Huda Shaarawi

Huda Shaarawi

Huda Shaarawi was a prominent Egyptian women's rights activist and arguably the most important Arab feminist of the 20th century. She began her career of political activism by organizing lectures for mostly upper-class women of the harem and later became a member of the Wafd Party women's committee, which gained recognition because of substantive all-women's demonstrations in the 1919 revolt.

Shaarawi was from an upper-class background, with extensive political connections—her husband was one of the founders of the Wafd Party in 1919, and she was the daughter of the president of Egypt's first national assembly.

However, Shaarawi fought the upper-class institution of the harem by removing her veil in 1923 when she disembarked from a train station in Cairo, marking the beginning of the end of the harem in Egypt.

In 1923 she also formed Egypt's first women's organization, the Egyptian Feminist Union, whose agenda focused on women's political rights, including the right to vote and the right to stand for parliamentary elections.


In her activism Shaarawi reflected two ongoing social and political movements, Islamic modernism and secular nationalism, challenging both British colonial rule over Egypt and Egyptian patriarchy by claiming that they concurrently served to eclipse women's voices.

She was the founder and president of the Arab Feminist Union and vice president of the International Women's Union. She was a strong advocate for girls' education and participated in more than 14 international women's gatherings on behalf of Egyptian women.

SEASIA (Southeast Asia)

SEASIA (Southeast Asia)

The term Southeast Asia came to be used during World War II, when the region was placed under the command of Lord Louis Mountbatten (1900–79). It includes the area to the east of the Indian subcontinent and to the south of China. In 2006 the countries of the region were Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Myanmar, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

In the first half of the 20th century, all of Southeast Asia except Thailand was under foreign domination. Southeast Asia is a region of ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and historical diversity. It has retained its own identity in spite of cultural influences from different areas.

The first half of the 20th century witnessed momentous events and new ideas that transformed the history of the region. World War I, World War II, Japanese occupation, the rise of anticolonialism, the growth of communist ideas, and the onset of the cold war had varied impacts on the countries of the region.


In a geographical sense, before 1950 Southeast Asia comprised two broad groups. The mainland comprised the British colony of Myanmar (formerly Burma), the French colony of Indochina (Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam), and Thailand. Island Southeast Asia consisted of the British colony of Malaya, the Netherlands East Indies, and the Philippines under U.S. domination.

Thailand survived without becoming a colony of either Britain or France due to the sagacious policies of the kings. It did not succumb to colonial subjugation by signing unequal treaties of friendship and commerce or allowing extraterritoriality rights to France, Great Britain, the United States, or Germany. Rama V (1853–1910) maintained friendly relations with the colonial powers even at the cost of Thai territory.

King Vajiravudh (1881–1925) joined with Allied powers and was able to revoke extraterritorial rights. In 1932 there occurred for the first time in the history of Thailand a bloodless coup, which ended absolute monarchy there. Pridi Phanomyong (1900–83) and Pibul Songgram (1897–1964) were important leaders.

The military dominated the affairs of government. Thailand gave the Japanese passage to invade the British colony of Malay. But after the defeat of Japan, Thailand gave up the newly acquired territories to Malay, Burma, and Cambodia.

The British colony of Burma was governed as a province of British India until 1937. The Japanese drove out the British in 1942. Burmese nationalism, which had been given a boost after World War I, was in full swing. The days of the British were numbered. Leaders like Aung San (1915–47), who had collaborated with the Japanese, sided with Great Britain in 1945.

On January 4, 1948, the country became independent. The three Indochinese states of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam rebelled against French colonial rule. Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) had pleaded in vain with the Allied countries to give independence to the Indochinese countries at the Paris Peace Conference.

The Indochinese freedom struggle had communism as one of its ideologies for a sizable number of people. When the French came back again, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), or North Vietnam, had already been established on September 2, 1945.

The Khmer Issarack, or the Free Khmers, of Son Ngoc Thanh (1907–76) and Souphanouvong's (1901–1995) Pathet Lao (Land of Lao) had been aligned with the Vietminh. The First Indochina War began in 1946 and continued until the French defeat eight years later. The communist faction had not accepted the limited independence given to Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam in 1949.

