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  • Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course: World History and today we are going to talk

  • about something we haven’t discussed much here at Crash Course. Peace. Peaceful, non-violent protest.

  • Mr. Green! Mr. Green! Finally an episode where no one gets killed.

  • Mmmm. Ehhh. Some people are gonna get killed, Me From the Past. Sadly, peaceful, nonviolent

  • protest is often just peaceful on the one side.

  • So weve talked a lot about war this year on Crash Course, how it shaped civilizations

  • and nation states. And it’s easy to assume that humans are kind of naturally violent

  • and prone to fighting. And in recent human history, especially during the 20th century,

  • we got scarily good at waging war, right? There were, of course, the two World Wars, but there

  • were also many other very destructive smaller wars and we can’t forget that there were also genocides.

  • But one of the most remarkable and often unnoticed aspects of the 20th century is the incredible

  • number of peace, non violence, and anti-war movements. Like, we know about Gandhi, but

  • what makes the 20th century unique in history is that Gandhi wasn’t unique. There was

  • actually a surprisingly large number of peace and nonviolence movements that were occurring all

  • around the world. So in this episode, were going to talk a little bit about the nonviolent

  • heavy hitters, like Martin Luther King and Gandhi. I guess I should say, the heavynon-hitters

  • because, you know, they were nonviolent. But they were, by no means, the only ones.

  • So by 1900, Europeans pretty much dominated the world, even though there had been relative

  • peace in Europe since 1871, Europeans, using new weapons, had unleashed an incredible amount

  • of violence everywhere else on the planet. They had colonized most of Africa, Asia, and

  • the Pacific. Americans had also expanded across the continental United States, and were making

  • eyes at the Caribbean and Asia. And I want to be clear that this conquest and colonization

  • was consistently violent. But some people were beginning to question the very idea of

  • violence itself. Like in his 1894 book, The Kingdom of God is Within You, Leo Tolstoy,

  • who knew a little bit about War and Peace, explored how Jesus’s message to quoteturn

  • the other cheekwas the basis for a life of nonviolence.

  • He argued that governments and individuals needed to give up violence if they believed

  • themselves to be true Christians, and Tolstoy also saw nonviolence as a solution to ending

  • colonialism. In 1908, Tolstoy wrote "A Letter to a Hindu" to Mohandas Gandhi, and in the

  • letter, he explained that Indians needed to confront British imperialism with love and

  • nonviolence. Gandhi not only read that letter, he also published it in his South African

  • newspaper "Indian Opinion" in 1909. And Tolstoy's ideas in this correspondence with Gandhi marked

  • the beginning of an informal dialogue between the advocates of nonviolence from around the

  • world that spanned the 20th century.

  • And Tolstoy wasn't the only influence on Mohandas K. Gandhi, he'd grown up in the Gujarat region

  • of India where there's a sizable Jain community. And through the Jain monks Gandhi was exposed

  • to the idea of Ahimsa: non-violence or non-injury to life. He also read widely including western

  • writers like John Ruskin, and Henry David Thoreau.

  • So after his return to India from South Africa in 1915, Gandhi began to distill his thinking

  • related to non-violence into a more explicit philosophy. In his 1929 autobiography "The

  • Story of my Experiments with Truth", Gandhi wrote about how his belief in Ahimsa could

  • be the basis for Indian resistance to British rule. So for Gandhi non-violence was both

  • a way of life, and a tool for gaining Indian self-rule. He saw Western civilization as

  • violent and exploitative. That's ridiculous. I know the Eurocentrists are gonna get mad

  • at me for saying that but it is true, a smidge violent and exploitative at times. That said,

  • well done with like market-based innovation and the Mona Lisa and etc. OK let's move on.

  • Gandhi believed that Indians could reject that lifestyle and replace it with a nonviolent

  • one. And Gandhi also believed that Indians could bring about an end to British rule through

  • a combination of Ahimsa and Satyagraha, a word often translated as adherence to truth.

  • All right, let’s go to the Thought Bubble.

