory in three spheres of influence: the northern part under French
sphere of influence and the southern part under British sphere of influence + Palestine under
international administration.
2. It was a classical imperial division of soils, as there was no talk about self determination or

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 tutelage. Independent Arab states were settled, but those were under the protection of empires
for indeterminate time.

If we take the Sykes Picot agreement and we juxtapost it with the League of Nations mandate system,
which got decided in 1919, we get the Article XXII of League of Nations Covenant:

“To those colonies and territories ... inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under
the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-being
and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization ... . The best method of giving
practical effect to this principle is that the tutelage of such peoples should be entrusted to advanced
nations ... and that this tutelage should be exercised by them as Mandatories on behalf of the League.”
(It is an echo of the fifth point of the 14 Wilson points)
“Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development
where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognised subject to the rendering of
administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The
wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory.”

The transition is important: from protectorates to proto states. Within 3 years the world had moved from
imperial protectorates to proto states. In 1916 those lines were intended to be simply demarcations of
spheres of influence, whereas in 1919 the lines had become the borders of proto states. (go to the map)

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The lines are completely arbitrary, lines in the desert which were never designed to designate
independent states, they were designed to designate spheres of influence. But because of what American
intervention in the war did, and what Wilsonian principles brought into the conference, creating the idea
of mandates as proto states, came toward defining the border of independent states.

READING: ROSENBERG - FINANCIAL MISSIONARIES

World War I transformed the position of the United States in global financial markets. Allied nations in
Europe borrowed heavily from American institutions, and the closure of European money markets and
trade lanes forced Latin American nations also to look to the United States for enlarged financial and
commercial connections. The United States rapidly shed its prewar status as a debtor nation and
emerged after the war as the world’s leading creditor, with $12.6 billion in total net assets on private and
government accounts and with the largest gold stock in the world. New York banks became the largest
source of new lending. U.S. capital and financial policies would be key to the postwar economic system.

With the new preeminence of U.S. capital markets, policymakers struggled to create what they called a
“general loan policy.”

The wartime cooperation between the Wilson administration and investment bankers continued after
Republican Warren G. Harding’s election in 1920. Harding had little knowledge of foreign affairs,

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especially international finance. He was in awe of his Secretary of State, Evan Hughes and Secretary of
Commerce Herbert Hoover. Both believed that global economic interconnections through trade and
investment would pave paths to peace. This Republican approach has been called “associative” or
“cooperative,” emphasizing the conviction that private enterprise could carry out public purpose with
some guidance from the government's hidden hand.It is known as dollar diplomacy.

The foreign policy of the 1920s encouraged private bank investment overseas as the primary means
through which to stabilize the postwar world. Foreign lending during the early 1920s, then, had the
status of a broad strategic issue, and the State Department was the most important player in the
government.

In 1921 and 1922, the United States sank into its worst depression since the early 1890s. Business
leaders and Secretary Hoover saw the problem to be a disjuncture between production and consumption.
To stimulate new markets and improve the infrastructure that made markets work efficiently, both
agreed that increased foreign lending was critical.

Plans to alleviate Europe 's post war economic problems were designed. Experts feared the destabilizing
effects of America 's huge international credit balance (y necesitaban que sus socios europeos tuvieran la
capacidad económica para seguir manteniendo la línea de negocio pre guerra) Norman Davis, proposed
that the U.S. government for a broad collaborative plan to finance European recovery.

Such a call for government action, however, quickly became a political orphan. Europeans hoped to
make cancellation or reduction of war debt payments to the United States part of a recovery plan, yet the
political sentiment in the United States ran strongly against any such concession. The Harding
administration adopted a hard line on war debts. It established the World War Foreign Debt
Commission, which fixed a 4.25% minimum interest rate with a 25-year minimum repayment schedule
on all war debts. His administration also insisted that private banks, not the government, take the lead in
lending to Europe. In 1920, the Treasury Department publicly announced that wartime restrictions on
the sale of foreign bonds no longer prevailed and encouraged investment bankers to seek lending
opportunities abroad.

Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the U.S government supported
promoting budget equilibrium and anti-inflationary policies, restoring the gold or gold-exchange
standard, and creating central banks in each country.

In the years immediately following World War I, in short, the U.S. government remained officially aloof

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from issues of European economic stabilization, even though it encouraged private bankers to make
loans and to educate the public about the importance of buying foreign securities.

In contrast to the policy toward Europe, Washington energetically encouraged stabilization loans to
parts of Latin America in which the United States had, through the Monroe Doctrine, claimed both the
right and duty to provide financial oversight.

Harding and Hughes pledged to end the unpopular military interventions in the Dominican Republic and
Haiti and to work toward enhancing stability by means other than military intervention echoing Taft's
dollar diplomacy, “dollars for bullets.” The period between 1921 and 1923 thus marked the apex of the
U.S. government’s activism to promote stability by using the loan-for supervision formula.

Edwin Kemmerer had presented the fullest argument for Pan-American monetary unity: it would bring
stable money, a precondition for economic and moral advancement. .Only five countries of the
American Republics— Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Canada—could claim
solid gold standards with their currency units valued the same as the U.S. dollar

Toward the end of World War I, U.S. monetary reformers claimed that the time was ripe to push for a
common monetary system for the Western hemisphere. Many countries had been adversely affected by
wild currency fluctuations during and immediately after the war; rampant postwar inflation prompted
widespread calls for currency stabilization. Most Latin American officials were also relieved at the
reopening of sea lanes and eager to reestablish old markets or to forge new ones for their products. The
Second Pan-American Financial Conference of 1920 continued to discuss establishment of an
International Gold Clearance Convention.Harding’s Treasury Department, however, showed little
interest in the agreement, and in 1922 the International High Commission was moved into Hoover’s
Commerce building.

The basic techniques of dollar diplomacy, making private loans to foreign governments conditional on
gold-standard currency reform and financial supervision, emerged as the primary strategy for bringing
regularity to financial and political systems in Latin America.

When Latin American countries asked the State Department for help in gaining access to U.S. financial
markets in the immediate postwar period, the Department’s usual response was to recommend that they
hire Kemmerer to put together a comprehensive fiscal reform plan. Kemmerer began championing
country-by-country establishment of national banking systems with reserves held in New York.

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Dana G. Munro, wrote in 1922 that the State Department was in a position to use loans “to insist much
more strongly upon desired . . . political and financial reforms which will make for greater stability of
government, and which will provide a safe field for American commerce and investment.”

This Kemmerer agenda, first devised by the gold-standard reform economists at the turn of the century,
then elaborated under the name of dollar diplomacy, lived on as a way of reconstructing the post-World
War I international order in the Western hemisphere. The purpose of loan controls, as under Taft’s
policy twenty years earlier, was to avoid outright colonialism while advancing U.S. interests through the
introduction of financial supervision. After the war, with nearly every government in the Central
American area seeking loans from U.S. bankers, the chance to spread financial expertise seemed
opportune. The customary professional-managerial rationale bolstered the policy discussions: gold
standard currency systems, anchored by reorganized national central banks and U.S. supervisors who
collected customs and oversaw budgets, would eliminate graft and political instability. Economic and
moral progress for all citizens would triumph over the exploitation of unscrupulous local elites and loan
sharks. This economic reform agenda was presumed to buttress the lofty goals for peace and progress
that Secretary of State Hughes proclaimed at the Central American Conference of 1923 and in his many
speeches celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine.

The active governmental promotion of bank loans in the Western hemisphere contrasted so sharply with
hands-off policies toward Europe that some obvious dilemmas came up when the government tried to
craft an overall policy on foreign lending.

Hoover and Grosvenor Jones of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce argued that the
government had a threefold responsibility to exercise oversight on foreign loans:
1- to investors who expected their interests in foreign lands protected;
2- to bankers who could benefit from government’s advice on conditions in foreign countries
3- to foreign governments whose borrowing might become excessive if U.S. capital markets
became too eager to lend.

Secretary of State Hughes agreed that oversight could imply responsibility and preferred only to be kept
advised of private loan negotiations. Officials in the Latin American division suggested a separate loan
policy for Latin America—one that openly acknowledged the special relationship and accepted the task
of arranging loans to that region and perhaps even supervising their expenditures. But Hughes refused,
and asked Arthur Young to draft a “general loan policy” that would apply everywhere.

Issued in March 1922, this policy required bankers to submit loan proposals for State Department

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scrutiny who developed a standard language, indicating “no objection” for loans that met certain
“political” requirements. As the policy evolved, loans were considered unobjectionable as long as they
were:
1. not used to meet budget deficits in lieu of taxation
2. to buy armaments
3. to support foreign monopolies
4. to support non recognized governments or those in default to the U.S. government.

The general loan policy, however, only continued to highlight the dilemmas of using private bank
lending to accomplish public goals

While the government was unable and unwilling to regulate capital, by passing on the merit of loans, it
would try to regulate risk through encouraging private U.S. experts to undertake rehabilitation and
stabilization missions.
Opposition to Financial Imperialism, 1919–1926

Journalist John Kenneth Turner, and others claimed that the United States had entered the war to protect
the bankers who had floated loans to Britain and France.

Government-banker cooperation was cast as a means for restoring and maintaining stability within the
international system; economic connections seemed the pathways to peace. Within the antibanking
discourses, by contrast, controlled loans became an obvious target of criticism. This view identified
bank loans with exploitation, militarism, and imperialism.

This antibanking critique of foreign policy began to employ the word “imperialism.” The anti-
imperialists of 1898 had generally used this term to describe territorial acquisition. By this definition,
dollar diplomacy could seem anti-imperial because it respected a nation’s formal sovereignty.
As the meaning of imperialism broadened to include the loan-for supervision arrangements envisioned
in dollar diplomacy, fears about government-banker collusion focused antibanking sentiment onto
foreign policy.

Henríquez y Carvajal, whom U.S. military forces had ousted in 1916, emerged as leader of an
opposition nationalist movement in the Dominican Republic. He published the cause of Dominican self-
determination throughout the world, refused cooperation with the military government, denounced any
new controlled loans that would extend the life of supervisory structures, and galvanized opposition
around the issue of the military’s censorship. In 1919, he and Haiti’s President Sudre Dartiguenave

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appealed to the Peace Conference at Versailles on behalf of their countries’ right to self-determination.

CLASS 8:A FRAGILE ORDER?

QUICK REMINDER: The “Big Three in Paris”

At Paris, big three deal with three main topics:

● Territory (what to do with lands of fallen empires?): last class we analyze the territory topic
● Economics (how to revive struggling economies?)
● International institutions (how to prevent future war?)

Their goals:

● Guarantee future security

● Extract retribution from defeated powers (esp. Germany)

FIRST… A QUESTION: WHO IS THE “SELF” IN SELF-DETERMINATION?

And, who is the external authority that gets to determine the self in the self determination and who
decides between that self versus other self?

The main principle was that Empires were illegitimate and therefore they had to be broken up according
to the problem of self determination. If Empires are not a legitimate unit of government, what are the
legitimate units of government? The answer is NATIONS, but it leaves us with the same question, how
do you tell if a certain group of people are a nation deserving self-determination?

Contemporary example: Catalonia could be considered a nation from a theoretical point of view: a group
of people with a common history, a set of customs, a language, a well defined territory and, most
important of all, a self-awareness of themselves as members of a nation. However, it is another thing to

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suggest that Catalonia is or ought to be a Nation-state, or to suggest Catalonia has some legitimate claim
to deciding this question unilaterally.

In the period of the aftermath of WWI, with the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian and the Russian
Empire, the perception was, also in Central Europe, that a nation is defined relying on linguistic, cultural
and historical differences with other territories However, the most important characteristic was the
linguistic one. Chekoslovakia became a separate nation because they considered themselves slavs, as
they speak slave lenguage, and they don’t feel similar to those speaking Hungarian or Germany.

Nevertheless, after WWII India received the right of self determination from the British Empire even
though they speak dozens of different languages. What is the self in that context and how was it
determined? In other contexts, like in the Indian one, the nation was defined by religion, so the various
linguistic groups did not receive self determination and the religious groups defined their new nations.
Pakistan became a muslim majority country and India was made of indus.

Another example of self determination defined by religion was the massive population exchange
between Turkey and Greece after WWI. You were Greek if you were cristian orthodox and you were
Turkish if you were muslim regardless of what lenguage you spoke.

On the other hand, the post colonial states of sub Saharan Africa don’t have a single linguistic group, so
the principle of language was not involved in their self determination. Neither is religion, as most of the
states are composed of various religious groups. Nigeria, for example, has numerous religious and
linguistic groups because its territory remains as constituted by the British Empire. One could argue that
in the case of decolonization of the Sub Saharian Affric the operating difference was race. The basic
idea was that black people ought not to be ruled by white people in Europe, they ought to be ruled by
other black people of Africa.

To sum up, there are different principles that help to constitute the self. Sometimes it is a linguistic
principle whereas other times it is a religious principle. There is not a single answer to define what
determines the self in the self determination of people. Thus, on the one hand we have a principle that
has profoundly shaped world order in the XX and XXI century, but on the other hand we have a
principle that has been problematic because it is deeply unstable and open to interpretation. At the core
of most of the conflicts of post imperial world order, the main problems are inherited in the
ambiguity of the notion of the self.

From the Bolshevick perspective, the advocacy of self determination was a wedge to break up powerful
empires into bits and pieces so the socialist revolution could gather them together into a socialist
commonwealth. They broke the Russian Empire, partly arguing for self determination, and they brought

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all of those territories together into the Soviet Union.

However, the question is still unanswered: who gets to determine what the self is that ought to be self
government? Who has the problem?

If empires are broken down into bits and pieces, self-determining bits and pieces could result either in
chaos or in the re-integration of these bits and pieces into some kind of international collaboration. From
the Soviets perspective the alternative was the socalist internationalism, meaning gathering those bits
and pieces under socialism. For Wilson and those following the Wilsonian perspective, it was gathering
those bits and pieces into a collaborative international institution that created order and buttressed the
basic institutions of capitalism against revolution: the League of Nations.

THE ECONOMIC SETTLEMENT

The point of peace was to allow prosperity. However, the economic settlement that came out of
Versailles had several problems.

1. Europe’s economies (with partial exception of British) had been devastated by the war
2. European governments (esp. Britain & France) owed US banks ~$10 billion dollars by war’s
end
3. Wilson was not willing to help by loaning Europeans US government money or pressuring US
banks to forgive loans

THE SOLUTION: GERMAN REPARATIONS

- The Americans wanted to be paid, the British and French did not have the money, so as the
Germans were faulty, they ought to pay.
- Germany was required to pay $132 billion gold marks (US$33 billion) in reparations
- British economist John Maynard Keynes calls this a “Carthaginian Peace” (after the Punic Wars
between Rome and Carthage). He was a member of the British delegation in the peace
conference and was very upset about this decision, in which he saw political rather than
economic reasons. He referred to the settlement as a “Carthaginian Peace” because he thought it
would generate destruction for generations in Germany. His interpretation was really influential,
particularly when Germany fell into the economic spirals of hyperinflation in the 1920s and then
to fascism in the 1930s. The peacemakers in WWII, particularly Franklin Roosevelt, took every
Wilsonian failure into account for the peace settlements. WWII is the clear example of the
interrelation of agency and structure. There are two ways in which the past structures the future:
one is in a material sense, as it creates the various structures and institutions that future agents

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 have to operate in,; but it also creates their mental tools. Their understanding of history, the
mistakes, challenges of past actions shape and structure the way in which they think about their
options and how they use their agency.
- The New German government printed money to pay, leading to runaway inflation in Germany.
There are historians that thought that the Weimar Republic purposely created hyperinflation in
Germany in order to convince the allies that the German economy was going to collapse if the
reparation bill was actually demanded.
- Payment amounts and schedules were renegotiated several times in the 1920s and canceled
entirely in 1932 after the depression. There is a certain consensus among historians today which
defends that the reparations were not Cartighinian, than the German economy would have been
able to pay it from an economic perspective, but from a political perspective the German
government refuse to pay the reparations because they felt they have been mistreated in the
Paris Peace Conference. They thought it was unfair to pay that large reparations because
they have agreed to an Armistice and they shouldn’t be held individually responsible for a
world war. No había habido una derrota, había habido un armisticio.
- Payments were resumed after WWII, with an agreement to pay 50% of remaining balance. Final
payment was made in 2010.

FROM ECONOMICS TO INSTITUTIONS… THE LEAGUE FIGHT

For Wilson, the League Cabinet was the most important part of the whole treaty. His logic was that even
though they get parts of the treaty wrong, if they had a strong institution that will be there afterwards,
everything could be fixed. Wilson called it the “League Covenant”, and he was of course the central
figure in outlining the text and in insisting in making it part of the Treaty of Versailles. He thought that
if he managed to staple together the Treaty of Peace with Germany and the League Covenant, he would
be able to bring it to the Senate as one peace for ratification. If the Senate rejected the League Cabinet,
they would reject the Peace Treaty. However, this gamble failed.

President Wilson presented the text of the Versailles Treaty on July the 10th. He said it was “the hand of
god” which had led them in that way, and he asked ``Dare we reject it and break the heart of the
world?”. The Senate answered: yes, we dare. Wilson tried to shift American public opinion on a whistle
stop tour but the strain broke him in a terrible stroke. In November, the Senate put Versailles to the vote,
rejected it and spurned the League of Nations.

