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Colonization, decolonization,
redrawal of national boundaries - Part 2
8.0 ESTABLISHMENT OF ISRAEL
Although Jews have, over the eighteen centuries since the Roman Exile, maintained a constant presence (albeit small) in the Land of Israel, the modern concept of Zionism - which led to the formation of the State of Israel - has its roots in nineteenth century Europe. There, Jews experienced the political and scientific renaissance known as the Emancipation, which gave Jews the chance to break their general isolation from the day-to-day affairs of the countries in which they resided. Many Jews adopted the ethno-nationalist political ideology that was developing in Europe at the time and set up moshavim - communities which were financed largely by Baron Edmund de Rothschild of Paris - and socialist communes (called kibbutzim) in Israel, their ancient homeland. The first wave of Jews who were so inclined arrived in Israel (then known as Palestine) in 1882, in what is known as the First Aliyah ("going up" the way Jews describe their immigration to the Holy Land).
Other Jews assimilated into their host countries. One such Jew was Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian-born reporter. Although he was fully assimilated into European society, Herzl's life and worldview changed dramatically in 1895, when he covered the court martial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. The court martial resulted from the French intelligence services' discovery of a secret military document that had been transmitted from a French officer to the military attaché of the German Embassy in Paris. Although evidence seemed to indicate that the actual traitor was Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, a Hungarian who had connections to the Germans, the French military establishment refused to believe that Esterhazy was guilty. Instead, they blamed Dreyfus, primarily because he was a Jew, which made him, in the eyes of the French military, a likely traitor. On January 5, 1895, following a secret court martial, Dreyfus was publically demoted and exiled for life to Devil's Island, near South America.
At the public demotion ceremony, Herzl heard many anti-Semitic epithets being uttered by members of the crowd, including "Death to the Jews". Herzl came to the conclusion that, no matter how much the Jews assimilated into their host countries, they would always be persecuted. The only solution, Herzl believed, would be the exodus of Jews from these countries to a specifically Jewish country. Although he died in 1904, decades before the formation of the State of Israel, the state owes its existence in large part to Herzl's ideas.
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Jewish immigration to Israel continued. The climactic event of this period, however, took place not in Israel but rather in Nazi Germany, in which millions of Jews, forced to remain in Germany because they had nowhere else to go, perished in the Holocaust. Hitler had millions of them killed in gas chambers, and otherwise, in concentration camps.
Since 1917, Palestine had been under the control of Britain, which supported the creation of a Jewish state in the holy land. Sympathy for the Jewish cause grew during the genocide of European Jews during the Holocaust. In 1946, the Palestine issue was brought before the newly created United Nations, which drafted a partition plan.
On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for Palestine to be partitioned between Arabs and Jews, allowing for the formation of the Jewish state of Israel.
The plan, which organized Palestine into three Jewish sections, four Arab sections and the internationally-administered city of Jerusalem, had strong support in Western nations as well as the Soviet Union. It was opposed by Arab nations.
The General Assembly voted, 33-13, in favor of partition, with 10 members, including Britain, abstaining. The six Arab nations in the General Assembly staged a walkout in protest. The New York Times reported: "The walkout of the Arab delegates was taken as a clear indication that the Palestinian Arabs would have nothing to do with the Assembly's decision. The British have emphasized repeatedly that British troops could not be used to impose a settlement not acceptable to both Jews and Arabs, and the partition plan does not provide outside military force to keep order. Instead, it provides for the establishment of armed militia by the two nascent states to keep internal order."
Six months later, on May 14, 1948, Jewish leaders in the region formed the state of Israel. British troops left, thousands of Palestinian Arabs fled and Arab armies invaded Israel. In the Arab-Israeli War, Israel defeated its enemies. It was the first of several wars fought between Israel and its neighbors.
The Holocaust was such a powerful demonstration of Herzl's reasons for setting up a Jewish country being taken to their logical extreme that that Jewish country, the State of Israel, was declared just three years following the end of World War II, on May 14, 1948.
The State of Israel, the first Jewish state for nearly 2,000 years, was proclaimed at 1600 on 14 May 1948 in Tel Aviv. The declaration came into effect the following day as the last British troops withdrew. Palestinians remember 15 May as "al-Nakba", or the Catastrophe.
The year had begun with Jewish and Arab armies each staging attacks on territory held by the other side. Jewish forces, backed by the Irgun and Lehi militant groups made more progress, seizing areas alloted to the Jewish state but also conquering substantial territories allocated for the Palestinian one.
