Ideas - The Hinge Years: 1919 | Dividing the Spoils

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

After the First World War, the Western powers create new borders and carve out spheres of influence, leaders from the Global South fight for self-determination, and the League of Nations and the Communist International are formed. In this series, IDEAS explores five years in the 20th century that have shaped our world today. *This episode originally aired on Jan. 22, 2024.

My name is Graham Isidor. I have a progressive eye disease called keratoconus. Unmaying I'm losing my vision has been hard, but explaining it to other people has been harder. Lately, I've been trying to talk about it. Short Sighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds. By sharing my story, we get into all the things you don't see

about hidden disabilities. Short Sighted, from CBC's Personally, available now. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. The Great War was over. On the 11th of November, 1918, an armistice had been signed. In Britain and France, the survivors celebrated victory, the return of peace and the end of bloodshed. It's the year 1919. The First World War has just ended.

The victors gather in Paris to carve out spheres of influence. While leaders from the Global South fight for self-determination and an equal say in the new world order. They'd left behind the nightmare lands of death and destruction created by four years of war. The cost of those years was almost beyond imagination, but somehow, somewhere, that cost would have to be counted. Unrest in China foreshadows the future,

and communism begins to spread across the globe. The League of Nations is born, as is the Communist International. This is the first installment in a series we recorded at the Stratford Festival about hinge moments in the 20th century. It's inspired by an essay by Salman Rushdie, who writes about hinge moments in the 20th century. It's inspired by an essay by Salman Rushdie, who writes about hinge moments in history, moments when, quote, everything is in flux, everything is changing at immense speed.

We recorded this series in July 2023, and since then, questions about the history of violence, extremism, human rights, and imperialism have only become more urgent as we grapple with our own era of profound change. Our panelists for today's program are Amitav Chowdhury, Chair of the History Department at Queen's University and Director of the Global History Initiative, Renee Warringer, a Professor of Islamic and Middle East history at the University of Guelph and Alexa Drakovich, an assistant professor of history at Western University.

This is the year 1919, dividing the spoils. Thank you so much to all of you. It's so wonderful to be back here in Stratford and to see some really familiar faces. I see some of you who were here last year. Thank you for coming back for another round of our Hinge Year series. We're here, as we discussed last year, to discuss the past in the hope that it could inform our collective future.

And we're still hoping that underlying this discussion will be a couple of questions that we're trying to answer in the global conversation, which is, how does change happen? How does change actually occur in our history? What's required for change to happen? And are we now living in a hinge moment? Everybody's nodding. We can go home now.

This morning, of course, we're talking about the year 1919. So without further chatter from my end, I'd love to begin with each of you kind of giving us a story that you think really symbolizes and embodies the years around 1919. And Renee, I'd love to start with you. Okay. Well, as a Middle East historian, I'm interested in talking about what happened at the end of World War I. This was a moment of optimism for peoples in the region who believed that they were going to throw off the yoke of colonialism

and actually become independent. And President Woodrow Wilson's 14 points of self-determination made a lot of people think that was going to be possible. The problem was a lot of imperial empires had actually made a lot of secret agreements to carve up the Middle East. The Sykes-Picot Agreement, which was a secret agreement, but there were several other agreements to that effect that were going to divide up the region in a way that the people living there would not have liked and did not like. Great. Thank you. Alexa? The settling of it, you mentioned Wilson. And at the other end, you have, after 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution,

which at that point became an event that inspired a number of individuals from a variety of walks of life who were, well, tired of either liberal democracy, tired of various dictatorships and autocracy, or saw it eventually by, say, 1919, when the Comintern formed in March of that year, the Communist International, to guide international communism. It became this symbol of hope for a lot of people. And at the same time as we then look at sort of 1919, you have that symbol of hope happening as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution. You have the symbol of hope that Wilson purportedly at least seemed to represent and then gets quashed. But then you also have to have the consequences of this. One being that you have the roots of fascism develop also in 1919 as a result, as a response to both this idea of liberal democracy and of also the development of communism.

And Amitav. Thank you. and Amitav. Thank you. 1919 I think is one of those years one of those rare years where you can look back and say a decisive difference happened. You can look at that year and say the world changed. The old had come to an end and the new was hesitant to be born. There was no new path going forward. Woodrow Wilson as the the long war, long and bloody war was gradually coming to an end in 1918, Wilson talked about his vision of the post-war world. And one was the idea that people should have the freedom to choose who they want to be. They have the freedom to organize themselves in the form of a new nation.

Four empires crumbled as a result of the First World War. Nine new nations were born. And there were other colonies all around the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, that did not form or become a nation. But the story I want to talk about right at the beginning is a story in Egypt of a person named Saad Zaghlo, who was a politician who was at that time on the opposition of the British protected government in Egypt.

