Chapter 34: Africa, the Middle East, and Asia in the Era of Independence
 The Battle of Algiers: revolutions are difficult to get going and
even harder to sustain…but the real test is when the revolutionary
struggle has been successfully concluded.
 Leaders of new nations faced many challenges: compete in an
international economy that favored industrialized nations.
The Challenges of Independence
 Internal rivalries and civil wars between different social and
ethnic groups.
 Economic growth hampered by population increase, and
underdeveloped economies
 Nationalist movements in Africa, the Middle East and Asia had
some degree of mass mobilization
o Many leaders promoted socialist-inspired ideologies that
proved misleading
o Continued disparity between rich and poor
o Not enough resources to go around
o European colonizers had established arbitrary boundaries,
sometimes combining hostile ethnic or religious groups (so
it would be difficult to unify)
 Example: India (1947)East (1947) and West Pakistan(1947): East
Pakistan eventually became the country of Bangladesh(1971)
The Population Bomb
 Many nationalistic leaders were Western-educated
o Many wanted their countries to follow the western
industrialization patterns.
o Soviet bloc also fostered heavy industrialization in their
state-directed drives to modernize their economies and
societies.
 Spiraling population increases overwhelmed limited economic
advances.
 Food crops from New World, led to dramatic population growth in
China, India, and Java as early as 17th century.
 Railways and steamships cut down on regional famines in those
areas.
 India and Java: death rates declined, but birth rates remained the
same: larger net increases.
o With decline of war and famine, partly due to colonization,
population growth sped up.
 However, population estimates for central and eastern Africa have
been revised lower because of the AIDS epidemic.
 Low use of birth control in many areas due to the importance put
on children, especially boys.
Parasitic Cities and Endangered Ecosystems
 With rising populations, urban growth followed.
 Not as many opportunities: many underemployed and
unemployed migrant workers in the cities.
 Slum areas developed on the outskirts of urban centers
 Parasitic cities: heavily dependent for survival on food and
resources drawn from their own countryside or from abroad.
 Pollution and deforestation
Women’s Subordination and the Nature of Feminist Struggles in the
Postcolonial Era
 Indira Gandhi: daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime
minister of India. Served as Prime Minister herself, and was
assassinated by her own guards over the way she dealt with a
Sikh incident.
 Corazon Aquino: female president of the Philippines in the late
1980’s: her husband was a leader of opposition to Marcos and was
assassinated.
 Early marriage ages for women and large families are still the
norm in most African, Middle Eastern, and Asian societies.
 1970’s estimated 20% of the female population of India was
malnourished…and women do not outnumber men like in other
parts of the industrialized world.
 Religious revivalism: return to more traditional religion,
oftentimes patriarchal in nature.
Neocolonialism, Cold War Rivalries, and Stunted Development
 Most emerging nations relied on cash crops and minerals to earn
the money they need to finance industrialization, so the structure
of the world market worked against them.
 Primary products: cocoa, palm oil, coffee, jute, hemp, copper,
bauxite, oil: prices of these exports have declined steadily
 Neocolonial economy: global economy dominated by the
industrialized nations, (legacy of colonialism, where countries
that industrialized first, Western Europe and United States, then
used other parts of the world for their raw materials and markets
and stifled the industrialization of those areas.)
o Also has been extensive corruption of leaders in newly
independent nations.
o Small minority of people live well, at the expense of the
majority.
 International organizations: World Bank and International
Monetary Fund that lend money to many emerging African,
Middle Eastern, and Asian nations…with the expectation of
concessions made and interest paid.
Paths to Economic Growth and Social Justice
 Many challenges to emerging nations, especially fulfilling
promises of social reform and economic well-being.
