Why did modern nationalism develop in Asia between the First and Second World Wars, and what was its appeal?

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the peoples of Asia adapted the European ideology of nationalism to their own situations. In some cases, such as in Vietnam and India, they sought genuine freedom from foreign imperialism. The Turks and Japanese sought to avoid European colonialism by modernizing and industrializing so they would be the equals of the West. In China there was a limited colonial presence. There different leaders arose who, after overthrowing the ancient monarchy, fought a long civil war to determine what form a modern China would take. The First World War profoundly affected these aspirations by altering relations between Asia and Europe. For four years Asians watched Kipling’s haughty bearers of “the white man’s burden” (see “A Civilizing Mission” in Chapter 25) vilifying and destroying each other. Japan’s defeat of imperial Russia in 1905 (see “The Modernization of Russia” in Chapter 24) had shown that an Asian power could beat a European Great Power; now for the first time Asians saw the entire West as divided and vulnerable.