The Rise Of Australasia

The news of the Pacific Alliance to some extent overshadowed the news from other regions. If Arthur hadn’t been concerned with the situation in Europe, he might not even know when Constantinople was renamed.

Yes, in March 1930, the Republic of Turkey officially declared the renaming of the European city, Constantinople, to Istanbul.

The renaming was the result of a vote by the entire Turkish population and was an inevitable part of Kemal’s firm implementation of Turkish reforms.

After all, although Constantinople and Istanbul are only different in name, for the Republic, where the vast majority of its citizens are Turkish, it’s natural that the city’s naming should primarily reflect the thoughts of the Turkish people.

History has proven that even if it deviates due to various reasons, the wheels of history still repair the deviation.

By the middle of March 1930, several significant events had still occurred worldwide.

The first was the famous nonviolent non-cooperation movement, which caused quite a headache for the British.

This was the Indians’ resistance against the brutal British rule, and it also represented their desire for independence and democratic rights.

The so-called nonviolent non-cooperation doesn’t mean no cooperation as long as there’s no violence. The true meaning of the movement is nonviolence and non-cooperation, that is, achieving one’s goals in a comparatively gentle manner.

Starting from September 1920, the renowned Gandhi put forward the famous plan of nonviolent non-cooperation.

It included refusing to work in colonial courts and governments, not studying in British schools, advocating for handmade goods to resist British goods, and refusing to pay taxes, among other things.

Under Gandhi’s call, people staged strikes, school boycotts, market boycotts, and protests, merging into a torrential flood against the British.

However, the first action quickly exceeded Gandhi’s expectations. Over 2000 Indian civilians burned down a police station along with 22 policemen, signifying that the resistance had gone beyond the scope of nonviolent non-cooperation.

Although Gandhi had quickly tried to stop such behavior, he still couldn’t prevent the British from taking out their anger on the Indians.

In less than a month, Gandhi, who proposed non-violence and non-cooperation, was put behind bars, and actions taken against the British faced extremely brutal suppression.

After this incident, Gandhi learned his lessons and advocated for civil disobedience in advance, urging the Indian public not to resort to violence.

As early as last year, during the time of a more severe economic crisis, bodies like the Indian National Congress put forward demands for independence and authorized Gandhi to lead this movement.

The main reason was that the British shifted most of the economic crisis’s harm onto India, exploiting Indians maniacally to maintain stability on the British mainland.

Such actions naturally led to widespread dissatisfaction among Indians. Due to the severe economic crisis, the majority of India’s population was in a state of starvation.

In 1929 alone, at least several million Indians died of hunger, and hastily buried corpses and sloppy graves were visible everywhere in the villages.

As a defiance against the British, after entering 1930, Gandhi officially put forward 11 demands to the Governor of India.

These demands included respecting the rights of Indians, granting self-governance to the Indian people, providing relief to Indians, and stopping exploitation, among others.

Such terms were naturally rejected by the Governor of India. In the British view, India was just a colony, and what right did Indians have to resist their rule?

During the British rule over India, they had slaughtered millions, if not tens of millions, of Indians, and they hardly cared about the lives of these Indians.

After all, India didn’t have much of anything, except a large population. The death of a few million people wasn’t an issue, and due to the high birth rate in India, the population gap would soon be filled.

After being firmly rejected by the Governor of India, Gandhi decided to start his firm resistance against the British by breaking the salt monopoly law.

Beginning in mid-February, Gandhi led 78 followers from Ahmedabad in India, heading towards the west coast of India on foot, with a total distance estimated to be 426 kilometers.

With Gandhi’s immense prestige in India, a large number of people soon joined along the way, resembling a silent protest.

On March 22, Indian Standard Time, Gandhi led a large number of people to the Dandi coast and personally boiled sea salt, which lasted for three weeks.

This historic event, known by Indians as the Salt March, won’t be tolerated by the British Colonial Government.

In April 1930, the British Colonial Government began to massively suppress this silent protest, including but not limited to shooting, throwing grenades, and even strafing with heavy machine guns, etc.

In just a few days, the thousands of Indians accompanying Gandhi were slaughtered, and Gandhi himself was arrested by the British Colonial Government.

This massacre can be said to have caused a great uproar, instantly arousing discontent and anger throughout India.

The British coldness and discrimination toward Indians were almost palpable, and this disregard for human life led many Indians to join the resistance against the British.

