Archive | History

In the spring of 1914 President Woodrow Wilson sent his chief adviser, Colonel E. M. House, on a fact-finding mission to Europe. Greatly disturbed by the obvious escalating tension generated by international rivalries House reported: “The situation is extraordinary. . . . It only needs a spark to set the whole thing off.”

Motilal Nehru was one of the prominent leaders of the Indian National Congress (INC) and father of India’s first premier, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964). Descended from a Kashmir Brahmin family, Motilal was born on May 6, 1861, to Gangadhar and Jeorani in Agra.

Sarojini Naidu was born on February 13, 1879, to Aghornath Chattopadhyaya and Varada Sundari in the city of Hyderabad, India.

Il Duce, “the leader,” was born in Predappio, in northern Italy, on July 29, 1883. His father was a socialist blacksmith and his mother a school teacher.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah was an Indian politician who helped found the country of Pakistan, which he governed as its first governor-general from 1947.

The Indian National Congress (INC) was a leader of the Indian freedom movement against British colonial rule. One of the success stories of the nationalist struggle in Asia, the congress was established in 1885.

During the late 19th century British-educated Indians began to demand a role in their government, which later developed into the independence movement.

World War I was important for India’s nationalist movement. Indians of all persuasions overwhelmingly supported Great Britain and the Allied cause during the war. Nearly 800,000 Indian soldiers plus 500,000 noncombatants served in Europe and the Middle East.

The first Government of India Act (1858, after the Sepoy Rising of 1857) abolished the British East India Company and put India under British government administration.

Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany, proponent of Nazism, and perpetrator of the Holocaust, was born on April 20, 1889, in the Austrian town of Braunau near the German border.

By the summer of 1945, World War II in the Pacific was virtually over. Since December 1941, the United States had pushed Japanese forces back until only the homeland itself remained in Japanese control.

The Indian leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who dominated the Indian political scene for three decades, became an internationally acclaimed person for his nonviolent path of struggle to achieve Indian independence from British colonial rule.

Subhas Chandra Bose abandoned an intended career in the Indian civil service to support Mohandas K. Gandhi and the Indian National Congress (INC) in the cause of Indian independence from Great Britain

With new styles and the availability of new construction material, there was a dramatic change in architecture during the first half of the 20th century.

The Amritsar massacre (April 13, 1919) helped many moderate Indian nationalists become fiercely anti-British.

Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar was the most important leader of the oppressed untouchable minority in the history of India. He acquired the honorific name Babasaheb. Fighting for his people, he angered Mohandas K. Gandhi, the revered leader of the Indian nationalist movement, as well as many Hindu traditionalists.