A Global History
1830-2000
Module HI31D
(Advanced Option)
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Module HI31D
Module teacher: David Hardiman
Room 308. Tel. 72584. Email: D.Hardiman@warwick.ac.uk
Module website (includes all the information in the handbook, but will be updated as necessary): http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/undergraduate/modules/resistance/
Seminars are held each Wednesday in room H 0.43 (ground floor of Humanities) from
10.0 to 12.0 in the morning.
The module examines the history of nonviolent resistance in a global perspective during the modern period. It examines the ways in which the method has evolved over time, bringing out how protesters learnt from past struggles, in the process evolving their own strategies and techniques in the context of their own societies. It provides, therefore, a case study of a global dialogue. The module will bring out the way in which a range of different and evolving issues could be asserted through this means, ranging from working class demands of Britain in the 1830s and 1840s, to nineteenth century nationalist causes, notably that of the Hungarians within the Hapsburg Empire, the Finns within the Russian
Empire, the demand for independence by Indian nationalists led by Gandhi (who reframed the concept as satyagraha), non-violent resistance to the Nazis, the antiapartheid movement in South Africa, the civil rights movement by African-Americans in the USA, the upsurge in eastern Europe in the 1980s, the pro-democracy protests in
Burma in 1988 and China in 1989 that failed, and the successful movement in Serbia in
2000 to remove Slobodan Milosevic. This list is by no means exhaustive, and students may explore movements other than the ones focussed on in the weekly seminars in their written work, examining the efficacy of the method in a variety of particular historical contexts. There will also be a discussion of the efficacy of the method; when it has worked best and when it has failed; and the relationship between nonviolent and violent resistance, such as terrorism, and warfare. The module is conducted through a two-hour seminar each Wednesday from 10.0 to 12.0 in room H0.43.
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(All seminars apart from week 1 are on Wednesdays in room H 043, from 10.0 to 12.0)
Autumn Term – w eeks:
1.
15 minute preliminary meeting on Wednesday 3 October at 915 in H 303
2.
Defining nonviolent resistance and its implications.
3.
Violence and nonviolence – a discussion of theories.
4.
The 18 th and early 19 th centuries.
5.
Passive resistance for national self-determination without revolution –
Hungary and Finland.
6.
Reading week.
7.
Satyagraha and ‘Nonviolence’: Gandhi in South Africa.
8.
Gandhi in India.
9.
Gandhi’s influence in South Asia and the World.
10.
Nonviolent resistance to Hitler
Spring Term – weeks:
1.
US Civil Rights Movement.
2.
Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa.
3.
Nonviolence in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s: theories, critiques, movements, and the Gandhi film.
4.
Solidarity in Poland 1980-8.
5.
Women and nonviolence.
6.
Reading week.
7.
Burma and China.
8.
OTPOR in Serbia.
9.
Comparative themes (1).
10.
Comparative themes (2).
Summer Term – week :
3. Revision session
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Set out below are some comparative questions relating to violence, nonviolence and strategy that you will be thinking about during the course of the year:
 Definitions of nonviolence and forms of nonviolent resistance.
 How understanding of such movements has shifted over time.

How has the theory and practice of nonviolent resistance evolved over time?

Does violence help or hinder revolutionary change? Does it make it faster or slower?

Is nonviolence futile against certain opponents, such as highly unscrupulous and violent dictators?

Do humans have a tendency towards violence that makes effective nonviolence hard to achieve? Isn’t violence cathartic, and thus a healthy force? Isn’t heroic violence more stirring, courageous and inspirational than nonviolent resistance?

Doesn’t power, as Mao Tse Tung put it, grow from the barrel of a gun?

Is nonviolence – as Marxists have alleged – a liberal, reformist and bourgeois ideology?
 Does nonviolence favour the socially privileged?

Is nonviolent resistance a negation of the rule of law? Does it breed contempt for the law?
 Does nonviolent resistance have greater potential for mass mobilisation than violent resistance?
 Is nonviolence primarily a moral or pragmatic principle? Do people act nonviolently primarily for the sake of their own conscience, or because it gets better results?
 Does a society have to be structurally ready for change, or can particular historical circumstances and strategic choices by dissidents determine the outcome of a movement, regardless of the political, social and economic structure of a society?

How important is strategy for a movement? What are the most important strategic considerations to be taken into account? These may include framing an agenda, building an organisation, forging broad-based solidarity, deploying symbols, developing a repertoire of imaginative forms of protest, media use and publicity, intelligence gathering, cultivating external help, and so on.

How important is charismatic leadership for a movement? What is the role of local leaders and local organisation?

What is the role of compromise?

Does nonviolence promote democracy?

Is nonviolence more efficacious in a global age?
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(Note: copies of these can in many cases be found in the Short Loan Collection (SLC), on the 1 st floor of the library)
 Peter Ackerman and Christopher Kruegler, Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The
Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century (Westport, Connecticut, 1994)

Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, A Force more Powerful: a Century of Nonviolent
Conflict (New York and Basingstoke, 2000)

April Carter, People Power and Political Change: Key Issues and Concerns
(Abingdon 2012)

Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic
Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (New York 2011)

Howard Clark (ed.), People Power: Unarmed Resistance and Solidarity (London
2009)

Tim Gee, Counter Power: Making Change Happen (Oxford 2011)

Robert Helvey, On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: Thinking About Fundamentals
(Albert Einstein Institute, Boston 2004). Whole text can be downloaded from: http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/OSNC.pdf

Robert L. Holmes and Barry L. Gan, Nonviolence in Theory and Practice (Long
Grove, Illinois, 2005)
 Mark Kurlansky, Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea (London, 2006)
 Sharon Nepstad, Nonviolent Revolutions: Civil Resistance in the Late 20th Century
(Oxford, USA 2011)
 M. Randle, Civil Resistance (London, 1994). Available also at http://civilresistance.info/randle1994
 Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash (eds.), Civil Resistance and Power Politics:
The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present (Oxford, 2009).

Jonathan Schell, The Unconquerable World: Why Peaceful Protest is Stronger than
War (London 2005)

Kurt Schock, Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in Nondemocracies
( Minneapolis 2005)

Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston, 1973).

Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual framework for
Liberation (Boston, 2002) (for electronic links, see library catalogue)

Gene Sharp, Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20 th Century Practice and 21 st Century
Potential (Boston, 2005)

Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics
(Cambridge, 1998)

Stephen Zunes, Lester R. Kurtz, and Sarah Beth Asher, Nonviolent social
movements: a geographical perspective (Malden, Mass., 1999)
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Books to buy
It is recommended that you purchase either: Ackerman and Kruegler, Strategic Nonviolent
Conflict; or Ackerman and DuVall, A Force more Powerful. These will provide reading on several of the case studies examined in the weekly seminars. Schock, Unarmed
Insurrections; Carter, People Power and Political Change; Chenoweth and Stephan, Why
Civil Resistance Works; and Nepstad, Nonviolent Revolutions are all highly recommended for their excellent critical analysis of a variety of the more recent movements. M. Randle,
Civil Resistance provides the best long-term history, and can be purchased cheaply second-hand.
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Presentations:
Each of you will give one presentation. Topics and dates will be allocated in October 2012, after consultation. You should prepare a PowerPoint presentation that sets out the theme of the topic and provides an argument that answers the question. One of the nonassessed essays may be on the same topic as your presentation.
Non-assessed work:
It is compulsory to do two 2,000-word essays, the first due in week 7 of the autumn term, and the second in week 3 of the spring term. You may do extra essays if you wish, and they will be marked and commented on by David Hardiman in exactly the same way as the compulsory essays. Note: You should not do two essays on the same country or movement, and at least one should compare movements in different places or over different issues.
Assessed work:
EITHER
One three-hour exam (answer 3 questions).
OR
One two-hour exam (answer two questions) AND one 4,500 word long essay (due at noon on Wednesday of week 3 in the summer term). 4,500 words is the
maximum number of word, and marks will be deducted at the rate of 1 mark each
50 words, or part thereof, over the limit. Footnotes are included in this wordcount, but the bibliography is not.
Dissertations.
Although students are normally expected to do their dissertation in their special subject, it is permitted to do it in the advanced option. If this is the choice, please see David Hardiman to discuss it, and he will then supervise the dissertation. You must make a final decision in this respect by the end of the autumn term, so begin to think about this from early on in the term, and discuss it with DH to see if it is viable.
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These are for your guidance. You may modify them, or choose different topics if you wish, but please clear all titles with David Hardiman first.
Questions on specific movements
1.
Why was American ‘non-resistance’ considered such a radical force in the nineteenth century?
2.
Discuss the rival ‘moral force’ and ‘physical force’ debates within the Chartist movement. What were the strategic advantages and disadvantages of each approach?
3.
What were the features of ‘passive resistance’, as seen in the national self determination movements in either Hungary 1849-67 or Finland 1899-1900?
4.
Compare and contrast the passive resistance campaigns in Hungary 1849-67 and
Finland 1899-1900.
5.
‘Despite all his denials, the movement that Gandhi led in South Africa was firmly within the tradition of passive resistance.’ Discuss.
6.
Assess the strengths and weaknesses of Gandhi’s leadership of campaigns of nonviolent resistance in India either in 1917-1922 or in 1930-31.
7.
Why has the Indian Civil Disobedience movement of 1930-31 been so iconic for nonviolent resistance studies in general?
8.
Examine the relationship between Islam and nonviolence in the case of the Khudai
Khitmadgars of the North West Frontier Province of India.
9.
How effective was nonviolent resistance to Nazi occupation in World War II?
10.
What were the reasons for the success of the Civil Rights Movement in the
American South 1955-1965?
11.
‘Nonviolent resistance proved far more effective than violent resistance in overthrowing the apartheid regime in South Africa.’ Discuss.
12.
What were the reasons for the successes and failures of the Solidarity movement of 1980-1 in Poland?
13.
How was dissent organised and expressed in Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe?
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14.
Evaluate the reasons for the success of the women of the Plaza de Mayo in
Argentina.
15.
Did either the Burmese or Chinese pro-democracy movement fail because of poor strategy?
16.
What were the reasons for the success of nonviolent resistance against Slobodan
Milosevic in Serbia in 2000?
Comparative questions
17.
‘Nineteenth and early twentieth-century ‘passive resistance’ was anything but passive.’ Discuss.
18.
To what extent was nineteenth and early twentieth-century ‘passive resistance’ an elitist form of protest?
19.
How important was Martin Luther King in the development of the theory and techniques of nonviolent resistance?
20.
Evaluate the importance of American political theorists in the practice of nonviolent resistance.
21.
‘During the 1960s, nonviolence went out of fashion.’ Discuss
22.
‘The 1980s was a decade of both great success and failure for nonviolent resistance.’ Discuss using the cases of Poland, the Philippines, Chile, Burma and
China.
23.
Do women, as Gandhi contended, have a superior capacity for nonviolent resistance?
24.
In nonviolent resistance, how important is an ethic of justice, as against an ethic of care?
25.
‘Islam and nonviolence have proved incompatible in modern times.’ Discuss.
26.
Is nonviolent resistance a strategy that is generally in the interests of the socially privileged?
27.
What forms of leadership have proved to be most effective in nonviolent resistance?
28.
To what extent has violence by one element within a movement helped or hindered predominantly nonviolent movements? (You may if you wish focus on
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10 one particular movement, such as the Indian nationalist movement or the antiapartheid movement in South Africa, and make this an essay on a single movement. Don’t do this if you have already written an essay on one of these movements.)
29.
How important for nonviolent resistance is a commitment to nonviolence as a moral imperative?
30.
How important is it for the success of nonviolent campaigns that the opponent is open to moral appeal?
31.
Are there any particular conditions that enhance the possibility of success for a nonviolent movement against an authoritarian government? Or Why do some authoritarian regimes collapse while others remain strong in the face of extensive nonviolent resistance? Discuss at least three cases. (Note, among other things, the importance of pressure on the regime, the internal cohesion of the regime, and negotiation abilities by protestors.)
This applies if you decide to do a long essay and a two-question exam. You may choose any topic that relates to the subject of the module for the long essay. You can choose a short essay question, a modification of one, or a topic that does not appear on the essay list. All long essay titles should be discussed with me. I will give each of you a time in the final two weeks of the spring term when I shall see you individually about this. If you decide to change or modify your title after this, you should send an email to me. During the course of the year, you should think about your long essay; and you may come to me to discuss it at any time.

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This lists some of the more noteworthy movements during this period. It is not a comprehensive list. In many cases, there were violent elements to the movements, in which case the interplay between violence and nonviolence within the movement, and how each affected the outcome is of interest.
 1832. Britain. Agitation for parliamentary reform.

