12.2 Nationalism in Africa and the Middle East

Read the following section and answer the questions that follow. 
Nationalism in Africa and the Middle East

Terms, People, and Places
apartheid
Pan-Africanism
négritude movement
Asia Minor
Pan-Arabism
Balfour Declaration

Jomo Kenyatta, quoted above, was a leader in Kenya’s struggle for independence from British rule. During the 1920s and 1930s, a new generation of leaders, proud of their unique heritage, strug-
gled to stop imperialism and restore Africa for Africans.

Africans Resist Colonial Rule
During the early 1900s, almost every part of Africa was a European colony. Agricultural improvements in some areas caused a boom in export crops. However, the colonizers exploited the boom solely for
their own benefit.
Some Africans were forced to work on plantations or in mines run by Europeans. The money they earned went to pay taxes to the colonial government. In Kenya and Rhodesia, white settlers
forced Africans off the best land. The few who kept their land were forbidden to grow the most profitable crops. Only Europeans could grow these. Also in Kenya, the British made all Africans carry
identification cards, imposed a tax, and restricted where they could live or travel. In other parts of Africa, farmers kept their land but had to grow cash crops, like cotton, instead of food. This led to famines in some regions.
During World War I, more than one million Africans had fought on behalf of their colonial rulers. Many had hoped that their service would lead to more rights and opportunities. Instead, the situ-
ation remained mostly the same or even worsened.

Opposing Imperialism 
Many Western-educated Africans criticized the injustice of imperial rule. Although they had trained for professional careers, the best jobs went to Europeans. Inspired by President Woodrow Wilson’s call for self-determination, Africans condemned the colonial system. In Africa, as in other regions around the world, socialism found a growing audience. Protests and opposition to imperialism multiplied.
Racial Segregation and Nationalism in South Africa Between 1910 and 1940, whites strengthened their grip on South Africa. They imposed a system of racial segregation. Their goal was to ensure white
economic, political, and social supremacy. New laws, for example, restricted better-paying jobs in mines to whites only. Blacks were pushed into low-paid, less-skilled work. As in Kenya, South African blacks had to carry passes at all times. They were evicted from the best land, which was set aside for whites, and forced to live on crowded “reserves,” which were located in dry, infertile areas. 
Other laws chipped away at the rights of blacks. In one South African province, educated blacks who owned property had been allowed to vote in local elections. In 1936, the government abolished that right. The system of segregation set up at this time would become even stricter after 1948, when apartheid (uh PAHR tayt), a policy of rigid segregation, became law.
Yet South Africa was also home to a vital nationalist movement. African Christian churches and African-run newspapers demanded rights for black South Africans. They formed a political party, later known as the African National Congress (ANC), to protest unfair laws. Their efforts, however, had no effect on South Africa’s white government. Still, the ANC did build a framework for political action in later years.

Nationalism and an “Africa for Africans”
In the 1920s, a movement known as Pan-Africanism began to nourish the nationalist spirit and strengthen resistance. Pan-Africanism emphasized the unity of Africans and people of African descent worldwide. Among its most inspiring leaders was Jamaica-born Marcus Garvey. He
preached a forceful, appealing message of “Africa for Africans” and demanded an end to colonial rule. Garvey’s ideas influenced a new generation of African leaders.

Pan-African Congress Forges Ties 
African American scholar and activist W.E.B. DuBois (doo BOYS) organized the first Pan-African Congress in 1919. It met in Paris, where the Allies were holding their peace conference. Delegates from African colonies, the West Indies, and the United States called on the Paris peacemakers to approve a charter of rights for Africans. Although the Western powers ignored their demands, the Pan-African Congress established cooperation among African and African American leaders.

The Négritude Movement Shows Pride 
French-speaking writers in West Africa and the Caribbean further awakened self-confidence
among Africans through the négritude movement. In the négritude movement, writers expressed pride in their African roots and protested colonial rule. Best known among them was the Senegalese poet
Léopold Senghor, who celebrated Africa’s rich cultural heritage. He fostered African pride by rejecting the negative views of Africa spread by colonial rulers. Later, Senghor would take an active role in Senegal’s
drive to independence, and he would serve as its first president.

