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British Empire Research Paper

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By the 20th century, empire had evolved to the point of total collapse and the next evolution was rise of the nation state. At the peak of the British Empire, its colonial rule expanded over the whole globe. In particular, the colonies in the Middle East and colony in India are great examples of the function of the British Empire. When the Ottoman Empire was split up into smaller countries among the British and French Empire with little regard for the people living there, tension arose. In Palestine, the Jewish people and the Palestinian Arabs were promised land under the Balfour Declaration (Tusan, Lecture, 4/20). The Declaration was not acted upon and the Arabs did not get what was promised to them, the Jewish people however did. The state …show more content…

The Middle East was made up with small, dysfunctional countries that could not unite because of the difference of religion. India on the other hand did unite and defeated the British Empire by using a non-violent approach. The INC or Indian National Congress and the Muslim League were the two groups that pushed for nationalization of India. The INC’s leader was Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi pushed for the non-violent approach and used the already tainted view of empire against empire not against the British people. “Our quarrel is not with the British people, our fight their imperialism”(Tusan, 232). That quote is from Gandhi’s Quit India Speech. Instead of using violence and anger against the British people, Gandhi used movements like the Salt March as a non-violent approach to protest taxes and people were thrown in jail for it. This was what he needed to get rid of Empire. (Tusan, Lecture, 4/8). With every the non-violent approaches that Gandhi took; it was one step closer to gaining independence. The way that India gained its freedom was …show more content…

Russia had a different idea of what a new nation should look like. It became the USSR during World War 1. It was a Nationalist Empire at its core and had nations under its empire that conformed to Soviet laws. These countries were called republics (Tusan, lecture, 4/22). It was not long before the strong centralized power of the USSR began to evolve into something evil. Joseph Stalin was in charge over the USSR when it was at it worst. The Iron Curtain cut Europe in half. Easter Europe was the USSR. Stalin did this to claim the region as his own. This is what the true evil in empire can do. There was too much pressure for the USSR to survive from the outside world. On top of that, the people of the USSR began to revolt. After the USSR fell, Joseph Havel, the president of Czechoslovakia under the USSR addressed to the nation the plans for a new democratic nation (Tusan, 227). This was the first step in rebuilding a broke group of

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