1830s. USA. Anti-slavery campaign, centred on Boston, where William Lloyd Garrison and his friends formed the ‘Non-Resistance Society’ to fight slavery by nonviolent means.

1838-48. Britain. Chartist movement. Debate over ‘moral force’ or ‘physical force’.

1848. Europe. Resistance to autocracies.

1849-67. Hungary. Movement for self-determination led by Ferenc Deák.

1867-1907. New Zealand. Resistance by Maoris under leadership of Te Whiti.

1870s-1880s. Ireland. Home Rule Movement. Incorporated some important nonviolent methods, notably the boycott, though there was much violence as well

1899-1905. Finland. Movement for self-determination against Russia.
 1905. Russia. The 1905 Revolution had important nonviolent dimensions, though there was violence as well.
 Britain. Suffragette Movement.
 1906-14. South Africa. Anti-racial discrimination movement led by Gandhi.
 1918. Western Samoa. Mass nonviolent movement to protest the mandate given by the League of Nations to New Zealand.
 1920. Germany. Nonviolent resistance in Berlin to attempted coup.
 1920-47. India. Independence movement led by Gandhi.
 1923. Germany. Resistance to French occupation in the Ruhr.

1940-45. Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands. Resistance to Nazi occupation.

1944. El Salvador. Civic strike.

1945-89. South Africa. Anti-apartheid struggle.

1945 onwards. Britain, USA and Europe (mainly). Movement to ban nuclear weapons.

1950-65. Africa. Nationalist liberation struggles against colonial rule, e.g. in Ghana,
Zambia, Tanzania.

1955-68. USA. Civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King.

1965-71. USA. Struggle for better working conditions for Hispanic workers led by
Cesar Chavez.
 USA 1966-70. USA. Anti-Vietnam war movement.
 1968. Czechoslovakia. The ‘velvet revolution’ led by Alexander Dubcek.
 1968-1981. Northern Ireland. Civil rights movement and hunger strikes.
 1970. France. Struggle against extension of an army camp in Larzac led by Lanza del
Vasto.
 1973-80. India. Chipko movement against cutting of trees in Himalayas.


1974-75. India. Movement against corruption of Congress regimes led by Jayprakash
Narayan.
 1977. Argentina. Movement by mothers of the ‘disappeared’.

1978-79. Iran. Movement against the Shah.
 1980-81. Poland. Solidarity movement by workers led by Lech Walesa.
 1983-84. Philippines. Movement against Marcos.
 1986. Chile. Movement against Pinochet dictatorship.
 1987-90. Palestine. Intifada against Israeli occupation.
 1987-94. India. Movement against the Narmada Dam led by Medha Patkar.

1988-90 and 2007. Burma. Democracy movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi.

1989. Eastern Europe. Movement to overthrow communist regimes.

1989. China. Democracy movement.

1990. Nepal. Movement for democracy.

1991. Russia. Resistance to attempted coup led by Boris Yeltsin.

1991-92. Thailand. Resistance to military rule.

1990s. Global. Eco-protests led by organisations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.

1998 onwards. Global. Anti-globalisation movement.
 1996-2000. Serbia. Movement against Milosevic.
 2004. Ukraine. The ‘Orange Revolution’ for Democracy.
 2009. Iran. Movement for democracy and civil liberties.
 2011. Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya (initially), Syria etc. Movements for democracy and civil liberties.
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Seminars will all be each Wednesday in room H 0.43 from 10.0 to 12.0. They are compulsory, and everyone must have read the core reading for the week beforehand, and be prepared to contribute fully to the discussion. Unavoidable absence (e.g. though illness) should be notified by email or telephone at the time. From week 3 onwards, the seminars will be led by one or two students, who will have prepared a talk on the topic for the week lasting about twenty minutes. Other students can then have a chance to question the presenter. In some cases, a short film will follow on the topic. The seminar will then be split into four small groups that will each discuss one of the leading questions, after which there will be a general discussion, moderated by the student or students who are leading the seminar. There will be a short five-minute break in the middle of each seminar. The seminars are as follows:
15-minute preliminary meeting in at 9.15am on Wednesday 3 October 2012 in room H
303.
In this introductory session, we shall begin by establishing the subject and scope of this module. What do we mean by ‘nonviolence’, and a ‘nonviolent resistance’? What other sorts of terms may be used to describe such movements? What are the implications of each? After a discussion of all these issues, we shall in the second part of the seminar look at the film How to Start a Revolution (2011). This is about the work and influence of the foremost contemporary theorist of nonviolent resistance, Gene Sharp.
Core reading:
Thomas Weber and Robert J. Burrows, Nonviolence: An Introduction. Full text on http://www.nonviolenceinternational.net/seasia/whatis/book.php
Questions for discussion:
Definitions:
1.
What is meant by ‘violence’ and ‘nonviolence’? Look up these terms in dictionaries.
2.
What qualifies as a nonviolent movement?
3.
How do we define such action? Numerous phrases have been used, such as: passive resistance, civil resistance, Satyagraha, nonviolent resistance, nonviolent coercion, unarmed insurrection, direct action, nonviolent action, radical pacifism,

14 people power movements, and so on. What are the implications of each of these terms?
Questions for discussion:
1.
What are the main objections raised to nonviolent form of resistance?
2.
What are the main advantages? How do its proponents claim that it works?
3.
How do Weber and Burrowes seek to classify different forms of nonviolent resistance?
4.
What are the main forms that such resistance takes? Provide a list.
5.
Is sabotage a valid form of nonviolent resistance?
6.
Should all such protestors be open and transparent in their activities? Should they resist or evade arrest?
7.
Is nonviolent resistance a moral or practical stance?
Further reading:

Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent
Conflict, Palgrave, New York 2000, introdution.
 Kurt Schock, Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in Nondemocracies,
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2005, chapter 1.
 Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic
Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia University Press, New York 2011), chapter 1.
 Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Porter Sargent Publisher, Boston
1973.
 Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for
Liberation, The Albert Einstein Institute, Boston 2003.

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In this seminar, we shall examine the writings of some of the major theorists and, in the case of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, practitioners of nonviolent resistance.
Core reading and tasks:
Manfred B. Steger and Nancy S. Lind (eds.), Violence and its alternatives: an interdisciplinary
reader, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999, the following chapters (photocopies will have been handed out in week 2).

Chapter 1. Hannah Arendt, ‘On Violence’.

Chapter 30. Gandhi on nonviolence.
 Chapter 31. Martin Luther King on ‘Love, Law and Civil Disobedience.’
 Chapter 34. Gene Sharp on ‘Beyond Just War and Pacifism: Nonviolent Struggle towards Justice, Freedom and Peace.’ (Note: after p.324 this piece focuses on
‘Christian and non-pacifist voices’ and is not s relevant to the discussion this week.)
In the first part of the seminar, you will be divided up into four groups, each of which will discuss one of these chapters, applying to it the following questions:
1.
How does the piece understand nonviolence? For example, how is it defined? Is it seen as moral, ethical, passive, practical, loving, courageous, and so on?
2.
In what ways is nonviolence held to be superior to violence?
3.
What understanding of the history of nonviolence is there?
4.
Are any limits to nonviolence acknowledged in the piece?
5.
Does the piece provide guidelines on how nonviolence should be practised?
6.
Does the author of the piece argue for any practical long-term advantages for a society in using nonviolence?
The seminar will be conducted according to the following plan.
1.
Divide into 4 groups. Each will focus on just one of the above readings
(Arendt, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or Gene Sharp). Begin by discussing the particular chapter in the small group. Do this for about 15 minutes.
2.
Come together in a big group again, and focus on one chapter at a time, e.g.
Arendt, then Gandhi, then Martin Luther King, then Gene Sharp. The members of the each group present their findings (each member should make some contribution, e.g. by answering at least one of these questions).
Then, open the discussion up to the wider group. Repeat this process for each of the four chapters.
3.
Finally, open the discussion up to a comparison between the four readings.

16
We shall conclude with a short presentation by David Hardiman on the long-term history of nonviolence.
Further reading:

Hannah Arendt, On Violence

Hannah Arendt, ‘Reflections on Violence’, New York Review of Books, Vol. 12, No.
4, 27 February 1969 – www.nybooks.com/articles/11395

Joan Bondurant, Conquest of Violence

William Borman, Gandhi’s Non-Violence.
 Robert Burrowes, The Strategy of Nonviolent Defiance: A Gandhian Approach
(Albany, 1996).

David Cortright, Gandhi and Beyond: Nonviolence for an Age of Terrorism, Ch. 1
 Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action
 Pat Duffy Hutcheon, ‘Hannah Arendt on the Concept of Power’, available on the web on: http://www.turning-thetide.org/files/Hannah%20Arendt%20on%20Power%20Article.pdf
 Peter Gelderloos, How Nonviolence Protects the State (Cambridge 2007). A critical appraisal of nonviolent resistance. For link to the text see module website, week
3.
 Mary King, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.: the Power of Nonviolent
Action

Brian Martin, ‘Gene Sharp’s Theory of Power’, Journal of Peace Research, 26, 1989.

Thomas Merton, The Nonviolent Alternative (London 1988).

Greg Moses, Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Philosophy
of Nonviolence

Michael N. Nagler, The Search for a Nonviolent Future, Ch.2. for defining nonviolence, and Ch. 4 on whether it ‘works’.

Michael J. Nojeim, Gandhi and King: The Power of Nonviolent Resistance

Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi’s Political Philosophy

Krishnalal Shridharni, War without Violence

Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action
 Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual framework for
Liberation (available electronically through library link)
 Gene Sharp, Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20 th Century Practice and 21 st Century
Potential
 Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth, ‘Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic
Logic of Nonviolent Conflict’, International Security, 33, 2008.
 J.M. Washington (ed.), A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin
Luther King Jr.

17
th
th
In this week, we shall explore some of the pre-history and origins of nonviolent resistance. While the idea of not-killing and not-injuring opponents has existed in many societies, often with religious underpinnings, it only began to be established as a conscious political technique in modern times. After a brief introductory statement by
David Hardiman, two main developments will be focussed on:
1.
The American tradition from the Quakers to Thoreau and Garrison.
2.
The English tradition, from Godwin to Lovett and the ‘moral force’ Chartists.
One person to present each of these two topics.
Core reading:

Mark Kurlansky, Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea, Jonathan Cape,
2006, chapters 1-6, pp.3-85.

Michael Randle, Civil Resistance, Chapter 2, ‘The Evolution of Passive Resistance, pp.19-51. Available at http://civilresistance.info/randle1994
Questions for discussion:
1.
The Quakers: Why were the Quakers in the USA unable to consolidate their
‘peaceable kingdom’? Why is John Woolman important in the history of nonviolent resistance?
2.
What was the significance of the William Lloyd Garrison’s Society of Non-
Resistance (1838)?
3.
What is the significance of Thoreau in the history of nonviolent resistance?
4.
Discuss the rival ‘moral force’ and ‘physical force’ debates within the Chartist movement. What were the strategic advantages and disadvantages of each approach?
5.
Would the Chartist movement have been more successful in 1839-40 if the ‘moral force’ strategy had prevailed?
Further reading:
Quakers

Peter Brock, The Quaker Peace Testimony 1660 to 1914
 George Lakey, Non Violent Action: How it Works (Pendle |Hill 2005). Available online at: http://www.pendlehill.org/resources/files/pdf%20files/php129b.pdf

Staughton Lynd and Alice Lynd, Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History, pp.xii-xvii and 1-12. On William Penn and John Woolman
Revolutionary and Post-revolutionary America

Robert F. Berkhofer (ed.), The American Revolution: the critical issues

Mere E. Curti, ‘Non-Resistance in New England’, The New England Quarterly, 2,
1929, pp. 34-57.
 Mark Kurlansky, Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea, pp.75-85.

18

Staughton Lynd and Alice Lynd, Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History,
Part II, ‘Abolitionists’, pp. 13-41. Thoreau, pp. 21-41.
 Daniel Marston, The American War of Independence: 1774-1783

Henry David Thoreau, ‘Civil Disobedience’, in Walden and Civil Disobedience, pp.385-413.
 Harry M. Ward, The war for independence and the transformation of American
society (1999)
Chartist movement
 Warwick library section on Chartism DA 559.7.A8
 Malcolm Chase, Chartism: A New History, 2007
 Anna Clark, ‘The Rhetoric of Chartist Domesticity: Gender, Language and Class in the 1830s and 1840s’, The Journal of British Studies, 31, 1992, pp. 62-88.

Mark Hovell, The Chartist Movement, 1918.

J.M. Kemnitz, ‘The Chartist Convention of 1839,’ Albion, 10, 1978, pp. 152-170.

William Lovett, Chartism: A New Organisation of the People: Embracing a Plan for
the Education and Improvement of the People Politically and Socially, London
1841.

