1930 - Political Events

Political Events

Spanish dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera resigns January 28 for reasons of health and dies at Paris March 16 at age 59, having ruled the country since September 1923. Alfonso XIII appoints Cuba-born military leader Dámaso Berenguer (y Fusté), 56, prime minister, but students denounce the monarchy, agitate for a republic, and are joined by lawyer-novelist Manuel Azaña y Díaz, now 50, who begins to organize a liberal republican party (Acción Republicana). Revolutionary committee leader Niceto Alcalá Zamora, 53, blames Alfonso for the dictatorship, joins with the socialists and Catalan left and with Azaña y Díaz in the Pact of San Sebastián signed in August, but is arrested and thrown into prison (see 1931). Former army commander-in-chief Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, marqués de Tenerife, dies at Madrid October 20 at age 92.

German chancellor Hermann Müller resigns under pressure March 27 after his Social Democratic Party (SPD) has tried to increase workers' unemployment benefits. Former German naval secretary Admiral Alfred P. F. von Tirpitz has died at Ebenhausen, near Munich, March 6 at age 80 (he was a right-wing member of the Reichstag from 1924 to 1928). With unemployment reaching its highest level since the early 1920s, voters respond to demagogues of the right and left who promise solutions to the nation's economic woes. The last Allied troops leave the Rhineland June 30—5 years before the date set by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The National Socialist (Nazi) Party wins 6,409,000 votes in the mid-September Reichstag elections, up from 800,000 in 1928, and is second only to the Socialist Party, which wins 8,400,000 (see 1928). Adolf Hitler makes it plain that he favors a dictatorship that would eliminate many of the country's political parties, and his thuggish "storm troopers" engage in fist fights with leftists in the streets of Berlin and other cities. The Nazis gain 107 seats, up from 12 in the old Reichstag, but Hitler is barred from taking his seat because he is an Austrian citizen. Nazi deputies show up in uniform October 13, violating the rules and creating an uproar (see 1931). The last Allied troops leave the Saar December 12 (see 1935).

Polar explorer-statesman (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) Fridtjof Nansen dies at his home outside Oslo May 13 at age 68.

Italy's Benito Mussolini comes out May 24 in favor of revising the Versailles Treaty.

Romanians remove their boy king Michael after a 3-year reign and replace him with his 37-year-old father, who electrifies the country by arriving from Paris by airplane and will reign until 1940 as Carol II. The new king's 26-year-old mistress Magda Lupescu joins him at Bucharest in June (her father, a Moldavian junk dealer, Latinized his name from Wolff) and will exercise great influence on his regime. Romanians hate her because she is vulgar, ruthless, egocentric, and Jewish (anti-Semitism is endemic); Carol's mother, Queen Marie, refuses to meet with her, referring to her as that "lady of light repute."

Turkey's president Mustafa Kemal renames Constantinople and Angora, which become Istanbul and Ankara, respectively (see 1924; 1935).

Turkish and Russian forces launch an offensive against Kurdish rebels August 12.

A London Naval Conference convened January 21 ends 3 months later with a treaty signed by Britain, the United States, France, Italy, and Japan, who agree to limit submarine tonnage and gun-caliber and to scrap certain warships (see 1922). Japanese militarist factions attack the treaty, a right-wing militant youth shoots Prime Minister Yuko Hamaguchi, 60, at the Tokyo Railway Station November 14, and Hamaguchi will die of his wounds in late August of next year. He has supported acceptance of the London Naval Conference program (see 1931).

French authorities in Vietnam crush the Yen Bai uprising that breaks out February 9 at a small town along the Chinese border, where the military garrison mutinies. The French have been alerted to the possibility of a revolt and come down so hard on the rebels that the 3-year-old Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (VNQDD) party is destroyed. Many of its members join the new Indochinese Communist Party.