The Philippines was annexed by the United States after the Spanish-American treaty in December 1898. After the Philippine-American War (1898–1901) military occupation was replaced by civilian governments. In principle, the independence of the Philippines was recognized by the U.S. Congress in the Jones Act of 1916.

On July 4, 1946, it got complete independence. British Malaya had three types of administration: Crown colonies, protected federated states, and protected unfederated states. The Japanese had faced tough opposition from the Malay Chinese, who had formed the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army.

The British created the Malayan Union in April 1946, which faced problems from the Malayan Communist Party. The pan-Malayan party called the United Malay National Organization was established in May of the same year. The British created the Federation of Malay in February 1948, which became a stepping stone to independence in 1957.

In World War II Japan occupied Singapore on February 15, 1942. General disillusionment with British rule and the growth of political consciousness accelerated. After the abolition of Straits Settlement, Singapore became a separate Crown colony on April 1, 1946.

Elections to its legislative council were held in March 1948. The British government was compelled to give greater self-government to Singapore in 1953. Singapore attained self-government in 1959, with Britain retaining control of its defense and foreign affairs.

The Dutch established direct rule over the whole of modern Indonesia by 1909. Nationalism grew out of the country's glorious historical past, colonial exploitation,Western education, anticolonial movements in Asia, and miserable social conditions.

The first nationalist organization was Budi Utomo (Noble Conduct), founded in May 1908. The Sarekat Islam (Islamic Association), established in 1912, became a mass organization with membership running above 2 million. In 1920 a group of radicals formed the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI, Communist Party of Indonesia).

The Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI, Indonesian Nationalist Party), with its motto of one nation (Indonesia), people (Indonesian), and language (Bhasa Indonesia), was established in 1927. It was led by Sukarno (1901–70). The nationalist struggle was suppressed by policies of repression and by sending leaders to prison camps.

On August 17, 1945, Sukarno and Muhammad Hatta (1902–80) proclaimed independence and established the Republic of Indonesia. But it took five years of guerrilla warfare and diplomatic offensives to establish its independence unchallenged, as the Dutch came back. At last, on August 17, 1950, the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia was restored.

In the second half of the 20th century this historical legacy, along with new developments, shaped Southeast Asia. In the 21st century Southeast Asian countries had increasing importance among the nations of the world.

Shandong (Shantung) Question (1919)

Shandong (Shantung)

Shandong (Shantung) is a province on China's northern coast. It is the birthplace of two great sages, Confucius and Mencius, and is therefore called China's Holy Land. Dramatically weakened after its defeat by Japan in 1895, Germany set off the "scramble for China" in 1898 by seizing Jiaozhou (Kiaochow), a port in Shandong, for a German naval base and forcing the Qing (Ch'ing) government to lease it to Germany for 99 years.

Germany also received the right to build and control two railways in Shandong and gained other mining and financial concessions. Shandong became a German sphere of influence.

Japan entered World War I as an ally of Great Britain with a goal of destroying German influence in East Asia; by November 1914 it had ousted all German interests in Shandong. In 1915 the Japanese government presented Chinese president Yuan Shikai (Yuan Shihk'ai) with the Twenty-one Demands, aimed at establishing its hegemony in China.

One group stipulated the transfer of German interests in Shandong to Japan. Although Yuan agreed to the demands in May 1915, they were never ratified by the Chinese parliament, which he had dissolved. In 1917 Japan's allies (Great Britain, France, Russia, and Italy) agreed to the transfer of German rights in Shandong to Japan after the war. After joining the war the United States also agreed to Japan's special rights in China.

China joined World War I in 1917 as an associated power and thus won a seat at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Its broad goal, the rescinding of the unequal treaties China had been forced to sign with Western powers since 1842, was never discussed. Japan had three goals at Paris:

1. the Micronesian Islands (Carolines, Marianas, and Marshalls) in the northern Pacific as mandates under the League of Nations, which was granted;
2. a clause in the covenant of the League of Nations on racial equality, which was controversial and withdrawn; and
3. obtaining German rights in Shandong.