Irgun and Lehi massacred scores of inhabitants of the village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem on 9 April. Word of the massacre spread terror among Palestinians and hundreds of thousands fled to Lebanon, Egypt and the area now known as the West Bank.
The Jewish armies were victorious in the Negev, Galilee, West Jerusalem and much of the coastal plain.
The day after the state of Israel was declared five Arab armies from Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq immediately invaded Israel but were repulsed, and the Israeli army crushed pockets of resistance. Armistices established Israel's borders on the frontier of most of the earlier British Mandate Palestine.
Egypt kept the Gaza Strip while Jordan annexed the area around East Jerusalem and the land now known as the West Bank. These territories made up about 25% of the total area of British Mandate Palestine.
9.0 THE AFRICAN NATIONS
After the Second World War nationalist movements in Africa quickly gained momentum. This was largely due to the War itself, and its effects. Many thousands of Africans had fought In the Allied armies, expanding their outlook and their knowledge of international affairs; and the war had been to some extent an antiracist war - against the racist governments of the Axis powers. And many more Africans had by now received the beginnings of a modern education and begun to take an interest in political matters. In many parts of Africa outstanding leaders arose - such men as Kwame Nkrumah of the Gold Coast, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Sékou Touré of (French) Guinea, Houphouet- Boigny of Ivory Coast.
Moreover the status of the two great colonial powers in Africa - France and Britain - had changed, and also their attitude to colonialism. France had been defeated, and after the war soon had serious troubles in her south-east Asian colonial empire, which she abandoned altogether in 1954. Britain had been forced to withdraw from her Empire in India In 1947, and British opinion was becoming favourable to political concessions towards self-government in her colonies and protectorates.
The first moves came in the north. After their withdrawal from south-east Asia the French were faced with nationalist unrest in Morocco and Tunisia which they were unable to subdue, and both were granted independence in 1956 - the year in which the British left the (Egyptian) Sudan to be an independent nation.
The greatest blow to France, though, was a Muslim revolt in Algeria, regarded as part of France, and where there were over a million European settlers. For four years, 1954-58, huge numbers of French troops were sent to Algeria to crush the rebellion, but failed to do go. In 1958 the French government decided to negotiate, whereupon the settlers and French military leaders in Algeria seized power. To restore the situation de Gaulle came back, on a wave of public enthusiasm, to govern France. But the war went on; and in 1962, with the approval of a referendum in France, the independence of Algeria was accepted. Nearly a million settlers moved to France.
Meanwhile France had launched, in 1958, a "Community of African nations" to include all the remaining French territories in Africa. (De Gaulle had probably hoped that Algeria would fit into this.) In the Community each state was to be self governing, but closely linked to France in foreign, strategic, financial and economic affairs. The following became members : Senegal, Gabon, Chad, Congo, Central African Republic, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Upper Volta, Ivory Coast, Benin (Dahomey), and Malagasy (Madagascar). Guinea did not join, and became independent.
Two years later all members of the Community became fully independent - whereupon six of them withdrew from the Community (Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Upper Volta, Ivory Coast, and Benin). The organs of government in the Community later dropped into abeyance, but French influence remained dominant. The ex-mandates Togo and Cameroon also became independent in 1960, and remained territories associated with the Community. French Somaliland became a "territory associated with France" and fully independent as the Republic of Djibouti in 1977.
In all these ex-French African states, except those in North Africa, French is still an official language - and it is also much spoken in ex-French North Africa.
The first Negro state to gain independence was the British colony, the Gold Coast, which became independent Ghana in 1957 under the leadership of Nkrumah (and the British part of the Togo mandate was added to Ghana). The other British possessions in West Africa - Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia - followed between 1960 and 1965. (Gambia took the name "The Gambia" after independence.)
Progress towards self-government and eventual complete independence was probably smoother in these West African states where there were few white settlers than it was in some of the climatically more salubrious territories in East Africa, where there were significant numbers of Europeans and Asians who were apprehensive of their future under African rule. For instance, in Kenya there were some 40-50,000 whites, about the same number of Arabs, and nearly 200,000 Indians or Pakistanis who had originally been imported for work on railway building.
