Category: Colonialism

September 7, 1652 - The Guo Huaiyi rebellion begins on Dutch Formosa (modern Taiwan)

9/7/2021

Flag of the Dutch East India Company

The Guo Huaiyi rebellion (also spelled Kuo Huai-i Rebellion) was a peasant revolt by Chinese farmers against Dutch rule in Taiwan in 1652. Sparked by dissatisfaction with heavy Dutch taxation on them but not the aborigines and extortion by low-ranking Dutch officials and servicemen, the rebellion initially gained ground before being crushed by a coalition of Dutch soldiers and their aboriginal allies. It is considered the most important uprising against the Dutch during the 37-year period of their colonization of Taiwan.

The burden of Dutch taxes on the Chinese inhabitants of Taiwan was a source of much resentment. The falling price of venison, a chief export of the island at the time, hit licensed hunters hard, as the cost of the licenses was based on meat prices before the depreciation. The head tax (which only applied to Chinese, not aborigines) was also deeply unpopular, and thirdly, petty corruption amongst Dutch soldiers further angered the Chinese residents.

The revolt was led by Guo Huaiyi (Chinese: 郭懷一; 1603–1652), a sugarcane farmer and militia leader originally from Quanzhou known to the Dutch by the name Gouqua Faijit, or Gouqua Faet. After his planning for an insurrection on 17 September 1652 was leaked to the Dutch authorities, he decided to waste no time in attacking Fort Provintia, which at the time was only surrounded by a bamboo wall. On the night of 7 September the rebels, mostly peasants-farmers armed with bamboo spears, stormed the fort.

The following morning a company of 120 Dutch musketeers came to the rescue of their trapped countrymen, firing steadily into the besieging rebel forces and breaking them. Governor Nicolas Verburg On 11 September the Dutch learned that the rebels had massed just north of the principal Dutch settlement of Tayouan. Sending a large force of Dutch soldiers and aboriginal warriors, they met the rebels that day in battle and emerged victorious, mainly due to the superior weaponry of the Europeans.

Over the following days, the remnants of Guo's army were either slaughtered by aboriginal warriors or melted back into the villages they came from, with Guo Huaiyi himself being shot, then decapitated, with his head displayed on a spike as a warning. In total some 4,000 Chinese were killed during the five-day uprising, approximately 1 in 10 Chinese living in Taiwan at that time. The Dutch responded by reinforcing Fort Provintia (building brick walls instead of the previous bamboo fence) and by monitoring Chinese settlers more closely. However, they did not address the roots of the concerns which had caused the Chinese to rebel in the first place.

However, the Taiwanese Aboriginal tribes who were previously allied with the Dutch against the Chinese during the Guo Huaiyi Rebellion in 1652 turned against the Dutch during the later Siege of Fort Zeelandia and defected to Koxinga's Chinese forces. The Aboriginals (Formosans) of Sincan defected to Koxinga after he offered them amnesty; they proceeded to work for the Chinese and behead Dutch people in executions. The frontier aborigines in the mountains and plains also surrendered and defected to the Chinese on 17 May 1661, celebrating their freedom from compulsory education under Dutch rule by hunting down and beheading Dutch people and destroying their Christian school textbooks.

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August 30, 1917 – Vietnamese prison guards led by Trịnh Văn Cấn mutiny at the Thái Nguyên penitentiary against local French authority.

8/29/2021

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The Thái Nguyên uprising (Vietnamese: Khởi nghĩa Thái Nguyên) in 1917 has been described as the "largest and most destructive" anti-French rebellion in Vietnam (then part of French Indochina) between the Pacification of Tonkin in the 1880s and the Nghe-Tinh Revolt of 1930–31. On 30 August 1917, an eclectic band of political prisoners, common criminals and insubordinate prison guards mutinied at the Thai Nguyen Penitentiary, the largest one in the region. The rebels came from over thirty provinces and according to estimates, involved at some point roughly 300 civilians, 200 ex-prisoners and 130 prison guards.

The initial success of the rebels was short-lived. They managed to control the prison and the town's administrative buildings for six days, but were all expelled on the seventh day by French government reinforcements. According to French reports 107 were killed on the colonial side and fifty-six on the anti-colonial, including Quyen. French forces were not able to pacify the surrounding countryside until six months later. Can reportedly committed suicide in January 1918 to avoid capture. Both Quyen and Can have since been accorded legendary status as nationalist heroes.

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August 8, 1942 – Quit India Movement is launched in India against the British rule in response to Mohandas Gandhi's call for swaraj or complete independence.