William Lovett, Life and Struggles of William Lovett

Marc Newman, ‘Chartism: Violence vs non-violence’, Socialist Alternative,
November 2000. Available on www.sa.org.au

Donald Read and Eric Glasgow, Feargue O’Connor: Irishman and Chartist, 1961.

Edward Royle, Chartism, pp. 18-28. Available on: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/main/electronicresources/extracts/hi
/hi31d
 Preston Slosson, The Decline of the Chartist Movement, 1967.
 Robert Stephen and Dorothy Thompson, Images of Chartism, 1998.
 Dorothy Thompson, The Early Chartists, 1973
 Dorothy Thompson, ‘Radicals and their Historians,’ Literature and History, 5, 1977.
 Dorothy Thompson, The Chartists, 1984.

J.T. Ward, Chartism, 1973. pp. 113-119 on the debate in London in early 1839 on
‘moral force’ versus ‘physical force.’

Joel Wiener, William Lovett, 1989.

D.G. Wright, Popular Radicalism: The Working-Class Experience 1780-1880
Chapter 6, pp. 112-149.

19
‘Passive resistance’ was legitimised as an effective political force above all by the successful struggles for national self determination by the Hungarians against Austria
(1849-67) and the Finns against Russia (1899-1905). We shall examine these two movements this week, and discuss the strengths and limits to such movements.
One person to present each of these two topics.
Core reading:
 Thomas Csapody and Thomas Weber, ‘Hungarian Nonviolent Resistance against
Austria and its place in the History of nonviolence,’ Peace and Change, 32, 4,
October 2007, pp. 1-21. Available through library online.
 Steven Duncan Huxley, Constitutionalist Insurgency in Finland: Finnish “Passive
Resistance” against Russification as a Case of Nonmilitary Struggle in the European
Resistance Tradition, Societas Historica Finlandiae, Helsinki 1990, pp.52-77. Pdf version available through module website.
Questions for discussion
 Trace the relationship between violent revolt and passive resistance in the
Hungarian movement for self-rule in the period 1848-1867.

What strategies did Ferenc Deák deploy in his campaign of passive resistance?

What strategies did the Finns deploy in their passive resistance to Russia in 1899-
1905?

Compare the social bases to these two respective movements.

Can we distinguish ‘passive resistance’ from ‘nonviolent resistance’? Are there distinctive features to the former not found in the latter?
Further reading:
Hungarian struggle for self-determination 1849-67
 Warwick library section DB 925.H4
 Agnes Deak, ‘Ferenc Deak and the Hapsburg Empire’, Hungarian Quarterly, Vol.
44, No.172, 2003, pp. 29-40.
 Ivan Zoltan Denes, ‘The Value System of Liberals and Conservatives in Hungary,
1830-1848,’ Historical Journal, Vol. 36, No. 4, 1993
 Alice Freifeld, Nationalism and the crowd in liberal Hungary, 1848-1914
 Arthur Griffith, The Resurrection of Hungary. Available online at:
 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=RYWoRX7uL6kC&dq=arthur+griffith+the+ resurrection+of+hungary&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=BWVASC6Afa&s ig=OLKryL5GkvaDWKLDtZyrxat8xrc&hl=en&ei=sE4FS__fMdrTjAfK5e22Cw&sa=

20
X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=
&f=false
 Andrew C. Janos, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary: 1825-1945

Bela K Kiraly, Ferenc Deák (in store, has to be ordered from library desk).

Péter Hanák, ‘The Period of Neo-Absolutism’, in E. Pamlenyi (ed.), A History of
Hungary (1973), pp. 285-320.

Peter F. Sugar, Péter Hanák, and Tibor Frank (eds.), A History of Hungary, chapters
12 and 13. (3 copies of Ch. 13, Éva Somogyi, ‘The Age of Neoabsolutism, 1849-
1867, are in SLC.).
Finland: the Struggle against Russia 1899-1905

Risto Alapuro, State and Revolution in Finland (London 1988), Chapters 5 & 6

Steven Duncan Huxley, Constitutionalist Insurgency in Finland: Finnish “Passive
Resistance” against Russification as a Case of Nonmilitary Struggle in the European
Resistance Tradition, Societas Historica Finlandiae (Helsinki 1990). This out-ofprint but important book is not available in the library; however, David Hardiman has a photocopy of the book for the person presenting the seminar.
 Max Jacobson, Finland in the New Europe (1998)
 D.G. Kirby (ed.), Finland and Russia 1808-1920, pp. 69-122. Useful collection of original source material on the movement in Finland
 Brian Martin, ‘Learning about ‘nonviolent’ struggle: Lessons from Steven Huxley’,
Nonviolence Today, No. 22, August-September 1991, pp. 11-14. Also at www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/91BRnvt.html
 W.R. Mead, Finland (1968), pp. 142-45

John H. Wuorinen, A History of Finland (see chapter 5 on nationalism and the language question. There is no mention of the passive resistance movement in this book however)

21
In this week we shall examine Gandhi’s first campaign in South Africa, the relationship between it and European traditions of passive resistance, and the extent to which Gandhi built on existing Indian traditions of nonviolence and resistance? Gandhi later contended that he had created a new form of struggle, which he called ‘satyagraha’ and, later on, he coined a new term in English - ‘nonviolence’ to describe what he was trying to achieve.
This was a direct translation of the ancient Indian term ‘ahimsa’. To what extent can we say that he was in fact creating something very new?
Core reading:

Ronald Duncan (ed.), Selected Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, Part III, ‘The practice of satyagraha’, pp. 65-99.

David Hardiman, Gandhi in His Time and Ours, chapter 3, pp. 39-65.

Claude Markovits, The Un-Gandhian Gandhi: The Life and Afterlife of the Mahatma, chapter 8, ‘Gandhi and Non-Violence’, pp. 146-61
Questions for discussion:

How does satyagraha differ from other forms of nonviolent resistance?

Why did Gandhi reject the label ‘passive resistance’?

Was it primarily a western technique that was Indianised, or rather an India technique that was valorised by Gandhi through reference to certain western thinkers?
 What aspects of the society and culture of South Africa were particularly important in the formation of Gandhi’s idea of satyagraha?
 How effective is self-sacrifice in nonviolent resistance? Is it most effective in an
Indian rather than western context?
Further reading:
Indian traditions of nonviolent resistance

A.L. Basham, ‘Traditional Influences on the Thought of Mahatma Gandhi,’ in R.
Kumar (ed.), Essays on Gandhian Politics.
 Aurobindo, ‘The Doctrine of Passive Resistance’, in Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram:
Early Political Writings. Argument by a contemporary nationalist for the need to use civil disobedience against the British rather than force. D. Hardiman has a photocopy.

Dharampal, Civil disobedience and Indian tradition with some early nineteenth century documents. Sets out details of protests in north India in early British
period. Not available in Warwick library – ask David Hardiman if you require it, as he has a photocopy.

Howard Spodek, ‘On the Origins of Gandhi’s Political Methodology,’ Journal of Asian

22
Studies, 30, 1971, pp.361-72.
Gandhi in South Africa and the origins of Satyagraha

Obtain any good biography of Gandhi and read the sections on South Africa.

Joan Bondurant, Conquest of Violence
 William Borman, Gandhi and Non-Violence
 Judith Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope. A recent scholarly account of Gandhi’s political career.
 Judith M. Brown and Anthony Parel (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Gandhi
(Cambridge 2011)
 Ronald Duncan (ed.), Selected Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, Part II, ‘The Gita and
Satyagraha’, pp. 40-64
 M.K. Gandhi, An Autobiography, or the Story of my Experiments with Truth.

M.K. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, (see chapters 11-13 for the ‘invention’ of satyagraha)

M.K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and other writings, (esp. chapters 14 & 15)

M.K. Gandhi, ‘On Satyagraha’, in Robert L. Holmes and Barry L. Gan, Nonviolence in Theory and Practice

Jonathan Hyslop, “Gandhi, Mandela and the African Modern” in A. Mbembe and S.
Nuttall (eds.), Johannesburg – The Elusive Metropolis

Jonathan Hyslop, ‘Gandhi 1869-1915: The transnational emergence of a public figure’, in Judith M. Brown and Anthony Parel (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to
Gandhi

H.J.N. Horsburg, Non-violence and Aggression (esp. chapter 3)

Steven Duncan Huxley, Constitutionalist Insurgency in Finland: Finnish “Passive
Resistance” against Russification as a Case of Nonmilitary Struggle in the European
Resistance Tradition, Chapter 2 (available only in photocopied version from David
Hardiman). Provides an important critical examination of the relationship between ‘passive resistance’ and ‘satyagraha’.
 Raghavan Iyer, The moral and political writings of Mahatma Gandhi, 3 volumes. See in particular vol.3, Non-violent resistance and social transformation. Gandhi’s ideas, in his own words, are set out subject by subject.
 Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi’s Political Philosophy

Bhikhu Parekh, Colonialism, Tradition and reform: An Analysis of Gandhi’s Political
Discourse
 Bhikhu Parekh, Gandhi

Bhikhu Parekh, ‘Strengths and Weaknesses of Gandhi’s Concept of Nonviolence’, in
Michael Randle (ed.), Challenge to Nonviolence

Paul Power, ‘Gandhi in South Africa’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 7:3, 1969.
Argues that Gandhi adopted a racist approach when he protested that Indian were being treated like Africans.

Krishnalal Shridharni, War without Violence

Ronald J. Terchek, Gandhi: Struggling for Autonomy, chapter 6, ppp.179-228.

Thomas Weber, ‘The Lesson from the Disciples: Is there a Contradiction in Gandhi’s

Philosophy of Action?’ Modern Asian Studies, 28, 1994.

Thomas Weber, ‘Gandhian Philosophy, Conflict Resolution Theory and Practical
Approaches to Negotiation,’ Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 38, No. 4, July 2001.

Thomas Weber, Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor
23

24
This week we shall examine how Gandhi transferred his technique of satyagraha to India after his return there in 1915. His first Indian satyagraha was in Champaran in 1917, followed by two in 1918 in Kheda and Ahmedabad. The Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919 led to considerable violence, both by and against the protestors, and it culminated in the
Amritsar massacre. In the following year, Gandhi launched the Non Co-operation movement, in which he had a strong emphasis on highly disciplined protest. He was accused by his critics of reigning in the protests of the masses excessively, and thus undermining the potential success of the movement. This was called off in 1922, and
Gandhi was jailed. Later, after his release, he supported a highly successful satyagraha in
Bardoli in 1928, and in 1930 launched the Civil Disobedience Movement, in which his first act was to break the salt laws. The presentation will focus on the years 1915-22. A DVD on the Civil Disobedience movement of 1930-31 will be shown, followed by a critical discussion of the overall role of Gandhi’s movement in gaining independence for India in
1947.
Core reading

Either Peter Ackerman and Christopher Kruegler, Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The
Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century, chapter 5, pp.157-211.

Or Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, A Force More Powerful: A Century of
Nonviolent Conflict, chapter 2, pp.61-111.
Questions for discussion:

How did Gandhi first apply his technique in India, and how successfully did he do it?

How did Gandhi modify his strategy after the violence of the Rowlatt satyagraha of 1919?

Gandhi’s insistence on nonviolence. Did it hinder the Indian nationalist movement in 1920-22?
 Did Gandhi make a mistake in calling off the movements in 1922 and again in 1931 before any positive concessions had been gained from the British? Does this reveal a fundamental flaw in his approach?
 How important was Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance in winning independence for
India in 1947?
Further reading:

Carol Becker, ‘Gandhi’s Body and Further Representations of War and Peace’, Art
Journal, Vol. 65, No. 4, Winter 2006, pp. 76-95.

J. Bondurant, The Conquest of Violence, pp.88-102, for Civil Disobedience 1930-31.
There is an extract from this book in Robert L. Holmes and Barry L. Gan,
Nonviolence in Theory and Practice, pp. 85-94.

Judith Brown, ‘Gandhi and Civil Resistance in India, 1917-47; Key Issues’, in Adam
Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash (eds.), Civil Resistance and Power Politics

25

Judith Brown, ‘Gandhi as Nationalist Leader, 1915-1948’, in Judith M. Brown and
Anthony Parel (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Gandhi
 Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action

D. Dhanagare, Peasant Movements in India
 D. Hardiman, Peasant Nationalists of Gujarat: Kheda District 1917-34
 Peter Heehs, The Bomb in Bengal: The Rise of Revolutionary terrorism in India 1900-
1910 For the violent alternative to Gandhi
 Peter Heehs, Nationalism, Terrorism, Communalism: Essays in Modern Indian
History. For the violent alternative to Gandhi
 Peter Heehs, Sri Aurobindo: A Biography.
 Peter Heehs, ‘Terrorism in India during the Freedom Struggle’, Historian, Vol. 55, No.
3, 1993, pp. 469-82.

