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Turkey becomes a republic and moves its capital to Ankara

29 October 1923 · Diaspora

The 1900sSezisman1 source
29 October 1923 · Diaspora

Turkey becomes a republic and moves its capital to Ankara

The assembly amended a two year old constitution and elected Mustafa Kemal president.

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The assembly elected in 1923 opened on 11 August, ratified the Lausanne treaty, and in October made Ankara the capital. On 29 October it amended the constitutional act passed two years earlier, and the country became a republic. The presidency went to Mustafa Kemal. Ismet Pasha took office as the first prime minister under the new arrangement. The change followed from the principle of national sovereignty that the assembly had claimed since 1920, and it began a new ideological direction. The nationalism of the war of liberation had grown out of populist ideas and religious loyalty and had served to fix the territory. The nationalism that came after the republic aimed to rebuild the state on a secular western model. From this point the words Turk and Turkey appear in the leaders' speeches in a national sense where they had previously carried a religious one, and pan Islamism and pan Turanism were both discarded.

Mustafa KemalIsmet Inonu Ankara
Where this comes from Karpat, K. H. (1970). The Cambridge history of Islam, Volume 1B: The central Islamic lands since 1918. Cambridge University Press. p. 533.
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Meanwhile, and next door

28 July 1915 to 15 August 1934 · Haitianspan

Nineteen years of American administration and 1,200 miles of road

Haitians named the withdrawal of 1934 the second independence.

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American administrative control of Haiti ran from 28 July 1915 to 15 August 1934. In those nineteen years the occupation rebuilt the Haitian armed forces on an American model and laid 1,200 miles of all weather highway, much of it built by peasants conscripted under an old corvee law that the Americans revived. The same period produced Charlemagne Peralte, who led the Caco war against the occupation, was shot dead in 1919 and was then photographed tied upright to a door so that the picture could be circulated as proof. The photograph became the standing image of Haitian resistance and did the opposite of what the occupation intended. The Americans who governed treated Vodou as a police problem and never grasped how much of Haitian life ran through it. Haitians called the withdrawal of August 1934 the second independence. The phrase set the terms of every argument that followed about what exactly the country had to take back.

Charlemagne PeralteUnited States Marines HaitiPort-au-Prince
Where this comes from Source not recorded for this entry.
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1920s to 1930s · Africanspan

Igbo women attack the trading companies in the 1929 Women's War

Reid sets the riot beside the Gold Coast cocoa hold-ups as the same argument about price.

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Growing for export did not make African villages rich. Households had to divide their land between food and cash crops while imported European manufactures undercut whatever they might have made themselves. Farmers set neither the price of what they sold nor the price of what they bought, and by the end of the 1920s a handful of European firms, the enormous United Africa Company chief among them, controlled the West African import and export trade. Between the wars the terms moved steadily against the grower. In the 1930s farmers had to plant more of the export crop and less food simply to meet the tax, which exhausted soil and produced famine, as in Niger in 1931. Growers organised. In 1929 Igbo women in Nigeria attacked the offices of the trading companies over falling export prices, and dozens died in what is remembered as the Women's War. Gold Coast cocoa farmers held their crop back until the price should rise, and the firms bought elsewhere and waited for the tax collector to do their work.

Igbo womenUnited Africa CompanyGold Coast cocoa farmers NigeriaGold CoastNigerWest Africa
Where this comes from Source not recorded for this entry.
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19 May 1921 · Caribbean

Trinidad law puts six months and a whipping behind the word obeah

The same ordinance silences drums after ten at night and bans the bongo dance.

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The Summary Conviction Offenses Ordinance of 19 May 1921 defined obeah in Trinidad as any pretended assumption of supernatural power or knowledge for fraudulent or illicit ends, for gain, or to injure a person. Conviction before a magistrate carried up to six months in prison, with or without hard labour. A man could be sentenced to corporal punishment on top of it. A woman could be held in solitary confinement, three days at a stretch and a month in all. A justice could issue a warrant on the oath of one credible witness to search any premises by day or night and seize what was found. The police manual advised that convictions usually needed paid informers, and noted that no intent to defraud had to be proved. The same ordinance forbade drums, gongs, tambours, bangees and chac-chacs between ten at night and six in the morning, banned the bongo dance, and set a penalty of ten pounds with the instruments forfeited.

Trinidad
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