8/8/2021

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The Quit India Movement, also known as the August Movement, was a movement launched at the Bombay session of the All India Congress Committee by Mahatma Gandhi on 8 August 1942, during World War II, demanding an end to British rule in India.

After the failure of the Cripps Mission to secure Indian support for the British war effort, Gandhi made a call to Do or Die in his Quit India speech delivered in Bombay on 8 August 1942 at the Gowalia Tank Maidan. The All India Congress Committee launched a mass protest demanding what Gandhi called "An Orderly British Withdrawal" from India. Even though it was at war, the British were prepared to act. Almost the entire leadership of the Indian National Congress was imprisoned without trial within hours of Gandhi's speech. Most spent the rest of the war in prison and out of contact with the masses. The British had the support of the Viceroy's Council (which had a majority of Indians), of the All India Muslim League, the Hindu Mahasabha, the princely states, the Indian Imperial Police, the British Indian Army, and the Indian Civil Service. Many Indian businessmen profiting from heavy wartime spending did not support the Quit India Movement. Many students paid more attention to Subhas Chandra Bose, who was in exile and supporting the Axis Powers. The only outside support came from the Americans, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressured Prime Minister Winston Churchill to give in to some of the Indian demands. The Quit India campaign was effectively crushed. The British refused to grant immediate independence, saying it could happen only after the war had ended.

Sporadic small-scale violence took place around the country and the British arrested tens of thousands of leaders, keeping them imprisoned until 1945. In terms of immediate objectives, Quit India failed because of heavy-handed suppression, weak coordination and the lack of a clear-cut program of action. However, the British government realized that India was ungovernable in the long run and the question for the postwar era became how to exit gracefully and peacefully.

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July 30, 1676 - Nathaniel Bacon issues the "Declaration of the People of Virginia", beginning Bacon's Rebellion against the rule of Governor William Berkeley.

7/30/2021

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This 1905 depiction of the Burning of Jamestown by Nathaniel Bacon and his followers by Howard Pyle is far from an accurate portrayal of the actual event. Bacon's "Army" was more akin to a mob and was able only to defeat Governor Berkeley's forces because the Governor chose to retreat rather than cause bloodshed. In fact, the only death that resulted from Bacon's Rebellion were the 23 rebels who were hung after Bacon died of natural causes.

The Declaration of the People of Virginia, or simply the Declaration of the People, was a list of complaints issued by Nathaniel Bacon on July 30, 1676, in which he proclaimed Virginia's colonial governor, William Berkeley, to be corrupt and expressed his displeasure at what his followers regarded as unjust taxation and the government's failure to provide colonists protection from some tribes of American Indians. The presumed grievances brought about the uprising known as Bacon's Rebellion.

One hundred years afterwards, Bacon's Rebellion was cited by many of the Founding Fathers -- Thomas Jefferson, especially -- as the first stirrings of democratic revolt against the monarchy, and to the extent that the event is remembered at all nearly 350 years later, that is how it has been framed. Except that, as with much of history, the popular version is at odds with the facts.

Bacon is usually portrayed as a "man of the people" who led an "army" of tenant farmers, European indentured servants, and free and enslaved Africans against Berkeley's tyrannical rule. While his "army," which is better characterized as a "mob" was indeed made up of the laboring and servant classes, Bacon was a member of the colonial aristocracy and plantation owner.

His father was a wealthy member of the landed gentry, a lawyer, and member of parliament. As a young man, Bacon had studied at Cambridge, travelled extensively in Europe, and been accepted into chambers at Gray's Inn to read the law in 1664. He married well, also, his wife Elizabeth Duke was the daughter of Sir Edward Duke of Benhall, another prominent politician. By all appearances, Nathaniel, the only son of the Bacon family, was set to assume his father's role as a country squire and politician.

The twist of fate that sent Bacon across the Atlantic was a scandal , or rather his father's desire to avoid one. The younger Bacon was accused of having cheated another man out of an inheritance. The precise details have been lost to time, but before the matter could become widely known, the father packed the son off to the Virginia colony, providing him with 1,800 pounds (more that $500,000 in modern terms), which Bacon used to purchase two plantations and set himself up in Jamestown, where he soon became a member of Governor Berkeley's council. Berkeley was considerably older than Bacon and they were distantly related through the Governor's wife.

Bacon quickly learned that despite his connections with the Governor, he was not easily accepted by the established members of Virginia's colonial elite. The colony was entering its third generation, and those who could trace their lines back to the early days of the settlement were suspicious of newcomers like Bacon who purchase their positions, rather than having earned them. It soon became clear that despite their connection, Berkeley was not inclined to show any favoritism to Bacon, who in turn found the Governor to be tedious and an impediment to Bacon's plans to expand his holdings by encroaching on the lands of allied Indian tribes.

