Decolonization
1914-Present : Process in which many African and Asian states won their independence from Western colonial rule, in most cases by negotiated settlement with gradual political reforms and a program of investment rather than through military confrontation
Indian National Congress
1914-Present : Organization established in 1885 by Western-educated elite Indians in an effort to win a voice in governance of India; over time, the INC became a major popular movement that won India's independence from Britain
Mahatma Gandhi
1914-Present : Usually referred to by his sobriquet "Mahatma" (Great Soul), Gandhi (1869-1948) was a political leader and the undoubted spiritual leader of the Indian drive or independence from Great Britain
Satyagraha
1914-Present : Literally, "truth force"; Mahatma Gandhi's political philosophy, which advocated confrontational but nonviolent political action
Muslim League
1914-Present : The All-India Muslim League, created in 1906, was a response to the Indian national Congress in India's struggle for independance from Britain; the League's leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, argued that regions of India with a Muslim majority should form a separate state called Pakistan
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
1914-Present : LEader of India's All India Muslim League and first president of the breakaway state of Pakistan (1876-1948)
African National Congress
1914-Present : South African political party established in 1912 by elite Africans who sought to win full acceptance in colonial society; it only gradually became a popular movement that came to control the government in 1994
Nelson Mandela
1914-Present : South African nationalist (b. 1918) and leader of the African National Congress who was imprisoned for twenty - seven years on charges of treason, sabotage and conspiracy to over through the apartheid government of South Africa; he was elected president of South Africa in 1994, four years after he was finally released from prison
Black Consciousness
1914-Present : South African movement that sought to foster pride, unity and political awareness among the country's African majority and often resorted to violent protest against white minority rule
Soweto
1914-Present : Impoverished black neighborhood outside Johannesburg, South Africa, and the site of a violent uprising in 1976 in which hundreds were killed; that rebellion began a series of violent protests and strikes that helped end apartheid
Democracy in Africa
1914-Present : A subject of debate among scholars, the democracies established in the wake of decolonization in Africa proved to be fragile and often fell to military coups or were taken over by single-party authoritarian systems; Africa's initial rejection of democracy has sometimes been taken as a sign that Africans were not ready for democratic politics or that traditional African culture did not support it
Economic Development
1914-Present : A process of growth or increasing production and the distribution of the proceeds of that growth to raise living standards; nearly universal desire for economic development in the second half of the twentieth century reflected a cultural belief that poverty was no longer inevitable
Kemal Ataturk
1914-Present : Founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey (1881 - 1938); as military commander and leader of the Turkish national movement, he made Turkey into a secular state
Ayatollah Khomeini
1914-Present : Important Shia ayattolah (advanced scholar of Islamic law and religion) who became the leader of Iran's Islamic revolution and ruled Iran from 1979 until his death in 1989