The League Fight was about Senate ratification. The Constitution of the United States requires treaties
to be ratified by the Senate by a ⅔ majority. The actual implication of the ⅔ bar was that the Treaty got
a majority vote but did not get to the ⅔ needed. The failure has to do with Wilson's political
shortcomings and his failure to bring Republicans along sufficiently, and with his health shortcomings
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and his terrible stroke in September.

WHAT WERE THE POSITIONS? THE LEAGUE FIGHT, INTERNATIONALISM VS

ISOLATIONISM (en realidad, era una discusión sobre SOBERANÍA Y PAZ).

There were few senators, particularly from the west, who were something close to what is usually
qualified as isolationism (not in the economic terms but yes in the political terms). Thus, there were
senators that thought the United States should have never got into the war and broke with the tradition of
not involving themselves in European wars. However, historians today reject it as a debate between
internationalism and isolationism. It was a debate between two different approaches to American
internationalism:

WILSON VS CABOT LODGE: The main difference between these two perspectives is represented by
Henry Cabot Lodge, who was focused on American sovereignty. He thought that America should be
engaged with the world even in the military sense, but the American people need to have the power to
decide how, then and why they engage. He considered that by any means any of that power had to be
given to any international organization. On the other hand, Wilson considered that the issue was not
about sovereignty but about peace. He considered that there is no way that even the United States being
the most powerful nation on earth, can deal with all the problems of the world. Wilson considered that
the US had to give up a measure of its sovereignty in order to maintain peace.

The roots of the problem: President Wilson

traveled to Paris representing the United
States bringing himself his 14 points, one of
them being the creation of a League of
Nations, an international peace body that will
try to prevent future wars. WIlson’s 14 points
were set aside by the big three (Lloyd George,
Clemenceu and V.Emmanuelle), as they look
to secure and increase the size of their
empires and create a harsh and terrible peace with Germany. However, the League of Nations did find
its way in the final version of the Treaty of Versailles. Wilson was not completely happy with the result
but he signed the treaty anyway as he considered that the League of Nations will prevent future wars. “I
can predict with absolute certainty that within another generation there will be another war if the
nations of the world do not concur with the method by which to prevent it”.

Wilson returned to the USA with the signed treaty and the battle began. In order to understand the fight

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about the treaty it is necessary to look at the checks and balances of the US Constitution. The President
of the USA has certain powers and responsibilities and so does the US Congress, specifically in this case
the US Senate.

Back in 1917 the President could ask for a declaration of war but the Congress had the power to declare
it. When the war was over the President had the constitutional powers to sign the treaties that he wanted
with foreign nations, but the Senate must approve all of them and do so with ⅔ of the votes. Back in
1918 the Republicans took control of the US Senate and they were quite upset because Wilson did not
take any US Senators with him to Paris.

There were three types of Senators:

1. Internationalists: Senate Democrats who already supported the Treaty.

2. The Reservationist: Republicans led by Henry Cabot Lodge. They were willing to support the
treaty but they needed to have some major amendments to the Treaty made before they would
cast the vote in support of it.
3. Radical republicans or irreconcilables: 16 Republicans voting “no” no matter what led by
William Borah.

What was the big problem with the irreconcilables and what the reservationists wanted to change?

THE DEBATE OVER ARTICLE X: National Sovereignty vs International Cooperation

Wilson Defends the Peace Treaty and League, 1919

You have heard a great deal about Article 10 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Article 10
speaks to the conscience of the world. Article 10 is the article which goes to the heart of this whole bad
business, for that article says that the members of this league, that is intended to be all the great nations
of the world, engage to respect and to preserve against all external aggression the territorial integrity
and political independence of the nations concerned.

Article X - Final Text: Political scientists and specialists call it “The Collective Security Guarantee”. It
was negotiated by Wilson with the British and the French, particularly with the French, as Clemencau
was very worried about Germany being resurgent and attacking France again. Wilson felt compelled
about giving them the security guarantee.

“The Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the
territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League. In case of any
such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression the Council shall advise upon the

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means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled.”

In Article X of the League of Nations Charter, thus, it is stated that all member nations would support
another league member in the event of an attack by another nation. What that meant is that somehow
as a member of a League, it is the League and no longer the US Senate that would then decide
where and when the US went to war. This article took away the power and authority of the
Congress and superseded the US Constitution.

Senator William Borah stated: “We are told that this treaty means peace. Even so I would not pay the
price. Would you purchase the peace at the cost of your independence?

Senator Cabot Lodge said: “I want to keep America as she has been - not isolated, not prevent her from
joining other nations for these great purposes - but I wish her to be master of her fate”.

Article 2 of Henry Cabot Lodge reservations to the League Covenant, 1919

“The United States assumes no obligation to preserve the territorial integrity or political independence
of any other country.. under the provisions of Article 10, or to employ the military or naval forces of the
United States under any article of the treaty for any purpose, unless in any particular case the
Congress, which… has the sole power to declare war… shall… so provide”.

On the other hand, Wilson argued two separate things that can be considered self-contradictory:

1. The Council worked with the principle of unanimity, so if Us opposed it they wouldn't have to
do it. As a member of the League of Nations the US would have a great voice in where and what
the League decided to support military actions. Wilson outlined that the League was not
designed to support military actions but rather economic sanctions and boycotts of nations in
order to get them to comply. // Wilson Defends the Peace Treaty and League, 1919. “But when
is that judgment going to be expressed, my fellow citizens? Only after it is evident that every
other resource has failed, and I want to call your attention to the central machinery of the
league of nations. If any member of that league or any nation not a member refuses to submit
the question at issue either to arbitration or to discussion by the council, there ensues
automatically, by the engagements of this covenant, an absolute economic boycott”.
2. At the same time he considered that for the sake of peace the US needed to give up a bit of
sovereignty in the name of international cooperation.

BUT… WAIT A MOMENT, WHAT WAS WILSON’S ORIGINAL DRAFT OF ARTICLE X?

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Article X - Wilson’s original text

“The Contracting Powers unite in guaranteeing to each other political independence and territorial
integrity; but it is understood between them that such territorial readjustments, if any, as may in the
future become necessary by reason of changes in present racial conditions and aspirations or present
social and political relationships, pursuant to the principle of self-determination, and also such
territorial readjustments as may be in the judgment of three-fourths of the Delegates be demanded by
the welfare and manifest interest of the peoples concerned, may be affected, if agreeable to those
peoples; and that territorial changes may in equity involve material compensation. The Contracting
Powers accept without reservation the principle that the peace of the world is superior in importance to
every question of political jurisdiction or boundarWilson was so stubborn in his discussion with the
Senate because, from his perspective, he had already compromised with the final draft principles doing a
huge regression from his original idea of Article X that he couldn’t regress any more. On the one hand
there is a bit of radicalism in his idea, from the perspective of early XX century international relations,
and on the other hand there is a huge logic behind it.

TO SUM UP, CAN THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS HOLD ALL PERSPECTIVES TOGETHER?

THE PLAN VS THE OUTCOME

1. Decisions: Wilson wanted the decision of the League to be by majority (by some kind of
supermajority, as ¾) and it ended up being by unanimity.
2. Mandates: Wilson imagined that it would be a voice for colonial peoples (King Crane
Commission) and that small powers with less imperial interests as Sweden or Denmark would
take a significant role in being mandatory. It turned out that the great powers dominated the
Mandate System.
3. Stability vs Change: Wilson tried to strike a balance between revolution and reaction. He
wanted a system of world governance that, from his perspective, would prevent falling into neo

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 imperialism and bolsheviks. However, the League Covenant ended (in article X, for example)
defending the status quo.

THE WORLD IN 1920: THE OLD ORDER UNDER PRESSURE

The new old order is very much looking like the old imperial order, because even though several
empires fell apart during the course of WWI, other empires expanded their territory (France and
Britain). However, these order is under severe pressure throughout the interwar period and beyond from
three different directions:

1. Global South: The anticolonial national movements. Pressure from the colonized peoples of
the world. Nehru, Mao Zedong, Zululand, Sangor in Senegal…
2. The Union of Soviets Socialists Republic: the bolsheviks won the civil war against the whites
and created the URSS in 1922. They considered empires illegitimate, and a means to an end,
being the end from the bolshevik perspective of capitalism. Empires were considered a side
effect of capitalism. Imperialism was, from Lenin’s point of view, a manifestation of capitalism.
The Comintern advocated for anti colonial revolutions in a movement that is called the “anti
colonial transnational”. The goal of the anticolonial transnational was to create nation states in
those “nations in waiting”. Bolshevick-Marxist theory predicted that revolution would come
first to industrial societies, as the revolutionary class was the proletarian from the Marxist
perspective. However, they began to shift their perspective when they saw that the expected
revolutions in the most industrialized countries in Europe, such as Germany and Hungary, were
not happening or were quickly suppressed. Thus, after 1920 they changed their minds and
they began to consider that non-industrialized countries in the colonial world might be
ready for revolution, as they are already rising up against the injustice of imperialism.
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 This is where anti imperialism started to connect with anti capitalism. Lenin made this
connection in a book written in Switzerland during WWI called the “Imperialism, the highest
stage of capitalism”.

It is called “anticolonial transnational” because those colonies did not have a nation and
sometimes their colonial fight was carried out in other countries. For example, Ho Chi Min
founded the Comunist French and Vietnam parties. He lived in more than 50 different countries
running away from persecution. Another example of anti colonial transnationalism was the
meeting that Lenin had with an Indian communist named M.N Roy, who represented the
Mexican Communist Party, which he helped to found while he was in exile from India. Roy
convinced Lenin to broaden his vision to South America too. The Bolsheviks had a very
influential hand in creating the Chinese Communist party in 1921.

Understanding of anticolonialism as a fundamentally transnational phenomenon has deep

implications for understanding the twenty-first century world. What does it mean that so many
anticolonial movements understood imperialism as a global phenomenon that required
coordinated strategies and networks of solidarity?

3. The United States: The arguments against the imperial order were made by Woodrow Wilson
and (more forcefully) by F.D. Roosevelt. In the 1920 election, with Wilson already
incapacitated, the Democratic candidate was James Cox from Ohio. Cox ran against Harding,
the Republican. Cox's vice president was FDRoosvelt, but finally Harding won.

THE US IN THE 1920’s: BETWEEN ENGAGING THE WORLD AND KEEPING IT OUT

between engaging the world (economically, diplomatically and legally) and keeping it out. In the 1920’s
election, neither candidate, nor Harding or Cox, campaigned against anti internationalism politics.
Harding campaigned for going back to “normal” world.

The US was militarily powerful before WWI but it was not ready to let go of the traditions of having a
small peacetime military and avoiding military entanglements around the world, especially with
European affairs.

- 1919: “Red Scare”, expulsion of suspected subversives that had arrived from eastern countries 4
decades before. At the war's end, following the October Revolution, American authorities saw
the threat of communist revolution in the actions of organized labor, including such disparate
cases as the Seattle General Strike and the Boston Police Strike and then in the bombing
campaign directed by anarchist groups at political and business leaders. Fueled by labor unrest
and the anarchist bombings, and then spurred on by the Palmer Raids and attempts by United

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 States Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to suppress radical organizations, it was
characterized by exaggerated rhetoric, illegal search and seizures, unwarranted arrests and
detentions, and the deportation of several hundred suspected radicals and anarchists.
- 1921-22: The Washington Conference: A new order in East Asia. The US was strategically
concerned about the Pacific. Americans needed the Pacific in order to make it an
“American lake” (the capture of the Philippines was part of that campaign). Because the Peace
Conference only dealt with Europe, they wanted complementary conferences to put together an
East Asian order congenial to American interests.
-
1. Four Power Treaty: (Us, UK, France and Japan): treaty of security in the Pacific. It was
intended to break up the Anglo-Japan alliance of 1902, as Americans were worried that
Japanese could threaten the American lake. The British saw Japon as a rising power and
they wanted to have an ally in that region.The US did not want Japan to become so
powerful and to have European allies, and the US managed to convince the UK (that
was at that point dependent on US finances) to not renew its treaties with Japan.
2. Five Power Treaty (4+Italy): strict limits on size and number of navy ships. The
agreement fixed the respective numbers and tonnages of capital ships to be possessed by
the navies of each of the contracting nations. The argument was that big militaries
encourage war. Specifically, part of the treaty is kind of racial, as it established that the
British and the US naval had to be equal, and Japanese naval had to be ⅗ the size of
American navy. They wanted to avoid arm competition and to maintain US naval
hegemony.
3. The Nine Power Treaty (5+ China, Belgium, Netherlands and Portugal) affirmed
Chinese sovereignty and enshrined the “open door.”
- Fordney-McCumber Tariff (1922): law that raised tariffs on many imported goods to protect
factories and farms. The contradiction between putting tariffs on incoming goods while
advocating free trade has to do with contradictions within the Republican party. The US
Congress, controlled by the Republicans, displayed a pro-business attitude in passing the tariff
and in promoting foreign trade by providing huge loans to Europe. That, in turn, bought more
US goods. However, five years after the passage of the tariff, American trading partners had
raised their own tariffs by a significant degree.
- 1924: Dawes Plan (recasting German reparations): the Europeans owed Americans banks a lot
of money, and Americans wanted the money to be paid. However, the Europens could not pay
unless Germany paid them the reparations first. There were a bunch of bankers who tried to
make German reparations flow to the other Allies in order to make the American economy run.
- 1924: Johnson-Reed Immigration Act (National quota, Asian exclusion): up until WWII
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 inmigration from Europe to the US was more or less free flowing and millions of people came
between the 1870s and the 1910s, particularly southern Europeans and eastern europeans.
Inmigration from China and more generally from Asia to the USA was highly limited (with
exceptions as business men, diplomats and students). US Laborers did not want the competition
of the Asian working class. However, in 1924 the situation changed. The Johnson Reed
Inmigration Act concluded that even European inmigration was not well received any more in
the US. The quota had been based until then on the number of people born outside of the United
States, or the number of immigrants in the United States. The new quota provided immigration
visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the
1890 national census. The new law traced the origins of the whole of the U.S. population,
including natural-born citizens. The new quota calculations included large numbers of people of
British descent whose families had long resided in the United States. As a result, the percentage
of visas available to individuals from the British Isles and Western Europe increased, but newer
immigration from other areas like Southern and Eastern Europe was limited.
- 1928: Kellogg-Briand Pact (outlawing war): Kellog, Secretary of State, arranged a treaty in
Paris with Briand. They agreed that war is illegitimate and ilegal. They outlawed war. The pact
was one of many international efforts to prevent another World War, but it had little effect in
stopping the rising militarism of the 1930s or preventing World War II. However, it had
importance from the point of view that for the first time in international law it was instituted a
norm that said that war itself was illegal. It was used as a basis for the Nuremberg and Tokyo
tribunals after WWII
- 1929: Young Plan (recasting reparations, again)

Question: how to make sense of this apparent contradiction? On the one hand, policies of
engagement with the world in trade, arm reduction and diplomacy… On the other hand,
policies of keeping immigrants and foreign products out of the market. The answer in the
contradiction of foreign and domestic measures can be found in the racial hierarchy that
most of the American elites shared at this point of time.

TO SUM UP…

THE ORDER OF THE INTERWAR YEARS

POWER: the old powers still had influence but they were being increasingly challenged by other powers like the
US, Japan and the Soviet Union.

INSTITUTIONS:

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 - New institutions like the League of Nations which was run by the Western powers
- The Communist International (Comintern) that was run by the Soviet Union as a king od counter LON
- At the same time, former Empires attempt to convert themselves toward some variations that would allow
them to continue the colonial relationship in an attenuated form. Few of them succeeded.

NORMS:

- Colonial ideology was under pressure from liberalism, socialism and anticolonialism
- Concurrently, the increasing rise of self determination was codified in the Montevideo Convention of
1933, where the US

CLASS 9: THE ORDER COLLAPSES

Madison Grant, conservationist, friend of president Roosevelt, was a scientific racial. He wrote a book,
“The Passing of a Great Race”, which analyzed the European racial hierarchy. There are Nordics,
Alpines and Mediterraneans, considered the lowest race. He focused on the growing number of
immigrants from non-Nordic Europe since the 1880s. Grant asserts that members of contemporary
American Protestant society who could trace their ancestry back to colonial times were being
outnumbered by immigrants and "inferior" racial groups. Grant reasons that the United States has
always been a Nordic country, made up of Nordic immigrants from England, Scotland and the
Netherlands in colonial times and Nordic immigrants from Ireland and Germany in later times. Grant
argued that the new immigrants were of different races and were creating separate societies within the
United States. His analysis of population studies, economic utility factors, labor supply, etc. purports to
show that the consequence of this subversion was evident in the declining quality of life, lower birth
rates and corruption of contemporary American society. He reasons that the Nordic races would become

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extinct and that America, as it was known, would cease to exist, being replaced by a fragmented country
or a corrupt caricature of itself.

Lathtrop Stoddard published a book in the 1920s called The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-
Supremacy. He amplified Grant’s perspective not only focusing in the European inmigration an it effect
of it in the US. He argued that race and genetic inheritance were the governing factors of history and
civilization and that the elimination or absorption of the "white" race by the "colored" races would result
in the destruction of Western civilization. He considered that the rising tide of color cannot be stopped,
and that white world supremacy cannot survive. It is, thus, destined to fade away. However, he wanted
to enforce through policy initiatives the preservation of racial homes. He advocated to isolate parts of
the world where the rising tide of color existed, and to ally just with the people of their race, particularly
British and northern Europeans.