Francis Hutchins, India’s Revolution: Gandhi and the Quit India Movement
(Cambridge 1973).

R. Guha, ‘Discipline and Mobilise’, in P. Chatterjee and G. Pandey (eds.), Subaltern
Studies VII on Gandhi’s relationship with the masses in 1920-22 period.

Anil Kumar Gupta, ‘Defying Death: Nationalist Revolutionism in India, 1897-1938’,
Social Scientist, vol. 25, 1997.

Amit Kumar Gupta, ‘Anti-imperialist Armed Struggle: An Assessment’, Social Scientist,
Vol. 28, 2000.

Leonard Gordon, Bengal: the Nationalist Movement 1876-1940 (New York, 1974).

Leonard Gordon, Brothers against the Raj: a Biography of Sarat and subhas Chandra
Bose (New Delhi 1990).
 G. Krishna, ‘Development of Congress as a Mass Organization’, Journal of Asian
Studies, 25:3, 1966. Shows how Gandhi changed the constitution and organisation of the Congress radically in 1920.
 R. Kumar (ed.), Essays on Gandhian Politics: The Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919. Classic series of articles on the Rowlatt Satyagraha.
 R. Kumar, ‘Class, Community or Nation? Gandhi’s Quest for a Popular Consensus in
India’, Modern Asian Studies, 1969, no.4. Also in R. Kumar, Essays in the Social
History of Modern India
 Joseph Kupfer, ‘Gandhi and the Virtue of Care’, Hypatia, Vol. 22, No. 3, Summer
2007, pp. 7-21.

S.K. Mittal and Irfan Habib, ‘The Congress and the Revolutionaries in the 1920s’,
Social Scientist, Vol. 10, 1982.

Hugh Owen, ‘Towards Nationwide Agitation and Organisation: the Home Rule
Leagues 1915-18’, in D.A. Low, Soundings in Modern South Asian History.

Bob Overy, ‘Gandhi as a Political Organiser’, in Michael Randle (ed.), Challenge to
Nonviolence

Howard Ryan, Critique of Nonviolent Politics, available online at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/1556016/Critique-of-Nonviolent-Politics-From-
Mahatma-Gandhi-to-the-AntiNuclear-Movement for a strong critique of Gandhian nonviolence and its role in gaining independence for India.

Sumit Sarkar, Modern India 1885-1947

26
This week we shall begin by examining the movement led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan – known as the Khudai Khidmatgars – in the Northwest Frontier Province of India in the 1920s and
1930s. Here, the Gandhian method was adapted in an Islamic manner to powerful effect.
Islam is based on a notion of ‘peace’ – something often forgotten today – and is by no means incompatible with nonviolence. In the second half of the seminar we shall examine how Gandhi’s method attracted a global audience from around 1930 onwards.
Core reading

Robert C. Johansen, ‘ Radical Islam and Nonviolence: A Case Study of Religious
Empowerment and Constraint among Pashtuns,’ Journal of Peace Research, Vol.
34, No. 1, 53-71 (1997)

David Hardiman, Gandhi in His Time and Ours (London 2004), pp. 238-57
Questions for discussion:

How did Abdul Ghaffar Khan deploy Islam in his nonviolent movement?

What did the Muslims of the North West Frontier Province contribute to the
Indian nationalist movement?

Why did Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s fail to become an iconic figure in the Muslim world?
Can you suggest any alternative models of nonviolent resistance that might be more appealing in the Islamic world today?

Why did pacifists in the West embrace Gandhi in the 1930s, and were they right to do so?
 To what extent did Gandhian nonviolence strike a chord in the West – particularly in Europe and the USA?
Further Reading:
Islam (general)

Abu-Nimar, M., ‘A Framework for Nonviolence and Peacebuilding in Islam’, Journal
of Law and Religion, Vo. 15, No. 1/2, 2000-2001.

Abu-Nimer, Mohammad, Nonviolence and Peace Building in Islam, University Press of Florida, Gainseville, 2003.

Robert L. Holmes and Barry L. Gan, Nonviolence in Theory and Practice, pp.36-40

Noor Mohamed, ‘The Doctrine of Jihad: An Introduction’, Journal of Law and
Religion, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1985, pp. 381-97.

Scott Kennedy, ‘The Druze of the Golan: A Case Study of Non-Violent Resistance,
Journal of Palestinian Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2, Winter 1984.

Kurlansky, Nonviolence, pp.33-37.
 Michael Nagler, ‘Is there a tradition of nonviolence in Islam?’ in J. Patour Burns
(ed.), War and its Discontents: Pacifism and Quietism in the Abrahamic Tradition,
Georgetown University Press, Washington DC, 1996.

27

Glenn D. Paige, Chaiwat Satha-Anand and Sara Gilliatt (eds.), Islam and
Nonviolence, full text at: http://www.nonkilling.org/pdf/b3.pdf
 See the following websites: www.nonviolenceinternational.net/islambib_001.htm
& www.globalnonviolence.org/islam.htm
The Khudai Khitmatgars
 Aijaz Ahmad, ‘Frontier Gandhi: Reflections on Muslim Nationalism in India’, Social
Scientist, Vol. 33, Nos. 1/2, Jan-Feb 2005, pp. 22-39.
 Mukulika Banerjee, The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in the North
West Frontier (New Delhi 2001).
 Joan V. Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict,
Princeton University Press, Princeton 1958, pp.131-44.

Eknath Easwaran, Nonviolent Soldiers of Islam: Badshah Khan, a Man to Match his
Mountains (Petaluma, CA, 1999).

Tim Flinders, ‘A Muslim Gandhi? Badshah Khan and the world’s first non-violent army’, Peace Power, Summer 2005.

Irfan Habib, ‘Civil Disobedience 1930-31’, Social Scientist, Vol. 25, Nos. 9/10, Sept-
Oct. 1997, pp. 43-66.

A.G. Khan, My Life and Struggle: The Autobiography of Badshah Khan, Hind Pocket
Books, Delhi 1969.

M.S. Korejo, The Frontier Gandhi: His Place in History (Karachi 1993).

Karl E. Meyer, ‘The Invention of Pakistan: How the British Raj was Sundered’,
World Policy Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2003, pp. 77-92.

Amitabh Pal, ‘A pacifist uncovered’, The Progressive, Feb. 2002,
( http://progressive.org/?=node/1654 )

Pyarelal, A Pilgrimage for Peace: Gandhi and the Frontier Gandhi among N.W.F.
Pathans, Navajivan, Ahmedabad 1950.
 Pyarelal, Thrown to the Wolves: Abdul Ghaffar, Eastlight Book House, Calcutta
1966.
 Mohammad Raqib, ‘The Muslim Pashtun Movement of the North-West Frontier of
India – 1930-1934’, in Gene Sharp (ed.), Waging Nonviolent Struggle, 20 th Century
Practice and 21 st Century Potential (Boston 2005), pp.113-34.
 Dr. Sayed Wiqar Ali Shah, ‘Abdul Ghaffar Khan’ (courtesy of the Baacha Khan
Trust), pp. 1-38.
 James W. Spain, ‘The Pathan borderlands’, Middle East Journal, Vol. 15, No. 2,
Spring 1961, pp.165-77.

D.G. Tendulkar, Abdul Ghaffar Khan: Faith is a Battle, Gandhi Peace Foundation,
New Delhi 1967.
Gandhi’s global influence

Thomas Adam, Ch. 5, ‘Change through non-violence: The rationalisation of conflict solution’, Intercultural Transfers and the Making of the Modern World (Basingstoke
2012)

28

David Cortright, Gandhi and Beyond: Nonviolence for an Age of Terrorism (Boulder,
2006)
 Richard Fox, Gandhian Utopia: Experiments with Culture (Ann Arbor 1995)

Richard Gregg, The Power of Nonviolence (London 1935). The first book to develop a theory of nonviolent resistance based on Gandhi’s practice.
 David Hardiman, ‘Gandhi’s Global Legacy’, in Judith M. Brown and Anthony Parel
(eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Gandhi
 Sudarshan Kapur, Raising up a Prophet: The African-American Encounter with
Gandhi (Boston 1992)
 Joseph Kip Kosek, ‘Richard Gregg, Mohandas Gandhi, and the Strategy of
Nonviolence’, The Journal of American History, 91:4, March 2005
 Joseph Kip Kosek, Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American
Democracy (New York 2011)

Claude Markovits, The Un-Gandhian Gandhi: The Life and Afterlife of the Mahatma
(London 2003)

M. Randle, Civil Resistance, Ch. 3. ‘Satyagraha to People Power’

Sean Scalmer, Gandhi in the West: The Mahatma and the Rise of Radical Protest
(New York 2011)

Krishnalal Shridharani, War without Violence: A Study of Gandhi’s Method and its
Accomplishment (London 1939)

Thomas Weber, Gandhi, Gandhism and the Gandhians (New Delhi 2006)

Thomas Weber, ‘Gandhian Non-violence and its critics’ (2007), www.transnational.org/Resources_Nonviolence/2007/Weber_Gandhi_critics

G. Woodcock, Gandhi (London 1972), Ch. 9.

29
The focus this week is on nonviolent forms of resistance to German occupation in Europe from 1940 to 1945, particularly in Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. Was this the ultimate test of the method? Can it be an effective form of national defence?
A DVD on Danish resistance to Nazis in Denmark will be shown.
Core reading:
 Either Peter Ackerman and Christopher Kruegler, Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The
Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century, chapter 6, pp. 213-49 on
Denmark.

Or Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, A Force More Powerful: A Century of
Nonviolent Conflict, chapter 5, pp.207-239. (3 copies are in SRC.)
Questions for discussion:

What were the conditions for effective nonviolent resistance to the Nazis?

How successful in the long term was such resistance, and to what extent did it help in the overall anti-Nazi struggle? What were the long-term post-war consequences?

How effective is sabotage against property in a nonviolent struggle? This may involve bombing buildings, factories, railways and other installations associated with the opponent, subterfuge disabling of vehicles and so on. There are varying degrees of violence in sabotage. In Denmark, sabotage led to harsh reprisals, and was abandoned in favour of strike action. Is it more akin to terrorism than nonviolent resistance?

Punishment of collaborators and traitors. This may range from executions (very violent), to social boycott. When does such a tactic cross the divide between violence and nonviolence? Note, sabotage, which involves secrecy, tends to lead to violent punishment of informers etc.
Further reading:
 Lennart Bergfeldt, Experiences of Civilian Resistance: The Case of Denmark, 1940-
1945
 J.H. Brinks, ‘The Dutch, the Germans and the Jews’, History Today, 49, 1999.

Anna Bravo, ‘Armed and Unanrmed: Struggles without Weapons in Europe’,
Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 10, 2005.

Louis DeJong, The Netherlands and Nazi Germany

Rachel Einwohner, ‘Identity work and collective action in a repressive context:
Jewish resistance on the “Aryan side” of the Warsaw Ghetto’, Social Problems, 53,
2006. This can be used as an example of resistance to the Nazis in particularly adverse circumstances.

Leo Goldberger (ed.), The Rescue of the Danish Jews Moral Courage under Stress
(1987).

30

Jorgen Haestrup, Secret Alliance: A Study of the Danish Resistance Movement
1940-45
 Jorgen Haestrup, European Resistance Movements, 1939-45; A Complete History

Glyn Jones, Denmark: A Modern History
 Brian Martin, ‘The Nazis and nonviolence’, Social Alternatives, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 47-
49 (August 1987); ‘The Nazis and nonviolence (II)’. Social Alternatives, Vol. 9, No.
1, pp. 54-55 (April 1990).
 Bob Moore (ed.), Resistance in Western Europe (Oxford 2000) – see chapters on
Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands.
 Ricard Petrow, The Bitter Years: The Invasion and Occupation of Denmark and
Norway (Aylesbury 1975).
 Werner Rings, Life with the Enemy: Collaboration and Resistance in Hitler’s Europe
1939-1945 (New York, 1982).

Adam Roberts, (editor) The Strategy of Civilian Defence: Non-violent Resistance to
Aggression. This has essays in it by various authors on nonviolent resistance to the
Nazis.

Bjørn Schreiber Pederson and Adam Holm, ‘Restraining Excesses: Resistance and
Counter-resistance in Nazi-occupied Denmark’, in Terrorism and Political Violence,
Vol. 10, No. 1, 1998, pp. 60-89.

Ernst Schwarcz, ‘Nonviolent Resistance against the Nazis in Norway and Holland during World War II’, in Barry L. Gan, Nonviolence in Theory and Practice
(Longrove, Ill, 2005).