As the war was coming to an end, and as people were talking about Wilson's ideas of the post-war world, he saw the birth of a new era. He thought, finally, the Egyptian people can organize themselves into an independent nation. And when the peace conference was convened, he asked to go there and represent the Egyptian people, and he was not allowed. And he thought, okay, the Britishers are not allowing me, so why don't I write to Wilson himself? And so he wrote to Wilson, did not get a response, wrote to him again, did not get a response, and ultimately the response was, it's not for you to go. And so what appeared to be a spring of hope as the war was coming to an end quickly

became a winter of despair. And people who had high hopes of a world free from colonialism and imperialism realized that it had morphed into a new guise under the different mandates. So that disappointment, that disorientation to realize that that self-determination was not for him is something that colors anti-colonial struggle right after. And it's a larger story. I just chose one example, but it has resonance elsewhere in the world. Yeah. And of course, a lot of these threads that you all covered begin in the years preceding 1919. So we'll maybe tackle that period first, go to 1919, and then the consequences of the actual year and what happens then. And of course, as we know, change does not happen kind of in a moment,

in a month, in a week. So some of the upheaval that happened at the time, René, was also the breakup of these, you know, these places that existed, these empires that had existed for quite some time. Can you talk a little bit more about how the First World War sowed the seeds of the breakup and the partition of the Ottoman Empire? Yes, well, you know, we're talking about nationalism here, and the pretext for this So we're talking about nationalism here, and the pretext for this is that there were a whole lot of secret agreements that were made during World War I between the British and the French, and also included the Russian Empire for a time. The Sykes-Picot Agreement you've probably heard of before. This was a secret agreement between the British and the French to carve up the Middle East in the aftermath of World War I. And the way in which people in the region of the Middle East found out about these plans,

these secret agreements, were from the Bolshevik Revolution, in which the revolutionaries actually discovered and published in a Russian newspaper those secret agreements, and then they were translated into English and published in a British paper after that. This is how people in the Middle East found out what was in store for them. And along with that, you know, Wilson's 14 points, actually one of those points was to have all agreements made publicly, not in secret. So there's a contradiction in 1919 between, on the one hand, the optimism in the world among colonial peoples for finally getting independence versus the plans that these empires had for the region in many places in the world. And it couldn't probably be more obvious than

at the League of Nations when Japan sat at the table as one of the victors, one of the allies, and actually tried to introduce a racial equality clause into the League of Nations provisions. And Wilson vehemently disagreed with that, in part because Australia had a white Australia policy in place and did not want any kind of a racial equality clause. So there's a tension in that moment between what formerly colonized peoples were going to achieve and what empires still calling the shots were going to achieve. And this kind of optimism quickly turned to disillusionment when what ends up coming out of the League of Nations is what they call the mandate states, which was a sort of repackaged colonialism. But I mean, there were people like W.E.B. Du Bois, who was

interested in Japan as a potential leader of the East in this moment of optimism. So it, you know, it extended to African Americans, to other colonized peoples of the world over. And we will get to all of this in a minute, but I do want to hear about the Russian Revolution too, which is happening kind of... Just can you talk about how it is that Russia finds itself at the time on the threshold of revolution? Well, a lot of things don't go well for the Tsardom, is the best way to put it.

Apparently, not listening to your people and largely just hoping magically things will work out because you're the czar tends to not work out well. So a long history of this is we have to actually go back to the great reforms in the early 1860s where you have the end of serfdom. You have a civil society start to develop that doesn't have a place in Russian society, which is still very much sort of this old school, almost feudalistic approach where you kind of have the peasantry, you have then the nobility, and you have the clergy. You also have a working class that starts to develop during this time as industrialization is something that happens in Russia, particularly from the 1860s onward, in part also helped funded by European investment. And all of this leads to groups of people that are disenfranchised simply for existing because they don't have a place

in Russian society. This leads to the revolution of 1905, where Nicholas basically hopes that it will just go away, and it doesn't. And he's forced to eventually give in to the October Manifesto, which would bring, apparently, parliamentary government to Russia. What he then promptly does is when they write a constitution remarkably fast, only in about six months, he promptly decides to declare also that the Tsardom is one and indivisible, which really isn't good if you're trying to start a parliamentary system. This all leads to sort of this bubbling tension underneath the surface that leads to the First World War. And the First World War, at first, mentioning nationalism again, it first allows sort of

everyone to crystallize around the Tsardom, hoping that this might be a way for Russia to reimpose its great power status. But what ends up happening is this all comes to the war where Nicholas's decision-making, and hubris really, is what brings about the end of the Tsardom. Because heading into 1917, he's on the front lines, believing that's the best way for him to bring about some fervor amongst the troops who are not doing well.

