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What was surprising in the book? What did you learn from reading?

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What was surprising in the book? What did you learn from reading?

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Was the argument successful in your opinion?

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Was the argument successful in your opinion?

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In one word, what is a central idea/theme from the book?

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In one word, what is a central idea/theme from the book?

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Professor of Political Science and Race, Diaspora & Indigeneity at the University of Chicago

Research interests: history of political thought; race & empire; postcolonial political theory; Africa & the Caribbean

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Adom Getachew | Department of Political Science

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Primary archival sources:

Bureau of African Affairs Papers at the George Padmore Research Library for African Affairs in Ghana

Federal Archives at the University of West Indies-Cave Hill in Barbados

League of Nations Archives at the United Nations Library in Geneva, Switzerland

Eric Williams Memorial Collection at the University of West Indies-St. Augustine in Trinidad

Secondary sources:

Histories of decolonization

Studies of international law & empire

Scholarship on nationalism and self-determination

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Getachew challenges the standard view of decolonization as primarily focused on nation-building and the rejection of alien rule. Instead, she argues that anticolonial thinkers and activists sought to fundamentally transform the international system itself, moving beyond the limitations of the nation-state to establish institutions and norms that would guarantee non-domination on a global scale.

Anticolonialism as worldmaking

Unequal integration & international hierarchy

Self-determination's ambitions & restrictions

Failed alternative: federation

Empire & worldmaking: embedded legacies of enslavement

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The book is divided into five chapters that are anchored by major themes that drive exploration of “worldmaking” visions and imaginaries. Central figures are thus given the space and recognition in their contributions to (re)formulate anti-colonial nationalism, self-determination, and international system hierarchies. Getachew deconstructs relevant junctures and highlights major critiques vis-a-vis leading anti-colonial voices/statesmen including:

W.E.B. Du Bois 🇺🇸

Kwame Nkrumah 🇬🇭

Julius Nyerere 🇹🇿

Michael Manley 🇯🇲

Nnamdi Azikiwe 🇳🇬

George Padmore 🇹🇹

Eric Williams 🇹🇹

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Worldmaking after Empire introduces ways to rethink/reshape our understanding of decolonization history and imperial past and present to forge and steer the “imagining of an anti-imperial future”

Getachew re-orients the conversation outside Western voices and framework of analysis and shifts agency to actors who experience first-hand the re-shifting global order impact on developing countries which are often left in the periphery of scholarly works.

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Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination

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Getachew presents a sweeping new account of the global visions of the activists who led the decolonization movement.

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How do prior books engage with similar ideas/themes/events? How do they frame these events differently? 

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How do prior books engage with similar ideas/themes/events? How do they frame these events differently? 

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How does this help our understanding of anticolonial movements?

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How does this help our understanding of anticolonial movements?

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Winner of the Frantz Fanon Prize, Caribbean Philosophical Association

Winner of the ASA Best Book Prize, African Studies Association

Winner of the First Book Award, Foundations of Political Theory Section of the American Political Science Association

Co-Winner of the W.E.B. Du Bois Distinguished Book Award, National Conference of Black Political Scientists

Co-Winner of the J. David Greenstone Book Prize, Politics & History Section of the American Political Science Association

Winner of the ISA Theory Best Book, Theory Section of the International Studies Association

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Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination with Adom Getachew.

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Key tenets of these early interpretations— the emphasis on alien rule, the inattention to the international conditions and context of imperialism, the identification of decolonization with the globalization of the nation-state, and the expansion of international society—continue to shape our understanding of the collapse of territorial empires. (16)

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Unequal integration conceives of international society as an internally differentiated space that includes sovereign states, huasisovereigns, and colonies which are organized through relations of hierarchy. The hierarchy ordering of international society ensured that non-European states were not afforded the full rights of membership in international society. The distributions of rights and obligations was such that non-European states and colones were encumbered with onerous obligations and had only limited conditional rights. (18)

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Ethiopia and Liberia—both independent and self-governing—occupied a similarly ambivalent position that facilitated their domination.