Egypt Gains Independence 
African nationalism brought little political change, except to Egypt. Egyptians had suffered during World War I. After the war, protests, strikes, and riots forced Britain to grant Egypt independence in 1922. However, Britain still controlled Egypt’s monarchy.
Displeased with this state of affairs, during the 1930s many young Egyptians joined an organization called the Muslim Brotherhood. This group fostered a broad Islamic nationalism that rejected Western culture and denounced corruption in the Egyptian government.

Turkey and Persia Modernize
Nationalist movements brought immense changes to the Middle East in the aftermath of World War I. The defeated Ottoman empire was near collapse in 1918. Its Arab lands, as you have read, were divided between Britain and France. However, in Asia Minor, the Turkish peninsula between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, Turks resisted Western control and fought to build a modern nation.

Atatürk Sets Goals 
In 1920, the Ottoman sultan reluctantly signed the Treaty of Sèvres, in which the empire lost its Arab and North African lands. The sultan also had to give up some land in Asia Minor to a number of Allied countries, including Greece. A Greek force landed in the city of Smyrna (now Izmir) to assert Greece’s claims. Turkish nationalists, led by the determined and energetic Mustafa Kemal, overthrew the sul-
tan, defeated the Greeks, and declared Turkey a republic. Kemal negotiated a new treaty. Among other provisions, the treaty called for about 1.3 million Greeks to leave Turkey, while some 400,000 Turks left Greece.

Kemal later took the name Atatürk (ah tah TURK), meaning “father of the Turks.” Between 1923 and his death in 1938, Atatürk forced through an ambitious program of radical reforms. His goals were to modernize Turkey along Western lines and to separate religion from government. To achieve these
goals, Atatürk mandated that Islamic traditions in several fields be replaced with Western alternatives (see Biography).

Westernization Transforms Turkey 
Atatürk’s government encouraged industrial expansion. The government built railroads, set up factories, and hired westerners to advise on how to make Turkey economically independent.
To achieve his reforms, Atatürk ruled with an iron hand. To many Turks, he was a hero who was transforming Turkey into a strong, modern power. Others questioned Atatürk’s dictatorial powers and complete rejection of religion in laws and government. They believed that Islam could play a constructive role in a modern, civil state.

Nationalism and Reform at Work in Persia 
The success of Atatürk’s reforms inspired nationalists in neighboring Persia (present-day Iran). Persian nationalists greatly resented the British and Russians, who had won spheres of influence over Persia in 1907. In 1925, an ambitious army officer, Reza Khan, overthrew the shah. He set up his own dynasty, with himself as shah.
Like Atatürk, Reza Khan rushed to modernize Persia and make it fully independent. He built factories, roads, and railroads and strengthened the army. He forced Persians to wear Western clothing and set up modern, secular schools. In addition, he moved to replace Islamic law with secular law and encouraged women to take part in public life. Muslim religious leaders fiercely condemned Reza Khan’s efforts to introduce Western ways to the nation.
Reza Khan also persuaded the British company that controlled Persia’s oil industry to give Persia a larger share of the profits and insisted that Persian workers be hired at all levels of the company. In the decades ahead, oil would become a major factor in Persia’s economy and foreign policy.

Arab Nationalism in the Middle East
Oil became a major factor throughout the Middle East during this period. The use of gasoline-powered engines in various vehicles during World War I showed that oil was the fuel of the future. Foreign compa-
nies began to move into the Middle East to exploit its large oil reserves.

Pan-Arabism Grows 
Partly in response to foreign influence, Arab nationalism grew after World War I and gave rise to Pan-Arabism. This nationalist movement was built on the shared heritage of Arabs who lived in lands from the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa. Today, this area includes Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco. Pan-Arabism emphasized the common history and language of Arabs and recalled the golden age of Arab civilization. The movement sought to free Arabs from foreign domination and unite them in their own state.

