Interwar Period

• Treaty of Versialles


  Germany had to...

  1. Pay billions in reparations
  2. Give up all of its colonies
  3. Restrict the size of armed forces
  4. Took all blame for the war
• Germany could not afford reparations, so they begin printing more money which led to massive inflation.
• War Debt


  France and GB struggled to repay debts to the US

  USSR refused to pay Russia's debt
• Colonial governments suffered too because they had depended on the economies of their parent countries.
• Vladimir Lenin's New Economic Policy


  -1923

  -introduced some limited free market principles

  -The biggest institutions remained under state control
• Five Year Plan


  -authoritarian Joseph Stalin

  -aimed to multiply Soviet industrial capacity
• Collectivization 


  Farmland taken from private owners. Enraged farmers, were sent to gulag alongside political opponents.
• Great Depression


  -1929

  -US Stock Market crashed

  -led to governments using Deficit spending
• Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal


  Brought the country relief, recovery, and reform.
• European powers and the Japanese maintained their colonial holdings in the interwar period, and in some cases, states gained colonial territory as a result of the war.
• Mandate System


  Middle Eastern territories would become mandates administered by the League of Nations.
• Class C Mandates

  • smallest population/least developed
  • treated as colonies
  • several islands in the Pacific
• Class B Mandates

  • larger populations/still underdeveloped
  • most of Germany's colonies in Africa
• Class A Mandates

  • Large populations/sufficiently developed
  • suitable for independence and self-rule
• Indian National Congress


  Formed before WWI for petitioning the British government for greater degrees of self rule in India. An example of colonial resistance
• African National Congress

  • founded in South Africa by western-educated lawyers and journalists
  • dedicated itself to obtaining equal rights for colonial subjects in S. Africa
  • influenced by Pan-Africanism
• Pan-Africanism


  aimed for the equality and unity of all black people across the world