Curtin Chapter 4

Curtin mainly talks about plural societies in chapter 4. Curtin asks what are the differences between Plural societies like South Africa and Soviet Central Asia? Curtin distinguishes these Plural societies as places which did not integrate. Groups of foreigners migrated in and formed their own communities in the state. Sometimes the foreigners formed a majority. As Europeans migrated to South Africa, they took the best land, the best jobs...The Africans still farmed, but in general the minority Europeans were in power. Central Asia was already extremely mixed, more so then South Africa. The Soviet Union attempted to create a common language between the five states they created, but failed. However, the amount of Russian and Ukrainian immigrants is quite noticeable. Kazakhstan, by 1911 was 40% Russian. In 1988 Soviet Central Asia had 49 million people, of which 25% were European. South Africa had 35 million people, of which 14% were white. However, both countries shared that non-Europeans grew faster in numbers then Europeans. However, the Europeans did have periods in which they rose quickly. Mainly from immigration, better diet, better health. Especially during the 1950s many people migrated to different places. However, by 1989 those numbers dropped. The Five Soviet states, except Kazakhstan, were named after their majority ethnic group. At the same time, the Russian minorities always had prominent positions, and usually were the second largest ethnic group in the country. The two areas sometimes took very similar and very different approaches to the problem of race. In terms of education, supposedly the Soviet Union advocated for equal education for everybody organized by the Communist Party. They created schools in central Asia, these really helped Russians more then anything but the attempt was there. In South Africa no attempt was there. If the Europeans had really wanted to make South Africans part of their culture they would created a system of free public education. As they didn't we see where their hearts lied. It wasn't until the 1950s that a very poor system of education was created for the South Africans. It made sense not to give them too good of an education, they were barred from the “most skilled and professional positions” anyways. Next Curtin talks about religion. Christianity had a strong hold in pre-revolutionary Russia and Colonial South Africa. Christian missionaries didn't make much of an effort to convert the Central Asian people and never had much success trying to convert Muslims. In South Africa however, they had much better chances. They ended up converting about half the South African population. Both the Soviet and South African governments “favored high productivity”. The South Africans encouraged an income barrier between races. Soviet Central Asia was a direct economy. Both areas were moderately successful. Nationalism spread among the colonies very quickly. Especially in places where multiple cultures presided. The Soviets tried to get rid of these nationalist ideas based on race and tried to form a common nationality based on language. The Soviets ended up giving five areas in Central Asia partial autonomy (as they were still under soviet rule. South Africa did the same thing with what it called homelands. The South African idea completely failed. Plural societies had ethnic problems lasting long after their European colonizers left. In fact, its because of the Europeans' rule that many of these ethnic problems exist.

If the European really wanted to keep their colonies, why didn't they try to push integration? Were there benefits for Europeans to move to those plural societies?