Through those lenses of racism we see a connection between tight imgration restrictions in 1924
and the reticence for getting too involved in the world. However, that was not the only view. Franz
Boos and W.E.B Dubois, anthropologist and sociologist, pushed against those ideas as they did not have
the racial vision of the world.

DEPRESSION AND COLLAPSE

1929: Stock market collapse: it loses 90% of its value for the next couple of years and it doesn’t come
back to 1929 prices until the early 1950s. It took a quarter of a century to come back to the pre crash
levels.

1930: Many Americans banks go bankrupt

1931: Trade barriers rise (Smoot-Hawley Tariff): stock markets have collapsed, corporations,
manufacturers, farmers etc cannot get any credit. so they have to sell their stuff as quickly as possible.
They raised import duties to protect American businesses and farmers, adding considerable strain to the
international economic climate of the Great Depression. It was the last legislation under which the U.S.
Congress set actual tariff rates.

1932: Ottawa Conference (Imperial preferences system): conference of British colonies and dominions
held to discuss the Great Depression. The conference saw the group admit the failure of the gold standard
and abandon attempts to return to it. The meeting also worked to establish a zone of limited tariffs
within the British Empire, but with high tariffs with the rest of the world. This was called "Imperial
preference" or "Empire Free-Trade" on the principle of "home producers first, empire producers second,

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and foreign producers last".

From 1929 to 1932...

1. US GDP fell 50%

2. Manufacturing fell 25%
3. Construction fell 78%
4. Investment dropped 98%
5. Unemployment reached 25%

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT RESPONSE….. THE US IN THE 1930S

- From upper class New York family

- Harvard graduate (like T. Roosevelt)
- Asst. Sec. of Navy under Wilson
- Democratic candidate for vice president in 1920 election. He and Cox lost the elections.
- Became paralyzed from waist down after 1921 (polio)
- He came back to the political arena and became Governor of New York, 1929-32
- President, 1933-45

Domestic policies

1. “New Deal” (employment, growth, regulation): interventionist policy implemented to combat

the effects of the Great Depression. Roosvelt opposed the traditional American political
philosophy of laissez-faire, and the New Deal generally embraced the concept of a government-
regulated economy aimed at achieving a balance between conflicting economic interests.
2. Domestic legacy: Social Security, SEC, FDIC

Foreign policies did not change much from Hoover

1. Rejects international currency stabilization (London Conference, 1933): he rejected the

international collaboration to pop up exchange rates
2. Good Neighbor Policy (rejects military intervention in Caribbean and Central America, where
the US have been engaged to in the last decades)
3. Signs Montevideo Convention of 1933, recognizing the “declarative theory of statehood”
(territory, population, government): broadly speaking, it cannot be assumed anymore since the
Montevideo Conference that another state has diminished sovereignty because another country
thinks it is not sufficiently civilized.

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FALL OF WASHINGTON ORDER IN EAST ASIA

If it can be said that America has been isolationist during the XX century, it is only appropriate to
qualify its international position as that in the first term of F.D Roosevelt (mid 1930).

Fall of Washington Order in East Asia fell apart:

1927: China was unified under Chiang Kai-shek

1931: China is disunited in 1931, Japan occupies Manchuria (a conflictive region which since the
Russo-Japanese war of 1905 had been disputed) and sets up “puppet state” of Manchukuo under claim
of “self determination”.They used the rhetoric of self determination to justify their conquest of
Manchuria and put a puppet emperor. They added a colony in China, which by that time was Taiwan,
Korea and then Manchuria. Chiang Kai-Shek and his military contest this action verbally but nt
militarily because they did not have the military capacity to defeat the Japanese in Manchuria. The 1928
Kellogg Briand Pact had already established that war was illegitimate, but the Japanese had made the
whole story about liberation of an oppressed race. They considered that they were not adding territory
by war but liberating the Manchurians from the Chinese occupation. The League of Nation sent a
delegation to Manchuria and it took 2 years to write the report. In 1933 they concluded that the Japanese
should leave. The Japoneses did not leave Manchuria but they left the League of Nations.

THE FASCIST CHALLENGE IN EUROPE

- 1922: Mussolini takes power in Italy

- 1933: Hitler takes power in Germany
- 1935: Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Fascism became aggressive long before the nazi war machine
began. The first incident of fascist aggression out of their own country is the Italian invasion of
Ethiopia. It is a really important event in the collapse of world order in the 1930s. Italy had a
couple of colonies, Eritrea and Somalia between Ethiopia which was one of the two unique
states that have remained independent in Africa. In 1935, with no other reason than to show the
greatness of the Italian Empire, Mossolini invaded Ethiopia from the north and the south. The
emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, was forced to go into exile. He came as a member of the
League of Nation and gave a famous speech, which was the first of a Head of Government:

“I assert that the issue before the Assembly today is not merely a question of the settlement in
the matter of Italian aggression. It is a question of collective security; of the very existence of
the League; of the trust placed by states in international treaties; of the value of promises made

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 to small states that their integrity and independence shall be respected and assured.”

The resounding answer was no. This is a major component of the collapse of the world order.

The League had already put economic sanctions on the Italians, relatively lightened, and more
surprisingly, the sanctions were lifted in 1936.

THE TWENTY YEAR’S CRISIS 1919-1939, an introduction to the study of international relations
Carr, Edward Hallett

In a limited number of countries, nineteenth-century liberal democracy had been a brilliant success. It
was a success because its presuppositions coincided with the stage of development reached by the
countries concerned.

Utilitarianism and laissez faire served, and in turn directed, the course of the commercial expansion. But
the view that nineteenth-century liberal democracy was based, not on a balance of forces peculiar to the
economic development of the period and the countries concerned, but on certain a priori rational
principles which had only to be applied in other contexts to produce similar results, was essentially
utopian; and it was this view which under Wilson’s inspiration, dominated the world after the First
World War.

When the theories of liberal democracy were transplanted, by a purely intellectual process, to a period
and to countries whose stage of development and whose practical needs were utterly different from
those of Western Europe in the nineteenth century, sterility and disillusionment were the inevitable
sequel. The liberal democracies scattered throughout the world by the peace settlements of 1919 were
the product of abstract theory … quickly shriveled away. JAPAN

In the years before the attack, U.S officials had tried to integrate Japan into the Western system on
largely Western terms. The Lamont-Kajiwara (whereby the J.P Morgan bank supported Japanese
investments in Manchuria) and Washington Conference disarmament agreements of the early 1920s
acted as gangplans which Japan used to board the ship of American capitalism. By 1931, that ship not
only threatened to sink but the ship’s officers seemed to be trying to keep passengers from the lifeboats,
porous as they were. The economic origins of the pacific war walter lafeber

RATIONALISM AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

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The most important of all the institutions affected by this one-sided intellectualism of international
politics was the League of Nations. The Covenant, observed General Smuts: “… simply carries into
world affairs that outlook of a liberal democratic society”…. But this transplantation of democratic
rationalism from the national to the international sphere was full of unforeseen difficulties.

Any social order implies a large measure of standardization, and therefore of abstraction; there cannot
be a different rule for every member of the community. Such standardization is comparatively easy in a
community of several million anonymous individuals conforming more or less closely to recognized
types. But it presents infinite complications when applied to sixty known states differing largely in size,
in power and in political, economic and cultural development. The League of Nations, being the first
large-scale attempt to standardize international political promise on a rational basis, was particularly
liable to these embarrassments.

There can be no stability or peace either within nations or between nations except under laws and
moral standards adhered to by all. International anarchy destroys every foundation for peace. … It is,
therefore, a matter of vital interest and concern to the people of the United States that the sanctity of
international and the maintenance of international morality be restored. p.118 Franklin Roosvelt
Proposes to quarantine aggressors, 1937

The founders of the League … had indeed recognized the dangers of abstract perfection. “Acceptance of
the political facts of the present”, remarked the official British Commentary on the Covenant issued in
1919, “has been one of the principles on which the Commission has worked”, and this attempt to make
account of political realities distinguished the Covenant … from such purely utopian projects as the the
International Police Force, the Briand - Kellogg Pact and the United States of Europe.

The Covenant possessed the virtue of several theoretical imperfections. Purporting to treat all members
as equal, it assured the Great Powers a permanent majority on the Council of the League. It did not
purport to prohibit war altogether, but only to limit the occasions on which it might legitimately be
resorted to.

The obligation imposed on members of the League to apply sanctions to the Covenant-breaker was not
free from vagueness… (however) from about 1922 onwards the current at Geneva set strongly in the
utopian direction.

There were determined efforts to perfect the machinery, to standardize the procedure, to close the gaps

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in the Covenant by an absolute veto on all war, and to make the application of sanctions ``automatic”…
The Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance, the Geneva Protocol, the General Act, the plan to incorporate
the Briand-Kellogg Pact in the Covenant… WERE ALL MILESTONES ON THE DANGEROUS
PATH OF RATIONALIZATION. THE FACT THAT THE UTOPIAN DISHES PREPARED DURING
THESE YEARS AT GENEVA PROVED unpalatable symptoms of the growing divorce between theory
and practice. Y AUN ASI CUANDO EMPIEZA LA IIGM SE SIGUE ALUDIENDO A ESTOS
TRATADOS

Some fifteen years ago the hopes of mankind for a continuing era of international peace were raised to
great heights when more than sixty nations solemnly pledged themselves nor to resort to arms in
furtherance of their national aims and policies. The high aspirations expressed in the Briand-Kellogg
Peace Pact and the hopes for peace thus raised have of late given way to haunting fear of calamity. ….
The peace loving nations must make a concerted effort in opposition to these violations of treaties…
There must be a return to belief in the pledged word, in the value of a signed treaty.

Even the language current in League circles betrayed the growing eagerness to avoid the concrete in
favor of the abstract generalization. (For example) The Franco-Soviet Pact, which was a defensive
alliance against Germany, was so drafted as to make it appear an instrument of general application ….
“Metaphysicians, like savages' ', remark Mr.Bertrand Russell, “are apt to imagine a magical connection
between words and things”. The metaphysicians of Geneva found it difficult to believe that an
accumulation of ingenious texts prohibiting war was not a barrier against war itself. …
There must be a return to a belief in the pledged word, in the value of a signed treaty. There must be
recognition of the fact that national morality is as vital as private morality… p. 118 President Franklin
Roosvelt Proposes to Quarantine aggressors 1937

Once it came to be believed in the League circles that salvation could be found in a perfect card-index,
and the unruly flow of international politics could be canalized into a set of logically impregnable
abstract formulae inspired by the doctrines of nineteenth-century liberal democracy, the end of the
League as an effective political instrument was in sight.

THE APOTHEOSIS OF PUBLIC OPINION

Nor did any better fortune attend the attempt to transplant to the international sphere the liberal
democratic faith in public opinion. ... The 19th century belief in public opinion comprised two articles:

1. That public opinion is bound in the long run to prevail

2. That public opinion is always right
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In 1909, President Taft evolved a plan for the conclusion of treaties between the United States and other
Great Powers for the compulsory arbitration of international disruption. But how, it was asked, would
the award of the arbitral court be enforced? Taft disposed of the question with complete light-
heartedness. He had never observed that in a democracy like the United States the enforcement of
awards gave rise to any particular difficulty; and he professed himself “very little concerned” about this
aspect of the matter. “After we have gotten the cases into court and decided, and the judgments
embodied in a solemn declaration of a court thus established, few nations will care to face the
condemnation of international public opinion and disobey the judgment”. … The United States rejected
the President’s proposal, so that the opportunity did not occur to put “international public opinion” to the
test. NO FUNCIONÓ LA PRE´ÓIN DE LA OPINIÓN PÚBLICA COMO SE PENSABA CITAR
CASOS ITALIA JAPÓN

Four years later, Bryan, Wilson’s first Secretary of State, came forward with a further set of treaties. In
the Bryan treaties … their most novel and significant feature was the provision that the parties to them
should not resort to war until twelve months had elapsed from the beginning of the dispute. … Several
such treaties were in fact signed between the United States and other powers - some of them, by a
curious irony, in the first days of WWI. “The sum and substance” of these treaties, said Wilson in
October 1914, was “that whenever any trouble arises the light shall shine on it for a year before anything
is done; and my prediction is that after the light has shone on it for a year, it will not be necessary to do
anything; that after we know what happened, then we will know who was right and who was wrong.

The belief in the compelling power of reason, expressed through the voice of the people, was
particularly congenial to Wilson. … America’s entry into the war entailed no modification of Wilson’s
faith in the rightness of popular judgment. He took up the cue in one of the speeches in which he
discussed the future conditions of peace:

“… National purposes have fallen more and more into the background, and the common purpose of
enlightened mankind has taken their place. The couples of plain men have become on all hands more
simple and straightforward and more unified than the counsels of sophisticated men of affairs, who still
retain the impression that they are playing a game of power and are playing for high stakes. That is why
I have said that this is a people’s war, not a statesman's. Statement must follow the clarified common
thought or be broken”. (The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson: War and Peace, ed R.S Baker, I.p 159.

CITAR A PROFESOR MANELA Y CONTRADICCIONES DE WILSON: POR UNA PARTE SELF

DETERMINATION PERO POR OTRA RACISTA

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“Unless the Conference was prepared to follow the opinions of mankind and to express the will of the
people rather than that of the leaders of the Conference, we should be involved in another break up of
the world”

Such conception did, in fact, play a conspicuous part in the work of the Conference. When the Italian
Delegates proved recalcitrant in their claims to Fiume and the Adriatic coast, Wilson remained
convinced that if he could appeal against “leaders” to the “people” … the voice of reason must infallibly
prevail. The communiqué to the Italian people, and the withdrawal of the Italian Delegation from Paris
were the result of this conviction.

Most important of all, the whole conception of the League of Nations was from the first closely bound
up with the twin belief that public opinion was bound to prevail and that public opinion was the voice of
reason. …
The ticklish problem of material sanctions was approached reluctantly from the American, and almost as
reluctantly, from the British side. Like Taft, Anglo-Saxon opinion felt itself “very little concerned” over
this aspect of the matter; for the recognition of the necessity of sanctions was in itself a derogation
from the utopian doctrine of the efficacy of rational public opinion. The official British
Commentary on the Covenant developed the same point of view:

France and Great Britain in particular refrained from challenging Germany’s rearmament and its
remilitarization of the Rhineland - both in violation of the Versailles Treaty - and the subsequent
annexation of Austria. Most dramatically, the British and the French hoped to limit Adolf Hitler’s
expansionism by adopting a policy of “appeasement”, whereby they responded to the dictator’s
bellicose threats toward Czechoslovakia by recognizing German sovereignty over the Sudetenland, a
German speaking region of the Country, in September 1938. p.111 American foreign relations

A treatyless situation plus an embargo would exasperate the Japanese to a point where anything could
happen, even serious incidents which could inflame the American people beyond endurance and which
might call for war. The Japanese are so constituted and are just now in such a mood and temper that
sanctions, far from intimidating, would almost certainly bring retaliation which, in turn, would lead to
counter retaliation. p.123 Ambassador Joseph C.Grew Warns Against Economic Sanctions, 1939

“The League must continue to depend on the free consent in the last resort, of its component States; this
assumption is evident in nearly every article of the Covenant, of which the ultimate and most effective
sanction must be the public opinion of the civilized world.”

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When the House of Commons debated the ratification of the Versailles Treaty, Lord Cecil was the
principal expositor of the League Covenant:

“For the most part there is no attempt to rely on anything like a superstate; no attempt to rely upon force
to carry out a decision of the Council or the Assembly of the League. That is Alamos impracticable as
things stand now. That we rely upon is public opinion, and if we are wrong about it, then the whole
thing is wrong”.

Even the more skeptical and sophisticated Balfour, explaining the absence of sanctions from the
Washington agreements of 1921, declared that “if any nation hereafter deliberately separates itself
from the collective action we have taken in Washington in this year of grace, it will stand
condemned before the world”, and it was one of the presuppositions of liberal democracy that
such condemnation would be effective.

THE NEMESIS OF UTOPIANISM

The nemesis of utopianism in international politics came rather suddenly. On September 10th 1931,
Lord Cecil told the Assembly of the League of Nations that “there has scarcely ever been a period in the
world’s history when war seems less likely than it does at present”. On September 18, 1931, Japan
opened her campaign in Manchuria, and in the following month, the last important country which had
continued to adhere to the principle of free trade took the first steps towards the introduction of a general
tariff.

From this point onwards, a rapid succession of events forced upon all serious thinkers a reconsideration
of premises which were becoming more and more flagrantly divorced from reality. The Manchurian
crisis had demonstrated that the condemnation of international public opinion, invoked by Taft and
many after him, was a broken reed. In the United States, (however), this conclusion was drawn with
extreme reluctance. In 1932, an American Secretary of State still cautiously maintained that “the
sanction of public opinion can be made one of the most potent sanctions of the world”. But in countries
more directly menaced by the international crisis, this consoling view was no longer found by many
adherents; and the continued addition to it of American statesmen was regarded as an index of American
unwillingness to resort to more potent weapons.

Japan had captured Chiang’s capital of Nanking and installed its own puppet government. But the
fighting only intensified. Chiang refused to discuss peace terms, conflicts between Soviet and Japanese
troops erupted along the Manchurian borders…

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Roosvelt responded to the 1937 invasion with a range of actions, few of them effective and some of them
embarrassing… His first public response to 1937 was merely a pious statement by Secretary of State
Cordell Hull that condemned the use of force and neglected even to mention Japan. p145

ECONOMIC INTERESTS BEHIND?