China's legal position was compromised when Japan revealed a secret agreement with Yuan's successor in China that acknowledged Japan's rights in Shandong in return for Japanese loans.

May Fourth Movement

The loss of Shandong provoked enormous public anger in China, directed mainly against its politicians, who were seen as incompetent and traitorous. Protests led by students, called the May Fourth Movement, won widespread support from merchants and workers. The government was pressured into not signing the Treaty of Versailles with Germany.

Shidehara Kijuro

Shidehara Kijuro in 1930

Shidehara Kijuro was born in Osaka and educated at the Imperial University of Tokyo. He began his career as a diplomat in 1899; his postings included Korea, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. In his capacity as ambassador to the United States (1919–22), he argued (without success) for the repeal of laws restricting Japanese immigration to the United States.

Shidehara led the Japanese delegation at the Washington Naval Conference (also known as the International Conference on Naval Limitation) in 1921–22, called by the United States to establish security and arms limitations agreements in the Pacific.

He assumed the post of minister of foreign affairs in 1924 and served in this capacity in the years 1924–27 and 1929–31. Shidehara's foreign policy approach was notable for his pursuit of peace and reconciliation rather than aggression and territorial expansion, an approach that became known as Shidehara diplomacy.


This conciliatory approach brought Shidehara into conflict with those individuals in the Japanese government who wanted to pursue more militaristic, expansionist goals, particularly toward China. Shidehara was forced out of office in 1931 after the Manchurian incident, when the bombing of a Japanese railway near Shenyang (Mukden) became a pretext for the Japanese capture of Manchuria from China.

Shidehara was held in high regard abroad even after he left office in Japan. He was well known and popular within the United States. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1931 with the caption "Japan's Man of Peace and War."

After the Japanese surrender in 1945 that concluded World War II, Shidehara, with the approval of the U.S. military occupation authorities, became the first prime minister of postwar Japan. Shidehara appointed Matsumoto Joji to head a commission to draft the new constitution. However, the result was rejected by the U.S. authorities as too similar to the Meiji constitution.

A new constitution that included women's right to vote and a renunciation of war was produced by General Douglas MacArthur's staff and was adopted in 1946. Shidehara was elected to the house of representatives of the diet in 1947, became speaker of the house in 1949, and held this post until his death in 1951.

Leopold Sédar Senghor

Leopold Sédar Senghor

Leopold Senghor was born into a wealthy merchant family in 1906 in a small fishing village south of Dakar in present-day Senegal. He was educated in Catholic mission schools. Senghor studied in Paris on a state scholarship and during the 1930s taught in several French lycées. He was granted French citizenship in 1932, and when World War I broke out Senghor enlisted in the French army and was captured by the Germans, spending over one year as a prisoner of war.

Senghor and Aimé Césaire are credited with developing the ideas of négritude, a glorification of African history and culture that was also a revolt against imperial control. Although he presented highly romanticized visions of Africa and its peoples, particularly women, Senghor was also highly assimilated into French culture. Senghor's descriptions of Africa as a region of feeling and Europe as one of reason were criticized by later African nationalists and intellectuals.

Poetry was Senghor's preferred medium of expression. Writing in French, Senghor published a collection of poetry, Chants D'Ombre, dealing with memories and loss of homeland in 1945. Senghor was well known in French intellectual circles, and Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the introduction to his Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et mangache de langue française in 1948. In 1944 Senghor became a professor of African languages at the École Nationale de la France d'Outre-Mer.


Senghor married a Guyanese woman, with whom he had two children, but the marriage ended in divorce. He then married a French woman from Normandy. From 1945 to 1946 Senghor represented Senegal in the French constituent assemblies, and he continued to serve in the French national assembly into the 1950s. With Alioune Diop, another Senegalese intellectual, Senghor established Présence Africaine, a renowned intellectual cultural journal.