Betrayal at the Peace Conference 
Arabs were outraged by the European-controlled mandates set up at the Paris Peace Conference.
During World War I, Arabs had helped the Allies against the Central Powers, especially the Ottoman empire. In return for their help, the Allies led the Arabs to believe that they would gain independence after the war. Instead, the Allies carved up the Ottoman lands, giving France mandates in Syria and Lebanon and Britain mandates in Palestine and Iraq. Later, Britain gave a large part of the Palestinian mandate, Trans-Jordan, to Abdullah for a kingdom.
Arabs felt betrayed by the West—a feeling that has endured to this day. During the 1920s and 1930s, their anger erupted in frequent protests and revolts against Western imperialism. A major center of turmoil was the British mandate of Palestine. There, Arab nationalists and Jewish nationalists, known as Zionists, increasingly clashed.

Promises in Palestine 
Since Roman times, Jews had dreamed of returning to the land of Judea, or Israel. In 1897, Theodor Herzl (HURT sul) responded to growing anti-Semitism, or prejudice against Jewish people, in Europe by founding the modern Zionist movement. His goal was to rebuild a Jewish state in Palestine. Among other things, violent pogroms against Jews in Russia prompted thousands of them to migrate to Palestine. They joined the small Jewish community that had lived there since biblical times.
During World War I, the Allies made two conflicting sets of promises. First, they promised Arabs their own kingdoms in former Ottoman lands, including Palestine. Then, in 1917, the British attempted to win the support of European Jews by issuing the Balfour Declaration. In it, the British advocated the idea of setting up “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The declaration noted, however, that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” Those communities were Arab. The stage was thus set for conflict between Arab and Jewish nationalists.

A Bitter Struggle Begins 
From 1919 to 1940, tens of thousands of Jews immigrated to Palestine due to the Zionist movement and the effects of anti-Semitism in Europe. Despite great hardships, Jewish settlers set up factories, built new towns, and established farming communities. At the same time, the Arab population almost doubled. Some were immigrants from nearby lands. As a result, Palestine’s population included a changing
mix of newcomers. The Jewish population, which was less than 60,000 in 1919, grew to about 400,000 in 1936, while the Muslim population increased from about 568,000 in 1919 to about 1 million in 1940.
At first, some Arabs welcomed the money and modern technical skills that the newcomers brought with them. But as more Jews moved to Palestine, tensions between the two groups developed. Jewish organizations tried to purchase as much land as they could, while Arabs sought to slow down or stop Jewish immigration. Arabs attacked Jewish settlements, hoping to discourage settlers. The Jewish settlers established their own military defense force. For the rest of the century, Arabs and Jews
fought over the land that Arabs called Palestine and Jews called Israel.

( vocab) apartheid

( vocab) Pan-Africanism

( vocab) négritude movement

( vocab) Asia Minor

( vocab) Pan-Arabism

( vocab) Balfour Declaration

( checkpoint ) In what ways did colonial powers try to control African life?

( checkpoint ) What significance does the phrase “Africa for Africans” have?

( checkpoint ) Why did Palestine become a center of conflict after World War I?

( assessment ) How did Africans resist colonial rule?

( assessment ) What are three examples of the rise of nationalism in Africa?

( assessment ) Why might Muslim religious leaders object to reforms in Turkey and Persia?

( assessment ) How did the Balfour Declaration affect the Middle East?

( objectives ) Describe how Africans resisted colonial rule.

( objectives ) Analyze how nationalism grew in Africa.

( objectives ) Explain how Turkey and Persia modernized.

( objectives ) Summarize how European mandates contributed to the growth of Arab nationalism.

( objectives ) Describe the roots of conflict between Jews and Arabs in the Palestinian mandate.

( focus question ) How did nationalism contribute to changes in Africa and the Middle East following World War I?