Jacques Semelin, translated by Suzan Husserl-Kapit, Unarmed against Hitler:
civilian resistance in Europe, 1939-1943 (Westport 1993).

Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, pp.87-8. For Norwegian teacher’s struggle of 1942.

Kathleen Stokker, ‘Heil Hitler; God Save the King: Jokes and the Norwegian
Resistance, 1940-1945,’ Western Folklore, 50, 1991.
 Michael C. Stratford, ‘Can nonviolent national defence be effective if the opponent is ruthless? The Nazi case’, Social Alternatives, 6, 1987.
 John Orem Thomas, The Giant Killers: The Story of the Danish Resistance
Movement
For how the people of Chambon village in France sheltered Jews from the Nazis, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Chambon-sur-Lignon Further references are given there, though the books cited are not in the Warwick library.

31
The subject is the Civil Rights Movement in the USA for African Americans from 1930s to
1968, with a particular focus on Martin Luther King, his leadership and his contribution to the theory and practice of nonviolent resistance. The Black Power reaction may also be discussed.
A DVD on the civil rights movement in Nashville, 1960, will be shown.
Core reading

Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent
Conflict, chapter 8, pp.305-368.
Questions for discussion:

What was distinctive about Martin Luther King’s leadership? How much was he influenced by Gandhi, and were his methods similar to those of Gandhi, or were there important differences?

Would it be true to say that Martin Luther King's nonviolence was as much pragmatic as moral?

How crucial was the leadership of Martin Luther King to the Civil Rights movement?

Why was the Nashville lunch-counter protest of early 1960 so successful? E.g. analyse the conditions for its success.

To what extent did the movement benefit from the counter-violence of white racists?
 What were the conditions that brought success to the movement in the south, but not in the north?
 How justified was the Black Power critique of Martin Luther King and his nonviolence?
 What was the legacy of the Civil Rights movement for the USA?
Further reading:
Development of the theory of nonviolent resistance in USA
 Richard B. Gregg, The Power of Nonviolence (London 1935).

Joseph Kip Kosek, ‘Richard Gregg, Mohandas Gandhi, and the Strategy of
Nonviolence’, The Journal of American History, Vol. 91, No.4, March 2005.

Krishnalal Shridharani, War without Violence: A Study of Gandhi’s method and its
Accomplishments (London 1939).
Civil Rights Movement

Warwick library section E 185.97.K4

Bell, Inge Powell, CORE and the strategy of non-violence

32

Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights
Movement 1954-63
 Gregory Calvert, Democracy from the Heart: Spiritual Values, Decentralisation, and
Democratic Idealism in the Movement in the 1960s
 Carson, Clayborne, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s
 Cone, James H., Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare
 David Cortright, Gandhi and Beyond: Nonviolence for an Age of Terrorism, Chs. 2, 3 and 7.
 John D'Emilio, Lost prophet: the life and times of Bayard Rustin
 Barbara Epstein, Political protest and cultural revolution, Nonviolent direct action
in the USA in the 1970s and 1980s
 G. Frederickson, Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the
United States and South Africa
 Herbert H. Haines, ‘Black Radicalization and the Funding of Civil Rights, 1957-
1970,’ Social Problems, 23, 1984, pp. 31-43.

Herbert H. Haines, Black Radicals and the Civil Rights Mainstream, 1954-1970,
University of Tennessee 1989.

Heale, M.J., The Sixties in America: History, Politics and Protest

Wesley C. Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC’s Dream for A New America

Sudarshan Kapur, Raising up a Prophet: The African-American Encounter with
Gandhi

Marable, Manning, Black American Politics: From the Washington Marches to
Jesse Jackson
 Marable, Manning, Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in
Black America, 1945-1990
 Doug McAdam, ‘The US Civil Rights Movement from Below and Above’, in Adam
Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash (eds.), Civil Resistance and Power Politics
 McClymer, John F., Mississippi Freedom Summer
 Meier, August and Elliott Rudwick, CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement,
1942-1968
 Aldon Morris, ‘Black Southern Student Sit-in Movement: An Analysis of Internal
Organisation’, American Sociological Review, Vol. 46, 1981

Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar (ed.), Problems in American Civilisation: The Civil Rights
Movement

Frederick O. Sargent, The Civil Rights Revolution: Events and Leaders, 1955-1968
Martin Luther King

John White, Black Leadership in America: From Booker T. Washington to Jesse
Jackson
Martin Luther King

Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights
Movement 1954-63

33

Carson Clayborne, ‘A leader who stood out in a forest of small trees’, in Thomas C.
Holt and Elsa Barkley Brown (eds.), Major Problems in African-American History,
Volume II, From Freedom to ‘Freedom Now’ 1865-1990s

James Colacico, ‘Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Paradox of Nonviolent Direct
Action,’ Phylon, 47, 1986. Also in John A. Kirk (ed.), Martin Luther King Jr. and the
Civil Rights Movement (Hampshire and New York 2007).
 James Cone, Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or Nightmare, New York
1997.
 Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi, Ch.6. On Gandhi’s impact on Martin Luther King and the USA.
 David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, 2004

David Garrow, ‘King’s Plagiarism: Imitation, Insecurity and Transformation,’ The
Journal of American History, Vol. 78, No. 1, 1991.

Nathan Huggins, ‘Martin Luther King, Jr.: Charisma and Leadership’, The Journal of
American History, 74, 1987.

Michael J. Honey, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther
King’s Last Campaign (New York 2010).

Martin Luther King, Stride Towards Freedom: The Montgomery Story (London
1959).

Martin Luther King, A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of
Martin Luther King, Jr. (San Francisco 1991)

Mary King, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.: the power of nonviolent action

John A. Kirk (ed.), Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement (Hampshire and New York 2007).

Steven Lawson, ‘Review: Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The Historiography of the
Civil Rights Movement’, The American Historical Review, 96, 1991.
 David L. Lewis, Martin Luther King: A Critical Biography (New York 1970)
 Peter J. Ling, Martin Luther King, Jr. (London 2002).
 David L. Martin, Martin Luther King: A Critical Biography, New York 1970.
 Greg Moses, Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Philosophy
of Nonviolence
 Rienhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics,
Niebuhr had a strong influence on Martin Luther King.

Michael J. Nojeim, Gandhi and King: The Power of Nonviolent Resistance

Stephen B. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. A readable and sympathetic life of King.

Warren Steinkras, ‘Martin Luther King’s Personalism and Nonviolence’, Journal of
the History of Ideas, 34, 1973.

Brian Ward and Tony Badger (eds.), The Making of Martin Luther King and the Civil
Rights Movement

J.M. Washington (ed.), A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin
Luther King Jr.

34
Black power alternatives

Floyd B. Barbour, The Black Power Revolt

Peniel E. Joseph, The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black
Power Movement. See in particular the chapter by Wendt.
 Akinyelw O. Umoja, ‘The Ballot and the Bullet: A Comparative Analysis of Armed
Resistance in the Civil Rights Movement’, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 29, No. 4.
 Simon Wendt, ‘Gods, Gandhi and Guns; The African American Freedom Struggle in
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 1964-65’, The Journal of African American History, Vol. 89,
No. 1, 2004.

35
The anti-apartheid movement that continued from 1945 to 1994 will be examined, focusing on the change from nonviolence to violence around 1960, and then on the nonviolent upsurge lead by the United Democratic Front in the 1980s that culminated in the fall of the apartheid regime.
A DVD will be shown on the township revolt of 1980s.
Core reading:

Ackerman & DuVall, A Force more Powerful, chapter 9, pp. 335-368.
 Kurt Schock, Unarmed Insurrections, pp.56-68.

S. Zunes, ‘The role of non-violent action in the downfall of apartheid’, Journal of
Modern African Studies, Vol. 37, No.1, March 1998, pp. 137-170. Also in S. Zunes,
L. Kurtz and S. Asher, Nonviolent Social Movements: A Geographical Perspective,
Oxford 1999. (3 copies in SRC)
Questions for discussion:

What were the main fault-lines in the apartheid regime that could be opened up through nonviolent resistance?

Assess Nelson Mandela’s critique of nonviolent resistance – how valid was it in the circumstances?

How did the Black Consciousness movement led by Steve Biko in the 1970s relate to nonviolent resistance?

How did the United Democratic Front (UDF), which was launched in 1983, relate to nonviolence?
 Given the strength of the apartheid state, which forms of nonviolent resistance proved most effective in the long term?
 What brought the eventual downfall of the apartheid regime? Was it influenced by the growing violence in the townships, with ‘necklacing’ of collaborators and so on? Were nonviolent forms of resistance more important? What was the role of international pressure on the apartheid regime?
Further Reading:
 Warwick library sections JD 116.66 R3; DT 780.D2; DT 763.W2
 Peter Ackerman and Christopher Kruegler, Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The
Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century, pp. 344-45.

Jeremy Baskin, Striking Back: A History of COSATU (London 1991). (COSATU was the
Congress of South African Trade Unions.)

Howard Barrell, ‘The Turn to the Masses: The African National Congress’ Strategic
Review of 1978-79’, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 18, no. 1, 1992.

William Beinart, Twentieth Century South Africa (Oxford 2001).

Steve Biko, Black Consciousness in South Africa.

William Cobbett and Robin Cohen (eds.), Popular Struggles in South Africa (London
1988).

36

Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie, Gandhi’s Prisoner? The Life of Gandhi’s Son, Manilal.
Manilal stayed in South Africa and continued Gandhian activities and protests there till his death in 1956.

Norman Etherington (ed.), Peace, Politics and Violence in the New South Africa
(London 1992).
 Robert Fatton, Black Consciousness in South Africa: the dialectics of ideological
resistance to white supremacy (Albany 1986).
 Steven Friedman, ‘The Struggle within the Struggle: South African Resistance
Strategies’, Transformations, No. 3, 1987.
 William Gutteridge (ed.), South Africa: From Apartheid to National Unity, 1981-1994
(Aldershot 1995).
 Brain Hackland, ‘Incorporating ideology as a response to political struggle: the
Progressive Party of South Africa, 1960-1980’, in Shula Marks and Stanley Trapido
(eds.), The Politics of Race, Class and nationalism in Twentieth Century South Africa
(1987).

Thomas G. Karis, ‘Revolution in the Making: Black Politics in South Africa’, Foreign
Affairs, Vol. 62, no. 2, 1983.

Leo Kuper, ‘The Problem of Violence in South Africa’, Inquiry, Vol. 7, No. 1, 1964.

Karen Jochelson, ‘Reform, Repression and Resistance in South Africa: A Case Study of
Alexandra Township, 1979-89’, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1,
1990.

Shaun Johnson (ed.), South Africa: No Turning Back (Basingstoke 1988).

Tom Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa since 1945 (New York 1983).

Tom Lodge and Bill Nasson, All, Here, and Now: Black Politics in South Africa in the
1980s (London 1992).

Tom Lodge, ‘State of Exile: The African National Congress of South Africa, 1976-
86,’ in Philip Frankel, Noam Pines, and Mark Swilling, State, Resistance, and
Change in South Africa (London 1998), pp. 229-58.
 Tom Lodge, ‘The interplay of Nonviolent and Violent Action in the Movement against Apartheid in South Africa’, in A. Roberts and T.G. Ash (eds.), Civil
Resistance and Power Politics (Oxford 2009), pp. 213-230.
 Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela,
(1994).
 Shula Marks and S. Trapido (eds.), Politics of Race and Class in Twentieth century
South Africa (1987).
 Anthony W. Marx, Lessons of Struggle: South African Internal Opposition, 1960-90
(Oxford 1992).

Matt Meyer and Bill Sutherland, Guns and Gandhi in Africa (Trenton 2000).

Murphy Morobe, ‘Towards a People’s Democracy: The UDF View,’ Review of
African Political Economy, 14, 1987, pp. 81-87.

Steven Mufson, ‘Introduction: The Roots of Insurrection,’ in Tom Lodge and Bill
Nasson (eds.), All, Here, and Now: Black Politics in South Africa in the 1980s, Hurst and Co., London 1992, pp. 3-17. This provides a good introduction to the background.

37

J. Paulson, ‘School Boycotts in South Africa 1984-87’, in G. Sharp, Waging
Nonviolent Struggle, pp. 232-38.
 Gail M. Presby, ‘Evaluating the Legacy of Nonviolence in South Africa’. Peace and
Change, Vol.31, No. 2, April 2006, pp. 141-74. This article is recommended for providing a critical overview of the topic. It includes a critique of Ackerman and
Duvall.
 Robert Price, The Apartheid State in Crisis: Political Transformation in South Africa,
1975-1990 (Oxford 1991).
 Anthony Sampson, Mandela: The Authorised Biography.
 Jeremy Seekings, The UDF: A History of the United Democratic Front in South

Africa, 1983-1991 (Oxford 2000).
Gay Seidman, Manufacturing Militancy: Worker’s Movements in Brazil and South
Africa, 1970-85, University of California Press, Berkeley 1994.
 Gay Seidman, ‘Blurred Lines: Nonviolence in South Africa’, Political Science and
Politics, June 2000.