Bacon was not alone in his desire for more land. Many of the landless European settlers had come to the colony as indentured servants with the expectation that, like those who had come before, they would be rewarded with a land grant at the end of the contracts of indenture. However, as land close into the Tidewater region became scarce, the colonial authorities opposed the expansion of settlement further up the James and into the Northern Neck, which by treaty belonged to tribes of natives who Berkeley viewed as creating a buffer between the colonials and the hostile tribe further inland. Nonetheless, squatters moved into the allied tribes territories and sometimes further in to the interior, creating friction with both friendly and hostile tribes alike.

Bacon soon found himself attracted to the cause of those who wanted to, in his words, "ruin and extirpate all Indians in General." Bacon also so an opportunity to use the popular support of this faction to gain more power, being elected to the House of Burgesses . The first act of violence occurred a large number of colonists marched on Jamestown, forcing Berkeley to flee and setting fire to the settlement. Order was quickly restored when the captains of the armed merchant vessels in the Hampton Roads lent their support to Berkeley. Peace was maintained for several years.

After an overseer at one of his plantations was alleged to have been killed by two Indians, Bacon sought Berkeley's permission to lead the militia on a retaliatory raid. Berkeley refused to authorize the action, doubting that the killing had been the result of an Indian attack, but was more likely committed by the slaves of the plantation who used the tale of an Indian raid to cover their crime.

When a rumor spread that another Indian raid was being planned, Berkeley again refused to call of the militia and denied Bacon's request to be granted a Colonel's commission. Nonetheless, Bacon went out to a makeshift camp of farmers and others with a quantity of brandy; after it was distributed, he was elected leader. Against Berkeley's orders, the group struck south until they came to the Occaneechi people. After convincing the Occaneechi warriors to leave and attack the Susquehannock, Bacon and his men murdered most of the Occaneechi men, women, and children remaining at the village. Upon their return, Bacon's faction discovered that Berkeley had called for new elections to the burgesses to better address the Native American raids.

The recomposed House of Burgesses enacted a number of sweeping reforms, subsequently known as Bacon's Laws, although Bacon was not actually sitting but was at his plantation. The new laws limited the powers of the governor and restored suffrage to landless freemen.

After passage of these laws, Nathaniel Bacon arrived with 500 followers in Jamestown to once again demand a commission to lead militia against the Native Americans. The governor, however, refused to yield to the pressure. When Bacon had his men take aim at Berkeley, he responded by "baring his breast" to Bacon and told Bacon to shoot him. Seeing that the governor would not be moved, Bacon then had his men take aim at the assembled burgesses, who quickly granted Bacon his commission. When it was reported that their had been a raid by Indians in Henrico (now Richmond) that had killed 8 settlers, Bacon blamed Berkeley, arguing that had the militia not been in Jamestown seeking to force the Governor to act, it could have defended the frontier.

On July 30, 1676, Bacon and his army issued the "Declaration of the People". The declaration criticized Berkeley's administration in detail. It leveled several accusations against Berkeley:

that "upon specious pretense of public works [he] raised great unjust taxes upon the commonality";
that he advanced favorites to high public offices;
that he monopolized the beaver trade with the Native Americans;
that he was pro-Native American.

After months of conflict, Bacon's forces, numbering 300–500 men, moved on Jamestown, which was occupied by Berkeley's forces, besieging the town. Bacon's men captured and burned to the ground the colonial capital on September 19. Outnumbered, Berkeley retreated across the river. His group encamped at Warner Hall, home of the speaker of the House of Burgesses, Augustine Warner Jr., who had sided with the rebels.

Although word of the rebellion had been sent to England and a Royal Navy squadron had been dispatched, before it arrived at Jamestown, Bacon suddenly died. Although John Ingram, one of the indentured servants who had been denied his land grant attempted to assume command on the rebel forces, he lacked Bacon's ability to stir populist sentiment. Supported by the merchant ships, Berkeley launched a series of counterattacks against the disorganized rebels.

The news of the rebellion being quelled did not soften King Charles II's frustration with Berkeley for having failed to prevent it in the first place. Berkeley was recalled to England, but died en route back. Going forward, the new administration of the colony adopted a policy favoring the expropriation of Indian land for European (but not African) freedmen.

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July 23, 1856 - Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Indian lawyer and journalist, is born.

7/23/2021

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Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (23 July 1856 – 1 August 1920), born as Keshav Gangadhar Tilak, was an Indian nationalist, teacher, and an independence activist. He was one third of the Lal Bal Pal triumvirate. Tilak was the first leader of the Indian independence movement. The British colonial authorities called him "The father of the Indian unrest." He was also conferred with the title of "Lokmanya", which means "accepted by the people (as their leader)". Mahatma Gandhi called him "The Maker of Modern India".