Before long the group of intellectuals who had once stressed the relative unimportance of the “material”
weapons of the League began to insist loudly on economic and military sanctions as the necessary
cornerstones of an international order. When Germany annexed Austria, Lord Cecil indignantly
enquired whether the Prime Minister “holds that the League should cease to attempt ‘sanctions’ and
confine its efforts to moral force”.

In August and Septmeber 1937, Japanese planes badly wounded the British ambassador to CHina and
bombed civilians in Nanking. Such killing of civilians still aroused condemnation in the West. The
British approached FDR with the idea of jointly imposing economic sanctions, an idea U.S officials
quickly distrusted because of its source…. The President instead decided to speak out on October 5…
COndemning the “international lawlessness” in CHina, he urged that the “90 percent who want to live
in peace under law” use “positive endeavor to preserve peace”.

Moreover, skepticism attacked not only the premise that public opinion is certain to prevail, but also the
premise that public opinion is certain to be right. … Even Wilson himself once used … an argument
which directly contradicted his customary thesis that reason can be made to prevail by appealing to “the
plain people everywhere throughout the world”. IN the League of Nations Commission of the
Conference, the Japanese had raised the issue of race equality. “How can you treat it on its merits in this
room”, enquired the President, “a question which will not be treated on its merits when it gets out of this
room?”. Later history provided many examples of this phenomenon. It became a commonplace for
statesmen at Geneva and elsewhere to explain that they themselves had every desire to be reasonable,
but that public opinion in those countries was inexorable… The prestige of public opinion
correspondingly declined.

Woodrow Wilson’s “plain men thought the mankind”, had somehow transformed themselves into.a
disorderly mob emitting incoherent and unhelpful noises. It seemed undeniable that, in international
affairs, public opinion was almost as often wrong-headed as it was important. But where so many of the
presuppositions of 1919 were crumbling, the intellectual leaders of the utopian school suck to their guns.

THE PROBLEM OF DIAGNOSIS

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If mankind in its international relations has signally failed to achieve the rational good, it must either
have been too stupid to understand that good, or too wicked to pursue it. Professor Zimmer leans to the
hypothesis of stupidity. … Professor Toynbee, on the other hand, sees the cause of the breakdown in
human wickedness. Some writers combined the large of stupidity and the charge of wickedness.

The simplicity of these explanations seemed almost disproportionate to the intensity and complexity of
the international crisis. The impression made on the ordinary man was more accurately recorded in April
1938 in some words of Mr. Anthony Eden:

It is utterly futile to IMAGINE THAT WE ARE INVOLVED IN A EUROPEAN crisis which may pass
as it has come. We are involved in a crisis of humanity all over the world. We are living in one of those
great periods of history which are inspiring in their responsibilities and in their consequences”:

EL LIBRO EMPIEZA CON LA CONCLUSIÓN Y ACABA CON EL CUESTIONAMIENTO

It is not true, as Professor Toynbee believes, that we have been living in an exceptionally wicked age. It
is not true, as Professor Zimmerman implies, that we have been living in an exceptionally stupid one. …
It is a meaningless evasion to pretend that we have witnessed, not the failure of the League of Nations,
but only the failure of those who refused to make it work. THE BREAKDOWN OF THE NINETEEN-
THIRTIES WAS TOO OVERWHELMING TO BE EXPLAINED MERELY IN TERMS OF
INDIVIDUAL ACTION OR INACTION. ITS DOWNFALL INVOLVED THE BANKRUPTCY OF
THE POSTULATES ON WHICH IT WAS BASED. The foundations of 19th century belief are
themselves under suspicion. It may be not that men stupidly or wickedly failed to apply the right
principles, but that the principles themselves were false of inapplicable. It may Turn out to be untrue that
if men reason rightly about international politics they will also act rightly … If the assumptions of 19th
century liberalism are in fact untenable, it need not surprise us that the utopia of the international
theorists made so little impression on reality. But if they are untenable today, we shall also have to
explain why they found such widespread acceptance, and inspired such splendid achievement in the
nineteenth century.

U.S ENTRY INTO WORLD WAR II (MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN FOREIGN

RELATIONS)

German and Japanese aggression in the 1930s presented Americans once again with tortuous questions
of war and peace. The United States protested the aggression, but Americans sought to avoid
entanglement in the cascading crisis in Europe and Asia. Congress passed neutrality acts that banned

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arms sales and loans to belligerent nations in the event of major war, and President Franklin D. Roosvelt
endorsed the United State’s neutral stance. Recalling the horrors of WWI, …, many Americans
embraced peace and some considered themselves to be isolationists. Europeans also remembered the
terrible blook-letting of the Great War and recoiled from another suck conflict. France and Great Britain
in particular refrained from challenging Germany’s rearmament and its remilitarization of the Rhineland
- both in violation of the Versailles Treaty - and the subsequent annexation of Austria. Most
dramatically, the British and the French hoped to limit Adolf Hitler’s expansionism by adopting a policy
of “appeasement”, whereby they responded to the dictator’s bellicose threats toward Czechoslovakia by
recognizing German sovereignty over the Sudetenland, a German speaking region of the Country, in
September 1938.

Allied appeassement did not deter the Nazi drive for territory and power. In March 1939, Hitler
occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia and in September, after he ordered his armies into Poland, WWII
commenced in Europe. … Roosvelt and the nation moved toward an interventionist posture, repealing
the arms embargo portion of the Neutrality Acts in late 1939, arranging with Prime Minister Winston S.
Churchill traded destroyers for bases in 1940, and gained congressional approval to send Lend-Lease
supplies to Britain in March. At the same time, Roosvelt won election to an unprecedented third term in
te White House by promising Americans boys would not be sent to die in a foreign war. When Hitler
turned his guns on Stalinist Russia in June 1941, Roosvelt opened up the Lend Lease spigot to the Soviet
Union. By September 1941, US naval convoys escorted cargo ships as far as Iceland, and the United
STates edged closer to war as its vessels traversed the submarine-infested North Atlantic.

When war came to the US, however, it occurred six thousand miles away from Europe, in Asia. For
most of the XX century, the United STates had opposed Japanese expansion into China. When the
Japanese sought access to vital raw materials and markets to relieve their economic stress in the 1930s,
taking Manchuria and renaming it Manchukuo Americans viewed Japanese imperialism as a violation of
the Open Door and threat to world order. Later in the decade, as the Sino-Japanese war escalated, the
United States gradually expanded its navy, granted loans to China and did not invoke the neutrality acts
- thereby permitting Chinga to buy arms to the USA. However, the Roosvelt administration, due to its
strategic priorities lay across the Atlantic in Europe, hoped to avoid the two front war.

Following the conclusion of the Tripartite Pact among Japan, Germany and Italy in September 1940 and
Japan’s acquisition of bases in northern French Indochina, the administration embargoed shipments of
scar iron and steel to the island nation. The crisis reached a critical juncture when Japanese troops, in
July 1941, occupied all of French Indochina. In response, Roosevelt froze Japanese assets in the United
States .. Tokyo and Washinghton exchanged proposals and counter proposals for the rest of the year, but

123
to no avail. On December 8, ina surprise attack, Japanese pilots bombed the U.S naval base at Pearl
Harbor in the Hawaiian Ilands, One day later, the United States declared war on Japan, and on december
11 Germany declared war on the United States.

Historians have long debated the U.S intervention in WWII. Although most agree that German, Italian
and Japanese militarism threaten world peace, they disagree over the significance of the threat to the US.
They also debate President Roosvelt’s handling of the crisis. The most widely shared view is that Nazi
racial ideology, Germany’s resources and Hitler’s personal ambition producd a hate-driven aggression
that aimed at world domination. Some scholars praise the Roosvelt administration for recognizing the
threat, preparing a reluctant public for action, and aiding the anti - Axis nations by all possible means.
Other writers agree that the liar and more forcefully against the aggressor states. Still others differentiate
between German and Japanese aggression and argue that Hitlr posed the most potent and immediate
threat to the U.S interests. Thus, why did the US not negotiate a limited trade accord with Tokyo to
dodge or delay the conflict in the Pacific, prepare for a showdown in Europe, and avoid a resource-
stretching, two front war? (P.112)

—-
For Americans, events in Europe and Asia during the 1930s raised the ominous specter of a second
world war. Adhering to the belief that U.S trade and shipping to Britain had led to the country war in
1917, Congress passed the Neutrality Act of 1935, which banned exports to belligerents. In 1936 and
1937, Congress bolstered the neutrality laws by banning loans to belligerents and prohibiting U.S travel
on belligerent ships. (P.115)

War broke out in Europe when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 and Britain and France
came to Poland's defense. Modifying his early neutrality, Roosvelt persuaded Congress to allow arms
sales on the basis of cash and carry. The German military rapidly advanced through Europe, and in
September 1940, FDR proposed his Lend-Lease program that allowed the United STates to lease
massive amounts of military equipment to Britain. The president’s program won congressional approval
in March 1941, The United States edged closer to war after FDR authorized U-S naval patrols part way
across the Atlantic to protect Lend-Lease shipping. In response to an attempted torpedoing of the U-S
destroyer Greer by a German U-boat submarine in September 1941, the president called for a new policy
of “shoot on sight” to safeguard U.S vessels. His speech of September 11, 1941.

The incident that led to U-S entry in the war, however, occurred on the other side of the world. On July
25, 1941, following Japan’s invasion of the southern portion of French Indochina, the Roosvelt
administration froze Japanese assets.

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DOCUMENT 1 SENATOR GERALD P.NYE CITES THE LESSONS OF HISTORY AND
ADVOCATES NEUTRALITY

Ww saw the last European war until 1917 as one in no degree of our business… We rejoiced at the
moment that leadership of our Government was showing the greatest determination to keep America out
of war, a leadership affording a policy that was presumed to be a guarantee of our neutrality. That
neutrality policy is now known as a permissive or discretionary policy, with its administration in no
degree mandarin the President. … The Woodrow Wilson permissive neutrality policy held that it was
not an unneutral act for America to sell munitions to nations at war so long as it was our policy to sell
to both sides alike, and free trade in munitions was the result. … (however) Britain, by her blockade,
was interfering with American commerce with Germany, writing new contraband definitions, searching
and seizing the cargoes of American ships destined for Grmay or even neural ports which Great Britain
suspicioned might be for ultimate German use. Because of these practices we were losing even our
normal trade with the Central Powers. … We were placated, however, with a larger order from the
Allies which much more than offset our loss of trade with Germany. These Allied orders were
tremendous and caused us to quite overlook the fact that our neutral policy was no longer one finding
us furnishing munitions to both sides. It was our increasing commerce with the Allies upon which our
prosperity now depended. (P115)
The Allies soon exhausted their own means of buying from us. They needed American credit. Our
permissive neutrality policy of the hour forbade loans and credits…. but it was concluded … that while
loans should be prohibited by any nation at war, credits would be countenanced.

How childish it was - this expectation of success in staying out of a war politically while economically
we stayed in it - how childish this permissive flip-flop neutrality policy of ours and our belief that we
could go on and on supplying the sinews of war to one or even both sides and avoid ourselves being
ultimately drawn into the engagement with our lives and our fortunes at stake.
..
Insistence now upon establishment of a mandatory policy of neutrality is no reflection upon any one
man. It is only fair to say that the preet Roosvelt determination to keep us out of war is no higher than
was that expressed by Wilson. Yet, while the Wilson administration was declaring itself neutral, parts of
the administration were actually contemplating the hour when we would ultimately get into the war
without a doubt as to which side we would enter on… DOCUMENT 2: PRESIDENT FRANKLIN

D.ROOSEVELT PROPOSES TO “QUARANTINE” AGGRESSORS, 1937

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Those who cherish their freedom and recognize and respect the equal right of their neighbors to be free
and live in peace must work together for the triumph of law and moral principles in order tha peace,
justice and confidence may prevail in the world. There must be a return to a belief in the pledged word,
in the value of a signed treaty. There must be recognition of the fact that national morality is as vital as
private morality… (...)
When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a
quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the
disease.
It is my determination to pursue a policy of peace. It is my determination to adopt every practicable
measure to avoid involvement in war.

THE ECONOMIC ORIGINS OF THE PACIFIC WAR: WALTER LEFEBER (p.143)

For the United States and Japan, WWII’s roots ran back to September 1931, when the Kwantung Army
struck to place all Manchuia under Japanese control. The causes and results of that invasion exemplified
the major themes of U.S-Japan relations after Perry’s arrival at Edo Bay in 1853. In the years before the
attack, U.S officials had tried to integrate Japan into the Western system on largely Western terms. The
Lamont-Kajiwara (whereby the J.P Morgan bank supported Japanese investments in Manchuria) and
Washington Conference disarmament agreements of the early 1920s acted as gangplans which Japan
used to board the ship of American capitalism. By 1931, that ship not only threatened to sink but the
ship’s officers seemed to be trying to keep passengers from the lifeboats, porous as they were.

CLASS 10: THE ROAD TO WWII

Summary:

1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria

1935 Italy invasion of Ethiopia
1936 Spanish Civil War
1936 German invasion of Rhineland
1937 Sino-Japanese War
USA NEUTRALITY ACTS
1938 Germany occupies Austria
1938 MUNICH CONFERENCE. SUDETENLAND SURRENDERED TO GERMANY
USA RESPONSE, FDR TELEGRAM TO CHAMBERLAIN
1929 March, Italy invades Albania

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US PROPOSES CONFERENCES ON DISARMAMENT
1939 August, German Soviet Pacto (RIBBENTROP-MOLOTOV)
1939 Sept, Beginning of the war with Germans attacks on Poland on Sep 1st.
1939/40 Winter: Russo Finnish War
1940 Germany takes France and the Lower Countries (Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland)
1940 USA SELECTIVE SERVICE AND TRAINING ACT
1940 Tripartite Pact from Axis Bloc: germany, Italy and Japan
1940/41 Winter: Battle of Britain
1941 March, USA BRITAIN Lend-Lease Act
1941 Summer, Germany invades the USSR
1941 Aug, USA ATLANTIC CHARTER
1941 Sept, Japan moves to French Indochina
1941 December, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor and the Philippines
7 DEC 1941 F.D.R DECLARATION OF WAR TO JAPAN

Remember:

1. Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria, making it a colony. The League of Nations
sent a commission, which took 2 years to complete a report, which concluded in 1933 that Japan
should cease the occupation. Finally, Japan decided to leave, not Manchuria, but the League of
Nations.
2. Italy invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, which was one of the very few independent states left in
Africa (Ethiopia in East Africa and Liberia in West Africa). At the beginning, the LON, led by
the British, put half-hearted sanctions. However, when the invasion was over and the Emperor
was in exile, the LON lifted the sanction. SEE SPEECH OF THE ETHIOPIAN GOVERNOR
3. What was the response of the American press to the invasion of Manchuria by fascist Italy?
What did the invasion do to the image of fascist Italy among the American public? Throughout
the 1920s fascist had a positive image among the US public, as they considered southern
europeans inferior. Thus, there was a kind of sense that Iatlians needed a strong hand, and
Mussolini was considered appropriate for them. However, the invasion of Ethiopia flipped the
American public opinion about the fascist regime. They began to realize that fascism wasn’t just
about a strongly organized state domestically, but fascism was also about aggression
internationally.

FASCIST ADVANCES

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- 1936: SPANISH CIVIL WAR, ANOTHER VICTORY FOR FASCISM. Facism continued to
advance in the late 1930s, most notably into Spain. When the Spanish Civil War broke out, the
fascists, supported by the Germans and Italians, were fighting the Republicans, which were
supported to some extent by the Soviet Union and more directly by a transnational leftist
movement. For example, Hemonigway supported the republicans, and a lot of Americans for the
post World War I generation (so called lost generation) found in the Spanish Civil War a kind of
cause, a way to directly defeat fascism. It was seen by them, influenced by figures like Picasso,
that it was the real first class between rising fascism on the one hand and the forces of a
supposed democracy on the other hand. (In retrospect, it cannot be considered that, as the Soviet
Union was supporting the republicans in the height of the Stalinist repression (1936-38)). While
Americans were responding, the U.S state was keeping its distance and hiding behind a series of
neutrality acts of the Congress. They were following Washinghton’s premises of not getting
involved in European affairs.

- 1936: GERMANY OCCUPIES THE SAAR (1935) AND MILITARIZED THE RHINELAND.
The Rhineland crisis was a diplomatic crisis provoked by the remilitarization of that German
region by decision of Adolf Hitler on March 7, 1936, in violation of one of the points
established in the Treaty of Versailles: the prohibition for Germany to station military forces of
any kind in that region bordering France and Belgium, without the prior permission of those
States. The fact that the German government could not establish troops in the Rhineland was
considered a humiliation by the German extreme right, which postulated that the Rhineland
"would not be recovered" until Reichswehr garrisons were stationed there. Clemenceau, during
the PPC, wanted to cut up Germany into small pieces, reversing Germany's unification of 1871
and turning Germany into a bunch of weak states again. However, Americans and British did
not permit it (as for the British imperial strategic point of view they did not want France to
challenge their dominance) and as a kind of compromise they decided that the French would be
allowed to occupy the Rhineland. In January 1923, French and Belgian troops and their
garrisons occupied the German Ruhr area. The other major Allies thought that by letting them
have the control over that region, they could control the possibility of avoiding German
reindustrialization. It was a huge rallying point for a lot of Germans, as they considered it a
humiliation. France withdrew in 1925, in accordance with the Dawes Plan, as a sign of
reconciliation with the Weimar Republic. By 1936 Hitler felt confident enough to stop
negotiating about this issue and to military occupy the area. The reoccupation of the Rheinland
by the Germans was thus seen as another step of getting rid of the humiliation of Versailles.

