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When Lenin came to power and denounced imperialism, criticism of imperialism spread to British leftists. British conservatives, on the other hand, believed that with determination Britain could hang onto its empire, and they continued to believe that British rule in India was better for the people of India than the people of India ruling themselves. People in India, on the other hand, had been encouraged in their desire for independence by Britain's description of fighting World War I for the sake of self-determination in Belgium. People in India, moreover, were upset by the privations of the war years and the great influenza epidemic of 1918, which left five million Indians dead.
Mohandus Gandhi had become a prominent political leader in India - an Indian who had read Thoreau, Emerson and the New Testament in addition to India's sacred literature. Gandhi advocated non-violent protests against British rule, and when Gandhi's protests spread among the masses, violence erupted - in the Punjab, in Gujarat and in the city of Delhi. And although Gandhi regretted the violence, he was not dissuaded from continuing his campaigns.
At Amritsar, between April 10 and April 12, 1919, a mob murdered five Europeans and attempted to murder an English missionary woman and an English woman doctor. A crowd of Indians set fire to an Anglican Church while students were inside studying. A mob looted two British banks, killing three managers. They set fire to a British railway depot, killing a British official there, and they attempted to burn down other buildings associated with British rule. The British in Amritsar responded by declaring assemblies illegal, but the next day at Amritsar a mob gathered, and the British officer in charge ordered his troops to fire into the crowd, killing 379 and wounding 1,208 in less than ten minutes.
The Jalianvala Bagh (Amritsar) Massacre was a turning point in India's drive for self-rule. Many who had been for gradual steps toward autonomy (self-rule with the British in charge of foreign affairs) swung to favoring complete independence. Jawaharlal Nehru and his family gave up their splendor and pro-British attitudes in favor of local dress and political action, Nehru joining the party to which Gandhi belonged, the Congress Party, which was leading India's independence movement.
A government inquiry in London condemned the commander in charge of the forces that fired into the crowd at Amritsar. Britain's Secretary for War, Winston Churchill, told the House of Commons that killing people in order to terrorize them to obedience should be forbidden as policy, that Britain's policy toward India had never been and should never be "based on physical force alone."
Britain attempted to appease the rise in nationalism in India by setting up government councils with Indian representatives that were to function under British control. Meanwhile, political assassination and terrorism in India increased. People believing in terrorism as a strategy for independence entered the Congress Party. They were elected to its committees and their resolutions were accepted by the membership. Bombs of a more powerful type were manufactured. And robbing wealthy Indians as a method of obtaining funds was discarded in favor of attacks on post offices and railway cash offices.
Gandhi's influence resulted in women entering India's nationalist movement in numbers, these women remaining exceptions in a land that where generally women were oppressed - Hindu women as well as Muslim women. Indian women has been described as "perhaps the highest in the world." Women in India still married in their infancy and childhood and became chattel to their husbands. The had had all the limitations forced upon women of past centuries. [note]
In 1922, the British arrested Gandhi and sentenced him to six years in prison. Then, with the publication of E. M. Forster's novel, A Passage to India, in 1924, belief among the British that their rule in India was justified began to erode. That same year, Gandhi was released from prison. And in 1925, at odds with other leaders of the Congress Party, he retired from politics. He turned his attentions instead to a war against taking drugs and drinking alcohol and to attempting to transform the world through spiritual power. Soon, however, he would return to political action, combined with his appeal to non-violence.
In Kenya, European farming diminished during World War I as many Europeans rushed to volunteer to fight. And during the war agriculture was crippled by a lack of transport for exporting crops to Britain. The economy in Kenya suffered at the end of the war. White employers cut the wages of black workers, and unrest and rebellion ensued. Numerous protest organizations emerged, mostly among people of the Kikuyu tribe, who expressed grievances over taxes, labor policies and the sense that they were second class citizens in their own homeland.
After the war, the British government hoped to advance farming in Kenya and encouraged migration there, offering former soldiers land in Kenya on easy terms. White migration to Kenya rose along with the growth in number and size of European-owned farms. And immigration from India had also been rising, with the Indians resenting the way in which Britain's colonial government in Kenya gave in to the demands of European settlers by imposing restrictions on Indian activities, preventing Indians from acquiring lands in certain areas and limiting Indian representation in legislative councils.