But this then leads to the February Revolution, in which a protest on International Women's Day, where women were protesting the lack of bread, leads into a general revolt in, at that time, Petrograd, modern-day St. Petersburg, and it ends with Nicholas being forced to abdicate. A provisional government is formed. The problem is, is it has to deal with those same issues, food, bringing in those disenfranchised people into government, but also it has to now deal with the war,

which is increasingly unpopular. And it decides to double down. And over the course of a handful of months in 1917, virtually every other group besides the Bolsheviks ties their lot in some way, shape or form to the provisional government. And then there's all of this hope again that quickly the Bolsheviks then in a revolutionary time focus on consolidating power where that leads to some of that hope disappearing a little bit. I like how you put, you outlined the difference between the insiders or the outsiders of the time. I wondered if we could, sort of slipping slowly into 1919 itself and looking at the January period when the Paris conference is going on, if we could talk about just a little bit more about how that competition for power and influence after the war kind of started unfolding.

You know, of course, the winners, the victors, were kind of setting the agenda and sitting there at the table, but there were also relatively new nations like Canada who fought their way, you know, with hundreds of thousands of young men fighting on the front, fought their way to that table. What is that vision? What are the strands, the most important strands of a vision of a new world order that the

Western powers, the victors, put forward at the Paris Peace Conference? What was emerging then? Was it actually a new world order, or was it kind of a reshuffling of the decks? Well, I believe in the Middle East, it ended up being a repackaging of colonialism under this mandate system. And when we talk about the understanding of nationalism in that, you know, immediate post-war time, there is an attempt, it seems, by powers in the West to create new nations, and their understanding of it is as homogenous nations. And in the region of the Middle East, for example, the former Ottoman lands, what they disregarded probably the most was the ethno-religious diversity of the region.

And so, for example, the mandate states that were created in the Middle East, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, which then broke off into Palestine and Transjordan. These were all countries that were assembled in certain ways that actually drew lines on maps that did not match the demography on the ground. Just as an example, the country of Iraq was actually assembled by the British into a mandate out of three former Ottoman provinces, one of which was predominantly Arab and Sunni, another that was predominantly Arab and Shiite, and a third that was Kurdish up in the north. And so, you know, it was a recipe, I think, for conflict in the future, for multiple coups later on in Iraq's history.

But all of these new mandate states were assembled in such ways that disregarded people's wishes. And there was actually a moment in 1919 when an American commission, the King Crane Commission, which maybe, I don't know if many of you have heard of it, but it was a commission led by some Americans, which, you know, at the time, the United States was still a revolutionary anti-colonial power, believe it or not. I know, it's hard to believe that now. And, I mean, they did have colonial ambitions then too, but they were seen in the rest of the world as being revolutionary.

They sent this mission over to the Middle East to actually ask people. They spent 42 days in the region of the Middle East asking people what they wanted. And overwhelmingly, they wanted an independent and united Syria, and that means a greater Syria that would have incorporated Transjordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and even parts of what is today modern Turkey. And that was the number one issue that people in the region wanted. They wanted it to be a democratic constitutional kingdom led by Emir Faisal, Prince Faisal, who will eventually become the king of Iraq. That's a whole another story. That report was

suppressed until 1922 when the League of Nations had already put mandates in place. That report was suppressed completely. And everything that was recommended there was ignored, including establishing an autonomous Kurdistan, something that is still an issue today, establishing an Armenia that extended further into Anatolia. There are a few threads to unpack there, and I know both of you guys want to weigh in. So maybe Alexa and then Amitav, please.

And this is where I would bring in E.H. Carr, who argues that the establishment of the League of Nations and what's happening at the Paris Peace Conference is largely, at this point, Britain trying to reimpose its leadership at the top of the European great power system, and France wants a piece of that, too. The difference between Britain and France

is France also wants Germany to pay very heavily for the war. But this is where you then have all of those sort of, what's the difference, what's the same? You mentioned the issues of borders. This is something that European great powers were doing well into the 19th century. The Treaty of Berlin with the situation in the Balkans, literally just drawing borders wherever they saw fit, undoing the Treaty of San Stefano, what the Russians had settled with the Ottomans at that time. And most historians argue that the Russian plans actually matched the ethnic realities on the ground. You then have the Berlin Conference on West Africa, which again,

just drew borders. People wonder why Namibia, then Southwest Africa, has this weird panhandle. It's entirely to allow the Germans access to that river. It had no sort of focus on what was really sort of on the ground. Was it always based on that?