A civil disobedience campaign against British rule in India begins March 12 (see 1922). The All-India Trade Congress has empowered Mohandas K. Gandhi to begin the demonstrations (poet Rabindranath Tagore has called Gandhi Mahatma, meaning great-souled, or sage, and that honorific has been commonly used for the past decade). Ashramites have left the Sarbamanti ashram outside Ahmedabad and march 240 miles to the beach at Dandi, on the Gujurat Coast of the Arabian Sea, where Gandhi breaks the law as a gesture of defiance against the British monopoly by picking up a handful of salt crystallized by the evaporation of seawater. It is illegal to manufacture or sell salt except under license from the raj, and Gandhi exhorts his fellow Indians to follow his example. British forces are unable to deal with a protest on such a large scale. The British release agitator Gandhi from prison April 5 and allow him to recuperate just outside Bombay. Britain's prime minister Ramsay MacDonald convenes a Round Table Conference on Indian affairs at Westminister in November, but neither Gandhi nor any other member of the Congress is able to attend and little or nothing is accomplished (see 1931),

Burmese nationalists rise against British rule under the leadership of former Buddhist monk, physician, and astrologer Saya San, 54, whose Galon Army proclaims him king at Insein, near Rangoon, October 28. Economic depression has produced a drop in the price of rice, leaving peasants in southern Burma virtually penniless yet burdened by heavy taxes. Indian moneylenders throw them off their lands, and the rebellion erupts in violence beginning in late December in the Tharrawaddy district; it soon spreads to other districts in the Irrawaddy delta, but the rebels are armed only with spears and swords (see 1931).

Chinese communists join forces in July to attack Hankou (Hankow); Nationalist troops launch an encirclement campaign November 5 in parts of Hunan, Hubei, and Jianxi provinces.

Canadian voters oust Mackenzie King's Liberal government as Conservative Party leader Richard B. (Bedford) Bennett, 60, promises vigorous measures to combat the Great Depression (see 1935).

Dominican army chief Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, 38, stages a coup April 11 following the resignation of the ailing president Horacio Vázquez, now 69. Trained in the constabulary guard created by the U.S. Marines during their 8-year occupation of his country, Trujillo wins election to the presidency in May with help from thugs who beat up, jail, or kill supporters of his opponent. A hurricane September 30 wreaks havoc on Santo Domingo, killing 2,000 people and giving Trujillo an excuse to place the country under martial law; supported by U.S. interests, he begins a 31-year dictatorship that will see modernization and an impressive increase in the literacy rate, but he will use blackmail and bribery to retain power, intimidating his foes, eliminating opposition political parties, abolishing independent trade unions, censoring the press, and engaging in summary executions, even massacres (see 1937).

Peru's president Augusto Leguía y Salcedo resigns August 25 and flees the country after 11 years of dictatorial rule. Col. Luis Sanchez Cerro has led a military revolt and will be elected president next year (see 1933).

Argentina has a military coup September 5 (see 1928). Retired general José Francisco Uriburu, 62, ousts the feeble president Hipólito Irigoyen, now 78; makes himself president; denounces Irigoyen's pro-labor legislation in December; demands that a selected elite replace the democratic government that has ruled since 1916; and will soon take the unprecedented action of removing the national legislature. An ardent admirer of Prussian militarism and of Benito Mussolini's corporate state, Uriburu returns the big landowners and business interests to power after 14 years that have seen social reform but also, in more recent years, corruption and stagnation. Right-wing elements will rule the country until 1943 (see 1931).

Brazil has a coup d'état October 24 as collapsing coffee prices shatter the nation's economy. President Washington Luís has engineered the election of São Paulo politician Julio Prestes as his hand-picked successor, but the governor of Rio Grande do Sul has other ideas: Getulio (Dornelles) Vargas, now 47, organizes the coup, accepts the presidency October 26, forces President Luís to resign 4 days later, abolishes all state and city assemblies, dissolves the congress November 1, and issues a decree November 11 organizing a provisional government. Luís leaves for exile in Europe (see Vargas, 1937).

Chief Justice (and former president) William Howard Taft resigns from the Supreme Court for reasons of health in early February and dies at Washington, D.C., March 8 at age 72. He is succeeded by Charles Evans Hughes, now 67, who will head the court until his retirement in 1941.

Former British prime minister Arthur J. Balfour, 1st earl of Balfour, dies at Woking, Surrey, March 19 at age 81 (see Balfour Declaration, 1917); statesman Frederick E. Smith, 1st earl of Birkenhead, dies at London September 30 at age 58. The Passfield Paper on Palestine presented October 20 suggests a halt in Jewish immigration to Palestine so long as unemployment persists among the Arabs. Sidney James Webb, 71, first baron Passfield, is the British secretary for colonies (see White Paper, 1939).

The Ethiopian empress Zanditu dies April 2 after a troubled reign of 14 years. Ras Tafari, 39, took the name Haile Selassie when he was proclaimed king (negus) in June 1928 and is crowned king of kings at Addis Ababa November 2; he will reign until 1974 as Haile Selassie I (see 1935).