The Ottoman Empire’s collapse in World War I left a power vacuum that both Western imperialists and Asian nationalists sought to fill. Strong leaders, such as Turkey’s Mustafa Kemal, led successful nationalist movements in Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan. British and French influence over the League of Nations–mandated Arab states declined in the 1920s and 1930s as Arab nationalists pushed for complete independence. The situation in Palestine, where the British had promised both Palestinians and Jewish Zionists independent homelands, deteriorated in the interwar years as increasingly larger numbers of European Jews migrated there.

Gandhi knew India could not challenge the British Empire militarily, but he also realized a hundred thousand British could do nothing if 350 million Indians refused to obey British laws. Gandhi’s active, nonviolent resistance campaign, which he called satyagraha, convinced the British that colonial rule in India was over, and India won independence in 1947. Regrettably, following independence, extreme Muslim and Hindu religious nationalism threatened to tear India apart.

China’s 1911 Revolution successfully ended the ancient dynastic system before the Great War, while the 1919 May Fourth Movement renewed nationalist hopes after it. Jiang Jieshi’s Nationalist Party and Mao Zedong’s Communists, however, would violently contest who would rule over a unified China. Japan, unlike China, industrialized early and by the 1920s seemed headed toward genuine democracy, but militarists and ultranationalists then launched an aggressive foreign expansion based on “Asia for Asians,” which contributed to the buildup to World War II. Filipino nationalists achieved independence from the United States but only by granting the American military long-term concessions. The diversity of these nationalist movements, arising out of separate historical experiences and distinct cultures, helps explain why Asian nationalists, like European nationalists, developed a strong sense of “we” and “they.” In Asia “they” included other Asians as well as Europeans.