Vietnamese activists demand equal legal rights at the peace conference

Strikes and closures marked a hartal against laws allowing detention and restrictive colonial powers. Mass refusal connected civil liberties with the struggle for self-government. The campaign...

Korean provisional leaders adopted a charter for a republic during resistance to Japanese rule. Its equality provision rejected distinctions of gender, class, and wealth among citizens. A movement...

Troops under Reginald Dyer fired into an unarmed gathering in Amritsar. Estimates of the dead differ. The massacre shattered claims that imperial government protected its subjects and intensified...

Students demonstrated in Beijing against the transfer of former German rights in Shandong to Japan through the postwar settlement. Their protest challenged decisions made about China without effective...

Rabindranath Tagore wrote to the viceroy renouncing his knighthood in protest at colonial repression. Rejecting an imperial honor challenged the prestige through which Britain sought to secure elite...

Gandhi wrote to the viceroy returning medals previously granted for service to the empire. Renouncing honors was one form of noncooperation. The act questioned imperial legitimacy and illustrates a...

Delegates adopted the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World. It condemned discrimination and asserted political, economic, and cultural rights across borders. The declaration...

Students boycotted the colonial university arrangements in Rangoon, challenging provisions they regarded as restrictive and exclusionary. The campaign helped encourage national education. Control over...

Police killed members of the religious community led by Enoch Mgijima after they refused to leave their settlement. The confrontation linked land occupation, spiritual life, and the racial state’s...

British authorities arrested Gandhi after the noncooperation campaign and charged him with sedition. Criminalizing criticism and mobilization defended the colonial state’s authority. His...