  • These interconnected ideas of Ahimsa and Satyagraha are best seen in the Salt March of 1930. So,

  • since the mid 19th century, the British had placed taxes on salt, and since salt, in addition

  • to making food more delicious is necessary to live, Gandhi saw these laws as a perfect

  • example of how British despotism affected all Indians. Gandhi announced that he and

  • a small group planned to march from his home in Ahmedabad to the coast in order to harvest

  • salt. The march took almost two months and quickly gathered media attention from around

  • the world and the British raj in India was forced to choose between arresting Gandhi

  • for breaking a British law or else allowing him to break the law because he was harvesting

  • salt illegally. Millions of Indians were inspired by Gandhi’s challenge to British rule and

  • began their own protests against the salt law. As civil disobedience spread across India,

  • the British began to arrest people and the international media focused even more on the

  • protests and popular opinion began to see British rule as unjust. By refusing to meet

  • violent British rule with violence of his own and highlighting the injustice of British

  • rule, Gandhi was able to use nonviolence as an effective tool in undermining the colonial regime.

  • Thanks Thought Bubble. So as previously noted, Gandhi’s use of nonviolence is very well

  • known but it wasn’t unique. Throughout the early 20th century nationalist movements in

  • colonies throughout Africa and Asia also adopted nonviolence. Like one of the first nationalist

  • leaders to advocate for nonviolence resistance to Imperialism was Phan Chu Trinh. Just as the

  • Vietnamese independence movement was developing in the first decade of the nineteen hundreds,

  • Phan began to question the violent methods advocated by other nationalists. Like he spoke

  • out against the violent uprisings that were occurring in many parts of Vietnam. He also

  • resisted requesting help from Japan in the Vietnamese Independence struggle because of Japan's militarism.

  • In 1919, Egyptians protested against British rule by going on strike, and boycotting British

  • goods, and organizing demonstrations across the country. Those protests went on for months

  • and eventually in 1922 the British granted independence to Egypt. Although some key areas,

  • including the Suez Canal, did remain under British control. And even as nonviolence became

  • a tactic associated with anti-imperial movements in Africa and Asia it was also becoming entrenched

  • in the peace movement that developed in response to World War One. When war broke out in the

  • fall of 1914 there were lots of protests in the United States, which had yet to enter

  • the war. A number of young activists met to discuss how to stop it and how to prevent

  • the United States from entering it. This group included AJ Musty and Kirby Page and Dorothy

  • Day, all of whom would go on to become important figures in the Peace Movement in the United

  • States. They also helped found the Fellowship of Reconciliation or (FOR), which advocated

  • on behalf of conscientious objectors and encouraged nonviolent alternatives to conflict. And then

  • after the war ended many of these American peace activists began to expand their horizons

  • and they saw connections between nonviolence and antiwar movements and nonviolence in the

  • anti-imperial struggle.

  • There was, for instance, Ricard Gregg, a young activist who had been involved in the anti-war

  • movement in the United States, who traveled to India in 1925. He spent four years in India

  • studying with Gandhi including seven months living at Gandhi’s ashram in Gujarat. And

  • then when he returned to the US, Gregg wrote the very influential book The Power of Nonviolence

  • in which he described how nonviolence would remake the world.

  • I mention this to get across the idea that this was truly an international movement that

  • involved cultural exchange that went both west to east and east to west. And this idea

  • of nonviolent resistance was also very compelling to artists. During the Spanish Civil War the

  • nationalist forces of General Franco heavily bombed the Basque village of Guernica and

  • after reading about the destruction of the village, the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso

  • who was working on a commissioned mural for the Spanish Republic abandoned the mural and

  • began painting Guernica to draw attention to the horrors that war inflicts upon innocent

  • civilians. The painting became one of the most famous of the 20th century and it remains

  • a powerful antiwar symbol. There were even nonviolent protests against the Nazis. Like

  • in 1943 the German Gestapo arrested about 1800 Jewish men who were married to non-Jewish

  • women. And as those men were being held in an office building, their wives gathered together

  • on the street. Armed German Gestapo agents attempted to disperse them with threats of

  • firing into the crowd and a stand off between the unarmed women and the armed Gestapo went

  • on for a week. Instead of firing on the women, Joseph Gerbils, the Nazi party director in

  • Berlin, ultimately decided to back down and he released the men. The so called Rosenstrasse

  • protest was the only successful public protest against Nazi policies in Germany but it wasn't the only protest.