When Senegal broke off from the federated Sudanese Republic and became an independent nation in 1960, Senghor was elected its first president. Although he was a practicing Catholic from a small ethnic group, Senghor ruled over a majority Muslim nation that was mostly Wolof. However, Senghor maintained cordial relations with Muslim leaders.

Leopold Sédar Senghor post stamp

Senghor served as president until 1980, when he willingly stepped down from office. In retirement he divided his time between Senegal and France. Senghor was honored with many awards, including the Dag Hammarskjold Prize in 1965. He was appointed to the prestigious Institut Française, Académie des Sciences in 1969. In 2001 Senghor died in France.

Sino-Japanese War

Japanese forces

The Nationalist government in China faced two major challenges after completing the Northern Expedition in 1928: domestically, the Communist rebellion, and internationally, Japanese aggression. While warlords ruled China Japan could exploit Chinese disunity by extorting concessions.

Japanese militarists bent on preventing the formation of a strong China had tried and failed to halt the advance of the Nationalist Northern Expedition in May 1928 by landing troops in Shandong (Shantung). They failed again in December 1928 to prevent the young warlord of Manchuria from acceding to the Nationalist government.

The Manchurian incident demonstrated the ascendancy of Japanese militarists over the civilian government. On September 18, 1931, junior officers of the Kwantung Army (a unit of the Japanese army stationed in Manchuria, a Japanese sphere of influence) attacked many cities in Manchuria (called the Northeastern Provinces in China). China appealed to the League of Nations, which passed resolutions ordering Japan to halt its aggression, in vain.


The league then sent a commission of inquiry (the Lytton Commission) to investigate the legitimacy of the puppet government that Japan set up in Manchuria. When the commission report rejected Japanese claims and ordered Manchuria's rendition to China, Japan resigned from the league.

Emboldened by the league's impotence and the indifference of the United States, Japan stepped up its aggression against China. Its troops conquered Rehe (Jehol) province, which adjoined Manchuria, in 1933 and attacked the Inner Mongolian provinces in 1934.

Fearing an all-out war where it would be crushed and beset by the Communist rebellion, the Nationalist government, led by Chiang Kai-shek, sought piecemeal resistance and negotiations with Japan in order to buy time to build up Chinese infrastructure and defenses.

Japanese troops marching through the rubble of a village near Hankow

Successes against China made the Japanese militarists heroes at home, and their tactic of assassinating their opponents silenced the opposition. Their avowed policy was to control all of China, then move by sea to conquer South and Southeast Asia and by land to conquer the Soviet Far East and then all of Central Asia.

These ambitions would lead to the formation of an Axis between Japan, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy in 1938 that aimed at world domination by these three nations. In 1935 Japan initiated a program to create another puppet state, called North Chinaland, to include five provinces in northern China.

The acceleration of Japanese aggression led to widespread demand in China that all Chinese unite and that the government cease its anti-Communist campaigns. In response to that prospect, Japan initiated the Marco Polo Bridge incident on July 7, 1937, by attacking a town in northern China at a railway junction near the Marco Polo Bridge (called Lukouchiao or Lugouqiao in Chinese).

Chiang Kai-shek

Realizing that the incident was part of a large design, the Chinese government decided to resist to the end. A United Front was formed with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and other parties and groups, all pledged to support the war of resistance led by the Kuomintang (KMT). Japan had expected to conquer China in three months. The war would last eight years and become part of World War II in Asia.

China Fights Alone

The modern Japanese army, aided by air and sea power, inflicted heavy losses and conquered the entire coastal region by the end of 1938. However, Japanese attempts to destroy Chinese morale by bombing schools, destroying industries, and treating the civilians in conquered areas with extreme brutality only forged an iron will among the Chinese to fight on.

The rape of Nanjing (Nanking), in which the Japanese soldiers raped, tortured, and slaughtered upward of 300,000 Chinese in the surrendered former capital, was one of the most despicable acts of brutality in World War II.