Rather than truncations of the principle of self-determination, these instances of inequality and domination are in fact reflections of a refashioned account of the principle that Woodrow Wilson and Jan Smuts made compatible with racial hierarchy and empire. Wilson and Smuts belatedly adopted the principle of self-determination but rejected the Leninist demands for separate national states and secession. Through their reassociation, self-determination would mean the consent of the governed and consultation with subject peoples. [...] Far from being a call for the dissolution of empire and the formation of national states, self-determination is equated here with Wilson’s long-standing commitment to the “consent of the governed.”(42)

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4. UN Resolution 1514: Declaration on Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples

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4. UN Resolution 1514: Declaration on Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples

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Resolution 1514 conceived of self-determination as a right of all peoples and declared: "The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights." (73)

https://legal.un.org/avl/ha/dicc/dicc.html

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The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 14 December 1960. The deliberate location of the United Nations vote - in the General Assembly rather than in the Security Council where a permanent member's veto would always be available to any one or more of the three permanent members that still had "colonial" legal ties or associations - was an obvious enough choice for the political activist States sponsoring resolution 1514 (XV). And the timing of the vote - in 1960, when the decolonisation process was already well under way - was hardly fortuitous. A working majority in favour of a patently anti-colonialist measure would not become politically possible until the General Assembly's transformation from its original very narrow base of representation limited to the States members of the victorious wartime Alliance against Fascism to something more nearly reflective in cultural and ideological terms of the world community at large. By 1960, this had begun to be achieved, albeit on an intermittent, or casual, step-by-step basis, over the decade and a half from War's end. The numerical breakthrough had occurred as late as 1955, when 16 new States had been admitted in one big step to membership, bringing the total to 76. In 1960 itself, 19 new States had been admitted, sealing the emergence of what became, in Cold War terms, a neutralist or uncommitted, majority voting coalition variously styled as the Non-Aligned bloc, the Group of 77, the Bandoeng group, the Developing or Third World countries. It was this informal electoral alliance, that provided the intellectual cohesiveness and also the political-tactical competence to secure the adoption of resolution 1514 (XV) without a single expressed dissent in the General Assembly.

Why a Declaration, and not something with more obvious and immediate concrete political and legal consequences? The answer must be that it was partly tactical, to convert potential negative votes in the General Assembly into softer, legally ineffective abstentions. But it also has something to do with the patently French civiliste, legal-systemic influences on its styling and drafting. The paradigm-model for resolution 1514 (XV) must be the great French Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen) of 1789. Resolution 1514 (XV), like that historical example, is short and succinct, and written in clear, non-technical, often poetic language.

In the end, the persuasiveness, in both political and legal terms, of resolution 1514 (XV) as Declaration must rest upon its claims to be an authoritative, interpretive gloss upon the Charter of the United Nations as originally written, amplifying and extending the Charter's original historical imperatives so as to encompass the new historical reality of the post-World War II international society of the drives for access to full sovereignty and independence of erstwhile subject-peoples, in an emerging new, culturally inclusive, representative, pluralist world community.

In its substantive law stipulations, the Declaration postulates what may be described as ordering principles, intended to guide the progressive development of international law in accordance with the General Assembly's own explicit mandate under Article 13, paragraph 1 (a), of the Charter of the United Nations:

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that the subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights (art. 1);

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that all peoples have the right to self-determination, but that this necessarily includes the right freely to determine their political status and freely to pursue their economic, social and cultural development (art. 2);

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that all armed action or repressive measures of all kinds directed against dependent peoples shall cease (art. 4);

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that immediate steps shall be taken, in United Nations Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories or all other territories which have not yet attained independence, to transfer all powers to the peoples of those territories (art. 5).

And there is the warning, in the premonition of possible future post-decolonisation conflicts (as, at the time, in the former Belgian Congo), against any attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a (post-decolonisation) country (art. 6); and as to the obligation of all States to observe the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as to equality and non-interference in the internal affairs of all States, and respect for the sovereign rights of all peoples and their territorial integrity (art. 7).

The Declaration's subsequent history, as a call for legislative activism - affirmative action - within the General Assembly (and, if politically opportune, within the Security Council) and certainly also for parallel initiatives in other coordinate United Nations institutions and agencies (the International Court of Justice in particular), has helped in a process of elevating the Declaration's claimed juridical status to the rank of imperative principles of international law ( jus cogens), binding, as such, on the United Nations as authoritative interpretation of the Charter's norms and entering into general international law in the result.

