WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO "DECOLONIZE"? Democracy and the Others of Europe (original) (raw)
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New Eastern Europe, 2023
“We will regain Odesa and everything will be back in place! Monuments will get removed and street names changed,” reads a comment on the website of Russia’s state-owned information agency Ria Novosti. It was placed under an article describing the removal of the Catharine the Great monument in Odesa. In a nutshell, these two sentences present the discourse that has developed in Eastern Europe around the topic of decolonisation. In theory, decolonisation, or a decolonisation shift, refers to a process of denaturalisation of existing (i.e. colonial) order of knowledge. As such, this process eventually leads to a change in the way a society thinks about itself, the world, the past and the future.
Introduction: Decolonisation Matters
2021
In 2020, Europe was the setting for several events that sparked off a broad debate on the need for the decolonisation of thought, practices, spaces, monuments and museums. Historically, several European countries have had a direct or indirect relationship with colonialism and its practices, as well as with the authoritarian ways of managing and exercising power (Cahen and Matos 2018; Cooper and Stoler 1997; Matos 2019). The need to reflect on imperial ruins (Stoler 2013) and to decolonise thought today is therefore understandable.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
in: Wemheuer-Vogelaar, Wiebke/Peters, Ingo (eds.) Studying the Global Discipline: International Relations Scholarship Amidst Divides and Diversity
In February 2010, an encounter in the Chilean city of Temuco called into question the foundations of what my education in various European countries had taught me about democratization. During my Bachelor studies in Political Science, I had specialized on International Relations (IR) and theories of democracy. A very natural combination, as I soon came to believe, since democracy seemed so intrinsically linked to the main themes of IR, such as political theory and history of ideas, peace and conflict studies, economic development theories, or comparative foreign policy analysis. Democracy was the recurrent topic, the necessary condition or favored outcome of all political processes. Its origins could be unquestionably located in Ancient Greece, its journey traced back from Europe to North America and finally to the so-called “developing world”.
"Foreword" to The First Wave of Decolonization
The First Wave of Decolonization, ed. by Mark Thurner (Routledge), 2019
The global phenomenon of decolonization was born in the Americas in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The First Wave of Decolonization is the first volume in any language to describe and analyze the scope and meanings of decolonization during this formative period. It demonstrates that the pioneers of decolonization were not twentieth-century Frenchmen or Algerians but nineteenth-century Peruvians and Colombians. In doing so, it vastly expands the horizons of decolonization, conventionally understood to be a post-war development emanating from Europe. The result is a provocative, new understanding of the global history of decolonization.
Decolonization and the right to self-determination
Guerra Colonial
The ideas about self-determination evolved from the Wilsonian understanding of self-governance - to a norm and drive for decolonization that changed the 20th century’s landscape. Despite its general proclamation as a right to all, the UN applied it as a “principle of saltwater”. Hence, the only legitimate right holder – colonial peoples could realize self-determination under several legal instruments and within the principle of uti possidetis juris that preserved the artificiality of the borders. The legal controversies of the decolonization processes are numerous and its loose end appears to be present up to now since the same principles were applied during the dissolution of the socialistic federations after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Itinerario, 1996
In March 1996, as the headlines announced to all, Europe met Asia in Bangkok. The first summit between the European Union and the ASEAN countries, Japan, China, and South Korea was more important for its symbolic meaning than for its substance. Nothing concrete was achieved, nor had this been the intention. It was all fairly informal, with heads of state and government showing to the world that the age of decolonization was now really over: European and Asian leaders communicating as equals, on terms the ASEAN host had set. 1 This seemed to be a new departure, though it had been foreshadowed for years. Given the fact that Pacific Asia is the growth engine of the world economy, European business and political leaders felt they were missing out on something. The ASEM (Asia Europe Meeting) was designed to show all this. With the handover of Hong Kong (and Macao) approaching, decolonization in Asia really seems to be over. But is it really true? It can hardly be denied that in Europe it is Germany which takes the initiative in forging a new European-Asian relationship, not the former colonial powers themselves. Turning to the Netherlands, for a moment, it is easy to see why. In August 1995, Queen Beatrix paid a state visit to Indonesia, the former Dutch colony that had proclaimed its independence on August 17, 1945, fifty years earlier. The state visit was exceptional for two reasons: it almost, but not completely, coincided with the independence celebrations, and it almost, but not completely, coincided with the presence of a huge Dutch economic delegation, headed by the minister of Economic Affairs, Hans Wijers. The delegation was successful, but what about the state visit? Crucial to its success, at least on the Dutch side, was the speech the Queen was to give during the banquet on 21 August, the day of her arrival. During her speech, she expressed her deep regret for the pain inflicted during the decolonization struggle of 1945-1949, but stopped short of apologizing for Dutch atrocities committed during those years. 2 Her speech turned out to be a typically Dutch compromise, reflecting all for which the Government was willing to be held accountable for and thus a little disappointing to many people who had expected something terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
AHR Roundtable The Archives of Decolonization Introduction
2015
DECOLONIZATION IS SURELY AMONG the most significant events or processes of the twentieth century. In the span of less than two decades, longstanding European empires in Africa, Asia, and beyond were largely dismantled to create dozens of new nation-states, and with them a new geopolitical landscape. The magnitude of change was immense: in Africa alone, more than fifty new states were created, beginning in the 1950s.1 The United Nations provides another example of the scale of geopolitical transformation that decolonization precipitated. From its inception in 1945 to 2002, membership in the United Nations went from 51 to 191; “most of these new members,” Raymond Betts notes in his study Decolonization, “came from the failed colonial empires.”2 Indeed, one can suggest without hyperbole that decolonization fundamentally shapes the world we live in. While this may be true, such an accounting emphasizes decolonization as a political event, one “whereby colonial powers transferred institu...