Lesson 4 - Page 2

You are about to view three timelines of political change. The first example concerns the break-up of Yugoslavia, a former state in a region of Eastern Europe known as the Balkans. Second, we will trace the origins of nationalism in East Timor, formerly part of Indonesia. Our third case study, Nunavut, is a political territory governed by aboriginal Canadians. Of the three case studies, only the creation of Nunavut could be described as being a peaceful process. To understand why, we must compare and contrast the histories and geographies of the three regions.

For each region, read the background profiles and click on the dates in the timelines for highlights and maps of nationalism.

Nationalism in the Balkan Peninsula The Balkan Peninsula is the southeastern-most peninsula of Europe, c.200,000 sq mi (518,000 sq km), bounded by the Black Sea, Sea of Marmara, Aegean Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Ionian Sea, and Adriatic Sea. Although there is no sharp physiographic separation between the peninsula and Central Europe, the line of the Sava and Danube rivers is commonly considered as the region's northern limit. The Balkan Peninsula therefore includes most of Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Albania, Macedonia, continental Greece (including the Peloponnesus), Bulgaria, European Turkey, and SE Romania. These countries, successors to the Ottoman Empire, are called the Balkan States. Historically and politically the region extends north of this line to include all of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, and Romania. The peninsula is very mountainous; the main ranges are the Dinaric Alps, the Balkans, the Rhodope Mts., and the Pindus. Except for the barren Karst plateau in the northwest and the eroded highlands of Greece, the mountains are densely forested. The Morava, Vardar, Strimón, Mesta, and Maritsa are the largest rivers. The Morava and Vardar river valleys form the chief corridor across the peninsula. The mild Mediterranean-type climate, with its dry summer period, is limited to the southern and coastal areas. Covering a greater area are the humid subtropical climate in the northwest and the harsher humid continental climate in the northeast. The region as a whole is largely agricultural; fruits, grains, and grazing are important. A variety of mineral deposits are found there, including iron ore, coal, manganese, copper, lead, and zinc. The peoples of the Balkan Peninsula make up several racial groups. However, linguistic and religious differences are more distinct than the racial divisions. The peninsula, at the crossroads of European and Asian civilizations, has a long history; Ancient Greece, the Byzantine Empire, and the Ottoman Empire flourished there. Text excerpts from InfoSource (2004).

Nationalism in Indonesia Timor was first colonized by the Portuguese in 1520. The Dutch, who claimed many of the surrounding islands, took control of the western portion of the island in 1613. Portugal and the Netherlands fought over the island until an 1860 treaty divided Timor, granting Portugal the eastern half of the island as well as the western enclave of Oecussi (the first Portuguese settlement on the island). Australia and Japan fought each other on the island during World War II; nearly 50,000 East Timorese died during the subsequent Japanese occupation. In 1949, the Netherlands gave up its colonies in the Dutch West Indies, including West Timor, and the nation of Indonesia was born. East Timor remained under Portuguese control until 1975, when the Portuguese abruptly pulled out after 400 years of colonization. The sudden Portuguese withdrawal left the island vulnerable. Nine days after the Democratic Republic of East Timor was declared an independent nation, it was invaded by Indonesia and annexed on July 16, 1976. Although no country except Australia officially recognized the annexation, Indonesia's invasion was sanctioned by the United States and other western countries, who had cultivated Indonesia as a trading partner and cold-war ally (Fretilin, the East Timorese political party spearheading independence, was Marxist at the time). Indonesia's invasion and its brutal occupation of East Timor - small, remote, and poor - largely escaped international attention. East Timor's resistance movement was violently suppressed by Indonesian military forces, and more than 200,000 Timorese were reported to have died from famine, disease, and fighting since the annexation. Indonesia's human rights abuses finally began receiving international notice in the 1990s, and in 1996 two East Timorese activists, Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and José Ramos-Horta, received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to gain freedom peacefully for East Timor. After Indonesia's hard-line president Suharto left office in 1998, his successor, B. J. Habibie, unexpectedly announced his willingness to hold a referendum on East Timorese independence, reversing 25 years of Indonesian intransigence. As the referendum on self-rule drew closer, fighting between separatist guerrillas and pro-Indonesian paramilitary forces in East Timor intensified. The UN-sponsored referendum had to be rescheduled twice because of violence. On Aug. 30, 1999, 78.5% of the population voted to secede from Indonesia. In the days following the referendum, pro-Indonesian militias and Indonesian soldiers retaliated by razing towns, slaughtering civilians, and forcing a third of the population out of the province. After enormous international pressure, Indonesia finally agreed to allow UN forces into East Timor on Sept. 12. Led by Australia, an international peacekeeping force began restoring order to the ravaged region. The UN Transitional Authority in East Timor (UNTAET) then governed the territory for nearly three years. A parliament was elected in 2001 and a constitution assembled, and on May 20, 2002, nationhood was declared. Charismatic rebel leader José Alexandre Gusmão, who was imprisoned by Indonesia from 1992 to 1999, was overwhelmingly elected the nation's first president on April 14, 2002. The president has a largely symbolic role; real power rests with the parliament and Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri, also a former guerrilla leader. The first new country of the millennium, East Timor is also one of the world's poorest. Its meager infrastructure was destroyed by the Indonesian militias in 1999 and the economy, primarily made up of subsistence farming and fishing, is in shambles. East Timor's off-shore gas and oil reserves promised the only real hope for lifting it out of poverty, but a dispute with Australia over the rights to the oil reserves in the East Timor Sea have currently thwarted those efforts. The oil and gas fields lie much closer to East Timor than to Australia, but a 1989 deal between Indonesia and Australia set the maritime boundary along Australia's continental shelf, which gives it control of 85% of the sea and most of the oil. East Timor wants the border redrawn halfway between the two countries, and estimates that this would allow it to earn $12 billion over the next 30 years, as opposed to $4.4 billion. Australia, however, has refused to negotiate. As Australia's conservative foreign minister Alexander Downer put it, "Australia isn't going to suddenly move all of its maritime borders with other countries in the teeth of a whole lot of emotional clap trap, which is being pumped up through left-wing NGOs." Text excerpts from InfoSource (2004).