Chinese Kuomintang troops fighting Japanese troops

Millions of Chinese civilians were killed in the war, but more millions trekked to Free China in the interior, moving schools, libraries, and factories to continue resistance. To slow the Japanese advance, in 1938 the Chinese even breached the Yellow River dikes, at a horrendous toll to the local population.

The Chinese government moved too, up the Yangtze (Yangzi) River first to Wuhan and finally to Chongqing (Chungking) in Szechuan (Sichuan) Province, deep in the interior, where the mechanized Japanese military could not penetrate, though its bombs did inflict heavy damage.

Chongqing was repeatedly destroyed by Japanese incendiary bombs, but life and factory production continued in caves excavated in the surrounding mountains, which served as air-raid shelters. Despite great odds, the government persisted in its goal of resistance combined with reconstruction.


China fought alone with little outside aid until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Japan could not entice prominent Chinese leaders to collaborate. The only man of national prominence to defect and form a quisling regime was Wang Jingwei (Wang Ching-wei) in 1938.

But he had become so discredited by then because of his previous political machinations and because Japan so obviously dominated the several puppet regimes in China that few followed him.

The United Front with the Communists was ill fated and a lifesaver for the besieged remnant Communist forces, down to about 30,000 men in 1937. From the beginning the CCP used it to increase their numbers and territory, while the KMT army was mauled by superior Japanese forces.

Chinese troops marching on The Great Wall

As Communist leader Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) told his men, "Our fixed policy should be 70 percent expansion, 20 percent dealing with the Kuomintang, and 10 percent resisting Japan." In the light of these policies, it is not surprising that even nominal cooperation between the two parties had broken down by 1941.

In April 1941 Japan and the Soviet Union signed a neutrality pact that allowed the Soviet Union to focus on preparing for war against Germany. This pact also removed the doctrinal basis for CCP-KMT cooperation. Their standoff continued throughout the war.

The CCP continued its expansion, and the KMT maintained a military blockade of CCPcontrolled areas around its capital, Yanan (Yenan). The war also provided the CCP an opportunity to restructure its party and its army and provided Mao and other leaders time to develop new social, political, and economic institutions and strategies.

China Gains Allies in World War II

China fought alone between 1937 and 1941 except for Soviet aid in its air defenses in the initial years, some small loans from the United States and Great Britain, and an Air Volunteer Corps (Flying Tigers) of U.S. airmen under General Claire Chennault. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and British and Dutch colonies in Asia in December 1941, World War II expanded to include all Axis powers against China and all Allies against Japan.

Chinese Communist troops training with American Thompson sub-machine guns

China became part of the China-Burma-India theater of war, and Chiang Kai-shek became supreme commander of the China theater. China also began to receive expanded U.S. aid. 1942 was a bleak year for the Allies in Asia as Japan conquered most Western holdings—the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya, Burma, and the Dutch East Indies.

In contrast, China had stood alone against Japan for over four years. China's international prestige soared. In 1943 treaties were signed between China and the United States and Great Britain that ended 100 years of unequal treaties.

Chiang and Madame Chiang Kaishek traveled to Cairo, Egypt, to meet with British leader Winston Churchill and U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt. The leaders agreed that Japan would have to surrender unconditionally, return its conquests since 1895 to China, and grant Korea independence.

War also brought disagreements between the Allies. Churchill and Roosevelt had agreed that they would give first priority to defeating the Nazis in Europe, then the Japanese in the Pacific, with the Chinese theater coming third.

Friction developed between China and its allies over expectations. In exchange for China's receiving U.S. Lend-Lease aid, the United States expected China to expand its role in the war, while exhausted China expected the United States to bear a greater burden in the fighting. There were also disputes over Lend-Lease.

Roosevelt appointed newly promoted general Joseph Stilwell, the chief of U.S. forces in China, Chiang's U.S. chief of staff, and gave him control over Lend-Lease materiel in China (whereas Lend-Lease materiel in Britain was under British control). China was also disappointed that it received the least amount of Lend-Lease, although the logistics of transportation were a factor in the limited amount reaching China.