I mean, can we make one statement about how random these quote-unquote random borders were? Often most of the borders were either because of geographic issues or for trade. In many cases it comes down for at least those are the decisions that European nations were making and would impose on non-European or at least I should say non-Western European regions. So that continues afterwards with again what happens after the war but also the mandate system this idea that Europe is the cradle of civilization, that everyone else needs to be led to the civilizing mission,

doesn't go away. But then at the same time, you have Woodrow Wilson who comes in and wants to impose a little bit more of at least his ideas of liberal internationalism, which do have their own problems. The mandate system still has a lot of the racial components. This is Wilson taking segregation in the United States and internationalizing it. And then you also have Italy, the other victor, the other European victor, who just wants the territory they were promised and don't walk away

with it. And it comes down to sort of those are the four main European powers. And you have Japan who wants to be seen as sort of an equal of those four great powers after the war. you get your podcasts. And on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, across North America on US Public Radio and on Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad. Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goldtar and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and, most of all, true crime podcasts. But sometimes, I just want to know more. I want to go deeper.

And that's where my podcast, Crime Story, comes in. Every week, I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. This is the year 1919, dividing the spoils. Amitav Chowdhury, Renee Warringer, and Alexa Drakowicz in conversation

at the Stratford Festival about a hinge moment in history, a year whose aftershocks still shape our world today. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 brings what? A new world order or just a reshuffle? The great powers want to hang on to their power And there's precious little left for anyone else. But not nothing. World War I may be over, but there are new borders, new players in the game, and fresh unrest. Amitav, how did leaders from the Middle East and Asia and Africa intervene at the peace conference to try to create a different kind of world order? There are two disparities, ambiguities that we see in 1919 during the peace process and immediately afterwards.

And one we have already talked about, the differential treatment of the European nations or what became European nations and the rest of the world. What applied to Europe did not apply elsewhere, did not apply to the mandates. That was immediately apparent. The other inconsistency is within Europe. The thing about nationalism is when you form a nation you weave together a narrative to say that it has always existed, that nation

is immemorial and that's what people thought while weaving these new nations together but look at Czechoslovakia which was so heterogeneous in its political ethnic and various other dimensions that a long term unity was not going to be possible. So that inconsistency within

made the peace a flawed process in itself. And the non-European powers, well, did not have a voice in the peace process. What they recognized was the driving force of global imperialism, the justificatory means within the European nations was something we have always called the civilizing mission. We're out there to civilize the rest of the world. But that mission comes across as not only insincere, but a sham. And that drives the political process and eventual decolonization in the rest of the world.

So you could say that roots of decolonization are sown simultaneously as the peace process was being drawn up. Rene mentioned W.E.B. Dubois, who's the African-American sociologist. Can we talk a little bit about how he tried to organize a whole other conference to look at self-rule in Africa? Maybe Rene or Amitav, both of you. Sure. One interesting thing here is during the First World War, the unity between Britain and the United States was becoming stronger as a common political force and soon becoming allies. And a phrase that was used very frequently, first in journalism, then in the political spheres, was the Atlantic world, something called an Atlantic entity. But that Atlantic did not include Africa.

And that is where Du Bois intervenes. And the African intellectuals point out that what we call to be the unity of the Atlantic world has another dimension that has been ignored in the conceptualization of a political and geopolitical entity called the Atlantic world. So that brings together a new dimension of African thought and independence that Du Bois really is very helpful in laying out right at the beginning of the century. Renee? I was just thinking about how in this moment there's also resistance to some of these Western intentions. Egypt, we've already kind of mentioned Saad Zaghoub. And there was a revolution in 1919 in Egypt,

an Egyptian nationalist movement where people were on the streets protesting and demanding that the British leave, demanding that they gain a constitution and independence. And this was a movement in Egypt in which women were a big part. Women were marching on the streets and, you know, the suffragette movement was also in play in other places in the world. And so this was really significant for the women's movement. And eventually, Egypt did gain a constitution. The British didn't leave until 1956, ultimately.

But slowly, Egypt was getting what it demanded. And in the post-Ottoman lands of Anatolia, a man named Mustafa Kemal, who was a military hero at Gallipoli, actually reassembled military forces and developed a Turkish nationalist movement that resisted the plans that European powers had for Anatolia, which was in the Treaty of Sèvres, in which Italy was going to get, you know, southeastern Anatolia, the French were going to get southwestern Anatolia, Russia was going to get, you know, southeastern Anatolia. The French were going to get southwestern Anatolia. Russia was going to get pieces of eastern Anatolia. The city of Istanbul and the Bosphorus Straits and the Dardanelles Straits were all going to be internationally controlled waters. And Turkey was going to be this tiny little area of sort of central Anatolia up towards the north.