Nevertheless, between 1960 and 1964 independence was granted to all the British possessions in East Africa: British Somaliland (which was united with ex-Italian Somaliland to form the new state of Somalia), Tanzania**, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, and Zambia. In Kenya Britain had been confronted during most of the 1950s by a terrorist Organisation, the Mau Mau, a Kikuyu secret society expressing resentment against the European settlers and against the restrictions on allotment of land to Africans.
In South Africa the British protectorate of Bechuanaland became independent Botswana in 1966; and two other tribal territories - Basutoland and Swaziland - which were surrounded by the Union of South Africa and had become British protectorates in 1868 and 1902 respectively, also gained independence, Basutoland (as Lesotho) in 1966, Swaziland in 1968.
In 1960, the Union of South Africa became a republic, and in 1961 withdrew from the British Commonwealth. The former British colonies and protectorates Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland all remained in the Commonwealth.
The situation in Southern Rhodesia was more difficult. Britain's plans for her independence with majority rule (in effect African rule) were bitterly opposed by most of the ¼ million or so white settlers. Failing to reach any agreement on the question, the white Rhodesians in 1965 declared Rhodesia to be an independent Dominion, within the Commonwealth. Negotiations and discussions - and internal troubles - continued for 15 years, until in 1980 Rhodesia became the independent African nation Zimbabwe - staying in the British Commonwealth.
10.0 COLLAPSE OF USSR
The disintegration of the Soviet Union began on the peripheries, in the non-Russian areas. The first region to produce mass, organized dissent was the Baltic region, where, in 1987, the government of Estonia demanded autonomy. This move was later followed by similar moves in Lithuania and Latvia, the other two Baltic republics. The nationalist movements in the Baltics constituted a strong challenge to Gorbachev's policy of glasnost. He did not want to crack down too severely on the participants in these movements, yet at the same time, it became increasingly evident that allowing them to run their course would spell disaster for the Soviet Union, which would completely collapse if all of the periphery republics were to demand independence.
After the initiative from Estonia, similar movements sprang up all over the former Soviet Union. In the Trans-Caucasus region (in the South of the Soviet Union), a movement developed inside the Armenian-populated autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabagh, in the Republic of Azerbaijan. The Armenian population of this region demanded that they be granted the right to secede and join the Republic of Armenia, with whose population they were ethnically linked. Massive demonstrations were held in Armenia in solidarity with the secessionists in Nagorno-Karabagh. The Gorbachev government refused to allow the population of Nagorno-Karabagh to secede, and the situation developed into a violent territorial dispute, eventually degenerating into an all-out war which continues unabated until the present day.
Once this "Pandora's box" had been opened, nationalist movements emerged in Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Byelorussia, and the Central Asian republics. The power of the Central Government was considerably weakened by these movements; they could no longer rely on the cooperation of Government figures in the republics.
Finally, the situation came to a head in August of 1991. In a last-ditch effort to save the Soviet Union, which was floundering under the impact of the political movements which had emerged since the implementation of Gorbachev's glasnost, a group of "hard-line" Communists organized a coup d'etat. They kidnapped Gorbachev, and then, on August 19 of 1991, they announced on state television that Gorbachev was very ill and would no longer be able to govern. The country went into an uproar. Massive protests were staged in Moscow, Leningrad, and many of the other major cities of the Soviet Union. When the coup organizers tried to bring in the military to quell the protestors, the soldiers themselves rebelled, saying that they could not fire on their fellow countrymen. After three days of massive protest, the coup organizers surrendered, realizing that without the cooperation of the military, they did not have the power to overcome the power of the entire population of the country.
After the failed coup attempt, it was only a few months until the Soviet Union completely collapsed. Both the government and the people realized that there was no way to turn back the clock; the massive demonstrations of the "August days" had demonstrated that the population would accept nothing less than democracy. Gorbachev conceded power, realizing that he could no longer contain the power of the population. On December 25, 1991, he resigned. By January of 1992, by popular demand, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. In its place, a new entity was formed. It was called the "Commonwealth of Independent Republics (CIS)," and was composed of most of the independent countries of the former Soviet Union. While the member countries had complete political independence, they were linked to other Commonwealth countries by economic, and, in some cases, military ties.
Now that the Soviet Union, with its centralized political and economic system, has ceased to exist, the 15 newly formed independent countries which emerged in its aftermath were faced with an overwhelming task. They had to develop their economies, reorganize their political systems, and, in many cases, settle bitter territorial disputes. A number of wars developed on the peripheries of the former Soviet Union. Additionally, the entire region suffered a period of severe economic hardship. However, despite the many hardships facing the region, bold steps were taken toward democratization, reorganization, and rebuilding.
