📍Topic 8.7: Global Resistance to Established Power Structure

📖 AMSCO p.599 - p.604

Main Idea

Key Timeline

Image Courtesy of Riya Patel

Things to Know

Nonviolent Resistance as a Path to Change

• Mohandas Gandhi led a movement employing nonviolent marches, boycotts, and fasts against British colonial rule in India, ultimately leading to the country's independence in 1947.
• Martin Luther King Jr., a prominent African American civil rights leader, utilized various tactics such as court decisions, boycotts, and massive marches to achieve significant milestones, including the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

Challenges to Soviet Power in Eastern Europe

• In 1956, in Poland:
  • Workers demonstrated against Soviet domination, resulting in changes in leadership under Wladyslaw Gomulka.
• Hungary (1956):
  • Protests led by Imre Nagy declared Hungary's freedom from Soviet control, ultimately leading to a Soviet invasion and the execution of Nagy.
• Czechoslovakia (1968 - Prague Spring):
  • Alexander Dubcek increased freedom of speech and press, only to be crushed by Soviet forces using the Brezhnev Doctrine.

1968: The Year of Revolt

• Globally in 1968:
  • Various protests occurred, including Mexico, Yugoslavia, Poland, Northern Ireland, Brazil, and Japan.
• France:
  • Massive student protests in Paris resulted in the largest general strike in French history.
• United States:
  • Protests against the Vietnam War intensified, notably with the Kent State University incident in 1970, where the National Guard killed four unarmed students.

An Age of Terrorism

• Northern Ireland (1969-1994):
  • The Catholic-Protestant conflict involved the Irish Republican Army (IRA) using terrorism, including bombings in London; a cease-fire was reached in 1994.
• Spain (ETA):
  • The Basque Homeland and Freedom (ETA) engaged in terrorism for Basque independence, later declaring an end to violence in 2011 and opting for political means.
• Peru:
  • Abimael Guzman led the Shining Path, using Maoist ideology for terrorism, causing 37,000 deaths; Guzman was arrested in 1992.
• Islamic Terrorism:
  • Groups like al-Qaeda, responsible for the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

Response of Militarized States

• Spain (Franco Dictatorship):
  • The regime executed, imprisoned, or sent dissenters to labor camps; opposition persisted until Spain moved toward democracy after Franco's death.
• Uganda (Idi Amin):
  • Idi Amin's brutal dictatorship from 1971 to 1979 exacerbated ethnic tensions, human rights abuses, and economic instability; opposition, including nationalists and Tanzanian troops, forced Amin into exile.

Terms to Remember