The worst thorn in the side of Sino-U.S. relations was Stilwell's abrasive personality, for which he was called Vinegar Joe and his insulting attitude toward the Chinese leaders. Stilwell also clashed with Claire Chennault, an advocate of air power, and finally demanded that he be handed total command of Chinese troops.

Convinced that Stilwell's goal was to subordinate rather than cooperate with the Chinese, Chiang demanded his recall, which was endorsed by General Patrick Hurley (secretary of war under President Hoover), Roosevelt's special emissary to China to mediate between Stilwell and Chiang.

He was recalled in October 1944 and replaced by General Albert Wedemeyer, who was not given command of Chinese troops. Relations between the two nations improved as a result. Hurley, however, was unsuccessful in mediating between the KMT and the CCP.

In February 1945 Roosevelt met with Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin at Yalta to obtain Soviet entry into the war against Japan after Germany's surrender. The terms included important concessions to the Soviet Union in Manchuria and Chinese recognition of the independence of Mongolia (a Chinese possession that had become the first Soviet satellite state in 1924).

These agreements were made without prior consultation with the Chinese government, which was forced to agree. World War II ended in Asia on August 10, 1945, after the United States dropped the second atomic bomb on Japan.

China was Japan's first victim and had suffered most from Japanese aggression. The Chinese rejoiced in their victory, and in China's new international status as one of the Big Four Powers, a founding nation of the United Nations (UN), and a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Alfred E. Smith

Alfred E. Smith

Al Smith was born in Manhattan into a working-class family of partly Irish ancestry. He had no formal education past grade school because he had to go to work at age 12 when his father died.

Smith took various jobs, including a well-paying job at the Fulton Fish Market, which brought him to the attention of Tammany Hall, New York's political machine, and at the age of 22 he became a clerk in the office of the commissioner of jurors. He was elected to the New York state assembly as a Democrat in 1904 and elected speaker in 1913.

Smith gained even greater prominence when he was appointed vice chairman of the New York State Factory Investigating Commission, formed to investigate the fatal 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.


This familiarized him with industrial conditions in New York State and encouraged him to support progressive policies. By 1915 Elihu Root, a Republican senator who had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912, could call Smith "the best informed man on the business of the State of New York."

In 1915 Smith was elected to the office of sheriff of New York. Three years later he was elected governor. He lost the position in the Republican landslide of 1920, regained it in 1922, and kept it through two more election cycles.

As governor he assisted in the creation of the New York Port Authority, run jointly by New York and New Jersey, and he sponsored legislation on rent control; tenant protection; workers' compensation; aid o mothers, infants, and dependent children; and regulating women's work hours. He also put Robert Moses in charge of the state park system.

During his tenure as governor he feuded with newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst and the mayor of New York. Smith's reelection victory in 1926 against a very strong Republican candidate made him the foremost Democrat holding public office in the country.

Smith had been nominated as a candidate for the presidency at the Democratic National Convention in 1924, but the combination of a late start in the hunt for delegates, his Roman Catholic faith, and a fight over a platform plank denouncing the Ku Klux Klan by name led to a deadlock with a southern candidate, William McAdoo, and neither received the nomination.

In 1928 Franklin Delano Roosevelt presented Smith to the convention as "The Happy Warrior," and he was nominated on the first ballot, making him the first Roman Catholic ever nominated for president by a major party.

His New York accent, his religion, his association with a big-city political machine, and his stand against Prohibition led to a sound defeat by Herbert Hoover in a campaign characterized by appeals to religious bigotry.

After his defeat Smith became involved in the project of erecting the Empire State Building, and he became president of the firm that owned and operated it, a position he held until his death. Although he supported the nomination of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, he became a critic of the New Deal and government regulation of industry.

He later joined in the formation of the American Liberty League, a nonpartisan organization devoted to protection of the rights of property and opposition to the "political experiments" being conducted by the Roosevelt administration. Smith supported Republican presidential candidates in 1936 and 1940.