- 1937: SINO-JAPANESE WAR. The Japanese military in Manchuria engineered an incident that

128
 allowed them to cross from Manchuria, cross the Great Wall to the South and attack China. The
incident is known as the Marco-Polo bridge incident, but the Chinese name is Lugou Bridge
Incident.
Beginning in late June 1937, the
Japanese Army stationed a large
military group west of the Lugo Bridge
and began carrying out intensive
military drills. On July the 7th the
Japanese army telegraphed to the
Kuomintang forces demanding to search
a nearby town as a Japanese soldier was
missing. This request was rejected by
the Kuo Ming Tang forces but despite
this the Japanese army wind ahead and marched on the town. Before they had even arrived, they
received a telegraph from reporting that the Japanese soldier was found. This information was
hidden from the Chinese army and three hours later the Japanese struck the town and opened
fire on the Chinese position. After capturing the bridges, the Japanese forces moved northward
and the first major battle took place. The Kuomintang was divided in two. Ona part decided to
collaborate with the Japanese in order to save China whereas the part of the Kuomintang headed
by Chang Kai Shek spaced westward and established the capital in Chongqing,

- WHAT IS THE US RESPONSE TO ALL THE VIOLENCE IN EUROPE AND ASIA?: US

response to the violence in Europe and Asia, with the invasion of Ethiopia, the attack on China,
the Spanish Civil War and the German occupation of the Rhineland: Neutrality Acts of 1935
and 1937, reiterating the idea that the US was going to stay out of these wars. For Americans,
events in Europe and Asia during the 1930s raised the ominous specter of a second world war.
Adhering to the belief that U.S trade and shipping to Britain had led to the country war in 1917,
Congress passed the Neutrality Act of 1935, which banned exports to belligerents. In 1936 and
1937, COngress bolstered the neutrality laws by banning loans to belligerents and prohibiting
U.S travel on belligerent ships. (P.115)

- March 1938: GERMANY OCCUPIES AUSTRIA: Austrians welcomed the annexation, as the
idea of Germany and Austria being one country was based on the principle of self
determination. It was, thus, the second step in knocking down the humiliation of the Versailles
Treaty.

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 - September, 1938: MUNICH CONFERENCE, SUDETENLAND SURRENDERED TO
GERMANY. The principle of unification of all German speaking people did not end with
Austria, and the next step that Hitler demanded was the annexation of a part of Czechoslovakia,
the Sudetenland, which was mostly populated by the German speaking population. However,
Hitler wanted not just to unite all German speaking countries, but to initiate a great war. He had
an imperial vision and he was trying to provoke the western powers to begin a war. He was
aware that the annexations of the Sudetenlands would lead to a world war, and he was surprised
by the fact that the British Prime minister, Chamberlain, came to Munich to discuss the situation
in the Munich Conference. Through the mediation of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and on
the initiative of Hermann Göring, British Prime Minister Arthur Neville Chamberlain and his
French counterpart, they approved the incorporation of the Sudetenland (belonging to
Czechoslovakia) into Germany, on the pretext that most of its inhabitants were German-
speaking. No representative of Czechoslovakia was present. The United Kingdom and France
were “accommodating” to the wishes of the Sudeten German population and regarded this
agreement as a partial revision of the Treaty of Versailles. It was especially intended to avoid a
new war, even though it greatly endangered the existence of Czechoslovakia. Czchekoslovakian
s were against unification.

- US RESPONSE: FDR telegram Chamberlain: “Good man”. From there on, Chamberlain was
considered an appeasement (apaciguador). However, Chamberlain was doing what the British
public had voted him to do. There was no appetite among the British public for going to war in
the Sudetenland, so he was executing what the British public and the other Allies wanted him to
do.

- WAS IT APPEASEMENT? Munich came at the tail end of a long series of appeasements: Japan
over Manchuria, Italy over Ethiopia, then again Japan over China, then the German occupation
of the Rhineland, the very soft Allied response to Franco's take over of Spain… Thus, it was not
a rare strategy of appeasement but a continuation of Allied policy, including American policy,
that endured throughout the 1930s.

This policy did not end up with Munich, as a direct act by the Germans and the Japanese on the Allies
was necessary to actually get them to respond with a declaration of war. Chamberlain hoped that
Sudetenland would be the last thing that Hitler was there to take and he did not have the backing at
home to do nothing else then appease Germany. The entire 1930s were marked by the politics of
appeasement. This history has taken hold through people who have studied that period. It defined Bush's
response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and shaped the British government's response to the

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nationalization of the Suez Canal.

- March 1939, ITALY INVADES ALBANIA: Mussolini decided that Albania needed to be the
next part of the Italian Empire. He invaded it without a claim or a provocation. There was no
self determination implied, it was a traditional colonial invasion. There was no response from
the other Allied powers, as nobody cared about Albania.

- April 1939: FDR proposes CONFERENCE on disarmament and free markets. It was similar to
the Washington conference of 1922 but in a completely different context. He did not know what
was going to happen in the future with Poland, but he did know what had happened since 1931.
Did he really think that this was going to work or it was just a move to cover his tracks because
he knew the war was inevitable /y quería demostrar que él había hecho lo posible). The props
did not receive much attention.

- August 1939: GERMAN - SOVIET PACT (Ribbentrop-Molotov). It was a huge surprise, as the
Germans and the Soviets were major enemies until that point. Hitler rose to power, among other
things, on the back of denunciations of the perils of communism and the Soviet Union. In Soviet
propaganda, the nazis were the epitome of the capitalist enemy, the nazis were presented as the
last step. Stalin supporters from all around world were shocked by the fact that he was willing to
negotiate with Nazis. For some of his followers, this was the last strike after the Show Trials in
Munich. However, Stalin and Hitler shook hands in the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, which was a
tactical agreement to help save the revolution until it became stronger. What they agreed to in
the pact was that they were not going to attack each other. There was a secret addendum in the
pact that stated that if the Germans attacked Poland from the West, the Soviets would enter from
the East and Poland would be redivided (it was only constituted as an independent state after
WWI) between the Soviet Union and Germany.

- 1 September 1939: OFFICIAL BEGINNING OF WWI WITH GERMAN ATTACKS IN

POLAND. The USSR seized eastern Poland and the Baltic States, which were the few pieces of
the former Russian Empire that the Bolsheviks were unable to reconquer. They tried in 1920
with Trotsky and his Red Army, but they filed.

DID THE REAL WAR BEGIN WITH THE GERMAN INVASION OF POLAND?

No. The war technically began, as Britain and France formally declared war on Germany but… they did

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not actually fight a war in Germany. The whole period between September of 1939 and the summer of
1940 is known as “the Phony War”. Other than the official declaration of war, there were no significant
actions from the Western Allies side.

The Phony War was an eight-month period at the start of World War II, during which there was only
one limited military land operation on the Western Front, when French troops invaded Germany's Saar
district. Nazi Germany carried out the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939; the Phoney period
began with the declaration of war by the United Kingdom and France against Nazi Germany on 3
September 1939, after which little actual warfare occurred, and ended with the German invasion of
France and the Low Countries on 10 May 1940. Although there was no large-scale military action by
Britain and France, they did begin some economic warfare, especially with the naval blockade, and
shut down German surface raiders.

ROAD TO WAR…

- Winter 1939-1940: RUSSO-FINNISH WAR, “THE WINTER WAR”. Stalin, having occupied
the Baltic countries and eastern Poland, wanted to occupy the last piece of the Czarist empire,
Finland. The cartoon shows a Finnish soldier receiving ammunition from the Allies, but it is not
ammunition in the box, there are letters of support. The Soviet Union was expelled from the
LON. It ended up with the Moscow TReaty, in which Finland ceded 9% of its territory to the
Soviet Union, which despite the arrangement had suffered a decrease in its internal reputation.

- Spring 1940: GERMANY ATTACKS IN THE WEST, TAKES FRANCES AND LOW
COUNTRIES (Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg). France, which had been supposedly
preparing from a German attack since WWI, collapsed and surrendered in a couple of weeks.
The trauma of the devastation of the French landscape in WWI and the desire to not repeat that
leads to a surrender and effective collaboration by a significant portion of the French elite with
the German occupation.

- September 1940: FDR wanted to strengthen the US army with the Selective Service & Training
Act (first peacetime draft in US history).

- September 1940: TRIPARTITE PACT FROM AXIS BLOC: Japanese, Italians and Germans
formalized their informal alliance in the Tripartite Pact from Axis bloc.

Even after the surrender of France and the occupation of basically all of Europe, The United States did

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not get into war, and Britain, even though it had been at war with Germany since September 1939,
neither. There is a certain sense among historians that the Phony war continued long after the invasion
of France in May until the Winter of 1940.

- Winter 1940-41: BATTLE OF BRITAIN. The Battle of Britain is the name given to the series
of air battles fought in British skies and over the English Channel between July and October
1940, when Nazi Germany sought to destroy the British Royal Air Force in order to achieve the
air superiority necessary to invade Great Britain: Operation Sea Lion.

- March 1941: “Lend-Lease” Act passed. The battle of Britain was what got Aericans to enter the
war, de facto declaring war on Germany by passing in Congress the Lend-Lease Act.

On December 8, 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent President Roosevelt one of the
most important letters he had ever written, as he later recalled. In it he asked him for "a decisive act of
constructive non-belligerence" which consisted essentially of the U.S. Navy participating in the escort
and protection of British Isles supply convoys crossing the Atlantic that were under attack by German
U-boats and that the U.S. also provide him with merchant ships totaling three million tons to replace
the naval losses suffered - up to that time German U-boats had sunk ships worth more than two million
gross tons. It also requested the dispatch of two thousand aircraft per month. The letter ended by
addressing the most important point, the "financial question." Churchill told the President that Britain's
reserves of dollars and gold were about to be exhausted and that the latest orders placed under the
Cash and Carry Act already exceeded "several times the total foreign exchange resources still available
to Great Britain."

Roosevelt received the letter on December 9 aboard the USS Tuscaloosa while on vacation. He
immediately understood the gravity of the situation in Great Britain and immediately thought of a way
to circumvent the neutrality laws to get the British the aid they needed. Thus arose the idea of the
"Lend-Lease'', which had been first outlined at a cabinet meeting held on November 8, a month before
Churchill wrote his letter.

Roosevelt returned to Washington on December 16 and the next afternoon, at a press conference,
explained his Lend-Lease idea to the American public through the garden hose parable. To a neighbor
whose house is on fire, which puts your house at risk, Roosevelt said, you do not sell your garden
hose but lend it to him so that once he has put out the fire he will return it to you.

In this way Roosevelt prepared public opinion to support the Lend-Lease Bill he was going to present to

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the U.S. Congress - which was prepared by the Treasury Department headed by Henry Morgenthau and
given the symbolic number 1776. As soon as the bill was passed, President Roosevelt would be
empowered to "lend or lease" "articles of defense" to the "governments of any country which the
President deems vital to the defense of the United States." Página de internet.

- Summer 1941: GERMANY ATTACKS THE USSR: Hitler broke the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact
and attacked the USSR. Stalin thought that he was going to be assassinated, but he had done
such a “great” job eliminating all of his opponents, that all the people who were left in the
Soviet elites couldn’t imagine a world without Stalin.

Codenamed "Operation Barbarossa," Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. This
was the largest German military operation of World War II.

Objectives of the invasion. Since the 1920s, the fundamental policies of the Nazi movement had been:

1. The destruction of the Soviet Union by military force.

2. The permanent elimination of what Germany perceived as the communist threat.
3. The capture of prime territories within Soviet borders as Lebensraum ("living space") to form long-
term German settlements.

Thus, Adolf Hitler always regarded the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 23, 1939
(commonly known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) as a temporary tactical maneuver. In July 1940,
only weeks after the German conquest of France and the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, Hitler
decided to attack the Soviet Union within a year at the latest. On December 18, 1940, he signed
Directive 21 (codenamed "Operation Barbarossa"). This was the first operational order for the invasion
of the Soviet Union.

From the beginning of operational planning, the German armed forces and police authorities intended
to wage a war of annihilation against both the communist "Judeo-Bolshevik" government and its
citizens, especially the Jews. During the winter and spring months of 1941, officers of the army high
command and the Reich Security Main Office negotiated arrangements to deploy the Einsatzgruppen
behind the front line. The Einsatzgruppen were to carry out the mass shooting of Jews, Communists,
and others deemed to be a danger to the establishment of long-term German rule in Soviet territory.
Also called roving extermination units, they consisted of special units of the security police and the
security service (Sicherheitsdienst, SD). In addition, the German armed forces estimated that tens of
millions of Soviet citizens would starve to death as an intentional result of German occupation policies.

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Página de internet.

- August 1941: FDR AND CHURCHILL RELEASED THE ATLANTIC CHARTER. By this
point they had become allies in all, as the US was responsible for the continued survival of
Britain in the new military situation.
Eight main points of the Atlantic Charter:

1.No territorial gains were to be sought by the US or the UK. / 2. Territorial adjustments must be in
accord with the wishes of the peoples concerned / 3. All people had a right of self determination. / 4.
Trade barriers were to be lowered. / 5. The participants would work for a world free of want and fear. /
7. Freedom of the seas. / 8. Disbarment of the aggressor nations

The Atlantic Charter was a joint statement issued by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill on August 14, 1941 following a meeting of the two heads of
government in Newfoundland. The Atlantic Charter provided a wide-ranging statement of the war aims
of the United States and Great Britain.

Although the Atlantic Charter of August 1941 was not a binding treaty, it was nevertheless important
for several reasons. To begin with, it publicly affirmed the feeling of solidarity between the United
States and Great Britain against Axis aggression. Second, it set forth President Roosevelt's Wilsonian
vision for the postwar world, which would be characterized by freer trade, self-determination,
disarmament and collective security. Finally, the Charter served as an inspiration for colonial subjects
throughout the Third World in their struggle for independence.

- September 1941: Japan moves into French Indochina, which was already then ruled by an ally.
France under surrender to Germany was ruled by the Vichy regime, so it was a collaborationist
regime. Generally speaking, the Vichy forces had taken control of French colonies, but Japan
felt that they were not being sufficiently servile to Japanese interests and in Sept. 1941 they
occupied the colonies themselves. They kept Vichy forces in technical informal control but the
Japanese themselves ruled the colonies of France in Indochina. Once the Japanese got into
French Indochina, they became the direct enemy of the Vietnamese communists, which had
been until then fighting with the French. When the Pearl Harbor attack happened, the
Vietnamese communists became allies with the US, as both were fighting the Japanese Empire.
US embargo on steel, oil.

- December, 7, 1941: JAPANESE ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR AND PHILIPPINES. The

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 Japanese were engaged in an imperial building project which did not stop with China, Korea,
Taiwan or French Indochina. They wanted to control all South East Asia, including the parts
controlled by the British and the Dutch (Indonesia). In December of 1941 they attacked those
territories. Even Though 12/7/1941 was primarily remembered for the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, it is needed to be understood that the PH attack was a small part of the much bigger
Japanese offensive that began on that day in that month. On the very same day (on the other side
of the international deadline, so the attack was technically on December 8th) that they attacked
PH they also attacked the Philippines, which was an American possession, and the colonies of
British and Dutch possessions in SouthEast Asia.
The proximate reason for the attack on Pearl Harbor was that the United States had put an
embargo on oil on Japan. That was actually part of what made the Japanese feel that they must
conquer the Dutch and British possessions in SouthEast Asia, because the Dutch possessions in
Indonesia were the major oil producers and British Malaya was a major source of rubber, which
was necessary for military vehicles.
The Japanese did think that the Americans might be scared off. Japoneses attacked Manchuria
and the Americans did nothing. They attacked China and the Americans did nothing. The
Germans were doing savage things in Europe while the Americans were doing nothing and
maintaining their neutral status. They decided to invade American territory in Asia, not even a
USA State, with the security that Americans were only going to take symbolic actions in
response.

AMERICA DECLARES WAR IN JAPAN:

Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was
suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that Nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in
conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the
Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American
Island of Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our
Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it
seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or
of armed attack.
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their
righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress
and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the utmost but will make it very
certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us. Hostilities exist. There is no blinking

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at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger. With confidence in our
armed forces—with the unbounding determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—
so help us God. I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan
on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese
Empire

History tells us that both Churchill and Chai King Set had for many months hoped for this thing to
happen.

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CLASS 11: WWII AS A RACE WAR

SIMULTANEOUSLY TO THE PEARL HARBOR ATTACK…

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The attack on Pearl Harbor, that is so embedded in American national memory as a terrible event
disassociated from anything else happening in the world, was, from the perspective of the Japanese war
effort, the smallest and least important part of a massive push to expand the Japanese empire in early
December 1941.