Tilak was one of the first and strongest advocates of Swaraj ("self-rule") and a strong radical in Indian consciousness. He is known for his quote in Marathi: "Swarajya is my birthright and I shall have it!". He formed a close alliance with many Indian National Congress leaders including Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Aurobindo Ghose, V. O. Chidambaram Pillai and Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

He obtained his Bachelor of Arts in first class in Mathematics from Deccan College of Pune in 1877. He left his M.A. course of study midway to join the L.L.B course instead, and in 1879 he obtained his L.L.B degree from Government Law College. After graduating, Tilak started teaching mathematics at a private school in Pune. Later, due to ideological differences with the colleagues in the new school, he withdrew and became a journalist. Tilak actively participated in public affairs. He stated: "Religion and practical life are not different. The real spirit is to make the country your family instead of working only for your own. The step beyond is to serve humanity and the next step is to serve God."

Inspired by Vishnushastri Chiplunkar, he co-founded the New English school for secondary education in 1880 with a few of his college friends, including Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, Mahadev Ballal Namjoshi and Vishnushastri Chiplunkar. Their goal was to improve the quality of education for India's youth. The success of the school led them to set up the Deccan Education Society in 1884 to create a new system of education that taught young Indians nationalist ideas through an emphasis on Indian culture. The Society established the Fergusson College in 1885 for post-secondary studies. Tilak taught mathematics at Fergusson College. In 1890, Tilak left the Deccan Education Society for more openly political work. He began a mass movement towards independence by an emphasis on a religious and cultural revival.

Tilak had a long political career agitating for Indian autonomy from British colonial rule. Before Gandhi, he was the most widely known Indian political leader. Unlike his fellow Maharashtrian contemporary, Gokhale, Tilak was considered a radical Nationalist but a Social conservative. He was imprisoned on a number of occasions that included a long stint at Mandalay. At one stage in his political life he was called "the father of Indian unrest" by British author Sir Valentine Chirol.

During late 1896, a bubonic plague spread from Bombay to Pune, and by January 1897, it reached epidemic proportions. The British Indian Army was brought in to deal with the emergency and strict measures were employed to curb the plague, including the allowance of forced entry into private houses, the examination of the house's occupants, evacuation to hospitals and quarantine camps, removing and destroying personal possessions, and preventing patients from entering or leaving the city. By the end of May, the epidemic was under control. The measures used to curb the pandemic caused widespread resentment among the Indian public. Tilak took up this issue by publishing inflammatory articles in his paper Kesari (Kesari was written in Marathi, and "Maratha" was written in English), quoting the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, to say that no blame could be attached to anyone who killed an oppressor without any thought of reward. Following this, on 22 June 1897, Commissioner Rand and another British officer, Lt. Ayerst were shot and killed by the Chapekar brothers and their other associates. According to Barbara and Thomas R. Metcalf, Tilak "almost surely concealed the identities of the perpetrators". Tilak was charged with incitement to murder and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. When he emerged from prison in present-day Mumbai, he was revered as a martyr and a national hero. He adopted a new slogan coined by his associate Kaka Baptista: "Swaraj (self-rule) is my birthright and I shall have it."

Following the Partition of Bengal, which was a strategy set out by Lord Curzon to weaken the nationalist movement, Tilak encouraged the Swadeshi movement and the Boycott movement. The movement consisted of the boycott of foreign goods and also the social boycott of any Indian who used foreign goods. The Swadeshi movement consisted of the usage of natively produced goods. Once foreign goods were boycotted, there was a gap which had to be filled by the production of those goods in India itself. Tilak said that the Swadeshi and Boycott movements are two sides of the same coin.

Tilak opposed the moderate views of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and was supported by fellow Indian nationalists Bipin Chandra Pal in Bengal and Lala Lajpat Rai in Punjab. They were referred to as the "Lal-Bal-Pal triumvirate". In 1907, the annual session of the Congress Party was held at Surat, Gujarat. Trouble broke out over the selection of the new president of the Congress between the moderate and the radical sections of the party. The party split into the radicals faction, led by Tilak, Pal and Lajpat Rai, and the moderate faction. Nationalists like Aurobindo Ghose, V. O. Chidambaram Pillai were Tilak supporters.