By 1920, the number of Europeans in Kenya was nearing 10,000, up from 400 at the turn of the century - against something like 2,500,000 blacks and maybe 23,000 Asians and 24,000 people of Arab origin. Many of Britain's recent migrants to Kenya failed at farming, but in general European agriculture recovered from its decline during the war years. The colonial governing council, consisting of European emigrants, stabilized the currency in Kenya. The governing council passed a law forbidding whites to work as laborers on farms, and the governing council encouraged the development of a pool of full-time black agricultural labor to fill the need for labor on the more successful of the white-owned farms. The governing council passed laws to discourage growth of a rising black labor movement. And it passed a law against blacks growing coffee, responding to the fear of competition by white coffee growers and fear that black farmers would force up the price of black labor.
An association of Kikuyu farmers, the Kikuyu Association, was founded in 1920, which wished to block further losses of lands and sought reforms rather than the overthrow of British rule. A more militant group formed in 1921, called the East African Association. It rejected white rule, attacked the government's labor policies, taxes, loss of lands to whites, and the identification card that all native Kenyans were required to carry. The leader of the East Africa Association was Harry Thuku, a literate member of an influential Kikuyu family. The British arrested Thuku in 1922, charging him with sedition. And when crowds descended upon the jail where Thuku was being held, prison guards fired their rifles, killing about twenty. Thuku was deported to Jubaland, and the leaderless people, influenced by missionaries, consoled themselves by forming a harmless sort of trade union.
In Kenya in the twenties, more roads were built, railroads were extended, and a few automobiles and trucks were imported. There was now a rail line to the soda deposits at Lake Magadi, another rail line that connected with the rail lines that the Germans had built in Tanganyika, new rail lines to interior agricultural lands, and a rail line to the cotton growing areas in Uganda. The British inconvenienced the Masai people again by shifting them about. And the Indian community continued pressing its demands for representation in the colony's legislative council. Eventually the Indians won five seats on the council, but without the right to vote. Whites continued to dominate the council, and they sought additional power for themselves. They wished to make Kenya a self-governing colony like Southern Rhodesia. Great Britain refused their request, announcing its responsibility for Kenya's blacks, Asians and Arabs.
When Britain's Labour Party returned to power in 1929, they stood for land rights for Kenya's blacks and an increase of black representation on Kenya's legislative council. These improvements were accompanied by a crisis in 1929 concerning the brutal Kikuyu custom of female circumcision. The missionaries had been attacking the custom, and the Kikuyu responded with the claim that it was an essential part of their culture. They claimed that the missionaries were undermining Kikuyu rights. The leading Kikuyu nationalist association, the Kikuyu Central Association, rallied the Kikuyu, leading many Kikuyu to break away from the Christian churches and mission schools. And in place of these, Kikuyu developed their own schools.
British migrants were joining Germans in Germany's former colonies - colonies now being ruled by Britain though League of Nation mandates. The British rule in these areas faced challenges, but they were able to manage without much of a drain on their resources. The British suppressed a revolt in Nyasaland, a protectorate between Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia. And in 1923 the Khoikhoi( Hottentot) and Herero peoples in the former German colonies of Southwest Africa rebelled. The Khoikhoi and Herero were a proud, cattle owning people. They disliked prohibition against owning branding irons, being taxed on their dogs and being rounded up for work. The British blamed the rebellion on a too sudden move to leniency away from German discipline, and they crushed the rebellion with machine guns and airplanes.
The British continued to proclaim their rule in Africa as "a sacred trust" for advancing civilization. Their stated aim was to help their subjects to modernize and develop economically, a duty they said they would continue to perform until the Africans under their rule were able "to stand on their own." In partnership with Christian missionaries of various denominations, the British envisioned for areas in eastern and western Africa under its rule an expansion of health and education services, while about a third of the African children under its rule were attending four years of schooling.
In Britain's western holdings - Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia and Sierra Leone - efforts in education spread clerical skills and knowledge of the world among blacks, and people with clerical skills found employment in local government, in the churches, in commerce and in industry. The two hundred or so graduating every year from secondary schools did work with skill and responsibility, and the British stopped sending whites to Africa to fill positions that the Africans could fill.
Young men from wealthy black families in British ruled western Africa went to Europe for training as doctors, veterinary surgeons, agricultural, forest officers, and for other fields. And they returned to Africa to work in their professions or in such positions as managers in retail stores, as schoolmasters, or as officials in tribal government. A new category of African was being created, called by Europeans the "trousered niggers."