Gay Seidman, ‘Guerrillas in the Midst: Armed Struggle in the South African Anti-
Apartheid Movement,’ Mobilisation, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2001, pp. 111-27.

Dean Smuts and Shauna Westcott (eds.), The Purple Shall Govern: A South African
A to Z of Nonviolent Action (Cape Town 1991).

Henrik Sommer, ‘From Apartheid to Democracy: Patterns of Violent and
Nonviolent Direct Action in South Africa, 1984-1994’, Africa Today, Vol. 43, No. 1,
1996.

Bill Sutherland & Matt Meyer; with a foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan African insights on nonviolence, armed struggle
and liberation in Africa, Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2000.

Sampie Terreblanche, A History of Inequality in South Africa (Sandton 2005).
 Leonard Thompson, A History of South Africa (Oxford 2000)

Ben Turok, ‘South Africa: The Violent Alternative’, Socialist Register, Vol. 9, 1972.
 Mark A. Uhlig (ed.), Apartheid in Crisis (Harmondsworth 1986).
 Walter Wink, Violence and Nonviolence in South Africa: Jesus’ Third Way, New
Society Publishers, Philadelphia 1987.
 Donald Woods, Biko.
 Nigel Worden, The Making of Modern South Africa: Conquest, Segregation and
Apartheid (Oxford 2000).

38
The shift to a violent strategy by the African National Congress after 1960, and the eclipse of the Civil Rights Movement in the USA by Black Power after 1965 seems to have been symptomatic of a loss of faith in nonviolence at that time. The calls for violent revolution by Frantz Fanon in Algeria, Che Guevara in Cuba and Latin America, and the Vietcong in
Vietnam appeared to accord with this mood. Gene Sharp produced his influential defence of nonviolence in the early 1970s at a time when the pendulum was starting to swing back in favour of nonviolence. Sharp was however working within a long tradition of American political theory on civil resistance, which went back to Thoreau (or earlier), and which was developed by Richard Gregg (who stayed with Gandhi in the 1920s) and other American political scientists. Richard Attenborough’s film on Gandhi (1982) then helped to deliver Gandhi’s message to a whole new global audience. During the 1980s there were a number of very important nonviolent movements, as in Poland (next week),
Chile, and the Philippines.
The presenter this week will provide a critical analysis of these developments. In the second part of the seminar a DVD will be shown on the resistance to Pinochet in Chile.
Core reading:
 K. Schock, Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in Nondemocracies, pp. 36-46.
 Richard Deats, ‘The Global Spread of Active Nonviolence’. Full text on: http://www.forusa.org/nonviolence/0900_73deats.html
Questions for discussion:
 Why did so many activists and theorists condemn nonviolence with such virulence in the 1960s and 1970s?
 Why were so many of the major theorists of nonviolence in the twentieth century
Americans?

What – if anything – was innovative about the work of Gene Sharp’s, and did it provide a major advance for the theory of nonviolent resistance?

What message did Attenborough’s film on Gandhi convey?
Further reading:
Revolutionary violence

Hannah Arendt, On Violence, San Diego 1970. Argues that valorisation of violence by the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s was a departure from classic Marxism.

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth. Provides a strong and highly influential endorsement of violence by the oppressed.


Steven Duncan Huxley, Constitutionalist Insurgency in Finland, pp. 54-56, for
Marxist attitude towards passive resistance. This passage from Huxley is summarised in R.D. Laing and D.G. Cooper, Reason and Violence: A Decade of
Sartre’s Philosophy, 1950-1960.

Michael Randle, Civil Resistance, pp.36-7. Available at http://civilresistance.info/randle1994
 Rolling stones, ‘Street fighting man’ (celebration of late 1960s revolution-in-thestreets). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wKEzHXVPE4
39
The 1960s

Robert V. Daniels, Year of the Heroic Guerrilla: World Revolution and
Counterrevolution in 1968 (London 1996).

Carole Fink, Phillip Gassert, and Detlef Junker, 1968: The World Transformed
(Cambridge 1998).
 Lance Hill, ‘The Deacons for Defence: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights
Movement’ in John A. Kirk (ed.), Martin Luther King, Jr and the Civil Rights
Movement.
 Gerd-Rainer Horn, The Spirit of ’68: Rebellion in Western Europe and North
America, 1956-1976 (Oxford 2007).
 Marable, Manning, Black American Politics: From the Washington Marches to
Jesse Jackson
 Marable, Manning, Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in
Black America, 1945-1990

Bill Sutherland and Matt Meyer, Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan African Insights on
Nonviolence, Armed Struggle and Liberation in Africa (Trenton, NJ, 2000). This brings out how the Gandhian-style anti-colonial resistance of 1950s Africa was replaced increasingly with a use of violence in the 1960s.

Tom Wells, ‘The Anti-Vietnam War Movement in the United States’, in peter lowe
(ed.), The Vietnam War (Basingstoke 1998), pp. 115-33.

Kieran Williams, ‘Civil Resistance in Czechoslovakia: From Soviet Invasion to
“Velvet Revolution”, 1968-89’, in Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash (eds.),
Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from
Gandhi to the Present (Oxford 2009), pp. 110-27.
American political theory on nonviolent resistance
 Hannah Arendt, On Violence, San Diego 1970. JC 15 A7
 Hugo Adam Bedau (ed.), Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice, New York 1969.
This contains a piece by John Rawls, ‘The Justification of Civil Disobedience.’
 Joan Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict,
Princeton 1958.

Joan Bondurant (ed.), Conflict: violence and nonviolence, Aldine Atherton, Chicago,
1971.

Richard Gregg, The Power of Nonviolence, 1935.

40

Joseph Kip Kosek, ‘Richard Gregg, Mohandas Gandhi, and the Strategy of
Nonviolence’, The Journal of American History, Vol. 91, No. 4, March 2005.
 Brian Martin, ‘Gene Sharp’s Theory of Power’, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 26,
No. 2, 1989, pp. 213-22.
 William Robert Miller, Nonviolence: A Christian Interpretation, Schoken, New York
1966.
 Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 1932.
 Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Porter Sargent, Boston 1973.
 Krishnalal Shridharani, War without Violence: A Study of Gandhi’s Method and its
Accomplishment, New York 1939.
 Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, Charles Scribner, New York
1960 (orig. 1932).
Gandhi film

Richard Attenborough, In Search of Gandhi
(trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wihfqAGkd2c )

Ackerman and Duvall, A Force more Powerful, pp.291 and 375.
Chile

Judy Maloof (ed. And Trans.), Voices of Resistance: Testimonies of Cuban and
Chilean Women, University of Kentucky Press, Lexington 1999.

Sharon Nepstad, Nonviolent Revolutions: Civil Resistance in the Late 20th Century
(Oxford, USA 2011), Ch. 5
Philippines 1986

Peter Ackerman and Christopher Kruegler, Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The
Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century, Praeger, Westport,
Connecticut (CT), 1994, pp. 339-40.
 Douglas J. Elwood, Philippine revolution 1986: model of nonviolent change,
Quezon City : New Day, 1986, 60 pp. SOAS HB950 /550749
 Sharon Nepstad, Nonviolent Revolutions: Civil Resistance in the Late 20th Century
(Oxford, USA 2011), Ch. 7
 Kurt Schock, Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in
Nondemocracies, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2005. Chapter 3 for
Philippines.
 Tereresa S. Encarnacion Tadem and Noel M. Morada, Phillipinnes Pllitics and
Governance, Quezon City 2006.
 Stephen Zunes, ‘The Origins of People Power in the Philippines’, in Stephen Zunes,
Sarah Beth Asher and Lester Kurtz (eds.), Non-violent Social Movements: A
Geographical Perspective, Massachusetts 1999, pp. 130-57.

41
The worker’s revolt and Solidarity in Poland 1980-90. A DVD will be shown of Poland. We mayl also discuss the forms that dissidence took in Eastern Europe, and the institutions that could be used as vehicles for this dissidence, such as trade unions, the church, folklore societies and so on. How is a culture of dissidence maintained?
Core reading:
Poland: either Ackerman and Kruegler, Strategic Nonviolent Conflict chapter 8, pp. 283-
316 or Ackerman and Jack DuVall, A Force more Powerful, chapter 9, pp. 113-174.
Questions for discussion:
1.
To what extent was factory occupation by workers a new nonviolent tactic? What were its advantages?
2.
Compare the role of the Church in Poland with religious involvement in other nonviolent movements. What were the differences, if any?
3.
List the full repertoire of nonviolent action in 1980-82, and describe the advantages and disadvantages, if any, of each method.
4.
What were the main reasons for the severe setback of December 1981? Could the damage have been limited with better strategy?
5.
What were the strengths and weaknesses of the ruling Communist Party in Poland?
Further reading:
 Warwick library section DK 443
 Neal Ascherson, The Polish August: The Self-Limiting Revolution, Viking Press,
(Suffolk 1981).
 Neal Ascherson (ed.), The Book of Lech Walesa ( Gdansk 1981)
 Timothy Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution: Solidarity, 1980-1982, Jonathan Cape,
London 1983.

Colin Barker, Festival of the Oppressed: Solidarity, Reform and Revolution in
Poland, 1980-81(London 1986)

Colin Barker, ‘Fear, Laughter and Collective Power: The Making of Solidarity at the
Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland, August 1980’, in Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper and Francesca Polletta (eds.), Passionate Politics, (Chicago 2001)

K. Brandys, A Warsaw Diary, 1978-1981 (London 1981)

Helena Flan, ‘Anger in Repressive Regimes: A Footnote to Domination and the Arts
of Resistance by James Scott’, European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 7, No. 2,
2004.

Hank Johnston, ‘Talking the Walk: Speech Acts and Resistance in Authoritarian
Regimes’, in Christian Davenport, Hank Johnston, and Carol Mueller (eds.),
Repression and Mobilization, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 2005.

David Mason, Public Opinion and Political Change in Poland 1980-1982 (Cambridge
1985).

42

Sharon Nepstad, Nonviolent Revolutions: Civil Resistance in the Late 20th Century
(Oxford, USA 2011), Ch. 3.
 David Ost, Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics, Opposition and Reform in
Poland since 1968 (Philadelphia 1990)
 Alexander Smolar, ‘Towards “Self-limiting Revolution”: Poland, 1970-89’, in Adam
Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash (eds.), Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The
Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present
 Jadwiga Staniszkis, Poland’s Self-Limiting Revolution (Princeton 1984).
 Alain Touraine, François Dubet, Michel Wieviorka, Jan Strzelecki et al, Solidarity:
The Analysis of a Social movement, Poland 1980-1981 (Cambridge 1983).
 Jan Zielonka, Political Ideas in Contemporary Poland (Aldershot 1989).

43
In this week there is a focus on nonviolent protests by women, who have in certain cases become involved in their roles as wives and mothers. Gandhi in fact contended that women are particularly suited to nonviolence. Our case studies include the mobilisation of women by Gandhi in the Indian nationalist movement, the protest by wives of Jewish husbands in Rosentrasse in Berlin in 1944, the protest by the mothers of the disappeared in Argentina from 1977 to 1983, mothers in Northern Ireland, and women against nuclear weapons in the 1980s.
Core reading:

Pam McAllister, ‘You Can’t Kill the Spirit: Women and Nonviolent Action’, in
Stephen Zunes, Lester R. Kurtz, and Sarah Beth Asher, Nonviolent social
movements: a geographical perspective, pp.18-35.

Argentina: Hebe de Bonafini and Matilde Sánchez, ‘The Madwoman at the Plaza de Mayo’, in Gabriela Nouzeilles and Graciela Montaldo (eds.), The Argentina
Reader: History, Culture, Politics, London 2002, pp. 429-39.
Questions for discussion:

In nonviolent resistance by women, to what extent has emotional appeal outweighed rational argument?

Does non-violence enable both sexes to transcend conventional gender roles (as argued by Carol Flinders) or does it play on them to enhance its emotional potency?

Is female non-violence predominantly personally motivated rather than ideologically motivated?

