Chapter 16: Chapter Outline

1. Reactions to social and political change
1. Everywhere the transformations of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries upset people's lives and established ways
1. In Europe, political and economic revolutions overturned the old order
2. In North America, the United States' conquest of lands and expansion upset Indian groups
3. In Latin America, new nation-states struggled to sustain order
4. In Asia and Africa, rulers had to come to terms with European economic and military power
2. Dissidents in all areas emerged to propose alternative scenarios that drew upon their own traditions as well as their contacts with outside disruptive forces
1. In one pattern, particularly in the Islamic Middle East, Islamic Africa, non-Islamic Africa, and China, alternative perspectives were shaped by the disruption of European commerce
1. These areas saw the emergence of leaders who believed that their own traditions required rejuvenation
2. In another pattern, mainly in Europe and the Americas, utopians and radicals envisioned more equitable rearrangements to the order created by the industrial and political revolutions
1. The most radical envisioned a socialist alternative
3. The third pattern emerged among the colonized peoples
1. Indigenous peoples in the Americas and South Asia struggled to defend their traditional worlds
3. All these movements shared four traits
1. All of them opposed some form of established authority
2. They were steeped in local historical and cultural traditions
3. They advocated new political and social arrangements
4. They either took place far from the center of the new order or were led by people on the margins
2. Prophecy and revitalization in the Islamic world and Africa
1. The era of Islamic expansion and the flowering of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires were over
1. European power encroached upon the Islamic World
2. Prophets emerged who urged revival and restoration of theocratic governments
3. Non-Islamic Africa was also transformed by the new emerging European trading regime and also witnessed the rise of charismatic leaders who drew strength from spiritual and magical traditions
2. Islamic revitalization
1. Movements to revitalize Islam took place on the peripheries
2. Wahhabism
1. Muhammad Ibn abd al-Wahhab preached that the local population of the Najd region of the Arabian peninsula had become too religiously lax in the late eighteenth century
1. Wahhabism swept across the peninsula
2. Followers sacked Shiite shrines and overtook the holy cities of Mecca and Medina
3. The Ottomans used Muhammad Ali of Egypt and his army to put down the revolt
3. Dan Fodio and the Fulani
1. Muslim revolts emerged in West Africa in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
1. The Fulani people sought to recreate a purer Islamic past
2. The Fulani Muslim cleric and prophet Usman dan Fodio created a vast empire
1. He waged jihad against unbelievers
2. He especially targeted Hausa rulers deemed too lax in their religion and too tolerant of nonbelievers
3. Fulani women of North Nigeria made critical contributions to religious revolt
1. Men expected women to be modest but to support their community
2. Best known female Muslim leader was Nana Asa'u
4. Eventually a new state emerged-the Sokoto Caliphate-that avidly promoted the growth of Islam
3. Charismatic military men and prophets
1. In southern Africa, in the early nineteenth century, the Mfecane revolt reordered the political map
1. The Bantu population in southern Africa had grown to strain the resources of the land
2. Shaka Zulu, son of a minor chief, possessed great military and organizational skills, and emerged to create a ruthless warrior state to replace the modest chieftaincies
1. He assimilated many conquered peoples
2. Other peoples duplicated his efforts in response to the threat his new state posed
1. The states of Ndebele and Sotho emerged
3. Shaka's power stemmed from the tradition of "big men" in the area who emerged at times of crisis and social change
1. Shaka and other leaders forged new states and built new ethnic and kinship ties using long-standing religious and cultural symbols
3. Prophecy and rebellion in China
1. China's Taiping Rebellion, unlike those in the Islamic world and Africa, arose in an area with some Western influences
2. Rising population, coupled with rising opium use and debt, had put increased pressure on land and resources
3. Lack of authority and respect for the Qing dynasty following the loss to the British in the Opium Wars paved the way for the Taiping Rebellion of 1850
1. The rebellion drew on China's tradition of peasant revolts rooted in religious sects
2. Women played an important role
4. The dream
1. Hong Xiuquan was a native of Guangdong province
1. He encountered Western missionaries while preparing for the civil service examination in the 1830s
2. On failing the exam, he began to have visions that led him to forming the Society of God Worshipers and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom
1. Confucius and women generals were in the visions
3. Hong reportedly realized the significance of the dream on reading a Christian tract in 1843
1. Hong believed that he was the son of Lord Ye-huo-hua (Jehovah) and that Jesus was his brother
2. Like Jesus, Hong believed he had been sent to save the world
5. The rebellion
1. Hong began preaching and converting in the surrounding areas
2. His followers lived in contradiction to Chinese traditions of hierarchy, patriarchy, and religion
1. His first followers came from the margins of society
2. Converts could not consume alcohol, opium, or indulge in sensual pleasure
3. Men and women were segregated for administrative and residential purposes
1. Women were allowed to serve in the Taiping army or bureaucracy
4. All land was divided among families according to need
1. Men and women received equal shares
3. In 1850, full-fledged rebellion began against the hated Manchus
1. In 1851, Hong set up the Taiping kingdom with its capital at Nanjing, declaring himself the Heavenly King
2. In 1853, Taiping rebels captured Nanjing and systematically killed Manchu men, women, and children
3. Han and Manchu elites rallied to the dynasty's side
4. Westerners also supported the Qing
1. Believed Taiping's doctrine represented a perversion of Christianity
4. Qing forces crushed the rebellion and killed Hong in 1864
5. Rebels became an inspiration for further reform
4. Utopians, socialists, and radicals in Europe
1. Restoration and resistance
1. The social and political unrest between 1815 and 1848 stemmed from the ambiguous legacies of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars
2. Political innovation meant that there were a variety of different state forms and ideologies from which to choose
2. Critics of the Restoration were varied
1. Reactionaries wanted to reverse secularization and democratization
1. Slavophiles in Russia wanted to cleanse the realm of "Western" influence
2. Liberals pressed for legal and political reforms encoded in the American and French Revolutions, but not economic equality
1. John Stuart Mill embodied this thought
3. Radical visions
1. Radicals envisioned total reconfiguration of the old regime's state system
2. Radicals were a diverse lot
1. Some demanded equality and end to personal property
3. Nationalists demanded new nation-states in Poland, Serbia, Greece, Italy, and Germany in place of the Ottoman, Habsburg, and Russian empires
1. Greece secured its independence from the Ottoman empire in the 1820s
4. Socialists and Communists demanded political and economic reform
1. They worried about the economic gap between workers and the new wealthy middle class
5. Fourier and Utopian Societies
1. Utopian Socialism was the most visionary of all alternative movements
2. Charles Fourier was the most influential of Europe's prophet-visionaries
1. His "system" planned for reorganizing society into phalanxes of about 1,500 people
2. All members of the phalanx would work
3. Fourier's writing gained popularity in the 1830s
1. Women worked toward reform based on Fourier's system
2. Writings influenced Russians such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Italians like Giuseppe Mazzini, the Spanish republican Joaquin Abreu, and the German Karl Marx
6. Marxism
1. Karl Marx became the most important Restoration-era radical
2. Collaborating with Friedrich Engels, he developed a materialist theory of human history
3. They believed the current clash between wage workers and capitalists would usher in a brave new world of true liberty, equality, and fraternity
1. This new world would not have private property
2. The state would wither away because there would be no need for human exploitation
4. The revolutions of 1848 resulted in uprisings in France, Austria, Italy, and Czechoslovakia, but they failed to achieve even limited goals, much less radical ones. Still, radical visions continued to shape views of alternatives
3. Marx published The Communist Manifesto in 1848, calling on the workers of all nations to unite and overthrow capitalism
5. Insurgencies against colonizing and centralizing states
1. In the nineteenth century, Native Americans and Indians developed alternative visions to their colonial status that drew upon traditional cultural and political resources, yet envisioned something new
2. Alternative to the expanding United States: Native American prophets
1. Tenskwatawa emerged as a prophet, part of a long tradition in Native American cultures
1. Indian seers had periodically emerged to encourage native peoples to purge colonial influenced and invigorate native traditions
1. Popé encouraged the Pueblo villages in New Mexico to rise up against colonial Spain
2. During the 1750s, Neolin led rebels against the British in the Ohio Valley
2. In the early 1800s, the Indians of the Ohio River valley envisioned a world from which the Euro-American invaders had disappeared
1. The Shawnee had lost most of their holdings to the United States
2. Many cooperated with American officials and Christian missionaries in order to survive
1. They took up farming and private property