Charismatic Populists and One-Party Rule
 Some leaders retreated to authoritarian rule
 Kwame Nkrumah: leader of Ghana’s independence movement. He
was committed to social reform and economic uplift for the
Ghanaian people and became the country’s first prime minister in
1957.
o Worked for universal education and industrial
development, but rival political parties repeatedly
challenged his initiatives and tried to block the efforts to
carry out his plans.
o Nkrumah seen as having leftist leanings, many Western
investors didn’t commit.
o Soon after independence, the price of cocoa went down and
resources for Nkrumah’s plan dried up.
o 1960’s Nkrumah crushed political opposition by banning
rival parties, became a dictator as head of Convention
People’s party.
o Nkrumah used nationalism to unify support and sought to
revive African traditions and African civilization
o Gold Coast Colony name changed to Ghana
o 1966 Nkrumah went on a peace mission to Vietnam and
was deposed by a military coup, he died in exile in 1972.
o Guest Speaker from Ghana, saw many of the benefits of
Nkrumah’s programs, especially in education
Military Responses: Dictatorships and Revolutions
 Strength and power of the military: monopoly of force needed to
restore order in many cases.
 Wide gamut of military regimes.
o Many very repressive such as in Uganda, Myanmar, and
Congo.
o Military despots were also aided by Western democracies
and/or Soviet bloc
 Gamal Abdul Nasser: took power in Egypt in 1952 following a
military coup.
o Free Officers Movement: evolved from a secret organization
in the 1930’s
o Muslim Brotherhood: an organization also against the
khedival regime
 Founded by Hasan al-Banna
 Contempt for the wealthy elite in Egypt
 Wanted social uplift and sweeping reforms
 Al-Banna was assassinated by the khedive
Farouk’s assassins in 1949
 Egypt was defeated in the first Arab-Israeli War of 1948, and by
the British in 1952 over the Suez Canal
 July 1952: military coup toppled khedive Farouk
 Nasser and Free Officers were installed
o All political parties were disbanded
o Land reform measures enacted
o State-financed education through the college level made
available
o Govt. Bureaucracy was Egypt’s main employer
o 1956 finally ousted the British from the Suez Canal Zone,
backed by US and USSR!
o Aswan High Dam project: cornerstone of Nasser’s
development drive, but had a lot of set-backs (flooding of
land that contained Nubian artifacts)
 Parasites that caused blindness along Nile River
 Rich silt disrupted
 Lost Six-Day War against Israel in 1967.
 Anwar Sadat: Successor to Nasser…favored private over state
initiatives. Middle class re-emerged.
o Expelled Russians and opened Egypt up to more foreign aid
from US
o He was assassinated by a Muslim fundamentalist
 Hosni Mubarak: successor to Sadat, (recently overthrown in the
2011 revolution in Egypt, was being detained and allegedly
suffered a heart attack, not sure where he is being kept right now,
protected by military?). Country is being led by a committee of
some sort.
The Indian Alternative: Development for Some of the People
 Preserved civilian rule since gaining independence from Great
Britain
 Suffers from overpopulation, but has a thriving industrial and
scientific sector.
 India remains the world’s largest functioning democracy
 Congress Party has been in power for the longest time.
 Nehru was more moderate than Nasser. Pushed state
intervention in some sectors, but allowed foreign investment in
others.
 Green Revolution: introduction of improved seed strains,
fertilizers, and irrigation as a means of producing higher crop
yields.
 Still disparity between rich and poor, social reform has been slow
Iran: Religious Revivalism and the Rejection of the West
 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini: led a revolution in Iran in 1979.
Wanted religious purification, and a call to return to the kind of
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society believed to have existed in the past “golden age” of the
prophet Muhammad. (7th century CE)
Khomeini from a Shi’a religious tradition
Iran had been a sphere of influence overseen by Great Britain and
Russia
o Therefore, didn’t have an extensive Western-educated
middle class
Shah Pahlavi pushed modernization in Iran, supported by revenue
from OIL.
o Allowed extensive foreign investment
o Did not seem as committed to strict practice of Islam
o Pahlavi eventually fled when his military would not support
him and refused to fire into protesting crowds: 1978
Khomeini repressed constitutional and leftist parties, “satanic”
influences of US and western Europe were purged.
o Veiling was mandatory for all women
o Conflict with Saddam Hussein from neighboring Iraq.
o First Gulf War
o Iraqi war machine was too powerful for the poorly armed
and trained Iranians, many of them young boys.