The Declaration was at the core of Security Council and General Assembly legislative initiatives that provided a legal base for reference to the International Court of Justice for Advisory Opinion in Namibia in 1971. The Declaration is also reflected, in its full spirit, in the International Court's Advisory Opinion ruling on Western Sahara in 1975.

In the immediate political context of the drafting and the diplomatic lobbying leading on to its adoption, the Declaration was generally understood as being directed to "salt-water" Colonialism - occupation of the lands and territories of indigenous, native or aboriginal peoples, in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, who were physically separated by the oceans from their colonial Powers. There is nothing in the language or the spirit of resolution 1514 (XV) inhibiting its legal extension to situations involving relations between European colonial Powers and other European or European-derived peoples overseas. In a major ruling, the International Court of Justice, being seised of a legal complaint of military and paramilitary support by the United States Government for forces from outside Nicaragua attempting to overthrow Nicaragua's elected government, may have come close in its strong judicial majorities to making such a connection.

Within the General Assembly itself, the Declaration gave birth immediately to further legislative acts whose ties of consanguinity to resolution 1514 (XV) are clear: resolution 1515 (XV) of 15 December 1960, on the sovereign right of States to dispose of their own wealth and natural resources and resolution 1803 (XVII) of 14 December 1962, on States' permanent sovereignty over those natural resources. The further Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order and the related Programme of Action (resolutions 3201 (S-VI) and 3202 (S-VI) of 1 May 1974), and the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States (resolution 3281 (XXIX) of 12 December 1974) are demonstrations of the prophetic quality of resolution 1514 (XV) in providing an inevitable legal linkage between self-determination and its goal of decolonisation, and a postulated new international law-based right of freedom also in economic self-determination.

Collateral questions arising from resolution 1514 (XV) concern its consequences for the continued validity in legal terms of the former territorial frontiers from the colonial era in the post-decolonisation context. The new Organisation of African Unity had displayed, in the early post-decolonisation period, a concern for avoiding the internecine conflicts over territorial frontiers and the resultant pursuit by military means of "natural frontiers". The pragmatic conclusion was that it might be wisest for the new African States to accept, at least for the moment, the legitimacy of their own newly-inherited territorial demarcations even where, as very often happened, they had arbitrarily divided indigenous peoples or "nations" belonging to distinct ethno-cultural communities. Openings in judicial terms to the Latin American legal doctrine of uti possidetis, as in the legal discussion in Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Mali), a ruling in 1986 by a Special Chamber of the International Court of Justice, perhaps do not take full account of that doctrine's own special, intrinsically regional character as a concept limited to disputes inter se of the South American Succession States to the former Spanish and Portuguese colonial Powers. The Badinter Commission's attempt in 1992 to extrapolate the Latin American uti possidetis doctrine to the international boundaries of the succession States to the Former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia may be questioned substantively on the same basis.

The large conclusion must be that the Declaration has essentially fulfilled its original legislative objective of consolidating the political process, already entered upon, of legally terminating the old Colonial Empires, and of pressing on with all deliberate speed to successful conclusion of the process. With political and economic self-determination now assured for the new succession States, and their control over their own natural and other economic resources guaranteed, the way would be open to pursuing supervening, collateral issues now being canvassed - rectification of inherited frontiers, autonomous development of economic resources on a fully regional basis, and related regional security questions - under other, different legal categories and in other, predominantly diplomatic-legal arenas in aid to the General Assembly's original great legislative act.

This Introductory Note was written in August 2008.

Related Materials

A. Jurisprudence

International Court of Justice, South West Africa (Ethiopia v. South Africa; Liberia v. South Africa). Second Phase, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1966, p. 6.

International Court of Justice,Legal Consequences for States of the Continued Presence of South Africa in Namibia (South West Africa) notwithstanding Security Council Resolution 276 (1970), Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1971, p. 16.

International Court of Justice,Western Sahara, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1975, p. 12.

International Court of Justice,Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Mali), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1986, p. 554.

International Court of Justice,Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America), Merits, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1986, p. 14.