Is it generally shaped by any theoretical understanding of non-violence or does it tend to be spontaneously generated from below?
 Does Gene Sharp’ understanding of power relationship marginalise women, as Kate McGuiness argues?
 Is nonviolent resistance by women based primarily on an ethic of care, rather than an ethic of justice?
Debate: ‘Women are by nature particularly suited to nonviolent resistance.’
Further Reading:
General
 ‘Asking the Right Questions: Gender and Nonviolence.’ Report on a conference of
2005. http://www.wri-irg.org/books/arq-report.htm
 H.H. Alonso, The Women’s Peace Union and the Outlawry of War, 1921-1942,
University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1989.
 Malathi de Alwis, ‘Motherhood as a Space of Protest: Women’s Political
Participation in Contemporary Sri Lanka’, in A. Basu and P. Jeffrey (eds.),

44
Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicised Religion in South Asia
(London 1998).

Pushpa Bhave, ‘Empowerment’. http://www.wri-irg.org/nonviolence/nvse03en.htm

Bernice Carroll, ‘Feminism and Pacifism: Historical and Theoretical Connections’, in
Ruth Roach Pierson (ed.), Women and Peace (London 1987)
 April Carter, People Power and Political Change: Key Issues and Concepts,
(Abingdon 2012), pp. 33-35 has a brief but useful discussion that compares women in violent and nonviolent campaigns.
 Cynthia Cockburn, ‘Women in Black: The stony path to “solidarity”’, in Howard
Clark (ed.), People Power: Unarmed Resistance and Solidarity
 Catia Confortini, ‘Galtung, Violence and Gender: The Case for a Peace
Studies/Feminism Alliance’, Peace and Change, 31, 2006.
 Paula Banerjee, Women in Peace Politics (New Delhi 2010).

Karen Beckworth, ‘Women, Gender, and Nonviolence in Political Movements’,
Political Science and Politics, 35, 2002.

Samir Kumar Das, ‘Ethnicity and Democracy Meet when Mothers Protest’, in Paula
Banerjee (ed.), Women in Peace Politics (London 2008).

Jean Bethke Elshtain and Sheila Tobias (eds.), Women, Militarism, and War,
Rowman and Littlefield, Maryland 1990.

J. Eglin, ‘Women and Peace: From the Suffragettes to the Greenham Women’, in
R. Taylor and N. Young (eds), Campaigns for Peace: British Peace Movements in
the Twentieth Century, Manchester University Press, Manchester 1987.

Carol Flinders, ‘Nonviolence: Does Gender Matter?’ Peace Power: Journal of Nonviolence
and Conflict Transformation, Vol. 2, No. 2, summer 2006 (Berkeley). Argues that women are naturally less violent than men, claiming scientific evidence. Available on: http://calpeacepower.org/0202/gender.htm

C. Foster, Women for all Seasons: The Story of the Women’s International League
for Peace and Freedom, University of Georgia Press, Athens and London 1989.

Adrienne Harris and Ynestra King (eds.), Rocking the Ship of State: Towards a
Feminist Peace Politics, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1989.

Robert L. Holmes and Barry L. Gan, Nonviolence in Theory and Practice, Part Three,
‘Women and Nonviolence’, pp. 115-172.
 M. Leonardo, ‘Review: Morals, Mothers and Militarism: Antimilitarism and
Feminist Theory’, Feminist Studies, 11, 1985.
 Jill Liddington, The Long Road to Greenham: Feminism and Anti-Militarism in
Britain since 1820, London 1989.
 Andrea Malin, ‘Mother who won’t disappear’, Human Rights Quarterly, 16, March
1994.

Christine Mason, ‘Women, Violence and Nonviolent Resistance in East Timor’,
Journal of Peace Research, 42, 2005.

Pam McAllister (ed.), Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence, New
Society Publishers, Philadelphia 1982.

Kate McGuiness, ‘A Feminist Critique of Gene Sharp’s Approach’, in Michael
Randle (ed.), Challenge to Nonviolence, Department of Peace Studies, University of

45
Bradford, 2002, pp. 105-31. This appeared first in The Journal of Peace Research,
Vol. 30, 1993, pp. 101-15. Also at: www.civilresistance.info/challenge/femcrit

Barbara Roberts, ‘The Death of Machothink: Feminist Research and the
Transformation of Peace Studies, Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 7,
No. 4, 1984.

Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace (London 1990).
 L.K. Schott, Reconstructing Women’s Thoughts: The Women’s International League
for Peace and Freedom before World War II, Stanford University Press, 1997.
 Inger Skjelsbaek, ‘Is Femininity Inherently Peaceful? The Construction of
Femininity in War’, in I. Skjelsbaek and D. Smith (eds.), Gender, Peace and Conflict
(London 2001).
 Christine Sylvester, ‘Some dangers in merging feminist and peace projects,
Alternatives, October 1987.
The ethic of care
 Virginia Held, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global (Oxford 2006).

Mary Jeanne Larrabee (ed.), An Ethic of Care: Feminist and Interdisciplinary
Perspectives (New York and London 1993).

Joan C. Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (New
York 1994).
Gandhi and women’s nonviolence

Aparna Basu, The Role of Women in the Indian Struggle for Freedom.

K. Chattopadyay, Indian Women’s Battle for Freedom (New Delhi 1983)

M. Chaudhuri, Indian Women’s Movement (London 1993).

J. Eglin, ‘Women and Peace: From the Suffragettes to the Greenham Women’, in
R. Taylor and N. Young (eds), Campaigns for Peace: British Peace Movements in
the Twentieth Century, Manchester University Press, Manchester 1987.
 G. Forbes, The Politics of Respectability: Indian women and the Indian National
Congress’, in D.A. Low (ed.), The Indian National Congress: Centenary Hindsights
(New Delhi 1988).
 G. Forbes, Women in Modern India (Cambridge 1996)
 M. Gandhi, Gandhi on women: collection of Mahatma Gandhi’s writings and
speeches on women, compiled by Pushpa Joshi. (New Delhi 1988)
 M.K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, ch. 9
 K.D. Gangrade, ‘Gandhi and the Empowerment of Women – Miles to Go,’ www.mkgandhi.org

D. Hardiman, Gandhi in His Time and Ours, ch. 5.

Jaya Jaitley, ‘Gandhi and Women’s Empowerment,’ www.mkgandhi.org

Pushpa Joshi (ed.), Gandhi on Women: Collection of Mahatma Gandhi’s Writings
and Speeches on Women (Ahmedabad 1988).

Sita Kapadia, ‘A Tribute to Mahatma Gandhi: His Views on Women and Social
Changes,’ www.mkgandhi.org

Manmohan Kaur, Women in India’s Freedom Struggle.

46

Madhu Kishwar, ‘Gandhi on Women,’ Economic and Political Weekly, in two parts,
5 & 12 October 1985. In SLC.
 Joseph H. Kupfer, ‘Gandhi and the Virtue of Care’, Hypatia, Vol. 22, No. 3, Summer
2007.
 R. Mukherjee, Penguin Gandhi Reader, pp.179-203.
 Sujata Patel, ‘Construction and reconstruction of Woman in Gandhi,’ Economic and
Political Weekly, 20 Feb. 1988, p.377. In SLC.
 V. Rajendra Raju, The Role of Women in India’s Freedom Struggle (Delhi 1994)
 Tanika Sarkar, ‘The Politics of Women in Bengal: The Conditions and Meaning of
Participation,’ in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol.21, No. 1,
1984.
Rosentrasse in Nazi Germany
 Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, pp.89-90. Brief overview of defiance by non-Jewish wives of Berlin against imprisonment of their Jewish husbands in
1943.

Nathan Stoltzfus and Walter Lacquer, Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and
the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany. Full-length study of the resistance by women married to Jews within Nazi Germany.

Nathan Stoltzfus, ‘Saving Jewish Husbands in Berlin’, in Gene Sharp (ed.), Waging
Non-violent Struggle (Boston 2005).
Argentina Mothers 1977-83

Silvia Arrom, ‘Women Resist Dictatorship: Voices from Latin America’, Women’s
History Review, Vol.11, No. 2, June 2002.

Hebe de Bonafini and Matilde Sanchez, ‘The Madwomen at the Plaza de Mayo’, in G. Nouzeilles and G. Montaldo (eds.), The Argentina Reader: History, Culture,
Politics (London 2002).

Alison Brysk, ‘The Politics of Measurement: The Contested Count of the
Disappeared in Argentina’, Human Rights Quarterly, 16, 1994.
 Margaret Burchinati, ‘Building Bridges of Memory: The Mothers of the Plaza de
Mayo and the Cultural Politics of Maternal memories’, History and Anthropology,
15, 2004.
 Elsa E. Chaney, Supermadre: Women in Politics in Latin America (Austin and
London 1979).
 Jo Fisher, Out of the Shadows: Women, Resistance and Politics in South America,
London 1993.

Jane Jaquette (ed.), The Women’s Movement in Latin America: Feminism and the
Transition to Democracy (London 1989).

Andres Jaroslavsky, The Future of Memory: Children of the Dictatorship in
Argentina Speak (London 2004).

Andrea Malin, ‘Mother who won’t Disappear’, Human Rights Quarterly, 16, 1994.

Maxine Molyneux, Women’s Movements in International Perspective: Latin
America and Beyond, Hampshire 2001.

47

Carina Perelli, ‘Memoria de Sangre: Fear, Hope and Disenchantment in
Argentina’, in Jonathan Boyarin (ed.), Remapping Memory: The Politics of
Timespace, Minnesota 1994.

Beatriz Sarlo, ‘Postmodern Forgetfulness’, in Gabriela Nouzeilles and Graciela
Montaldo (eds.), The Argentina Reader: History, Culture, Politics, London 2002.
 Jennifer Schirmer, ‘The Claiming of Space and the Body Politic within National-
Security States: The Plaza de Mayo Madres and the Greenham Common
Women’, in Jonathan Boyarin (ed.), Remapping Memory: The Politics of
Timespace, Minnesota 1994.
Chile
 Patricia M. Chuchryk, ‘Feminist Anti-Authoritarian Politics: The Role of Women’s
Organisations in the Chilean Transition to Democracy’, in Jane Jaquette (ed.), The
Women’s Movement in Latin America: Feminism and the Transition to Democracy
(London 1989).

Rita K. Noonan, ‘Women against the State: Political Opportunities and Collective
Action Frames in Chile’s Transition to Democracy’, Sociological Forum, Vol. 10,
No. 1, 1995.
Northern Ireland

Begona Aretxanga, Shattering Silence: Women, Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity
in Northern Ireland, Princeton 1997.

M. Ward and M. McGivern, ‘Images of Women in Northern Ireland’, The Crane Bag,
4, 1980.
Women against Nuclear Weapons (especially Greenham Common)

Cynthia Cockburn, From where we Stand: War, Women’s Activism and Feminist
Analysis (London and New York 2007).

M. Green, ‘Women in the Antinuclear Movement’, in G.H. Stassen and L.S.
Wittner (eds.), Peace Action: Past, Present, and Future, Paradigm Press, London
2007.
 B. Harford and S. Hopkins, Greenham Common: Women at the Wire, The
Women’s Press, London 1984.
 S. Hipperson, ‘Women’s Peace Camps 1981-2000’, in J. Kippin (ed.), Cold War
Pastoral: Greenham Common, Black Dog Publishing, London 2001.
 Beth Junor, Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp: A History of Non-violent
Resistance, 1984-95, Working Press, 1995.
 Margaret L. Laware, ‘Circling the Missiles and Staining them Red: Feminist
Rhetorical Invention and Strategies of Resistance at the Women’s Peace Camp at
Greenham Common’, NWSA Journal, 16, 2004.
 Micaela di Leonardo, ‘Review: Morals, Mothers, Militarism. Antimilitarism and
Feminist Theory’, Feminist Studies, 11, Autumn 1985.

Sasha Roseneil, Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at
Greenham, (Buckingham 1995).


S. Roseneil, Common Women, Uncommon Practices (London and New York
2000).
 Jennifer Schirmer, ‘The Claiming of Space and the Body Politic within National-
Security States: The Plaza de Mayo Madres and the Greenham Common
Women’, in Jonathan Boyarin (ed.), Remapping Memory: The Politics of
Timespace, Minnesota 1994.
 Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical
Politics in the 1960s (Chicago and London 1993).
 D. Thompson (ed.), Over our Dead Bodies: Women against the Bomb (London
1983).
48

49
The pro-democracy movements in Burma 1988-90 and China 1989 are the subject this week. Both ended in brutal repression and failure, and the question will be asked why this was so. Did the protestors make fatal tactical errors? A DVD will be shown of China in
1989.
One person to present each of these two topics.
Core reading:

Kurt Schock, Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in
Nondemocracies, chapter 4, pp. 91-119.
Some questions to consider:

In Burma, what were the main strategies of protest deployed against the regime in
1988?

What was the role of Buddhist monks in Burma?

Why was the military junta in Burma able to ignore the adverse election results of
1990 with impunity?