From that moment on, what had originally been a somewhat civilized disobedience movement had in fact become an independence revolution engulfing the whole of India.

After the outbreak of chaos in India, the British were no longer able to maintain a policy of balance on a global scale.

With such a significant problem arising in their core region, if it could not be resolved, the very foundation of the British Empire would be shaken.

In order to suppress the Indian independence revolution, the British dispatched a portion of the native fleet to India and declared martial law in the cities where the rebellion was particularly severe.

Beyond that, the British invited Australasia to a conference in an attempt to reconstruct the British-Australasian alliance.

The news of the Indian revolution quickly spread around the world, and Arthur closely followed the developments.

After receiving the invitation from the British, Prime Minister Raul promptly requested an audience with Arthur to ask whether to accept the invitation and attend the conference in the United Kingdom.

The conference was definitely something to attend; no matter whether Australasia would end up helping Britain or not, it wouldn’t change Arthur’s intention to take part in this meeting.

After all, at this time, Australasia and Britain had not yet severed ties, and at least the façade had to be maintained for the people of both nations to see.

Even for the sake of the numerous immigrants coming from Britain every year, Arthur had to make a good impression to ensure that the British maintained trust and goodwill towards Australasia.

The country most delighted by the chaos in India was undoubtedly France. This meant not only could France breathe a sigh of relief in its competition with Britain, but it could even involve itself in the Indian revolution, striking a heavy blow to the ancient colonial empire.

Of course, the French were not that extreme. While their actions might inflict heavy losses on the British, they were certainly not going to jeopardize the ruling position of the British Empire.

As long as the power of the Royal Fleet remained, Britain was still the dauntingly vast empire that inspired fear.

Clearly, France had no intention of declaring war on Britain, and naturally, it would not trample upon the British people’s bottom line.

But this didn’t mean the French were without action.

In April 1930, the French government formally invited the Austrian Empire, Spain, and the Republic of Poland for diplomatic visits, showing a tendency to form a new anti-British alliance.

At almost the same time, the delegation sent by the Australasian Government rushed to London, United Kingdom, on a transport plane to attend the conference.

The two conferences, held in the same month with different nations participating, were also called the new Allied Nations and Entente Powers Conference by the European media, marking the gradually emerging opposition between Britain and France.

Meanwhile, in a corner of the world unnoticed by Europeans, Italy and Germany were engaged in starkly different activities.

First, let’s talk about Italy, a country where a coup had long since taken place. Mussolini had established a lengthy dictatorship in Italy and also assembled an army loyal to himself, directly controlling Italy’s power.

Mussolini had successively sidelined both the monarch and the Parliament, reducing the King of Italy to a mere puppet.

Yes, at this point, Italy was still a monarchy, and the full name of the state was the monarchical Kingdom of Italy.

The plan that Italy was devising was, in fact, a very famous historical event—the war with Ethiopia.

Of course, the official name of Ethiopia at the time was the Abyssinian Empire.

In fact, more than 30 years earlier, Italy had brazenly invaded the Abyssinian Empire.

The outcome of that war is well-known: the Kingdom of Italy, one of the Powers, quickly faced defeat and could not even overcome the indigenous African state of Ethiopia.

The Italian Army had mobilized a total of 17,000 men, suffered over 11,000 casualties, and more than 4,000 were taken prisoner.

Such a ratio of casualties and prisoners was staggeringly high. On the Abyssinian side, that is, Ethiopia, the number of casualties was roughly between 10,000 and 15,000 people, almost the same level as that of the Italian forces.

The shock this war brought to the world was unquestionable. Of course, it was a shock at the weakness of the Italian military might.

At the time, the Italian military was equipped with various advanced weapons, whereas everything on the Ethiopian side was outdated.

With such a vast disparity in weaponry, it should have been an effortless slaughter.

But unexpectedly, the performance of the Italian military was less than satisfactory, even to the point of insulting the term "great power."

From then on, including during World War I and World War II, the Italian military was always considered a joke among the world’s Powers, and were one of the few sources of ridicule in the brutal wars.

This gave rise to the saying that an Italian Army was an ally that could drag down its own side, but an asset to the enemy, accelerating their own attack.

To use a famous quote by the German Iron Chancellor Bismarck to describe Italy, "They came to the African continent with a mouth full of cavities and a very large appetite, but decaying teeth are destined not to gnaw through bone."