11.0 NEOCOLONIALISM
"Neocolonialism"or the new colonialism refers to colonialism by other means. Specifically, neocolonialism refers to the theory that former or existing economic relationships perpetuated by the GATT and WTO are used to maintain control of former colonies after formal independence was achieved by controlling trade and other economic forces. In broader usage, neocolonialism may simply refer to the involvement of powerful countries in the affairs of less powerful countries and implies a form of economic imperialism. According to the dependency theory which draws upon Marxist thought, colonialism and neocolonialism are the reasons for poverty within the world system. This theory argues that countries have developed at an uneven rate because wealthy countries have exploited poor countries in the past through colonialism and today through neocolonialism using foreign debt and foreign trade as the tools.
11.1 Core, semi-peripheral, peripheral
According to the world-systems theory, the aftermath of colonialism was the new practice of neocolonialism. This practice produces unequal economic relations within the world system. Sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein elaborated on these forms of economic inequality. In this theory, the world economic system is divided into a hierarchy of three types of countries: core, semi-peripheral, and peripheral. Core countries (e.g., U.S., Japan, Germany) are dominant capitalist countries characterized by high levels of industrialization and urbanization. Peripheral countries (e.g., most African countries and low income countries in South America) are dependent on core countries for capital, and have very little industrialization and urbanization. Peripheral countries are usually agrarian and have low literacy rates and lack internet connection in many areas. Semiperipheral countries (e.g., South Korea, Taiwan, Mexico, Brazil, India, Nigeria, South Africa) are less developed than core nations but are more developed than peripheral nations.
Africa seems to be the latest battleground for neocolonialism and along with Europe the two biggest Asian nations India and China are also vying for the spoils. In 2014, trade between China and Africa was worth more than $ 200 billion, 20 times what it was in 2000. The essence of the model is the same as the European model of colonialism. Billions of dollars worth African resources are extracted and are used to make the manufactured goods that are then sold back to Africans at a marked-up price. This results in the same outcome where the value and money from the natural resources go to the West and East Asia rather than Africa. This asymmetric trade has the effect of pushing up poverty levels in Africa. According to some sources, between 1990 and 2003, African countries received US$540 billion in loans, paid back $580 billion in total and still owed $330 billion. Such "aid" is merely another way of bleeding the impoverished continent.
As a condition to offering loans to poor countries, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) insist on structural adjustment programs which force the nations to privatize their economies and allow Western corporations access to their raw materials and markets. The IMF and the World Bank's pressure on the Zambian government to privatize the copper mines is an example of this policy. Although Zambia has the third-largest copper reserves in the world, 64 percent of the Zambians live below the poverty line, 80 percent of people living on less than $2 a day. Once again the resources are extracted to enrich the economies of other nations. Swedish international development agency Forum Syd reports that the tax evasion of multi-national corporations operating on the continent causes African countries to lose $160 billion in tax revenue, a sum equaling more than one and a half times the total aid sent to the whole developing world over the course of one year. Instead, the money lands in rich Western nations or protected in tax havens.
The South Korean government and the Korean multinational companies , to ensure a reliable, long-term supply of food stuffs have bought the exploitation rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in under-developed countries of the Third World.
Throughout Africa and the rest of the developing world thousands of Non-Governmental Organizations are engaged in assisting the impoverished, the downtrodden, and the unfortunate. While their specific objectives might vary, their broad goal is to simply "help." However, contrastingly, the presence of so many NGOs and UN personnel coupled with their vast budgets creates distorting effects on the economy. The large influx creates an artificial boom economy in the region leading to inflation throughout all sectors of the economy. It becomes difficult for the local small business owner to recruit and retain qualified personnel.
11.2 Naomi Klein
In her latest book 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism', Naomi Klein makes the case that corporations (and capitalism-friendly governments) not only profit from disaster and conflict, but actively work to exploit countries in crisis. The "shock doctrine," as Klein defines it, falls into place after a terrorist attack, a killer hurricane, a regime change; in fact any disaster when corporate interests swoop in on a disoriented people to rewrite the rules in favor of commerce and globalization. In her deeply historical, carefully sourced book, Klein shows the link between commerce and crisis.
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