1. Pearl Harbor
2. Malaya: An hour before the attack in Pearl Harbor, the British Malaya was attacked.The number
of killed and wounded were much larger than the ones of Pearl Harbor.
3. Singapore: simultaneously with the Malaya attack, there was the third Japanese attack in
Singapore, which was a major transshipment point for the British, both for militarily and
civilian shipping. It was the most fortified British outpost in the entire East Asian region, so it
was quite a shock when it was not only attacked by the Japanese but also fell to the Japanese
within some weeks.
4. Hong Kong: less than 8 hours after Pearl Harbor, the Japoneses cross the border from the
continental part of HK, later crossing over to the island and capture it as well. The casualties
were significant too.
5. Philippines: Within 9 hours after Pearl Harbor, Japan started air, sea attack on Luzon. Even
Though the most remembered attack was the one of Pearl Harbor, the Philippines was also US
soil. The battle of the Philippines ended on May, 8, 1942 with tens of thousands of deaths and
100.000 captured. The Philippines became occupied by the Japanese, General McArther
withdraw with his famous: I will be back, what he actually did some years before. The
Philippines, in terms of American territory, was by far the one that suffered the great death and
destruction in WWII.

WWII AS A WAR OF EMPIRES

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AXIS

WWII, just as WWI, was a war among Empires. The post WWI negotiations seemed to pose a certain
threat to the global imperial world order. However, even though some empires did collapse, it did not
come to fruition thanks to some minor adjustment. WWII was a major global crush not so much
between nation states but between two groups of national empires. In fact, if we think about what the
Germans, the Italians and the Japanese were up to in the 1930s, in the run up to WWII, we realized that
they were building new empires more or less similar to the empires that their opponents had constructed
previously. Hitler, though he had different ideas, was reviving the Kaiser Wilhem spirit and he was
building his own place under the sun, his living space for the superior aerial race. (French colonies under
the Vichy collaborationist regime were part of the German Empire. Libya was Italian at that point, but
Italy was totally dependent on Germany and since 1943 formally a German puppet state.) Japan, even
though it was first collaborating with the VIchy colonies, ended up occupying it directly.

In conclusion, the map reflects two empire building projects. The Japoneses called it the “Greater East
Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”. It was an explicitly racialized empire building project, because their
explicit argument to the south asiatics was that because they have been controlled by white Europeans
for too long, they should be part of an Asian empire, ruled by Asians. Thailand, for example, was not
occupied for practical reasons but it was an ally.

ALLIES

The Allies were also empires, some of them explicitly and others no. The light blue parts of the map
describe the colonial territories of the allied powers, most of which belonged to the British Empire: the

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vast chunks of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. The other two major allies, the United States and
the Soviet Union, were empires in their own way, operating in differently than the older colonial
empires, the ones that the British and Frenchs had built before, and also differently to the empires that
the Germans and Japan were in the project of building. One can think about WWII, thus, not only as
a war between empires but as a war among different modes of imperialism. The British, (arguably)
the Germans, the Italians and the Japanese represented the older traditional mode and the Soviets and the
USA represented a second and third mode of empire building, which ended after WWII fighting
between them in the Cold War period.

1. The German was a racialized empire.

2. Italian fascism was not particularly racialized in its original form in the 1920s. However, by
1938, he had become so dependent on the Germans that Mussolini decided to pass a version of
the German race laws in Italy. They racialied the Italian project.
3. The Japanese were explicitly racialized, presenting as liberating the Asian race from the control
of white Europeans.

WAS WWII A RACE WAR?

Yes. It was, as WWI, a war among Empires where the racial thinking was a central component. This
racist spirit represents the Pacific War between the US and Japan. Both sides, but particularly the
American side, rationalized the enemy. This representation is analyzed in John Dower’s book, “War
without Mercy”. His argument in the book is that the Pacific War was unusually without mercy
because both sides perceive the other through a racialized lens, as subhumans. That is particularly
true for the American side, in which the war quickly evolved to a war not against humans, but war
against sub-human species that had to be exterminated.

USA PERCEPTION OF JAPANESE AND JAPANESE PERCEPTION OF US

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Americans represented Japanese as monkeys or other types of animals, even as louses. On the other
hand, Japanese represented Americans as oppressors. The right hand picture shows Winston Churchill,
Roosvelt and Chai Kan Sek pressing what seems to be a native Indonesian, Malayan… Their idea was to
send the message that the Europeans and Americans have oppressed them and they needed the Japanese
in order to be liberated.

WWII, RACE AND VISION FOR POSTWAR ORDER

Wendell L.Willkie:
- Born in Indiana
- Lawyer and utilities executive
- Opponent of New Deal
- “Dark Horse” Republican candidate for president in 1940
- Leading internationalist in run up to war
He was an interesting character because 1940 elections were
unprecedented, and F.D.Roosvelt was running for a third term, which had never happened in American
history. It was technically permitted under the American Constitution, but it was considered as an
unwritten rule not to do so since Washghton stepped down after his second term.

The Republicans had already lost two elections under FDR and even though the USA was not already in
the war then, the war was already going on and affecting the US citizens from various sides. The
Republicans were really sure who to put as a candidate in order to defeat him. They chose Wendell L.
Willkie, who had been out of politics until then (it is known as a “Dark Horse” candidate). He had been
a really successful lawyer and utilities executive, which had made him opposed the New Deal (because
of the regulation of the electric utilities). He was not from the republican side of isolationism and he
was openly in favor of American entry into WWII.

He lost the election with a narrower margin than the

previous elections, he was a popular candidate. Thus,
between the election of 11/19/40 and Pearl Harbor;
07/12/41, he remained a prominent political figure in
the public debate. He was a supporter of FDR
international politics even though he had been his
opponent.

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Once the war breaks out, Walkie came up with an idea, approved by FDR: he was going to take a trip
around the world, in the height of the German and Japanese effort of empire building, as the president's
personal representative (although he did not have any official role in the government). From New York
to Puerto Rico, to Brazil to West Africa… Egypt as the main part of the trip, to the desert with
Montgomery (who was planning how to stop the German toward Egypt, as the concern was that once
the Germans got to the Suez Canal, they would cut the British Empire in too) to British Palestine, where
he had meeting with the Arab and the Jew delegation. Then, he went to Ankara to meet the Turkish
leaders, who were neutral but allowed them to enter as technically he was not an official person… And
to Bagadad, Teheran (sha meeting)... Finally, he got to Asia. From the Soviet Union, where he met with
Stalin and Molotov, to West China, where he met Chiang Kai Shek.

WHen WIlkie came back, he gave a report to people. He went to the three major radio stations , CBS,
NBC and ABC and gave a message which became really popular. It got so successful that he decided to
publish it as a pamphlet (oct 26th 1942). He later wrote a book called “One World”, which was a huge
bestseller with more than 3 million readers.

What was the point of visiting the whole south world?

CENTRAL THEMES IN ONE WORLD

● The people of “the East '' (what we call today the Middle East and East Asia) are awakening and
demand independence:the game that was played in 1919, promising independence to all the
countries but not effectively giving it to them, has to end.
● The European colonial system cannot survive, it is antiquated.
● The “nearly three fourths of the people of the world who live in South America, Africa, eastern
Europe, and Asia” must be included in international society on an equal footing.
● Does the Atlantic Charter apply to Asia? If so, What about India?: The specific reason for that
question was that, a few weeks after WIlkie went on his trip, the British negotiation with the
Indian National Congress (the main representative of the Indian Nationalist movements) to have
them support the war effort, broke down. Indian National Congress, led by India, started a
movement called quit India (get out of India). The entire leadership of the Congress was
arrested (Gandhi. Neru…) and they remained in jail until the end of WWII. WIlkie was not
allowed to go to India, by the British, but when he got to China, he gave a big anti imperialist
speech with Chang Kai Shek and the Soviet Ambassador in which he basically said that Britain
had to get out of India.
● What binds the allies is not ties of race but “shared concepts and kindred objectives”: shared

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 values. Churchill, for example, is the most prominent representative on the thinking of the Allies
in an explicitly racial term. He thought in the alliance as “anglo-saxons” standing together
against the Germans and the Japoneses. For Churchill, the right way to arrange the world after
the war (if an allied victory) was through an anglo saxons alliance, WIlkie explicitly rejected
that idea.
● Japan's victories have shattered “our racial complacency” and proven that the “white race is not
a select race”. That idea had been held by people in the global south in 1905, with the Japanese
victory over Russia, but it has become more strong since the Japanese victories over the British
(conquer over Singapour!) and the American in Southeast Asia.
● Americans must also fight “our Imperialisms at home”: he argued that inside their own country
they had a “racial imperialism”, specifically with African Americans, they had anti semitism
movements, anti Catholic bias… He outlined that if the USA wanted to become the most
powerful country in the world, they had to get rid of all those movements. WIlkie was
considered a racial progressive.
● In sum, One World is a call for racial equality both domestically and internationally. It was an
idea as important as Wilson’s idea of embracing self determination a decade before. Wilkie was
not saying that he thought that was the best but also the necessary for the post world war world.

Wilkie was not the only one defending the idea of a RACE WAR, several authors around the world
advocate the same idea:

- Merze Tate was another important advocater of the anti racist WWII order. He wrote a famous
article called: “The War Aims of War World I and World War II and the Relation to the Darker
Peoples of the World”. She argued that if the oppression of the “darker people of the world” did
not end with WWII, another war was going to come. She argued that the wars were mainly focused
on race, so a durable peace settlement must also be based on race. Racial hierarchies must be broken
down and the idea of racial equality has to be settled. People like Tate underline the idea that the issue of
racial hierarchy was never a solely American problem, it was, from the beginning, a global issue.
- Lin Yutang wrote Between Tears and Laughter.
- Pearl S. Buck: winner of the Nobel Prize of
Literature. Expert on Chinese matters.The
Good Earth.
- The Indian Nationalist Krishnalal Shridharani
wrote Warming to the West.

OTHER WAYS IN WHICH AMERICAN

PERSPECTIVE OF THE WAR SHIFT DURING
WWII
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Unlike the usual world map, with Europe on the top center, Fortune magazine published another in
which instead of putting the viewer as if they were looking at the Equator, they put it as if looking above
the North Pole. This map shifted the perspective on American position and role in the world. This map shows
that North America and Asia are neighbors not just across the Pacific but across the North Pole. This map was so
central to the shift of the American popular understanding of their place in the world, that when the Americans
leaders were designing the institutions that would shape the postwar world they took the map and made it the logo
of the United Nations. They flipped the map 90 degrees to avoid centering North America.

The fact that they chose the Fortune Map meant that it was
so central to the collective imagination of the post world
war II world that they decided to use it as the United
Nations logo.

UNITED STATES PROPAGANDA

FDR picture looking at the world map. It was a present given to the president in 1942. He placed the
globe directly behind his office chair.

FDR was thinking about how to call the new alliance that the USA had joined. He did not like the term
allies, as Americans do not want to be an ally of nobody, and he came up with the term United Nations.
The same term was taken and reused in the organization created after the war. FDR gave some
indications for the poster:

1. China has to be up with all the major allies.

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 2. India has to be a separate signature.
3. France should not be included from the list of signatories.

FDR GLOBAL SOUTH

FDR had during the war meetings with the King of Morocco, the King of Saudi Arabia, the King of
Egypt, the Emperor of Ethiopia and China nationalist leader CHang Kai Shek. Any US president has
had meetings with most of those people from non-European countries and they are photographed as
peers, as equals. This was some of FDR's war strategy.

CLASS 12: REMAKING WORLD ORDER… AGAIN

One of the ways in which Franklin Roosevelt and his people were approaching the US role in remaking
world order during WWII was through adopting and adapting Wilsonian goals. They wanted to correct
what they considered Wilson’s mistakes in implementing the goals of the post WWI era. One of the
biggest corrections that they tried to make was: not to wait until the end of the war to discuss the post
world order.

In WWI it was not until the armistice happened that the big three (Wilson, Lloyd George and
Clemencau) decided to meet in Paris. Two months after the Armistice started, the Peace Conference
started. In the XXth century it was decided that the idea of waiting until the end of hostilities did not
work, partly because rewriting the world was no longer just the business of top diplomats and elites. In
the age of nationalism and popular politics (manifested through democracy of fascism) there wasn’t a
space in the wake of big wars to sit around for 6 months and defer decisions until all the diplomatic
ideas had been settled. Events make their own course, it was a lesson learned by the past post war
experience. Thus, FDR realized that they needed to have the peace conferences while the war was still
going on. He thought that the allies needed American support and help to fight the war, but they were
not going to need the USA as much when the war would be over. FDR had the best leverage when the
fighting was still going on and he wanted to take advantage of it.

It was because of this lesson that the big three (Roosvelt, Stalin and Churchill) gathered in the
conferences of Tehran, Yalta (Ukraine) and Potsdam during WWII.

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REMEMBER… FDR’S GLOBAL SOUTH

During WWII, large chunks of the world Americans had largely ignored previously, particularly much
of Asia, the Middle East and Africa, suddenly became extremely important in the eyes of the US for
strategic reasons during the war and the postwar world order. According to the historian Erez Manela, it
was the “American discovery of the global south”. FDR gathered with a number of leaders that US
presidents had neer met before: the king of Morocco, the king of Saudi Arabia, the emperor of Ethiopia,
the king of Egypt and the president of nationalist China. Taking China aside, it is made obvious by the
pictures the American interest in portions of the Middle East, North Africa and East Africa that were
crucial during WWII, the Mediterranean, the corn of Africa leading into the Red Sea and the Suez
Canal. All these regions were part of the British Empire area of hegemony in the pre WWII era. The
British Empire was premised on the supremacy of the British navy, which was a crucial component in
sustaining the Empire and connecting the various parts of it: the metropol and India. The lifeline that
connected both of those parts was the Suez Canal. However, to control the Suez Canal it was absolutely
necessary to control the Mediterranean, so East Asia and Saudi Arabia. Those leaders who Roosvelt
met with represented the architecture of British hegemony. What FDR was trying to do, thus, was
to replace the British hegemony by American hegemony. He was doing so by presenting himself as
a new type of leader, as nobody could have ever imagined any British Kings in the positions that FDR
is adopting in this picture.

FDR, by positioning himself as

the equal of those people was
intentionally signaling his
transition from an imperial
world order led by the British
to a post imperial nation - state
world order where all states are
notionally equal, as
represented in the United
Nations General Assembly.

FDR’S ADVOCACY FOR

CHINA’S GLOBAL ROLE

Why was it so important to Roosvelt himself that China had to be part of the United Nations Security
Council (at the time known as the “4 policemen”)? Why not just the three Allies policemen?

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Roosevelt already considered early in the war, soon after Pearl Harbor, that there must be four powers
collaborating in policing the postwar world, making sure that there was not another world war. For that,
it was necessary to demilitarize all the other powers. Roosvelt thought that the 4 policemen needed to be
US, United Kingdom, Soviet Union and China. Those four countries, with the later addition of France,
which was included because FDR was convinced by Churchill to do so (Churchill considered it was
needed to balance Germany), became in 1945 the five permanent members of the United Nations
Security Council.

1) Remember… Declaration by the United Nations (December 1941), one of the Roosvelt
demands for the United Nations image was that China had to be up with the great nations and
not down with the (alphabetical order) minor allies.
2) First meeting with Soviet foreign minister Moltov (May 1942), Roosvelt brings up the idea of
China being a major ally. Molotov was surprised by the fact that Roosvelt wanted to include
China, as he did not consider it to be or to have been a great power.

3) MOSCOW CONFERENCE (OCT-NOV 1943): the first time that the big three met (Stanlin,
Churchill and FDR) happened in Tehran, which was under occupation by the Soviets. BEFORE
the summit in Tehran, the foreign ministers had a meeting in Moscow, the “Moscow Conference
''. Cordell Hall, Molotov and Anthony Eden decided to put out a statement about their joint war
aims, one of the most important being that they were going to fight until total victory. Another
lesson that FDR had learned from Wilson's previous mistakes was that WWI was allowed to end
with an Armistice, with a signed document that stopped hostilities. Thus, Germany in WWI was
never invaded and occupied. That allowed the Germans later on, and particularly the nazis, to
claim that Germany had not been defetead in WWI and that they should not have had to suffer a
punitive treaty. The idea in Moscow was that it could not happen again, that they had to
compromise to have a total war and total victory, that Germany had to be defeated, Berlin
occupied and the German military destroyed.

The agreement on the text was relatively swift, most of the argument was who ought to sign.
Once they had the agreement on the text, Cordel Hall said that they needed the Chinese to sign
it. China was not invited because the Soviets had refused to do so, as they were not at war with
Japan and they did not see China as a peer. Cordel Hull asked the Russians to accept the
invitation of at least the Chinese Ambassador in Moscow, Fu Bringchang, to sign. The Soviets
were really surprised by the fact that the American delegation was so worried about China and
not about more important issues for the future world security such as the new borders of Poland

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 (which had been divided by the Germans and the Soviets in the Ribbentrop Molotov Pact).
Cordell Hall answered to the Russians that he was there to deal with the main issues, not to deal
with piddling little things. Hall managed to pressure and threaten Molotov that if China was not
allowed to sign the declaration, the USA may reconsider its land lease supplies to the Soviets
(withdraw some of their supplies and move them to the Chinese). The Soviets could not afford
any diminution of America's lend lease aid and Molotov finally got permission from Stalin to
agree to allow the Chinese to sign the declaration.

