The year 1919 was, for the colonies, when the switch was thrown, when nationalist movements abandoned polite petitioning. It was the year when Gandhi gave up his hope that India might be an equal partner within the British confederation and set his sights on independence. It was the year when everything seemed to spin out of control for the British in India: Gandhi’s nonviolence campaigns, government repression (the “Amritsar Massacre”), an invasion by Afghanistan, and an uprising of Indian Muslims that acquired all-India proportions.
