7.1 Flashcards
Power shifts after 1900
What primarily caused the development of a new world order at the end of the 20th century?
Large-scale revolutions in nations like China, Russia, Mexico, and the Ottoman Empire
Explain the Russian revolution and its significance.
- early 20th century
Context:
*slow economic growth (authorities neglected the construction of roads and railroads)
*less advanced/powerful economically and otherwise (“backwards” in comparison to the rest of Europe)
*voting rights severely restricted
Public resistance led to the government massacring large sums of rebels on Bloody Sunday in 1905, known as the Russian Revolution of 1905.
Additionally, tensions were rising because Russia lost the Russo-Japanese war in 1905 due to Japan’s superior industrialized military and economy, and due to their earlier defeat in the Crimean wars to the Ottomans in 1856.
This culminated in the Russian Revolution of 1917, where the Bolsheviks overthrew the tsarist government. They were led by Vladimir Lenin.
This led to the establishment of a communist government, in which free trade was abolished, factories and industries were nationalized, and crops grown by peasants were redistributed by the government to urban workers. This worried western powers.
What are bolsheviks?
They are communists in Russia
What did Lenin do?
He led the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution of 1917 to overthrow the tsarist government, and established a communist government
Explain the large-scale revolutions that occurred in China between 1900-present.
Under the Qing Dynasty, anti-foreign sentiments grew more intense. The Manchurian leaders enacted policies that were discriminatory against the ethnically Han population.
- famine was rampant, bc China’s population grew dramatically without increased agricultural production to support it. The occasional blight or drought meant that large sums of people died easily.
- imperial and already industrialized powers like the US, Britain, Japan, and France had already been economically imperializing China. This contributed to low revenue collection that pushed China’s economy to decline by 1900.
Sun Yat-Sen led the Chinese Revolution to overthrow the Qing dynasty in 1911 and established a new government that only lasted two months. This government espoused traditional Confucian values such as social harmony and admiration for ancestors, as well as sought a representative democracy and methods of balancing the vastly unequal distribution of wealth. This was the Republic of China.
Yat-Sen of the CNP (Chinese Nationalist Party/ Guomindang) died, so Chiang Kai Shek took over and attacked Mao Zedong’s CCP. This led to the Chinese Civil War. China later became communist under Mao Zedong during the Chinese Revolution of 1949, in which the People’s Republic of China was established. This is also known as the Chinese Communist Revolution.
Explain the large-scale revolutions within the Ottoman Empire from 1900-present and their significance.
Context:
- during the early 20th century, the Ottoman Empire was known as the sick man of Europe due to recent military defeats and economic decline.
- the 1840-1870s Tanzimat Reforms weren’t enough to sustain the Ottoman Empire.
The Young Turks called for a constitutional government modeled after European governments, as well as pushed Turkification, which was a problem for Armenian Christians in the Ottoman Empire. This conflict led to the mass legal persecution of Christians and the Armenian Genocide during WWI, in which Armenians were killed through execution, led into the Syrian desert to die or be killed on the journey, and were forcibly displaced. Their properties were taken from them and they often died due to harsh labor, disease, and starvation.
The Young Ottomans followed with similar reform visions.
The Ottomans sided with Germany in WWI in part because it believed that overarching European economic influence was causing their economic decline. So, when they lost, they were further weakened. Post-war treaties established the official end of the Ottoman Empire in 1922.
In 1923, the Republic of Turkey was established under Mustafa Kemal nicknamed Ataturk, who shared some of the Young Turks’ vision and focused on making Turkey like western democracies, unhinging their culture at least partially from Islam.
What was turkification under the Young Turks?
It was the attempt to forcibly impose the embrace of Turkish culture, which was deeply rooted in Islam. This was problematic for Armenian Christians in the Ottoman Empire and led to mass persecution.
Explain the significance of the Tanzimat Reforms
The Tanzimat Reforms were meant to modernize and westernize the Ottoman Empire.
- abolished slave trade
- established a centralized bureaucracy
- secularized schools and legal code, based on European models
Explain the large-scale revolution in Mexico from 1900-present and its significance.
Context:
- in the beginning of the 20th century, Mexico was independent and under the control of authoritarian Porfirio Diaz
*Diaz allowed foreign investors to control Mexico’s resources
*there was an extreme wealth inequality (1% of the population owned 90% of the land)
Fransisco Madero was Diaz’s presidential candidate opponent, so Diaz imprisoned him in 1910.
Madero escaped prison, organized opposition and led the successful effort to exile Diaz from Mexico.
By 1917, the new Mexican Constitution was ratified, including provisions for:
- minimum wages
- land redistribution
- voting rights for all men
- public education
- the separation of the Catholic Church from political power
