Twentieth Century

Thula’s American friends back in New York City learn of her fate and are saddened and outraged. They vow to
study what happened in Kosawa so that they can learn from it and, hopefully, devise a strategy that might
produce a better outcome for others battling against the kind of foes that the Kosawan villagers faced. You are
part of this group of friends and activists and you volunteer to provide a 4-5 pp. report. This report should have
two parts:
1) a description of the four resistance strategies that the villagers employed in their efforts to obtain justice, and
2) an analysis of why these strategies failed.
This analysis should draw on a) information in the novel, and b) information about other revolutionary and anticolonial revolutions found in course lectures (some of which failed, some of which succeeded). You can be
selective – you will not be able to discuss all the movements and revolutions covered in lectures – but your
analysis needs to contain some comparisons between events in Kosawa and similar events in other countries.
Information about those events is available in lectures on the “traditionalist” revolts discussed in unit #1 and the
lectures on revolutions in Mexico, China (two), Russia, Vietnam, and India. It would be wise to reference the
two themes I highlighted in my guide to the novel (the role of traditional culture, the use of violence) but feel
free to use other factors as well in your analysis (e.g., different forms of organization, different ideologies,
varying cultural factors).