B. Doctrine

M. Bedjaoui, Terra nullius, 'droits' historiques et auto détérmination, The Hague: Sijthoff, 1975.

M. Bedjaoui, "Non-alignement et droit international", Recueil des Cours, vol. 151, 1976, p.406.

B. Boutros-Ghali, "The Arab League 1945-1970", Revue Egyptienne de Droit International, vol. 25, 1969, p.67.

C.J.R. Dugard, "Organisation of African Unity and Colonisation", International and Comparative Law Quarterly, vol. 16, 1967, pp. 157-190.

E. McWhinney, Self-Determination of Peoples and Plural-Ethnic States in Contemporary International Law, Leiden, Boston, Martinus Nijhoff, 2007, particularly chapters 1-4.

E. McWhinney, United Nations Law Making: Cultural and Ideological Relativism and International Law Making for an Era of Transition, Paris, UNESCO; New York, Holmes and Meier, 1984, particularly Chapter 9 [French version: Les Nations Unies et la formation du Droit, Paris, Unesco, Pedone, 1986].

E. McWhinney, The World Court and the Contemporary International Law-Making Process, Alphen aan den Rijn, Sithoff & Noordhoff, 1979, particularly Chapters 2 and 4.

M. Mushkat, "Process of Decolonisation: International Legal Aspects", University of Baltimore Law Review, vol. 2, 1972-1973, pp. 16-34.

A. Zamora R. (ed.), Actividades Militares y Paramilitares en y contra Nicaragua, (Nicaragua c. Estados Unidos), (Corte Internacional de Justicia), Managua, Nicaragua, 1999.

The question of a declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples was initially proposed for inclusion in the agenda of the General Assembly by Nikita S. Khrushchev, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), during his address to the Assembly on 23 September 1960. This proposal was formalized in a letter to the President of the General Assembly of the same day (A/4501, 23 September 1960), which was submitted together with a draft Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples (A/4502, 23 September 1960). On 28 September 1960, the General Committee recommended that the item proposed by the USSR be included in the General Assembly's agenda at its fifteenth session of the same year and that it be allocated to the First (Political and Security) Committee. On 10 October, the General Assembly decided to place the item on its agenda and, on 13 October, a proposal by the USSR to discuss the item in plenary meetings was unanimously adopted.

The topic was discussed in the General Assembly from 28 November to 7 December 1960 and from 13 December to 14 December 1960 (A/PV.925-939 and A/PV.944-947). The General Assembly had before it, in addition to the draft Declaration submitted by the USSR (A/4502), another draft submitted, on 28 November, by Cambodia on behalf of 26 Asian and African countries, which was eventually sponsored by 43 delegations (A/L.323 and Adds. 1 to 6). The latter draft was adopted without change by the General Assembly, by a vote of 89 to 0, with 9 abstentions, in resolution 1514 (XV) entitled "Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples".

The following year, upon the request of the USSR, the General Committee recommended to the General Assembly that an item entitled "The situation with regard to the implementation of the Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples" be included on the agenda of its sixteenth session, in 1961. The General Assembly decided to include this item in its agenda on 25 September 1961. On 27 November 1961, the General Assembly adopted resolution 1654 (XVI), by which it decided to establish a Special Committee of seventeen members with a mandate to make suggestions and recommendations on the progress and extent of the implementation of the Declaration, and to report to the General Assembly. On 23 January 1962, the President of the General Assembly appointed, in accordance with the resolution, the seventeen members of the Special Committee. The same year, in resolution 1810 (XVII) of 17 December 1962, the membership of the Special Committee was enlarged by seven members, resulting in a total of twenty-four members. The Special Committee was further invited to propose specific measures of implementation for the complete application of the Declaration, and to report to the General Assembly no later than at its eighteenth session. At that session, in 1963, the General Assembly considered the report by the Special Committee (A/5446/Rev.1) and requested the Special Committee to continue to seek the best ways and means for the immediate and total application of the Declaration, and report to the General Assembly no later than at its nineteenth session, in 1964. The Committee was further invited to apprise the Security Council of any developments in any territories which may threaten international peace and security (resolution 1956 (XVIII) of 12 December 1963). In addition, the functions of the Special Committee were expanded to include the work of the Committee on Information from Non-Self-Governing Territories, which was dissolved, in resolution 1970 (XVIII) of 16 December 1963. The Special Committee continues to exist and meets annually to consider problems connected with colonial territories, as well as topics of a more general nature assigned to it by the General Assembly.