Analyse the reasons for (a) the size of the protest in China in April-June 1989, and
(b) why it was crushed so quickly and effectively.
 To what extent was the fact that both of these movements were student-led a weakness?

Do the examples of Burma and China reveal certain limits to theorizations by Gene
Sharp and others about the efficacy of nonviolent resistance?
Debate:
 What are the strengths and weaknesses of student-led nonviolent movements?
 Are there successful cases of such student-led movements, and, if so, how have they succeeded?
Further reading:
Burma
 Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear: And Other Writings

Aung San Suu Kyi; conversations with Alan Clements. The voice of hope

Aung San Suu Kyi, Letters from Burma

Aurélie Andrieux, Diana Sarosi, Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan, Speaking Truth to
Power: The Methods of Nonviolent Struggle in Burma. Full text available on: www.nonviolenceinternational.net/images/stories/Speaking_Truth_to_Power.pdf

50

Michael Beer, ‘Violent and Nonviolent Struggle in Burma: Is a Unified Strategy
Workable?’ in S. Zunes, L. Kurtz and S. Asher, Nonviolent Social Movements: A
Geographical Perspective, Blackwell 1999.

Vincent Boudreau, Resisting Dictatorship: Repression and Protest in Southeast
Asia, Chs.4 and 9 on Burma
 Alexander Dukalskis, ‘Stateness Problems or Regime Unification? Explaining
Obstacles to Democractization in Burma/Myanmar’, Democrtization, 16, 2009, pp.
945-968.
 Christina Fink, Living Silence: Burma under Military Rule (London 2001).
 James Guyot, ‘Myanmar in 1990: The Unconsummated Elections’, Asian Survey,
31, 1991, pp. 205-11.
 Bertil Lintner, Outrage: Burma’s Struggle for Democracy (Hong Kong 1989).
 Bruce Mathews, ‘Buddhism under a Military regimen: The Iron Heel in Burma,’
Asian Survey, 33, 1993, pp. 408-23.

Maung Mya, ‘The Burma Road from the Union of Burma to Myanmar,’ Asian
Survey, 30, 1990, pp. 602-24.

Maung Mya, Totalitarianism in Burma: Prospects for Economic Devlopment (New
York 1992).

Andrew Seith, ‘The Armed Forces and Military Rule in Burma’, in R. Rotberg (ed.),
Burma: Prospects for a Democractic Future (Washington, 1988).

Joseph Silverstein, Burma: Military Rule and the Politics of Stagnation. Published in
1977, before the democracy movement

David Steinberg, The Future of Burma: Crisis and Choice in Myanmar

Whitney Stewart, Aung San Suu Kyi: Fearless voice of Burma, Minneapolis 2005.

Ralph Summy, ‘Nonviolence and the Case of the Extremely Ruthless Opponent’,
Global Change, Peace and Security, 6, 1994.
 Robert H. Taylor, ‘Change in Burma: Political Demands and Military Power’, Asian
Affairs, 22, 1991.
China.
 Peter Ackerman and Christopher Kruegler, Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The
Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century, pp. 342-43.
 Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent
Conflict, pp.421-27.
 Timothy Brook, Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing
Democracy Movement

Timothy Brook and B. Michael Frolic (eds.), Civil society in China

Han Minzhu [pseud] (ed.), Cries for Democracy: Writings and Speeches from the
1989 Chinese Democracy Movement

Merle Goldman, Sowing the seeds of democracy in China : political reform in the
Deng Xiaoping era

Roderick MacFarquar, The Politics of China the eras of Mao and Deng

Andrew J. Nathan, ‘Chinese Democracy in 1989: Continuity and Change’, Problems
of Communism, 38, 1989, pp. 16-19.

51

Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link (eds.), The Tiananmen Papers (compiled by Zhang
Liang (2002)
 Sharon Nepstad, Nonviolent Revolutions: Civil Resistance in the Late 20th Century
(Oxford, USA 2011), Ch. 2.
 Michel Oksenberg, Lawrence Sullivan, and Marc Lambert (eds.), Beijing Spring,
1989: Confrontation and Conflict: The Basic Documents
 Joshua Paulson, ‘Uprising and repression in China, 1989’, in Gene Sharp (ed.),
Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20 th Century Practice and 21 st century Potential
 Jonathan Unger (ed.), The Pro-Democracy Protests in China

52
In the late 20 th century there were some major successes for nonviolent protest. This has helped legitimise the technique. Instead of a student presentation, a film that lasts for about one hour will be shown that provides an excellent example of one such success – the nonviolent movement that led to the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. It demonstrates that nonviolent resistance can be a highly potent force – however, we need to be aware of the conditions that allow for this. There will be a discussion in the second half of the seminar.
Questions for discussion:

How nonviolent was this movement?

Who supported it?

Who led it?

Was there a strategy?

How did outsiders react?

How was victory obtained, and judged to be a victory?

It has been argued that nonviolent resistance has become more effective in recent decades. What evidence can you see in this film that would back such an impression?
Further reading on Serbia:
 Alan Binnendijk, ‘Power and Persuasion: Nonviolent Strategies to Influence State
Security forces in Serbia (2000) and Ukraine (2004), Communist and Post-
Communist Studies, 39, 2006.
 Sarah Birch, ‘The 2000 elections in Yugoslavia: the Bulldozer revolution’, Electoral
Studies, 21, 2002.
 Dragan Bujosevic and Ivan Radovanovic, The Fall of Milosevic: The October 5 th
Revolution (New York 2003).
 Matthew Collin, This is Serbia Calling: Rock ’n Roll and Belgrade’s Underground
Resistance (London 2001)

Ivana Franovic, ‘Serbia eight years after’, in Howard Clark (ed.), People Power:
Unarmed Resistance and Solidarity

V.P. Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (New York
2004).

Vladimair Ilic, The Popular Movement Otpor – Between Europe and Re-
traditionalization (Belgrade 2000)

Adam LeBor, Milosevic: A Biography (London 2003)

Danijela Nenadic and Nenad Belcevic, ‘Serbia – Nonviolent Struggle for
Democracy: The Role of Otpor’, in Howard Clark (ed.), People Power: Unarmed
Resistance and Solidarity

Joshua Paulson, ‘Removing the Dictator in Serbia – 1996-2000’, in Gene Sharp,
Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential,
Porter Sargent, Boston, 2005, pp. 315-39.

53

Elizabeth Pond, Endgame in the Balkans: Regime Change European Style
(Washington, D.C. 2006).
 Srdja Popovic, An Analytical Overview of the Application of Gene Sharp’s Theory of
Nonviolent Action in Milosevic’s Serbia (Belgrade 2001), available on www.canvasopedia.org/legacy/files/serbian/CTI_Serbian_Political_Substance.doc
 Louis Sell, Slobadon Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (Durham, NC,
2003).
 Vidosav Stevanovic, Milosevic the People’s Tyrant (London 2004).
 Mark R. Thompson and Philip Kuntz, ‘Stolen Elections: The Case of the Serbian
October’, Journal of Democracy, 15, 2004.
 United States Institute of Peace Special Report, Whither the Bulldozer? Nonviolent
Revolution in the Transition to Democracy in Serbia (6 th August 2001) at www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr72.pdf

54
The exercise for this and next week will be helpful in tackling the sort of questions likely to come up in the exam. In answering the questions, you should illustrate what you are saying with plenty of concrete historical examples.
For these two seminars, each of you should make a list of preferences for each of these topics (two this week and two next week), numbering each from 1 to 5 in preference, and give it to me either by the seminar on Friday 12 February. In some cases, it will be a theme on which you have already written a short essay, or are about to write one.
Indicate to me on the list if this is the case. Each of you will be allocated with one of these themes, so that there will be five groups of either three or four members researching a topic. I shall send an email stating which group you are in. I want you to work co-operatively on this, and prepare a powerpoint presentation that answers the question as succinctly as possible, lasting about fifteen minutes. Each member of the group should take turns in giving the presentation, and then answer questions posed by the seminar as a whole. In answering the questions, you should illustrate what you are saying with plenty of concrete historical examples.
Theme 1
How important is it for nonviolent movements to have a commitment to nonviolence as a moral principle that must be adhered to at all costs? Is in fact their real appeal a pragmatic one – namely that they when the opponent commands the instruments of violence, opponents have to adopt a different strategy, that of mass nonviolent confrontation and protest?
Theme 2
Leadership: What is required of leadership in a nonviolent movement? What sorts of leadership do we find in different movements? How important is charismatic leadership?
Is organisation more important?
Theme 3
Is nonviolent resistance an elitist strategy? Examine socialist and Marxist critiques that it works in the interests of the bourgeoisie, and other critiques that see it as being in the interests of privileged groups, such as racial elites, or the state. Are these critiques valid, or misguided?
Further reading:
Theme 1
 L.K. Bharadwaj, ‘Principled versus pragmatic nonviolence’, Peace Review, 10:1,
1998.
 Harry Prosch, ‘Limits to the Moral Claim in Civil Disobedience’, Ethics; an
International Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy, 75, 1965, pp. 103-

55
111. Republished in Joan Bondurant (ed.), Conflict: violence and nonviolence, pp.
50-61.

John Rawls, ‘The Justification of Civil Disobedience’, in Hugo Adam Bedau (ed.),
Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice. This puts the idea of justice to the fore, defining such resistance in terms of a struggle for justice.

Darnell Rucker, ‘The Moral Ground of Civil Disobedience’, Ethics; an International
Journal of Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy, 76, 1966, pp. 142-45. Comment on Harry Prosch. Republished in Joan Bondurant (ed.), Conflict: violence and nonviolence, Aldine Atherton, Chicago, 1971.
 Bob Overy, Gandhi as a Political Organiser: An Analysis of Local and National
Campaigns in India 1915-1922’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, The University of
Bradford, 1982. See Introduction for an argument for linking Gandhi’s morality with his pragmatic technique. For link to the Ph.D. thesis, see website link under week
19.
 Note: the reading for theme 3 (below) provides material to argue against the case for nonviolence as a principled stand – in particular Howard Ryan and Peter
Gelderloos.
Theme 2

Ackerman and Kruegler p. 27, and Ackerman and DuVall pp.495-97 and 503.

David Garrow, ‘Martin Luther King Jr., and the Spirit of Leadership’, Journal of
American History, 74, 1987, pp. 438-447.

Nathan Huggins, ‘Martin Luther King Jr.: Charisma and Leadership’, The Journal of
American History, 74, 1987, pp. 477-81.

James MacGregor Burns, Leadership

Michael D. Mumford, Pathways to Outstanding Leadership: A Comparative
Analysis of Charismatic, Ideological and Pragmatic Leadership

Peter G. Northouse, Leadership: Theory and Practice.

Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organising Tradition and the
Mississippi Struggle. For the importance of organisation.

Look up 'leadership' in the index to Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, where there are many entries.
 Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement, pp.19, 135-6, 144-45.
Theme 3
 Peter Gelderloos, How Nonviolence Protects the State, South End Press, Cambridge,
Mass, 2007.
 Steven Duncan Huxley, Constitutionalist Insurgency in Finland: Finnish “Passive
Resistance” against Russification as a Case of Nonmilitary Struggle in the European
Resistance Tradition, see Ch.2. Passive Resistance in the European Tradition, and in particular pp. 24-5, 54-56.

George Lakey, ‘Nonviolence training and charges of Western imperialism: A guide for worried activists’, in Howard Clark (ed.), People Power: Unarmed Resistance
and Solidarity (London 2009). A rejoinder to left-wing criticisms that nonviolence is a tool of western imperialism.


Howard Ryan, Critique of Nonviolent Politics, full text online: http://www.scribd.com/doc/1556016/Critique-of-Nonviolent-Politics-From-
Mahatma-Gandhi-to-the-AntiNuclear-Movement
56

57
Theme 4
Radical violent wing: A number of nonviolent movements have had to coexist with groups that are fighting for the same cause in a violent manner. To what extent – if at all – does this compromise the movement and hinder its chances of success?
Theme 5
What are the conditions that enhance the possibility for success of a nonviolent movement? The literature on nonviolent resistance tends to analyse the failure of a particular movement in terms of bad strategy. However, if the social conditions are not right, can any amount of good strategy bring success? One point that you may discuss, among others, is the extent to which student and youth-based movements are weaker than movements that are rooted within other social classes.
Reading. As these two themes involve comparison of different movements, there is no specific reading for them. You should draw on examples of movements that have been covered in the module. However, for topic 5, Vincent Boudreau, Resisting Dictatorship:
Repression and Protest in Southeast Asia, provides a good comparative study of protests against different regimes in Southeast Asia that can help you to understand why some movement succeed and some fail.
Exam revision session in H0.43 from 10.0 to 12.0. The exact date of the exam will be fixed in the Easter vacation – it is likely to be at the end of May or early June.