2. They embraced Christianity
3. Tenskwatawa, a distraught Shawnee, had much in common with Hong Xiuquan, the Taiping leader
1. Having lived an uninspiring life thus far, he claimed to have fallen into a trance and envisioned a heaven where the Shawnee would return to traditional ways
2. He exhorted Indians to return to traditional ways and to reduce their dependency on Euro-Americans
1. He urged them to abandon alcohol, guns, and Christianity
3. He claimed that if the Indians heeded his message, they could restore their way of life and Euro-Americans would disappear
4. By 1805, he had converted numerous people from various tribes
4. His brother Tecumseh, a noted warrior, spread Tenskwatawa's vision around the Great Lakes and organized armed resistance to the United States
5. From 1811 to 1813 Tecumseh and his forces fought valiantly but were ultimately defeated by the United States army
6. During the 1820s and 1830s, most Indians in the eastern half of the United States were relocated, often by force, west of the Mississippi
1. Cherokee Trail of Tears
3. Alternative to the central state: The Caste War of Yucatan
1. The most successful of all rebellions in modern history or the New World was the Mayan revolt against the Mexican government in the nineteenth century
2. The Mayan of the Yucatan had enjoyed relative autonomy for centuries
1. They maintained their villages, ruled by elders, with collective ownership of the land
3. In the nineteenth century, regional elites began growing sugar and used debt peonage to coerce labor out of Mayans
1. During the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, government officials sought revenue and soldiers from Mayan villages
4. In 1847, the Mayans began a revolt against local elites and the Mexican government that would last for half a century
1. The conflict was known as the "Caste War" because Mayans wanted to end their status as a special caste that paid separate taxes and did not enjoy the same rights as whites
2. Mayan leaders essentially upheld a republican model based on full political equality
5. The rebellion was successful early on but Mexican forces used brutality to repress it
6. The war transformed the Mayan rebels
1. Some forged a mixed syncretic religion that blended Mayan and Christian traditions and demanded complete cultural autonomy, not just political equality
7. By the late nineteenth century, the rebellion still thrived in rural areas, but isolation and hunger had depleted the rebels' numbers
8. Henequen cultivation entered the area at this time
1. The Mexican government threw its full weight behind the large landholders' efforts to force the Mayans to work the plantations
9. Hunger and government arms crushed the rebellion by 1900
4. The Rebellion of 1857 in India
1. By 1857, the East India Company's rule in India was a century old and had become increasingly autocratic
1. In the 1840s it increasingly annexed more land and stripped native aristocrats of their privileges
2. It began collecting taxes directly from the peasants, bypassing traditional tax collectors
3. It transferred judicial authority away from indigenous elites
4. In 1856, the Company, violating treaty obligations, attempted to annex the province of Awadh
2. Furthermore, the Company began a program of building railroads, telegraph lines, and a postal network to unify its domains
1. The goal was to make India a colonial-capitalist economy
3. In 1857, Indians revolted
1. The revolt began within the Company army as native recruits rebelled against what they perceived as religious insensitivity
1. "Grease cartridge" controversy
2. Soldiers reasserted the authority of the Mughal emperor who still existed but had no real power
3. The revolt spread quickly as peasants, artisans, religious leaders, and the landed gentry joined in
1. Though the dispossessed aristocracy and petty landholders led the rebellion, many individual leaders came from lower ranks
2. The rebellion united Hindus and Muslims
3. Peasants often attacked anything that smacked of Company rule or any local people who benefited from Company rule
4. The revolt was really a series of revolts where local people attempted to settle local grievances. There was no national vision
5. The revolt did not challenge traditional hierarchies of caste and religion
4. By 1858, the British had brutally crushed the rebellion
1. They eliminated the Mughal dynasty through exile and execution
5. In August, Parliament assumed control over India, ending Company rule and transferring authority over India to the British crown
6. Queen Victoria declared religious toleration, improvements, and local say in her government
6. Conclusion
1. When viewed on a global scale, all of these rebellions signify a yearning on the part of many different peoples for a world with multiple centers and historical trajectories
2. Even after defeat, their messages remained alive and continued to shape their communities despite the "victory" of the dominant powers. The yearning for an alternative continued, though it would take different forms in the next century