Text of the Declaration

Selected preparatory documents
(in chronological order)

Letter of 23 September 1960 from the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics addressed to the President of the General Assembly, "Request for the inclusion of an additional item in the agenda of the fifteenth session: item proposed by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" ( A/4501, , 23 September 1960)

Draft declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples, submitted by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at the 869th plenary meeting of the General Assembly ( A/4502 and Corr.1, 23 September 1960)

Draft resolution, submitted by Afghanistan, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroun, Central African Republic, Ceylon, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Leopoldville), Cyprus, Dahomey, Ethiopia, Federation of Malaya, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Somalia, the Sudan, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Republic and Upper Volta (A/L. 323 and Add. 1-6, 28 November 1960)

General Assembly, Verbatim records of plenary meetings Nos. 925 to 939 and 944 to 947, held from 28 November to 7 December 1960 and from 13 December to 14 December 1960 ( A/PV.925, 926, 927, 928, 929, 930, 931, 932, 933, 934, 935, 936, 937, 938, 939 and A/PV.944, 945, 946, 947)

General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960 (Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples) General Assembly resolution 1654 (XVI) of 27 November 1961 (The situation with regard to the implementation of the Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoplesReport of the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples ( A/5446/Rev.1, 1963)

For further information concerning the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (Special Committee on Decolonization), see the following website:
http://www.un.org/Depts/dpi/decolonization/special_committee_main.htm.

Statements

Fifteenth Session of the General Assembly, 933rd to 939th Plenary Meetings, 2 to 7 December 1960: Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples
[Minor image quality problems in the original] Video (30 minutes, Full version)

Fifteenth Session of the General Assembly, 947th Plenary Meeting, 14 December 1960: Adoption of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples
[Minor sound quality problem in the original]
Video (5 minutes, Full version)

Fifteenth session of the General Assembly, 947th meeting, 14 December 1960: Adoption of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples
Audio (2 hours, 44 minutes minutes, Full version)

30 May 1964
Sub-Committee on Southern Rhodesia of the Special Committee of 24 on the ending of colonialism, London Airport.
[Read more]

8 March 1966
Opening of the 1966 session of the Special Committee of 24 on the ending of colonialism,
United Nations Headquarters,
New York.
[Read more]

4 November 1974
Twenty-ninth Session of the General Assembly, Fourth Committee (Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories),
United Nations Headquarters,
New York.
[Read more]

14 December 1975
Exhibit in commemoration of the fifteenth anniversary of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples,
United Nations Headquarters,
New York.
[Read more]

8 October 1986
Forty-first Session of the General Assembly, Fourth Committee Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories),
United Nations Headquarters,
New York.
[Read more]

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united nations audiovisual library of international law

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Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples

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United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law

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Understood only as freedom from alien rule, Nkrumah lamented that decolonization had become “a word much and unctuously used . . . to describe the transfer of political control from colonialist to African sovereignty.” Demonstrating its institutional flexibility, imperialism had “quickly adopted its outlook to [this] loss of direct political control [and] retained and extended its economic grip.” In the neocolonial phase of imperialism, imperial powers exploited their economic grip to indirectly realize political compulsion. The result was a distorted form of postcolonial sovereignty. While newly independent states sought to institutionalize the domestic dimension of the right to self-determination through popular sovereignty and representative governments, “the rulers of neocolonial states derive their authority to govern, not from the will of the people, but from the support which they obtain from their neocolonial masters.” (108)

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Yet for all the promise of postcolonial federation, the federal moment in the Black Atlantic was short lived. The demise of the West Indian Federation and Union of African States cannot be understood either as an example of the necessary incompatibility of nationalism and internationalism or as an instance of a utopian project bound for failure. Instead, it reveals the ways in which federals like Nkrumah and Williams misjudged the attachments sovereignty generated because they were convinced that postcolonial sovereignty was limited and precarious. (140)

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Redistribution