When asked in Calcutta whether he envisioned a Maratha-type of government for independent India, Tilak answered that the Maratha-dominated governments of 17th and 18th centuries were outmoded in the 20th century, and he wanted a genuine federal system for Free India where everyone was an equal partner. He added that only such a form of government would be able to safeguard India's freedom. He was the first Congress leader to suggest that Hindi written in the Devanagari script be accepted as the sole national language of India.

During his lifetime among other political cases, Tilak had been tried for sedition charges in three times by British India Government—in 1897, 1909, and 1916. In 1897, Tilak was sentenced to 18 months in prison for preaching disaffection against the Raj. In 1909, he was again charged with sedition and intensifying racial animosity between Indians and the British. The Bombay lawyer Muhammad Ali Jinnah appeared in Tilak's defense but he was sentenced to six years in prison in Burma in a controversial judgement. In 1916 when for the third time Tilak was charged for sedition over his lectures on self-rule, Jinnah again was his lawyer and this time led him to acquittal in the case.

On 30 April 1908, two Bengali youths, Prafulla Chaki and Khudiram Bose, threw a bomb on a carriage at Muzzafarpur, to kill the Chief Presidency Magistrate Douglas Kingsford of Calcutta fame, but erroneously killed two women traveling in it. While Chaki committed suicide when caught, Bose was hanged. Tilak, in his paper Kesari, defended the revolutionaries and called for immediate Swaraj or self-rule.

The Government swiftly charged him with sedition. At the conclusion of the trial, a special jury convicted him by 7:2 majority. The judge, Dinshaw D. Davar gave him a six years jail sentence to be served in Mandalay, Burma and a fine of ₹1,000 (US$14). On being asked by the judge whether he had anything to say, Tilak said: "All that I wish to say is that, in spite of the verdict of the jury, I still maintain that I am innocent. There are higher powers that rule the destinies of men and nations; and I think, it may be the will of Providence that the cause I represent may be benefited more by my suffering than by my pen and tongue."

Muhammad Ali Jinnah was his lawyer in the case. Justice Davar's judgement came under stern criticism in press and was seen against impartiality of British justice system. Justice Davar himself previously had appeared for Tilak in his first sedition case in 1897. In passing sentence, the judge indulged in some scathing strictures against Tilak's conduct. He threw off the judicial restraint which, to some extent, was observable in his charge to the jury. He condemned the articles as "seething with sedition", as preaching violence, speaking of murders with approval. "You hail the advent of the bomb in India as if something had come to India for its good. I say, such journalism is a curse to the country". Tilak was sent to Mandalay from 1908 to 1914. While imprisoned, he continued to read and write, further developing his ideas on the Indian nationalist movement. While in the prison he wrote the Gita Rahasya. Many copies of which were sold, and the money was donated for the Indian Independence movement.

Tilak developed diabetes during his sentence in Mandalay prison. This and the general ordeal of prison life had mellowed him at his release on 16 June 1914. When World War I started in August of that year, Tilak cabled the King-Emperor George V of his support and turned his oratory to find new recruits for war efforts. He welcomed The Indian Councils Act, popularly known as Minto-Morley Reforms, which had been passed by British Parliament in May 1909, terming it as "a marked increase of confidence between the Rulers and the Ruled". It was his conviction that acts of violence actually diminished, rather than hastening, the pace of political reforms. He was eager for reconciliation with Congress and had abandoned his demand for direct action and settled for agitations "strictly by constitutional means" – a line that had long been advocated by his rival Gokhale.[32][additional citation(s) needed] Tilak reunited with his fellow nationalists and rejoined the Indian National Congress during the Lucknow pact 1916.

Tilak tried to convince Mohandas Gandhi to leave the idea of Total non-violence ("Total Ahimsa") and try to get self-rule ("Swarajya") by all means. Though Gandhi did not entirely concur with Tilak on the means to achieve self-rule and was steadfast in his advocacy of satyagraha, he appreciated Tilak's services to the country and his courage of conviction. After Tilak lost a civil suit against Valentine Chirol and incurred pecuniary loss, Gandhi even called upon Indians to contribute to the Tilak Purse Fund started with the objective of defraying the expenses incurred by Tilak.

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September 7, 1652 - The Guo Huaiyi rebellion begins on Dutch Formosa (modern Taiwan)

August 30, 1917 – Vietnamese prison guards led by Trịnh Văn Cấn mutiny at the Thái Nguyên penitentiary against local French authority.

August 8, 1942 – Quit India Movement is launched in India against the British rule in response to Mohandas Gandhi's call for swaraj or complete independence.

July 30, 1676 - Nathaniel Bacon issues the "Declaration of the People of Virginia", beginning Bacon's Rebellion against the rule of Governor William Berkeley.

July 23, 1856 - Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Indian lawyer and journalist, is born.

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