  • And then we have the Civil Rights Movement in the United States which brought together

  • many of the different strains of nonviolent resistance in the 20th century. Like during

  • World War II, civil rights pioneer Bayard Rustin met AJ Musty and other members of the

  • Fellowship of Reconciliation, and they spent much of the war protesting racial discrimination

  • in the armed forces but at the same time Rustin was also becoming increasingly aware of the

  • injustice of the British colonialism in India and Africa and began to protest that as well.

  • And we see this global cross-fertilization of nonviolent ideas again in 1948 when Rustin

  • traveled to India, where he met with many of Gandhi’s associates -- Gandhi had been

  • killed in January of that year -- and learned about the role of nonviolent protest against

  • the British. And in the following decade, Rustin would teach Martin Luther King Jr about

  • Gandhi’s tactics, so he could use them in protesting against racial segregation in the

  • United States. King himself traveled to India in 1959 to learn more about nonviolence. And

  • before leaving he explained that he was quotemore convinced than ever before that the

  • method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people

  • in their struggle for justice and human dignity.”

  • And the principles of nonviolence would come to shape the strategies used for the remainder

  • of the Civil Rights Movement. Nonviolent resistance was also an important protest tactic during

  • the Cold War. Alexander Dubcek, the Czech Communist Party’s first secretary, began

  • a series of reforms to communist rule in Czechoslovakia in January 1968 that would become known as

  • the Prague Spring. And the Soviet Union was like no no no no no no no we don’t like

  • democratic reforms or Spring. So they sent in troops to destabilize Dubcek’s government

  • and in response to that invasion, civilians quickly took to the streets in support of

  • Dubcek and to resist the invasion. Most people resisted through a variety of nonviolent means,

  • including deliberately giving wrong directions to Soviet tanks, forming human blockades across

  • bridges, and distributing protest materials. Secret radio stations were set up to broadcast

  • calls for nonviolent resistance across the country. And the protest continued on for

  • the rest of 1968. In January of 1969, two Czech students burned themselves to death

  • in a Prague square to protest the Soviet occupation and as the tensions between the protesters

  • and the Soviets escalated, the Soviets began a violent crackdown. By the summer of 1969

  • they'd brought the demonstrations to an end.

  • Historians took note of all of this stuff, like historian Gene Sharp published his multi

  • volume Politics of Nonviolent Action which was reportedly read by a lot of the original

  • protesters in the Arab Spring of 2011, which reminds us that nonviolent resistance movements

  • advocating for and in some cases achieving political change are not just part of history,

  • they are also part of the world in which we live today. Ideas about nonviolence that began

  • with Leo Tolstoy at the beginning of the 20th century are still very much with us.

  • And I think it is good important to remind ourselves of two things. First, that Tolstoy’s

  • most famous book is called War and Peace. And secondly, that the 20th century while

  • it featured intensely destructive wars, was by many measures the least violent century ever.

  • Wars are traumatic and they have relatively straightforward narratives that allow us to

  • focus on human dramas and all of that stuff is appealing to historians. But really the

  • nonviolent struggles against oppression in the 20th century have been just as dramatic

  • and especially in the second half of the 20th century they have born fruit and not just

  • in the US and India. When the news focuses just on death and destruction it can be hard

  • to remember that more people are living under peaceful regimes than ever before and that,

  • at least between nations, inequality and injustice are diminishing. Nonviolent resistance doesn’t

  • always work and the governments that emerge form these movements aren’t always good

  • governments. The stories, as usual, are complicated. So the next time we think about the 20th century

  • merely as a century of war and genocide and nuclear weapons we need to remind ourselves

  • that it was also a century in which hundreds of millions of people emerged from poverty

  • and fewer people died as a result of violence. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next week.

  • Crash Course is filmed here in the Chad and Stacey Emigholz studios in Indianapolis and

  • it’s made possible by our Subbable subscribers. Thank you so much for watching and as we say

  • in my home town, don’t forget to be awesome.

Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course: World History and today we are going to talk

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