4) TEHRAN CONFERENCE (NOV-DEC 1943): the next month Roosvelt, Stalin and Churchill
met in Tehran. In the very first official meeting between Roosevelt and Stalin, Roosevelt
whipped up a sheet of paper and sketched out for Stalin his plans for the post world order. The
writing enclosed in the circles reads: 40 UN (which meant 40 member countries, the UN
General Assembly), in the mid circle is written Executive Committee (the Social Economic
Council in the UN, which it is supposed to deal with all of the Executive Functions of the UN
which are not related with military issues and security).

The final circle on the right

said “4 policemen”. Roosevelt
said to Stalin that the 4
policemen had to be Soviet
Union, China, England and
the USA. Stalin reacted as
Molotov did in Moscow. He
was surprised and he thought
that the minor European allies
wouldn’t be happy if China
got involved in European
security issues. FDR argued
that they couldn’t have
separate security for Asia
and for Europe, that security had to be global and integrated. It was a Wilsonian principle that
was adopted by Roosvelt. For Roosvelt and the American delegation, Spheres of influence were
exclusionary, and they considered them promoters of the risk of future war between them. They rather
thought that they all had to collaborate on the global scene and that China had to be, thus, in the 4
policemen.

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WHY WAS FDR INSISTING IN CHINA BEING IN THE 4 POLICEMEN? WHY IS IT A PUZZLE?

In the 1940s, China had not been considered a great power for at least a century, since the first Opium
War. China had been the prey of imperialist powers and not power itself. Even in the midst of the XX
century, after the Chinese revolution and the end of the Chinese dynasty, China was still really divided
and weak (in relation to its potential and side). That’s why Japan was able to occupy large chunks of the
country despite the lend lease aid that the US was sending them.

- China had been a victim of imperial power since the XX century

- China was treated as a “small nation” at 1919 peace conference in Paris (see the Seating
Chart of the plenary session of the Paris Peace Conference. China seated next to Bolivia
and Ecuador)
- The situation had changed slightly in the following two decades, but the Japanese
invasions in 1930 (Manchuria and China mainland) met no serious opposition from the
major powers.

So, why is Chins suddenly being promoted by FDR to a great power status?

RESISTANCE OF ALLIES

Both of FDR’s major allies strongly resisted China’s elevation to great power status. Churchill and
Stanlin thought it was a stupid idea.

Churchill: “Did not regard China as a great power and feared it would simply support the US effort to
liquidate the British overseas Empire”. Churchill understood that liquidating Germany and Japan was
important, but the liquidation of the European empires (british, French and Dutch spheres) was another
of the main Americans goals. There were deep divisions between the “Anglo-American alliance”.

Stalin consistently refused to meet with Chinese representatives and resisted their inclusion in the “Big
Four”. Stalin had their hands full fighting the Germans, and they were not at war with Japan, so from his
strategic vision was that the Japanese would see the approach to China as a war declaration. Stalin did
not consider China a serious military power but he also did not want it to be a military power in the
future because he had desires in Chinese territory (Russian-Japanese war in Manchuria 1905). Finally
they did not manage to get Manchuria from post war China but they did manage to grab large chunks of
today Mongolia.

And yet, both of them managed to get convinced/bullied by Roosevelt to agree that China must be

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one of the 4 policemen and therefore one of the members of the Security Council.

EVEN CHINESE LEADERSHIP RESIST THE IDEA

In its only face to face meeting in the Cairo Conference in 1943, nationalist government under Chiang
Kai Shek was reluctant to take on the role of “global policeman” that FDR envisioned for it. FDR
specifically asked Chiang Kai Shek to participate in the allied occupation of Japan once Japan was
defeated. Chiang Kai Shek was dubious, as he considered that they did not have enough military
capacity to do so, and because he had other internal military problems with the communists and he did
not want to be distracted (they have been locked in a civil war since 1920). Finally, the occupation of
Japan was done solely by the Americans, not by any other power, and the civil war between the
communists and the nationalists rezooed in 1945, ending up with the communist victory in 1949.

SO, WHY?

Two aspects of FDR strategic worldview must be considered…

1) Wilsonianism: he shared a vision of global security based on international organization that

would deter aggression through collective action on a global scale. No more “spheres of
influence”. The prevention of future war relied, for Wilson, in international organizations. He
thought Wilson had gotten it wrong in terms of implementation but not in terms of the basic
idea. This intuition comes from a similar analysis of both of the reasons of the two WW, which
are clashes of national and imperial interests. The only way to ameliorate those clashes is to
have an organization where everybody is a member and conflict can be discussed and resolved
before it comes into war (and where collective action is taken in case a member is doing
something wrong). The general wilsonian scheme was: (1) first arbitration, if arbitration does
not work, economic sanctions (2) and if economic sanctions don’t work, the Security Council
has to decide the military actions.

2) Anti Colonialism: sharp critic of European imperialism, not simply as a morally bankrupt
system but as inimical to global prosperity and security, and inimical to the US vision of the
“Open Door” policy.

To sum up… FDR’S advocacy for China as the “fourth policeman” was part of a long term vision for a
global order that incorporated the global south in the world order in a new way while institutionalizing

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long standing US interests, like the “open door”.

In some sense, people like Roosevelt and Willkie agreed with Americans like the author of Rising Tide
of Color, as they think that people of the global south were rising, and they have to be taken more
seriously than they had been taken previous to World War II. However, the treatment that they would
like to apply to those people was different than before, as they wanted to liquidate the principle of racial
imperialism and bring the formerly colonial people into the new World Order. That new order was
intended to be based on the system of “one state one vote”, in other words, notional equality sovereign
nations, while at the same time preserving at the core of the system American hegemony and American
interests.

FDR response to Admiral Louis Mountbatten (who was the British almirante commanding the India
theater in the war), 1943.

“I really feel it is a triumph to have got the four hundred and twenty five million Chinese on the Allied
side… This will be very useful twenty five or fifty years hence, even though China cannot contribute
much military or naval support for the moment”. What is implied in this message is that he thought that
China was going to become an important player and in that future moment they have to be sure that
China is already assimilated into the world order that they were constructing.

PLANNING THE PEACE WHILE FIGHTING THE WAR

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CAIRO CONFERENCE (Nov 1943) The Cairo Conference (also known as "SEXTANT") was held in
Cairo from November 22 to 26, 1943. It defined the Allied position against Japan during World War II
and made decisions on the postwar future of Asia. The meeting was attended by President Franklin
Roosevelt for the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill for the United Kingdom, and Chiang
Kai-shek for the Republic of China. The main lines of the Cairo Declaration were: -

1. Japan would be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific which it had occupied or seized since
the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
2. All territories that Japan had seized from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa and the
Pescadores Islands, would be restored to the Republic of China
3. In due course, Korea would become independent and free.

TEHRAN CONFERENCE (Dec 1943): The Tehran Conference was a meeting that took place between
November 28 and December 1, 1943, between the leaders Iósif Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin
D. Roosevelt, who formed the Allied side. It is one of the greatest examples of Allied cooperation in
World War II. The Tehran conference was the first conference of the "Big Three" in World War II, so
the first thing the United States and Great Britain did was to guarantee the full cooperation and
assistance of the Soviet Union in all war policies. Stalin agreed, but at a price: Roosevelt and Churchill
would have to support his mandate and the partisans in Yugoslavia, and also allow the modification of

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the border between Poland and the USSR. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin then turned to more important
matters, mainly Operation Overlord and political warfare. Operation Overlord was scheduled to begin in
May 1944, in conjunction with the Soviet attack on Germany's eastern border. In the series of battles
that would later become known as "D-Day," forces from Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States
and many other countries combined. The "Big Three" spent days arguing about when the Battle of
Normandy, code-named Operation Overlord, should take place.

YALTA CONFERENCE (Feb 1945) The official agreement stipulated: The declaration of liberated
Europe, i.e., that they no longer needed to remain in a state of war, allowing democratic elections in all
liberated territories / A conference in April in San Francisco to organize the United Nations (San
Francisco Conference). The idea of a Security Council for the UN was conceived, and it was agreed that
the Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR would have independent seats in the UN. / The disarmament,
demilitarization and partition of Germany, which was seen by the three powers as a "prerequisite for
future peace and security". Thus, the country was to be divided into four zones, one for each ally and
one for the Soviet Union / Indemnities to be paid by Germany for the "losses it has caused to the Allied
nations in the course of the war." These indemnities could come out of national wealth (machinery,
ships, shares in German enterprises, etc.), the supply of goods for a period to be determined, or the use
of German labor. The Americans and Soviets agreed on a figure of twenty billion dollars in
compensation.

POTSDAM CONFERENCE (Dec 1945)

Potsdam Conference happened after the German surrender, before the Japanese surrender, with Truman
as US president after the death of FDR

The return of all European territories annexed by Nazi Germany since 1938 and the separation of
Austria / Objectives during the Allied occupation of Germany: demilitarization, denazification,
democratization and de-Nazification / The Potsdam agreement provided for the division of Germany and
Austria into four zones of occupation (already agreed at the Yalta conference), and a similar division of
Berlin and Vienna / The prosecution of Nazi war criminals. The temporary establishment of the Oder-
Neisse line, which was to be the border of the territory administered by the Polish Government (the final
border between Germany and Poland was to be discussed at a final peace conference) / The resettlement
in a "humane and orderly manner" of the German minorities of "Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia''
within the new borders established for Germany and Austria / Agreement for reconstruction. The Allies
estimated their losses at $200 billion. Germany was obliged to pay only $20 billion in industrial
products and labor. However, the Cold War prevented this debt from being paid. /The Potsdam
Declaration, which underlined the terms of surrender for Japan. Ultimatum to Japan to surrender

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unconditionally / Stalin initially wanted to break off all relations with the Franco government.
Eventually an agreement was reached that the United States, the USSR and Great Britain would oppose
Spain's entry into the United Nations.[4] This would later lead to a world in which the United States, the
USSR and Great Britain would oppose Spain's entry into the United Nations.

This would later lead to a bipolar world in the Cold War, where for the first time communism and
capitalism would be separated in a physical way.

EXPLAINING THE SOVIET ALLIANCE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

The Soviet Union had been represented as a symbol of anarchy, anti capitalism and anti americanism,
especially after the German Soviet Agreement in 1939. By 1943 things changed, the Soviets were
attacked by the Germans and they became American allies. Stalin goes from being a friend of Hitler to
becoming an ally.

AUGUST 6, 1945… A NEW ERA AFTER THE ATOMIC BOMB ON HIROSHIMA AND
NAGASAKI

READING: THE ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR

The Grand Alliance collapsed soon after the Second World War. Already at odds due to the wartime
scramble for position, the United States and the Soviet Union drew different lessons from the 1930s and
pushed aside the plans devised at Yalta and Potsdam conferences near the end of the war. Whereas
Soviet leaders came to see the United States as an expansionist, capitalist power seeking world
supremacy, US leaders increasingly read the Soviet Union as a bullying communist aggressor bent on
subjugating neighbors and undermining peace through subversion. (...) Each side saw offense where
the other saw defense.

WWII left in its wake widespread social and economic dislocation, defeated and collapsing colonial
empires, and a redistribution of global power. Moscow and Washinghton each tries to influence the
postwar world:

1. The US wideled the atomic bomb, dominated the United Nations, perpeuated US hegemony in
Latin Amierca, unleashed its immense economic clout to build alliances…
2. The Soviets, reeling from the horrific impact of war, with more than 25 million dead and
widespread economic disruption, maintained the world’s largest army, manipulated politics in
Esaster Europe, and championed a socialist system whose premise of full employment appealed
to many the world over.

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The two adversaries never sent their troops into battle against one another directly. Instead, they
confronted one another militarily through proxies, built alliances, bolstered client states with foreign aid,
construcet overseas bases and intelligence posts, started an expensive arms race, launched covert
operations, and orchestrated international propaganda campaigns…

What motivated the two rivals?

- Some analysts point to power and security concerns - the Soviet preoccupation with the
borderlands of Easter Europe and Washnighton’s determination to plant air and naval bases
around the world to prevent another Pearl Harbor.
- Other writer’s highlight economics: America’s appetite for markets and raw materials and the
Soviet Union’s desperate need for rebuilding and reparation.
- The dramatic clash between the Soviet Union’s authoritarian Marxism and America’s
democratic capitalism.

Large personalities left their imprint (in this period of history). Joseph Stalin stood out for his brutality
and deep suspicion on the West. The conservative prime minister Winston Churchill fought a losing
battle to save the last remnant of the British Empire. The plain.speaking US president Harry S. Truman
accused the Soviets of reneging international agreements, but critics observed that Truan was prone to
oversimplifying diplomatic complexities.

What role did allies and neutrals play in the global drama?

A relative lack of power undoubtedly limited their freedom of action. Soviet repression cast a shadow of
fear over much of Easter Europe. U.S allies in Western Europe enjoyed more democratic rights and
negotiating space than their Soviets counterparts, but their dire need for reconstruction aid usually made
them cooperative partners.

People in many emerging states gained freedom from colonialism only to endure authoritarian
governments and continued dependency on international markets, making them susceptible to external
pressure.

In Yugoslavia, the renegade communist leader Josip Tito conducted foreign policy independent of
Stalin, and the People’s Republic of China questioned the Soviet Line.

THE FRANCK COMITTEE PREDICTS A NUCLEAR-ARMS RACE IF THE ATOMIC BOMB IS

DROPPED ON JAPAN, 1945

Summary: On June 11, 1945, a group of scientists in Chicago who had been developing an atomic bomb

156
petitioned Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson to recognize the importance of future international
(especially Soviet) agreement to prevent a nuclear.arms race. Headed by James Franck, the scientist’s
committee recommended against a surprise atomic attack on Japan and instead advocated a
noncombatant use of the bomb on an island or in a desert, with international observers.

But president Truman and his advisers rejected the Frank Committee's advice. On September 11, 1945,
Stimson sent Truman a memorandum in which the Secretary of War argued that “the rpoblem” of the
atomic bomb “dominated” Soviet-American realtions and urgen the US approach the Soviets to discuss
control in order to reduce distrust.

GEORGE F. KENNAN CRITIQUES SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY IN HIS “LONG

TELEGRAM” 1946

Summary: George Kennan in his “long telegram” sent to Washington on February 22, 1946, from his
post attaché in the US embassy in Moscow. Kennan pessimistically speculated on the motivations for
Soviet behavior. His critique proved persuasive among Truman officials and Kennan went to serve as
head of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, where he helped to establish “containment” as
US Cold War doctrine.

INSECURITY. At the bottom of the Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is the traditional and
instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. (...) Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was
relatively archaic in form, fragile and artificial in its psychological foundations, unable to stand
comparison or contact with political systems of Western countries. For this reason, they have always
feared foreign penetration, feared direct contact between Western world and their own, feared what
would happen if Russians learned the truth about the world without or if foreigners learned the truth
about the world within. And they had learned to seek security only in a patient but deadly struggle
for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it.

MARXISM. Only in this land which had never known a friendly neighbor or indeed any tolerant
equilibrium of separate powers, either internal or international, could a doctrine thrive which viewed
economic conflicts of society as insoluble by peaceful means. After the establishment of the
Bolshevist regime, Marxist dogma, rendered even more truculent and intolerant by Lenin’s
interpretation, became a perfect vehicle for the sense of insecurity with which Bolsheviks, even more
than previous Russian rulers, were afflicted.

ORIENTAL SECRETIVENESS. Finally we have the unsolved mystery as to who, if anyone, in this
great land actually receives accurate and unbiased information about the outside world.

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INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCE. In addition, it has an elaborate and far-flung apparatus for exerting
its influence in other countries.

THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL PAPER NO.68 (NSC-68) REASSESS THE SOVIET
THREAT AND RECOMMENDS A MILITARY BUILDUP, 1959

CAUSAS DE LA GUERRA FRÍA: Two complex sets of factors have now basically altered the
historical distribution of power. First, the defeat of Germany and Japan and the decline of the
British and French Empires have interacted with the development of the United States and the
Soviet Union in such a way that power has increasingly gravitated to these two centers. With the
development of increasingly terrifying weapons of mass destruction, every individual faces the ever-
present possibility of annihilation should the conflict enter the phase of total war…

Our overall policy at the present time may be described as one designed to foster a world environment in
which the American system can survive and flourish. It therefore rejects the concept of isolation and
affirms the necessity of our positive participation in the world community.

This broad intention embraces two subsidiary policies.

1. One is a policy of attempting to develop a healthy international community.

2. The other is the policy of “containing” the Soviet system.

POLICY OF CONTAINMENT: it is one which seeks by all mens short of war to (1) bock further
expansion of Soviet power, (2) expose the falsities of Soviet pretensions, (3) introduce a retraction of the
Kremlin’s control and influence and (4) in general, so foster the seeds of destruction within the Soviet
system that the Kremlin is brought at least to the point of modifying its behavior to conform to generally
accepted international standards.

- One of the most important ingredients of power is military strength. In the concept of
“containment” the maintenance of a strong military posture is deemed to be essential for two
reasons: (1) as an ultimate guarantee of our national security and (2) as an indispensable
backdrop to the conduct of the policy of containment.
- It is essential to leave open the possibility of negotiation with the U.S.S.R. A diplomatic freeze
tends to defeat the very purposes of “containment” because it raises tensions…

FORMER BRITISH PRIME MINISTER WINSTON CHURCHILL DECLARES AN “IRON

CURTAIN” HAS DESCENDED ON EUROPE, 1946

A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet

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Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are
the limits, if any, to their expansive tendencies. I have a strong admiration for the valiant Russian people
and for my wartime comrade, Marshal Stalin. (...)

