Topic 8.7 Notes – Global Resistance to Established Power Structures After 1900

What Resistance to Established Power Structures Looked Like After 1900

Power structures in this topic include colonial rule, segregation/apartheid, authoritarian or military dictatorships, and Cold War-backed regimes. People resisted them for concrete reasons: political exclusion, racial oppression, economic inequality, censorship, and state violence.

What matters is that resistance was not just “rebels vs government.” You need these three patterns together:

• Nonviolent resistance tried to pressure rulers through boycotts, marches, strikes, sit-ins, and civil disobedience.
• Militarized state repression treated dissent as a security threat and answered it with censorship, prison, torture, disappearances, exile, and killings.
• Violence against civilians aimed to create fear for political goals.

Ideas shaped methods. Nationalism could inspire anticolonial struggle or dictatorship. Christianity shaped King. Satyagraha shaped Gandhi. Marxism/Maoism inspired revolutionary violence like Shining Path. Anticommunism justified dictators like Pinochet and Franco. Extremist religious interpretations helped justify al-Qaeda.

Nonviolent Resistance and How It Worked

Nonviolent resistance means organized pressure without physical violence. Civil disobedience means openly breaking unjust laws and accepting punishment to expose injustice.

It worked through a chain:

1. Mass participation showed the movement was bigger than a few activists.
2. Economic and administrative disruption made ruling harder.
3. Disciplined response to repression exposed the violence of the state.
4. Media attention turned local injustice into national or global pressure.
5. Negotiation and reform became more likely.

Gandhi in British India

Gandhi’s satyagraha meant “truth-force” and was tied to ahimsa, or non-harm. The Indian National Congress used boycotts, noncooperation, and civil disobedience against British rule.

The Salt March in 1930 to Dandi challenged British salt laws. Salt was a perfect target because everyone needed it, so one simple act of lawbreaking revealed colonial exploitation in daily life. The famous image of Gandhi walking with supporters during the march captures that mix of mass participation and disciplined defiance. Gandhi turned nonviolence into a global model for anticolonial struggle.

Gandhi during the Salt March, 1930

Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States

King adapted Gandhian methods to fight segregation. The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 to 1956 began after Rosa Parks’s arrest and used economic pressure. Through the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King helped organize direct action.

The Birmingham campaign in 1963 mattered because police dogs and fire hoses made segregation’s violence visible on TV. The March on Washington and “I Have a Dream” speech helped build support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Nelson Mandela and apartheid in South Africa

Apartheid was legal racial segregation and white minority rule. The ANC first used protest, strikes, and civil disobedience. After the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, Mandela helped found Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961, which used sabotage rather than at first attacking civilians.

That sequence matters. Mandela moved from protest to sabotage to negotiation. After the Rivonia Trial and years in prison, he was released in 1990, negotiated with F. W. de Klerk, won the 1994 election, and supported reconciliation through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission under Desmond Tutu.

Militarized States and the Intensification of Conflict

Militarization means military power and values spreading into politics and society.

• Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the 1936 to 1939 Civil War, backed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. He used censorship, repression, and suppression of Catalan and Basque identity in the name of nationalism, Catholicism, and anticommunism.
• Idi Amin seized power in Uganda in 1971. His regime used executions, torture, disappearances, and ethnic targeting of Acholi and Lango. He expelled Asians in 1972, which badly damaged the economy.
• Augusto Pinochet took power in Chile in the 1973 coup against Salvador Allende. In the Cold War context, the U.S. supported anti-Allende efforts. Pinochet’s DINA repressed opponents, and Operation Condor linked dictatorships across South America.

Operation Condor member states in South America

The military-industrial complex, a term popularized by Eisenhower in 1961, describes the ties among governments, militaries, weapons makers, and research institutions. Cold War arms sales prolonged and intensified conflicts in places like Vietnam, Angola, and Afghanistan.

Movements That Used Violence Against Civilians

Keep these terms straight:

Shining Path in Peru

Shining Path or Sendero Luminoso, led by Abimael Guzmán, was a radical Maoist movement that began armed struggle in 1980. Based in poor highland regions, it used assassinations, bombings, massacres, and coercion of peasants. The Peruvian state also used brutal counterinsurgency. Guzmán’s capture in 1992 weakened the movement. Its violence alienated civilians and encouraged harsher repression.

Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda, founded by Osama bin Laden from Afghan-Soviet War networks, was a transnational extremist group, not a national liberation movement. It carried out the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the 2000 USS Cole attack, and the September 11, 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. Its goal was to provoke wider conflict and gain global attention. Its ideology does not represent Islam as a whole.

Comparing the Main Reactions

This topic is all about comparing methods, ideology, and outcomes.

• Gandhi and King used nonviolence as both a moral belief and a political strategy.
• Mandela used a mixed strategy over time and ended with negotiation and reconciliation.
• Franco, Amin, and Pinochet defended power through militarized repression.
• Shining Path and al-Qaeda used fear and civilian suffering to force change.