That would be Turkey. And Ataturk and his nationalist forces one by one resisted the Russians, who then became their suppliers of arms to fight off the French and then the Italians. The Greeks invaded in 1919 because they were also promised. And that became the Turkish War of Independence between Greece and Turkey. The Treaty of Sèvres was thus never enacted. Instead, the Treaty of Lausanne was enacted in 1923, and Turkey gained all of that land in Anatolia. Mustafa Kemal became Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the first president of Turkey. And so this was a revolution in a sense, too, a resistance to Western intentions. Alexa? And just to add, like we mentioned W.E.B.

Du Bois, there's also a number of other of these groups that focus on African nationhood or African American nationhood that become sort of what leads to Pan-Africanism, gaining much more consideration during these years. You have the African Blood Brotherhood based out of Harlem in New York, run by Cyril Briggs. You have the UNIA run by Marcus Garvey, which with their ideas, with his ideas of the Back to Africa movement. And what these ideas also lead to is especially in then the aftermath, and this is jumping a little bit ahead, but 1919 is when their ideas are starting to be published. The Liberators, this prominent periodical for the ABB in 1919.

And it's starting to inform different ideas of race, especially on the left. And this eventually leads once, as the common turn after it's developed, Moscow really wants to encourage African delegates and black delegates to come to Moscow to share their experience. And it starts to lead for at least communism to start to take race seriously. Prior to that, they always saw race as a bourgeois construction. But it leads to then how during the 20s and 30s, for example, in the United States, the Communist Party of the USA becomes a prominent, in fact, funding the defense of the Scottsboro Boys and things like this, fighting against segregation, even calling for self-determination on racial lines.

And we will come back to the comment turn in a moment. One last point from Amitav on this discussion. I want to amplify something Rene said in the fear that we might not get to that again in the time we have left, is about women and women's rights and women's movement and the right to vote. And a long reach history of that in England from the 19th century we're aware of. But what the war does, it hastens the process to make voting available, voting rights available to women. to make voting rights available to women. I think you see in New Zealand, end of 19th century, by 1893 they have the right to vote.

But one of the interesting things is that women participate in the war, and if not in the forefront, in various different capacities, especially in the shell factories, for example, in the United States. And having left the bounds of home, when they're out in the shell factories, for example, in the United States. And having left the bounds of home when they're out in the world, it becomes impossible to not listen to the women's voice asking for a right to vote. So the war makes it actually possible for various Western nations to extend the right to vote to women in In 1918, 1919, quickly it follows. Incredibly important point.

Of course, every single one of these answers deserves an hour, at least an hour on its own. It's so frustrating, but we have to charge ahead and talk about, go back to you, Alexa, and talk about the common turn, which really was a plan to take communism global. So can you talk about kind of its most immediate consequences the common turn, which really was a plan to take communism global. So can you talk about kind of its most immediate consequences for the world order at the time? So the immediate thing was is that in for many cases,

it led to, well, first off, it kind of reminded the world the Bolsheviks aren't going anywhere. The Allied intervention is happening at this time. The Russian Civil War is not necessarily going well for the Bolsheviks, but Lenin and the Bolsheviks decided this was their best chance to form what is the third international, the Communist International, hence Common Turn. Again, just to quickly highlight the nationalist aspect, the reason they needed this, the second international, most of the socialist parties supported the war effort. Lenin didn't. That's sort of it in a nutshell. So it reminds that the world, that,

well, the Common Turn is here, the Comintern is here, but it provides also a platform, and one that is naturally internationalist in scope. And in the early days of the Comintern, that internationalism was an important part of it. And it leads then to the development and sort of the spread of these ideas as they start to publish. And it's tried to publish in a variety of languages,

mostly German, French, and eventually English. It takes a few years before they reliably translate in English. But you start to see also the spread of various works. So in China, for example, they start to gradually go from usually translating anarchist works and Russian anarchist works to slowly getting Lenin and Trotsky and various thinkers there and translating them, often going from for China, often taking the Japanese translations and translating them, often going from for China, often taking the Japanese translations and translating them into Chinese. And this leads to those ideas starting to gain a bit of a foothold. And the common turn becomes the symbol, especially for the colonized

world, that there might be another path, especially as things look with the Paris Peace Conference, again, common turn forming while the Paris Peace Conference, again, common-term forming while the Paris Peace Conference is happening, that there might be another path. But you have sort of this moment where, because it feels that communism might be spreading, this is where the Red Scare starts to really spread. And you have events, the Winnipeg General Strike, just to name one, the Palmarades later in the year in the United States. You have then sort of this threat of that maybe things will fall to communism.