Just after the war, some educated blacks in British ruled western Africa organized a movement for national self-determination. Men from Nigeria, Ghana and Gambia met to establish the West African Congress. They resolved that a university should be established that reflected African nationality, that all judicial appointments and positions in medicine should be open to qualified blacks. They called on Britain to refrain from partitioning Africa without regard for the wishes of the people involved. And they called for constitutions that included some provisions for black representation. In September 1920, the West African Congress sent a delegation to London, and Britain's Secretary of State, Lord Milner, rejected their demands. Milner was backed by claims from Britain's governors in western Africa that the delegation did not represent the people in their jurisdictions. And Milner had the support of a powerful chieftain named Nana Ofori Atta, who claimed that the West African Congress despised and ignored the traditional authority of West Africa's chiefs.
While blacks in Nigeria who were more sympathetic to British rule were being given honors and positions of responsibility in local government, some others protested against British rule. In Nigeria's port city of Lagos, educated blacks who were offended by the attitudes of British officials, by missionaries and by white traders, wished to introduce political reforms based on British democratic traditions. But they made little headway in spreading their views. A more vociferous protest arose among the Egba people of Abeokuta, forty miles north of Lagos, who rioted against unfamiliar rules recently imposed by the British. And a rebellion arose in 1929 among market women in at Aba, fifty miles from the coast in eastern Nigeria.
The Union of South Africa was an independent nation within the British Commonwealth, its parliamentary capital at Capetown. South Africa had fought with Britain against Germany in the Great War, and during the war its industries had profited similarly to those in Japan and the United States. According to 1910 figures, 67 percent of South Africa's population was black; 9 percent were mixed black and white, called coloreds; 21.5 percent of the population was white; and 2.5 percent were Asian, largely Indians and some Chinese. The whites were divided between a British minority who lived largely in cities and an Afrikaner (Dutch) majority of farmers in rural areas. White influences, including missionary work, had already broken down some of the tribalism among the blacks. Some blacks were living in cities. Some were living in villages and working on white-owned farms or elsewhere in the countryside, Some were squatters on white farms, and many were still living on reservations - about one-fourteenth the area of South Africa. All blacks were subject to pass laws, which restricted their movement off of the reservations. And blacks working as servants were subject to a law that made breach of contract a criminal offense.
South Africa's political leader of Afrikaner heritage, Jan Christian Smuts, had advocated cooperation between whites and blacks, with whites maintaining power and blacks available to whites as a pool of labor. But in 1917, Smuts, and his colleague in the governing political party, Louis Botha, applied a limitation to the cooperation between blacks and whites: by law there was be no more mixed marriages or sexual relations between the two.
By 1918, blacks in South Africa were struggling for a modicum of freedom and power. They organized their first mass action, boycotting public utilities. Then in 1919, black workers organized a labor union, and they struck at loading docks against the railroads. In 1921, Prime Minister Smuts' government took one more step in separating the races: it created the Natives Land Act, preventing Africans from holding land except in specially designated reserves. Later that same year, Smuts' government faced a rebellion by white workers. The gold mining industry in South Africa was facing a drop in the price of gold and rising costs in production, and owners decided to save money by hiring blacks for semi-skilled work. White workers responded with violence, and against them Smuts sent troops, resulting in bloodshed and the deaths of white workers. And South Africa's white Labour Party responded by aligning itself with the Nationalist Party of Afrikaners, a party traditionally in favor of removing British influence in South Africa.
Smuts' tried to counter the alliance between the Labour and Nationalist parties by wooing South Rhodesia's electorate into incorporating Southern Rhodesia into the Union of South Africa. Whites from South Africa had been migrating to Southern Rhodesia, joined by migrants from Britain. But they did not wish to join Southern Rhodesia to South Africa, and Smuts' effort failed. Smuts lost in the elections in 1924 and he was replaced as Prime Minister by J.M.B. Herzog, leader of the Nationalist Party. Herzog was a strong supporter of the separation of the races - the policy to be known as Apartheid. He was opposed to mine owners employing skilled blacks. And in alliance with South Africa's Labour Party, in 1926 he introduced the Mines and Works Amendment Act, which excluded blacks and Asians from all skilled and some semi-skilled mining jobs.
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France, Spain and Italy in Africa, to1930
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