Nationalism in Canada The Inuit (pronounced in'oo it) are people of the Canadian Arctic. They live in the lands north of the Canadian forests, mainly in small communities near the Arctic coast. Until recently, Inuit depended on caribou, seals, whales, and fish for food and clothing. That is no longer true today, but hunting, trapping, and fishing are still important activities in Inuit culture. Inuit means "the people" in Inuktitut, the language spoken by people of the far north in Canada. Inuit are often incorrectly referred to as Eskimos, which means "eaters of raw flesh" in the Canadian Indian language Algonkian. To be called Eskimo is considered an insult by many Inuit. Nunavut is located in the treeless tundra of Canada's far north (Figure 8). The Inuit assumed a form of political control over their homelands in 1999, when Canada's Parliament approved a new territory called Nunavut (pronounced noon'ah voot). Nunavut, which means "our land" in the Inuit language, was carved out of the Canadian Northwest Territories. It has a total of 742,889 square miles of land-- as big as Alaska and California combined (Devine 1992). In 1996, the Nunavut region was home to 24,730 people, including Inuit and non-Inuit people (Census of Canada 1996). Nunavut was created out of a desire to bring government closer to the Inuit - both physically, and in spirit. Figure 8. Nunavut, Canada (Atlas of Canada, 2003). Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, from which Nunavut was governed until April 1999, is as far from Iqaluit as Vancouver is from Thunder Bay, Ontario. Now the territory's capital is, for most residents of Nunavut, closer to home, and a policy of decentralized government - in which territorial government departments are headquartered in various of the larger Nunavut communities - brings the administration of day-to-day affairs still closer. Nunavut's great distance from the rest of Canada and its extreme climate alone might look like good reasons for wanting political control to be located closer to home. The Inuit, however, expressed additional reasons for wanting control over their land: In the North we have had a lot of government people come and go, but not many of them have spoken our language. Not only have they not spoken Inuktitut, they knew little of the things which matter to Inuit. . . . Nunavut's most important meaning is that it is a government which reflects the life and lifestyles, and the language, of the people who live along the coasts and by the caribou hunting grounds of our homeland. . . . What we want to do in Nunavut is spread the changes around rather than concentrate them all in one place. That means that not one but many communities will have a new office and some new houses, with more air service and better communications as a result. . . . [A] Nunavut government . . . [is] going to encourage artists and musicians, and strengthen [the] language. . . . And what Nunavut will do is make sure that in Canada with its several provinces and territories, there is one government which always is speaking for the Inuit and making sure that Canada as a country has a large and important Inuit character as part of its national identity (Dickerson and McCullough 1993). The creation of Nunavut returned to the Inuit control over their own affairs and permits territorial-level government to reflect the circumstances of the central and eastern Arctic, which are very different economically and culturally than those in the western Arctic. Although Inuit did not have formal governments when they lived nomadically in scattered camps before being moved into permanent settlements by the Canadian government earlier this century, there were camp bosses and an informal system of management that served Inuit well. Text excerpts from Hill (1995).