And so Russia is always viewed with suspicion. So you have all of these little tendrils that are happening where people are seeing that what the Bolsheviks are offering, and I should highlight this before I sort of make the Bolsheviks sound too good here, is while they are this anti-imperial force, they're also trying to take over Ukraine. They're also trying to take over a lot of the former territories of the former Tsarist empire. A huge notwithstanding, but notwithstanding that, there's a massive attraction in the Middle East too, to this idea of communism being another way. As historians, you always go to the source. And it's interesting to see what the police are doing at this time. And there is a whole archive of Scotland Yard and London Metropolitan Police,

600 files or more. During this time, there is an increased surveillance of students who are perceived to be socialists or communists coming to study in London or Oxford or Cambridge. And the thought, therefore, in what we may call the imperial mind, because the empire is still an entity, the British empire is strong and alive, is to see what are the other entities coming up now that is a threat to the empire.

Fascism is not yet there, pronounced certainly, but socialism is, communism is. So the way the surveillance is working in England, in the United Kingdom at this time, tells you who they're worried about at this time, trying to maintain the empire. A couple more points on this before we move to the aftermath. Alexa, back to you.

Speaking of students, you know, as the leaders in Paris are carving up the world, they're also, they make the decision to give what was formerly German territory in China over to Japan. So May 4th, 1919, thousands of Chinese students are protesting in Tiananmen Square. How did that protest influence the rise of communism in Asia? So what you have for the May 4th movement is that there's a general outpouring where China is viewed as a weak nation that needs to bring its position back in the world. There's a nationalist aspect of this, but there's also a sense that the old traditionalist ways are outdated and there needed to be this sort of change.

And especially younger people are developing this movement. And you have a number of individuals who are part of this movement. Chen Zhuzhui, Li Dejiao, who, and of course Mao Zedong, who is working as a librarian under Li Dejiao. And they are starting to now read these communist sort of tracks, the anarchist tracks I mentioned as well. And they're starting to see it as a potential new way forward. And they start to have reading

groups and they start to then pass along what they know. And they start to see communism, especially as so many of them are starting to even make sojourns, taking the train into and going to Petrograd and Moscow and seeing this sort of this new utopia that is supposedly being built. And they start thinking that maybe that is the way forward, especially because also Russia occupies this weird position where it's European, but it's not, at least in many of their mental consciousness. And so for many of them, they see it as a possibility

to do something that is not essentially following the European way. And it essentially allows them to start taking these ideas. And eventually through the common turn, uh, the Bolsheviks are happy to send people, um, like Mikhail Borodin, uh, who would eventually help develop the communist party of China in the early twenties and, um, sort of allow communism to slowly take hold there. Also, I should highlight the, when Stalin takes over and has much more of an overemphasized power in the common turn, that they're the reason why they side with the nationalists, as this is something called the United Front tactics.

It's very quickly to try to spread the words of communism, work with anyone who's like-minded, whether it's anti-imperialists, even socialists, whomever, and hope that you can get sort of the ideas across and get that change you need and that sort of defines the 1920s until the Chinese communist movement is basically persecuted by the nationalists by the KMT and Chiang Kai-shek. And Alex I just want to pick up on something you mentioned in passing and that's the Winnipeg strike of 1919. How were communist ideas received in Canada in a year when you know know, the biggest protests, the biggest strikes are happening ever in Canada in little old Winnipeg? So a couple of ways. First, for many immigrants, for example, especially Eastern European immigrants, they're often the vector

that really latches onto some of these ideas as they see it as a way to essentially spread ideas that are becoming more familiar with them. A broad radical tradition does develop in Eastern Europe during this time. And hence, Ukrainians and Finns often being the most eventually vervent and communist supporters. But you have just even just the spread of ideas. The fact that the Bolshevik revolution succeeded, that the Bolsheviks are still in power two years later,

that starts to empower people. They say, maybe that can happen here. And that happens all over the world. But you also have even just that, the fight for workers' rights, for better pay. All of that also plays a role. Again, the Bolshevik Revolution becomes this utopian moment. And we all sort of, when we think of it,

we think of Stalin and everything else. Put yourself in the mind of in 1919, where it looks like this might be a new world order that's happening that can maybe be better for sort of the little guy and the little girl. And so you have that situation there. At the same time, to mention policing, they start to then look for anybody who might be passing that material. You again see crackdowns on immigration, especially immigrants from Eastern Europe, part of the reason for the palmerings in the United States, at least. Again, think about transnational connections across the border.

You have those reactions as well, and it's one reason why when the Communist Party of Canada forms in 1921, just outside of Guelph, it ends up actually being, really, just has to work underground, and they call themselves the Workers' Party of Canada to try to get around, while they also have the clandestine Communist Party of Canada working underneath them.

Amitav, you wanted to pick up on that, maybe? What I find really curious about global history is the simultaneity of things. And events and revolutions or rebellions happening in different parts of the world that are not necessarily structurally connected. What is happening in Winnipeg is not necessarily structurally connected with what is happening in Tahrir Square in Egypt. You mentioned in China. Yes. In 1919, there are numerous local outbreaks of protests against authority and power and government.

