1911 - Political Events
Political Events
A 60-horsepower Glenn H. Curtiss plane flown by civilian pilot Eugene Ely lands on a specially rigged deck platform aboard the U.S. Navy's armored cruiser Pennsylvania January 18. Ropes attached to sandbags brakes the plane's speed (see 1912).
A Mexican revolution begins May 25 as President Porfirio Díaz resigns under pressure, boards the private train of British construction engineer John Body, and voyages with Body to France (see 1910). Mestizo revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, 31, has taken the city of Cuautla in March and closed the road to Mexico City. He enters Cuernavaca with 5,000 men, and he brings them to the support of Francisco Madero, who has led a military campaign against Díaz and established a new capital May 11 at Ciudad Juarez; Madero enters Mexico City on a white horse in June, Zapata meets with him and asks that he bring pressure on the provisional president left behind by Díaz to return lands to the former Indian communal system of ownership (the ejidos), Madero refuses and demands that Zapata's guerrilla force be disbanded. He offers Zapata money to buy the land, but Zapata refuses. Teacher Otilio Montaño helps Zapata prepare the Plan of Ayala, whose signers vow to return lands that were stolen from the people, expropriating one third of the property occupied by large haciendas with compensation; haciendas that do not accept the plan will lose their property without compensation under the plan. Zapata adopts the slogan "Land and Liberty!" ("Tierra y Libertad"), and exploited peons begin breaking up the nation's large land holdings, distributing farmland among the campesinos. The provisional president sends troops to battle Zapata's guerrillas, and Madero makes himself president November 6, beginning an administration that will continue for 15 months (see 1913).
A military coup establishes a new Honduras "banana republic" favorable to the interests of planter Samuel Zemurray, who for the past 6 years has been shipping bananas from lands he has bought along the country's Cuyamel River. Now 34, he loans former Honduras president Gen. Manuel Bonilla enough money to buy the yacht Hornet, sends him out to the yacht in his own private launch at Biloxi, Miss., with a case of rifles, a machine gun, and ammunition, and provides him with the mercenary services of Guy "Machine Gun" Molony and Lee Christmas, now 48 (see 1897). When Bonilla and his cohorts oust the old Honduras government, Zemurray gains valuable concessions.
Canada's Liberal Party loses power and Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier goes down to defeat, partly over the issue of a reciprocal trade treaty signed with the United States, partly because his decision to build an independent Canadian Navy has pleased neither imperialists (who have called the aging vessels that he acquired Laurier's "tin pot navy") nor nationalists (whose leader Henri Bourassa has complained in his new Montreal newspaper Le Devoir that it would be placed under British command in any British war) (see 1909). The Conservatives regain a majority at Ottawa, and Nova Scotia-born party leader Robert (Laird) Borden, 57, becomes prime minister, a post he will hold until 1920.
Californians vote in a special election October 10 to amend the state's constitution to permit recall of elected officials, enactment of laws and constitutional amendments by initiative, and repeal of laws by referendum. Sacramento-born lawyer Hiram (Warren) Johnson, now 45, won election to the governorship last year with support from the progressive Lincoln-Roosevelt League, challenging the dominant group in the Republican Party with the slogan, "Kick the Southern Pacific out of politics" (see Fiction [Frank Norris novel], 1901). In his inaugural address January 3 the plain-spoken Johnson has said, "Nearly every governmental problem that involves the health, the happiness, or the prosperity of the state has arisen because some private interest has intervened to exploit either the resources or politics of the state." Politicians will be paying people to sign recall petitions by 1914, and many local and state officials will be recalled, but no effort to hold a recall election for a governor will succeed until 1921.
The Black Hand secret society founded at Belgrade May 9 works to reunite Serbs living within the Austrian and Ottoman empires with their kinspeople in Serbia. "Union or Death" ("Ujedinjenje ili Smrt") is the society's slogan, but while the Black Hand will influence Serbian policies in the Balkan wars, its Belgrade-born leader, Col. Dragutin Dimitrijevic, 34, will clash with the Serbian government (see Sarajevo, 1914).
Britain's House of Lords gives up its veto power August 10 under the Parliament Act passed under pressure from Prime Minister Asquith, who threatens to create enough peers to carry the bill.
Britain's House of Commons votes for the first time to pay its members regular salaries. Each MP is to receive £400 per year under terms of the measure adopted August 10, 6 weeks after the coronation of George V.
An act of Parliament establishes a naval counterpart to the MI5 military intelligence service created 2 years ago (His Majesty's Secret Service will later become MI6 and engage only in foreign intelligence). Capt. Sir George Mansfield-Smith Cumming, 52, Royal Navy, heads the agency, writes only in green ink, signs his papers "C," regards foreign espionage as great sport, is considered an eccentric, and will run the service until his death in 1923.
Russia's premier P. A. Stolypin is assassinated September 1 at age 49 in the presence of Nicholas II at the Kiev Opera House, having pushed through some comparatively liberal and human policies since his appointment in 1906 and obliged the reactionary czar to accept, albeit grudgingly, some limitations on his autocratic power. An informer for the czar's secret police fires a revolver at point-blank range.
Former Boer general Pieter Arnoldus Cronjé dies at Potchefstroom, Transvaal, February 4 at age 74; Boer political leader Stephanus Jacobus Du Toit in South Africa's Cape Province May 29 at age 63 (approximate), having been instrumental in making Afrikaans the country's official language.
Egyptian nationalist Ahmad Arabi al-Misri dies at Cairo September 21 at age 72, having returned from exile by British permission 10 years ago.
Italy declares war on the Ottoman Turks September 9, lands a force at Tripoli October 5, and occupies other coastal towns. Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti, 68, has intitially resisted the war, but Italian planes bomb an oasis on the Tripoli coast November 1 (the first offensive use of aircraft), and Cairo declares martial law November 2 to quell unrest in Egypt. Austrian army chief of staff and commander in chief Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, 58, calls for war against Italy and is dismissed (but see 1914); pacifist Ernesto T. Moneta, now 78, shared the Nobel Peace Prize 4 years ago after presiding over an International Peace Conference at Milan, but he supports the war against Turkey, calling it a "civilizing mission." Rome announces annexation of Libya, Tripolitania, and Cyrenaica November 5. Constantinople refuses to recognize the action (see 1912).
A revolution begins in China that will end the 267-year-old Qing dynasty of the Manchus, propel China into the 20th century, and begin the decline of such customs as having men wear humiliating pigtails and having women's feet painfully deformed by binding them (see 1908). China is proclaimed a republic in February, revolution breaks out in October, unrest spreads through the country, young women leave a mission school to form a regiment, women go into battle at their own initiative, wearing men's clothes, and throw homemade bombs on Nanjing from a hill above the city, but bloodshed overall is minimal. Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen, 45, returns from 16 years of exile in Hawaii, England, and the United States; the first graduate of Hong Kong's new College of Medicine, Sun is elected president of the United Provinces of China December 29 by a revolutionary provisional assembly at Nanjing, and industrialist Zhang Jian (Chang Chien), now 58, serves as minister of agriculture and commerce (see 1912).
Mongolia declares her independence from China, but the Chinese will not recognize the independence of the new government at Ulan Bator until 1946 (see 1921).
Australian voters oust the Liberal Party government in October elections as drought in Western Australia hits new wheat growers; a Labor Party government headed by Jack Scaddan takes power.
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