Abstract
This chapter explores the decolonization of the United Nations (UN) in the late 20th century. It considers two interlocking riddles: first, was third-world nationalism — defined as the movement that crystallized at the UN General Assembly at the height of post-war decolonization -distinct from the non-governmental movements that allegedly remade the global community during the 1970s? Second, did trends within the Afro-Asian world influence the human rights revolution that became so ubiquitous after 1970?
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Notes
See R. Burke, Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights, Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010;
F. Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 2005;
A Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 2002;
P. G. Lauren, Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimination, New York, NY, Westview Press, 1988;
R. Logevall and A. Preston, eds, Nixon in the World: American Toreign Relations, 1969–1977, New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2008;
E. Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism, New York, Oxford University Press, 2007;
M. Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2009;
S. Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2010;
N. Ferguson, C. Maier, E. Manela and D. Sargent, eds, The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2009.
Ibid., For further reflections on Indian nationalism, see M. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009;
J. Nehru, The Discovery of India, New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2004;
J. Nehru, Glimpses of World History, New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2004, as well as the voluminous secondary literature on this topic.
For a useful primer, see E. Luard, A History of the United Nations, Vol. 1: The Years of Western Domination, 1945–1955, London, Palgrave, 1982; Vol. 2: The Age of Decolonization, 1955–1965, London, Palgrave, 1989.
J. Nehru, India’s Toreign Policy: Selected Speeches, September 1946-April 1961, Delhi, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1961, p. 2.
For an introduction, see M. Bhagavan, The Peacemakers: India and the Quest for One World, New York, NY, HarperCollins, 2012,
and I. Abraham, ‘Migration and citizenship in Asian international relations and state formation’, in S. S. Tan and A. Acharya, eds, Bandung Revisited: The Legacy of the 1955 Asian African Conference for International Order, Singapore, NUS Press, 2008,
as well as M. Goswami, Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2004.
For a survey of Jawaharlal Nehru’s thinking, see J. Brown, Nehru: A Political Life, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2003,
and S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, Vols. 1–3, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1976–1984.
For an interesting reflection about this period, see Mazower, No Enchanted Palace, 2009,
as well as D. Bosco, Five to Rule Them All: The UN Security Council and the Making of the Modern World, New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2009;
P. Kennedy, Parliament of Man: The Past, Present, and Tuture of the United Nations, New York, NY, Vintage, 2007;
S. Schlesinger, Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations, New York, NY, Westview, 2004.
H. Tinker, Race, Conflict, and the International Order, London, Macmillan, 1977, pp. 100, 132.
G. Sluga, ‘The transformation of international organization’, in Ferguson et al., eds, Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2010.
Nkrumah, cited in F. Wilcox, UN and the Nonaligned Nations, New York, NY, Foreign Policy Association, 1962, p. 34.
For lengthy consider of these issues, see R. M. Irwin, Gordian Knot: Apartheid and the Unmaking of the Liberal World Order, New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2012. This section of the chapter overlaps with Gordian Knot, pp. 144–146.
For excellent overviews of early non-governmental anti-apartheid activism, see C. Anderson, ‘International conscience, the Cold War, and apartheid: The NAACP’s alliance with the Reverend Michael Scott for South West Africa’s liberation, 1946–1952’, Journal of World History, 19, 3, 2008, pp. 297–326;
L. V. Baldwin, Toward the Beloved Community: Martin Luther King, Jr., and South Africa, Cleveland, OH, Pilgrim, 1995;
D. Culverson, Contesting Apartheid: US Activism, 1960–1987, New York, NY, Westview, 1999;
J. Love, The US Anti-Apartheid Movement: Local Activism in Global Politics, Westport, CT, Greenwood, 1985;
R. K. Massie, Loosing the Bonds: The United States and South Africa in the Apartheid Years, New York, NY, Nan A. Talese, Doubleday 1997;
B. Magubane, The Ties that Bind: African-American Consciousness of Africa, Trenton, NJ, Africa World Press, 1987;
W. Minter, King Soloman’s Mines Revisited: Western Interests and the Burdened History of South Africa, New York, NY, Basic Books, 1986;
F. N. Nesbitt, Race for Sanctions: African Americans against Apartheid, 1946–1994, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 2004;
G. W. Shepard, Anti-Apartheid: Transnational Conflict and Western Policy in the Liberation of South Africa, New York, NY, Greenwood, 1977;
and E. Morgan, ‘Into the struggle: Confronting apartheid in the United States and South Africa, 1964–1990’, unpublished doctoral thesis, Colorado State University, 2009.
For broader scholarship on non-governmental activism, Anderson, Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955, New York, NY, Cambridge University Press, 2003;
T. Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2001;
M. L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2000;
P. M. von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anti-colonialism, 1937–1957, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1997;
G. Home, Black and Red: W E. B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963, New York, NY, State University of New York Press, 1985;
B. G. Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and US Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960, Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
For description of this shift, see P. G. Lauren, The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen, Philadelphia, PA, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003, pp. 233–247.
Ibid., p. 246. For introduction to scholarship on human rights, see S. Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, New York, NY, Basic Books, 2002;
M. A. Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, New York, NY, Random House, 2002;
J. Laber, The Courage of Strangers: Coming of Age with the Human Rights Movement, New York, NY, Public Affairs, 2005, as well as forthcoming work by Sarah Snyder.
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Irwin, R. (2015). Inside the Parliament of Man: Enuga Reddy and the Decolonization of the United Nations. In: Jerónimo, M.B., Pinto, A.C. (eds) The Ends of European Colonial Empires. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137394064_9
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