We understand the Russian need to be secure on her western frontiers from all renewal of German
aggression. We welcome her to her rightful place among the leading nations of the world (...) It is my
duty, however, to place before you certain facts about the present position in Europe.

IRON CURTAIN: From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended
across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern
Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous
cities and the populations around them lie in the Soviet sphere and all are subject, in one form or
another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and increasing measure of control from Moscow.
Athens alone, with its inmoral glories, is free to decide its future at an election under British, American
and French observation.

The Russian dominated Polish government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful
inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed
of are now taking place. An attempt is being made by the Russians in Berlin to build up a quasi
COmmunist party in their zone of occupied Germany by showing special favors to groups of left-wing
German leaders. At the end of the fighting last Juve, the American and British Armies withdrew
westward, in accordance with an earlier agreement, (...) to allow the Russians to occupy this vast
expense of territory which the Western democracies had conquered. If now the Soviet government tries,
by separate action, to build up a pro Communist Germany in their areas, this will cause new serious
difficulties in the British and American Zones, and will give the defeated Germans the power of putting
themselves up for auction between the Soviets and the Western democracies.

The Communist parties, which were very small in all these eastern states of Europe, have been raised to
preeminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian
control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia,
there is no true democracy.

Turkey and Persia are both profoundly alarmed and disturbed at the claims which are made upon them
and at the pressure being exerted by the Moscow government .

In front of the iron curtain which lies across Europe are other causes for anxiety. In Italy, the
Communist Party is hampered by having to support the Communist-trained Marshall Tito’s claim to
former Italian territory at the head of the Adriatic.

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Whatever conclusion may be drawn from these facts, and facts they are, this is certainly not the liberated
Eurpe we fought to build up. Nor is the one which contains the essential or permanent peace.

(....)

THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE CALLS FOR AID TO GREECE AND TURKEY TO CONTAIN
TOTALITARIANISM, 1947

(...) The United States has received from the Greek Government an urgent appeal for financial and
economic assistance. Preliminary reports from the American Economic Mission now in Greece and
reports from the American Ambassador in Greece corroborate the statement of the Greek Government
that assistance is imperative if Greece is to survive as a free nation.

The British Government has informed us that, owing to its own difficulties, it can no longer extend
financial or economic aid to Turkey. As in the case of Greece, if Turkey is to have the assistance it
needs, the US must supply it. We are the only country able to provide that help.

The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon
them against their will. The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against
coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. I must
also state that in a number of other countries there have been similar developments.

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of
life. The choice is too often not a free one.

One way of life is based upon the will of the majority and it is distinguished by free institutions,
representative government, free elections, guarantee of individual liberty, freedom of speech and
religion and freedom from political oppression.

The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies
upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal
freedom.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting
attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure. (...) I therefore ask the Congress to
provide authority for assistance to Greece and Turkey in the amount of 400 million for the period ending
June 30, 1948.

THE MARSHALL PLAN (ECONOMIC COOPERATION ACT) PROVIDES AID FOR

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EUROPEAN RECONSTRUCTION

The modern system of the division of labor upon which the exchange of products is based is in danger of
breaking down. ... Aside from the demoralizing effect on the world at large and the possibilities of
disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned, the consequences to the
economy of the United States should be apparent to all. It is logical that the United States should do
whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health to the world, without which
there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is not directed against any country,
but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Any government that is willing to assist in recovery
will find full cooperation on the part of the United States. Its purpose should be the revival of a working
economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free
institutions can exist.

CLASS 13: THE COLD WAR ORDER EMERGES

How did the US get from victory to the Cold War?

Remembering… FDR's sketch illustrated his concept of the United Nations Organization: he was
catching a vision of world order that relied on international cooperation and multilateral institutions.

And…Churchill’s sketch in his meeting with Joseph Stalin in Moscow showed a very different
understanding of how to ensure stability in the postwar world, which directly contradicted FDR's
approach. It was a vision of spheres of influence and geopolitical power. The sketch is known as the
percentage agreement because it defined percentages of influence that each of the great powers were
going to have in certain easter European countries after the war. For example:

- Romania - Russia 90% - the other powers 10%

- Greece - Great Britain 90% - Russia 10%

Stalin agreed with the percentage agreement.

What do these documents together show us? A period of competition between two very different
visions of world order, and a period in which elements of both visions were being implemented.

THE WAR THAT WAS LEFT BY THE WAR

The second world war left the world transformed in many different ways:

1. The demographic impact of the millions of people who were killed. The estimate of both

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 military and civilian deaths is 60 million.

Mil. Total (est.) % of pop.

US 417 418 0,3

USSR 8,800 23,100 million 14,1

UK 382 430 0,9

FRANCE 217 562 1,3

GERMANY 5,500 7,500 10,8

JAPAN 2,100 2,600 3,6

2. The importance of the US economy: the US GDP more than doubled from 1939 to 1945,
ending up accounting for over a third of the global economy.
3. Weakening of colonial empires and the rise of nationalist movements.

The landscape post world war was one in which the US power increased dramatically, so it
allowed him to be positioned in a leading role for the post war plans for establishing a new world
order.

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE INTERNATIONALIST ORDER

FDR's vision for postwar peace and stability is based on the idea that the post war peace that had been
settled after World War I had been an error. The allies should avoid making the same mistakes. Henry
Wallace, FDR’s vice president, said by 1942:

“We failed in our job after World War I (...). But by our very error we learned much, and after this war
we shall be in position to utilize our knowledge in building a world which is economically, politically
and, I hope, Spiritually sound”.

The institutions settled in the immediate postwar period answered the concerns about the settlements
after the end of WWI. The goals was to avoid the mistakes of WWI:

- Heavy reparations led to economic instability. The Allies were operating with the idea that the
reparations imposed on the German economy hobbled the German capacity to rebuild a stable
economy which subsequently led to an economic depression and monetary instability. Those
factors created the context for the rise of fascism during the interwar years. + No complete
defeat of Germany. Keynes qualified the economic settlement of the post first war as a

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 “Carthaginian Peace” during the Peace Conference.
- US absence of the League of Nations: President WIlson tried to get the US Congress to ratify
the US joining the League of Nations. That is a mistake that they did not want to repeat. They
wanted to make sure that whatever international organization is settled up after the war, it has to
have the support of the US congress and the US presence in it to ensure greater power.
- Failed promise of self-determination: the WIlsonian promise created a lot of hope at the end of
WWI, it failed, and that created critics of hypocrisy and instability.

TO AVOID MISTAKE 1: BRETTON WOODS (JULY 1944)

The Roosevelt administration decided to set up an international multilateral system to ensure economic
stability. They brought together representatives of 44 allied nations to Bretton Woods (New Hampshire)
to discuss plans for a post war economic and financial order. Two of the main thinkers behind the
conference were Henry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes.

Keynes was a vocal critic of the postwar world I economic settlement, which he qualified as a
“Carthaginian Peace” during the Peace Conference. He wrote a book in 1919 criticizing this settlement:
The economic consequences of the peace. He thought that the Versailles treaty would led to another war
more sooner than later:

“The Treaty includes no provisions for the economic rehabilitation of Europe, - nothing to make the
defeated Central Powers into good neighbors, nothing to stabilize the new states of Europe (...); nor
does it promote in any way a compact of solidarity among the Allies themselves; no arrangement was
reached at Paris for restoring the disordered finances of France and Italy.”

Economic instability ended up creating conditions of war. Economic cooperation, free trade and
integration of different markets end up bringing peace. What do they set up at Bretton Woods to
ensure those principles?

1. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank): it was founded in 1944
to help the reconstruction of countries that have been damaged directly or indirectly during the
war.
2. International Monetary Fund (FMI): it was designed to fight the instability of currencies, so it
was the monetary aspect to face inflation, deflation… it functioned and still function as an
international exchange system in order to make sure that exchange rates are all pegged to gold
and would remain stable through time.

Thanks to the economic cooperation and the creation of those institutions the Allies would ensure peace.

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Breton Woods represented a central pillar of the American vision of internationalism: by
promoting economic stability and free trade you ensure world peace,Through BW national
economies were interrelated and working according to the same rules.

BW was already important for the self interests of the US in that period, as it was trying to avoid all the
side effects of the depression of the 1930s: unemployment (16 million people were working for the arms
industry during WWII), inflation…

DO ALL THE ALLIES SUPPORTED THE BRETON WOODS VISION OF THE WORLD? WAS
THE SOVIET UNION INVOLVED?

There was an attempt to integrate the Soviet Union in that institution, and there was a Soviet
representative in BW, but they never ratified the institutions. They ended up seeing BW a promotion
of an specifically American ideal of free trade, and also a way of consolidating American
hegemony.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE UNITED NATIONS ORGANIZATION: FDR’S VISION

REALIZED

The establishment of the UN organization happened in two phases:

- Conference of the Dumbarton Oaks (August 1944): the big four (UK, US, SU and China)
negotiated a basic plan of the UN.
- The San Francisco Conference (Spring 1945): May 1945 the war ended. While Germany was
surrendering, the SFConference brought together 50 countries to negotiate the UN charter
between the 25th of April and the 24th of May. The Conference agreed on the Charter of the
United Nations and the Statute of the New International Court of Justice. The Soviet Union
attended to the SFC, and Stalin asked for the 16 socialists republics of the SU to have a seat in
the UN General Assembly (which would have resulted in a massive block of votes for the
USSR). The compromise they reached was to allow two Soviet socialist republics to have seats
in addition to the Soviet Union: Ukraine and Belarus.

The UN charter was signed and ratified. It was ratified by the US Senate by 89 to 2 votes, which
represented the complete turn around of the vision of the postwar order: from isolation to
international cooperation. The San Francisco conference made real the FDR dream, enabling the
use of economic sanctions as a way of maintaining peace.

The presence of China, which was directly related to FDR insistence, was a symbol of the spirit of

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the UN: non western nations and non white people were integrated in the vision of the post war
internationalist order.

*The end of the war ended the Chinese Exclusion Act, which had banned since 1882 Chinese people
from immigrating to the US. As a gesture of good will, the FDR Administration encouraged Congress to
eliminate the CEA.

INSTITUTIONS

- International tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo: separate from the UN project, but it's another
example of post war world cooperation.

SELF-DETERMINATION AND THE RISE OF NATIONALISMS

- Atlantic Charter (1941): promise of self-determination as established in the Atlantic Charter.

The post world order is a world of nation states united with common rules and under common
institutions.
- Weakening of colonial empires, US pressure on Britain to give up its colonial empire + new
laborist government led to decolonization. In the two-year period from 1945 to 1947, the
independence of India was agreed, Great Britain could not maintain its position because it was
weakened after World War II, the rise to power of the Labor Party, with Atlee at the head,
favored the understanding with the colonies.
- Rising importance of non Western nations: China and the countries that were on the edge of
independence: Philippines (1946), India (1947) and the State of Israel (1948).

COOPERATION WITH THE SOVIET UNION

To understand the breakdown of the relations after the war it is important to understand how where the
relations by the end of the war:

*US government poster, 1942 (“This man is your FRIEND, he fights for FREEDOM). The breakdown
of US-Soviet relation

*Big power unity was the main goal during the war and immediately after. After the Bolshevik
revolution, the US did not recognize the Soviet Union immediately. It was only after 1933, with the
election of FDR, that formal diplomatic relations were established. However, in the late 1930s the
relations were debilitated because of the US distrust of the USSR for several reasons:

1. Purges happening in the USSR: show trials and political purges

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 2. 1939 the Ribbentrop - Molotov Pact: non-aggression pact considered by the US an unnatural
alliance and an strategy for the partition of Poland
3. The invasion of Finland
4. The Soviet - Japanese non aggression pact

Situation changes when Soviet Union was attacked by nazi Germany in the summer of 1941, as the US
recognized that USSR resistance was paramount to ensure the victory of Britain. If the Soviets resisted,
the British had a higher chance of resisting as well. Lend lease was extended to the USSR in 1941
before the US entered the war. The USSR and US were fighting on the same side.

5. Stalin abolished the Comintern in 1943, which was an institution that formalized the links with
communist parties in other countries, ensuring cooperation and coordination. It was a big source
of distrust of the Soviet Union, and by abolishing it Stalin showed a good will toward his new
allies.
6. This created a sense in the US that the USSR was entering in a new phase of pragmatism instead
of idealism, no longer interested in toppling capitalist governments around the world but
containing their plans of communism into the Soviet Union.
7. Up until the very end of 1945 the US was still considering a big post war loan for reconstructing
the Soviet Union.
8. There were also plans of cooperation around the atomic bomb. The Truman administration
considered cooperation in the UN Atomic Energy Commission, but it failed. The aim was to
draft plans that the Soviets were bound to refuse: not to use the veto power in the Security
Council for nuclear weapons, inspections within the Soviet Union..

TENSIONS OVER SECURITY CONCERNS AND SPHERES OF INFLUENCES

Despite FDR institutionalization of internationalism, the same period is characterized by tensions that
emerged in the last few months of the war over how the post war order should look like and what the
main considerations should be. In Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, leaders were making decisions that
reflected not only FDR ideals but international relations in Stalin's vision of spheres of influences.

POST WAR DECISIONS AND PLANS AT YALTA AND POTSDAM

- Occupation of Germany: Germany will be split into 4 zones of occupation, American, British,
French and Soviet. There will not be an immediate German government.
- German reparations: the reparations were enormous after WWI, and the Allies were looking
for more mild reparations in order to avoid another period of instability. However, Stalin
insisted that there should be reparation due to the massive losses in the allied countries, in

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 particular the Soviet Union.

“2. Reparation in kind is to be exacted from Germany in three following forms:

a) Removals within two years from the surrender of Germany or the cessation of organized
resistance. Removal of the national wealth of Germany located on the territory of German
herself as well as outside her territory: (equipment, machine tools, ships, rolling stocks, German
investments abroad, shares of industrial transport and other enterprises in Germany…) these
removals to be carried out for the purpose of destroying the war potential of Germany.
b) Annual deliveries of goods from current production for a period to be fixed.
c) Use of German labor. (Hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war were put to work in
factories, agriculture not only in the East but also, for example, in Britain).
- Agreement on Polish borders: the Soviet Union insisted on keeping most of the territory that
they invaded in 1939, and in exchange, Poland could have part of the territory that belonged to
Germany before the war. What that meant is that a lot of the Polish population ended up living
in the Soviet Union, which led to population transfers.
- Population transfers: Polish population ended up moving toward the Western part of Poland,
so the German population living there was expelled. It resulted in the massive expulsion of
more than 12 million of ethnic Germans.
- Eastern European governments firendy to the USSR but while having free elections.
- Baltic States were annexed by the USSR.
- The Declaration of Liberated Europe at Yalta, were the Soviet Union promised to hold free
elections in the zones occupied by the Red Army. This was not implemented and it was one of
the reasons for the break of the relations.

*All of those decisions were made during the war. The Allies were preparing for the postwar world
order but at the same time were fighting for a victory, so they had to balance their post war objectives
with, for example, having the USSR happy in order to join them to fight against Japan or to get
the Soviet Union to participate in the UN. The result was a tension between the principle of self
determination recognized in the Atlantic Charter and Soviet Security needs with its buffer zone
definitions.*

AS A RESULT… BREAKDOWN OF THE RELATIONS, 1946-1947 THE COLD WAR LINES ARE
DRAWN

a) 1946-1947: YEARS OF RISING TENSIONS, CREATION OF COLD WAR BORDERS

- Communist regimes were established in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe in violation
of the Declaration of Liberated Europe, as elections were not considered free. Stalin

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 established a sphere of influence, no longer considered by the US as a Soviet necessity for
buffer zones but as a strategy of communist expansionism. The appetite of a direct conflict
with the USSR, which until then was not notary, began to grow. Senator H. Capheart said in
January 1946: Concessions made to Estern Europe remind of “Chamberlain and his umbrella
appeasement of Hitler”.
- Stalin speech in February 1946. More aggressive stands towards the Allies.

The response of the US to USSR provocations:

- Failure of the Marshall Mission to China: George Marshall tried to negotiate between the
communist party and the Kuomintang.
- Kennan’s Long Telegram Feb 1946: “containment”: he is interpreting Soviet ideology, which he
considered an ideology premised on the aggressive expansion of communism and Soviet Power.
The USSR is opposed to the US government and will seek to undermine it regardless of the
concessions.
- Churchill’s Iron Curtain Speech March 1946.
- The Truman Doctrine (March 1947): “It must be the policy of the United States to support free
people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures”. It
was a way to encourage Congress and the American public to support the implications of the
policy of more overt confrontation with Russia.
- The Marshall Plan (June 1947) : giving aid to Western Europe for reconstruction in order to
ensure economic and political stability, and in order to ensure that they won’t fall to
communism.
- The National Security Act (July 1947): this was not usual for peacetime, the reorganization of
the security usually happens in times of war.
a) Department of Defense
b) CIA
c) National Security Council that advises the president
d) Joint Chiefs of Staff
- The Peacetime Draft
- The creation of the OTAN
- The blockade of Berlin
- The Chinese Civil War
- The plans for Korean reunification: the international vision was constrained as the UN was only
able to supervise elections in the US zone of occupation, not in the Communist one.
- Russian creation of the nuclear bomb

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