And is this, therefore, a story of a global process that is underlying, that is not immediately visible, that manifests itself locally and gives it local color? That is a thing that I find quite curious. It happens in 1870s with all the famines. It happens in 1919 with all these outbreaks. It happens in the 1930s with the labor revolts all across the world. And one interesting one is, of course, 1919, 13th of April in India, the Amritsar Massacre. And you can't really talk about 1919 without talking about Gandhi,

who takes a decision to no longer cooperate with the British presence in India because the promises that were made were not kept. And a non-cooperation movement begins, a civil disobedience movement begins, and a group of people who had gathered in a square in Amritsar, in Jallianwala Bagh, for a peaceful religious observance were shot down. 379 people were killed. That shook the foundations of the British Empire.

That made the supporters of the empire back in England question their previous thought and decision. And of course, it provided a momentum for the anti-colonial struggle that enters its mature phase now. So when I hear Alex talking about Winnipeg and what's happening in Canada, similar processes are unfolding elsewhere in the world. Why is a question we want to ask as global historian? What is it that is lying underneath? So as we kind of look forward from 1919, I wanted to kind of test with you. Maybe, Renée, we can start with you. What seeds of that next big war in 1939 were beginning to be sown in 1919 and its aftermath?

I'm so glad you asked that. Because I wrote a book about this a while ago. We only have a few minutes. I know. I'll shorten it. You know, when we talk about this new order and we talk about colonialism, in the colonized world, Japan was already being seen as a potential Asian leader as early as 1905 with the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. in the world. A lot of revolutionaries, whether they were Irish or Russian Muslims or other people from the Middle East, ended up in Tokyo collaborating and kicking around these ideas about Japan as a leader. And the racial equality clause that we mentioned gave them even more boost after that, even though it didn't get enacted. And increasingly, even though Imperial Japan became more colonialist itself,

it still had this sort of image in much of the non-Western world as a potential resistor to Western aims in the world, in Western colonialism. And it's part of what we see ending up happening by the time we get to the 1930s and the war in Asia that will become also World War II down the road. At the same time that communism is kind of starting to spread, fascism is also not flourishing, but it's taking root. I wonder, Alexa, if you could talk about the key factors

that were sown again in 1919 and its aftermath that made that possible. So we have to go a little bit early to 1918 for the German story, but a lot of it was that start in 1918, Russia was out of the war as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution. The Americans had not yet arrived yet. They don't arrive until April. The belief was in Germany that Germany could still win the war in early 1918. And when there's that sudden collapse, when their major

offensive earlier that year leads to essentially to their defeat, it leads to what's called the stab in the back myth, which is that many conservative voices and far-right voices, and of course the eventual Nazi party, basically developed the conspiracy theory that the social Democrats who end up gaining the most as a result of being the party in charge after the november revolution in the weimar republic that establishes itself afterwards and the jewish community conspired to bring down the regime and in 1919 is when adolf hitler joins what would eventually become the nazi party also in 1919 as a result of not getting the territory they wanted

in what's called the mutilated peace in Italy, is Mussolini sees that liberal democracy may not get their fair shake in the great power system, and he forms the fascists, what becomes the fascist organization and party. And so you have those moments directly as a result of the end of the war. Many of the ideas, those nationalist ideas, the ideas of anti-Semitism and all of that had been around in both Germany, especially in Germany at this time, and for nationalism in Italy, for sure. But this is now giving that the peace

that develops afterwards, and of course the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with regards to Germany, leads to that giving credence to all of their sort of worst ideas, which then allows them to start to slowly build that base. For Mussolini, it's much quicker. 1922 is the March on Rome, which also comes after the two red years in which it looked like Italy might also fall to communism. So there's that red scare coming in again that starts in 1919.

And then for Germany is you have the Weimar Republic struggling through those early years, where it's not until 1923-24 that it looks like they might be able to get out of it. And then you have the Great Depression offering sort of the background that allows the rise of Nazism later on, while Hitler is developing his ideas, sharing those ideas, writing those ideas, and building his base as well. Of course, all of us can draw a direct line from 1919 to 1939, but I wonder if we could take a moment, a few minutes, for all three of you to draw a line from 1919 to today. But starting with you, Amitav,

pick a strand that you really see as a direct consequence of the dynamics of 1919 that still really makes a difference in today's world? I'll say three things. See? Tagore, whom I mentioned before, the great Indian poet, writes, and a bad translation would be, those who killed him in the name of the king are born again. Meaning those who killed the Christ in the name of the emperor are born again.

He views this new movement of Nazism and fascism as threatening the very core of humanity. So what happens after the war is actually a heightened continuation of nationalism that brought people into the war itself. So one needs to see fascism as an extreme example of ultra-nationalism that drives people to the war.

One thing to note here is that when we talk about fascism or Nazism, we talk about Germany and Italy mostly, but it is also a global process, which is quite interesting in the sense that there are expressions similar to what we would recognize as fascism in many, many parts of the world. In Asia, you see that. In South America, you see that. In Argentina. The desire to be unique and separated from each other, let us unite in our desire to do that, is quite an interesting thing. Something as circumscribed as fascism or Nazism

is also truly global. And that kind of a desire to be unique and separate, and let's talk about how we can be separate from others and unite on that basis, is a trajectory that hasn't gone away. And it raises its face from time to time. And that's a long story, is the debate between a virtue of small order. I live in Kingston. I can form a unified Kingston. All of us are together. But we don't like wealth. Hey, wait a minute.

That is a small-scale extreme example of what nationalism does. It's a unity of a small order. The other, of course, is universalism, seeing the unity in man. The story is the story of humanity. That debate and that kind of swing back and forth between the ultra-nationalist tendencies and the universalist aspirations is the story that we have seen in the 20th century. And that is what has continued even today.

Renee and then Alexa. Okay. The 1919 political arrangements in the Middle East and what I would call the unfulfilled expectations combined with the force of nationalism in the modern era, the combination of those two things are what we see as what results in pretty much all of the wars we've had and are still witnessing in the Middle East today. The distrust of the West, I'm sure you remember hearing, why do they hate us after September 11th? And it was the unfulfilled expectations and the distrust of the West

and its intentions that has lingered. And I suppose maybe the most obvious demonstration of that recently was, you know, when ISIS emerged in Syria and Iraq in 2015, roughly, one of their actions was to actually try to bulldoze the actual borders that had been drawn up between Turkey and Syria, and the establishment of what they called a caliphate, an Islamic caliphate, as a sort of rejection of Western political aims. And, well, I will give a date. February 21st, 2022,

when Vladimir Putin claimed that Ukraine was invented by the Soviet Union. First off, don't get your history lessons from Vladimir Putin. But secondly, this is where 1919, we can give sort of specific examples because I mentioned there are several Ukrainian nationalist movements that go to Paris

hoping that this will be their moment that they might have independence. And there's a Ukrainian nationalist movement that had gone well back into the 19th century. And it's not just the collapse of the Russian empire that helped that. It was also the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but also then the hope that an independent Poland might be there. Galicia, where Lviv is today, for example, ends up being placed under Polish control as a result of the Paris Peace Conference.

But this moment where, again, Ukrainian independence denied still has resonance today with how Putin not only instrumentalizes that history, but also the history of the Soviet Union and eventually Nazi Germany and the Second World War and all of that to basically spur the hyper-nationalist approach and imperialist approach he's using in Ukraine, approach and imperialist approach he's using in Ukraine, all as he is hoping to both take Ukraine for Russian purposes, but also to rebuild the greater Russia, to rebuild the old Russian empire that disappeared in 1917 as a result of the First World War and then was stamped out by the development of the Bolshevik Revolution. That also tried to rebuild the Tsarist empire, but just in a slightly different image, just like Putin also uses certain things that Stalin did, even though he might not have much respect for communism,

he is also a product of that regime that develops. That's just one example, but it's one example that today is, well, having global ramifications. To give another quick sort of connection, you have with regards to that decolonizing moment that didn't happen, that distrust of the West. Well, later on, you have nations of the decolonized,

quote, global South, as it's sometimes referred to. Well, many of them don't trust European powers or the European powers or American powers. The United States won't give them what, say, Russia or China might for economic or political stability. And in many cases, part of the reason that they have not come out today to condemn what is an imperialist war is comes down to the fact that they are a world that is sort of the, quote, global south is also trying to figure out what's best for them while seeing

some of their prominent allies engaging in these actions and being caught in the middle and realizing that things are not as simple as maybe we want them to be. So all of that has its roots in this moment. Okay. Amitav, Alexa, and Rene, I wish we had hours to talk, but thank you so much for your insights.

Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. On Ideas, you've been listening to the year 1919, dividing the spoils. It's the first in our series about hinge years in the 20th century, a collaboration with the Stratford Festival in Ontario. On today's program, our panelists were Amitav Chowdhury, Renée Warringer, and Alexa Drakowicz. Next in our series, the year 1938, the winds of war.

This series was produced by Philip Coulter and Pauline Holdsworth with production assistance from Annie Bender. We recorded this series in July 2023. At the Stratford Festival, special thanks to Julie Miles, Gregory McLaughlin, Vern Good, Renata Hansen, Mira Henderson and James Hyatt. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Technical production, Danielle Duval. Our acting senior producer is Lisa Godfrey. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly.

And I'm Nala Ayyad. Thank you. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.