Realidad problemática

The First World War was a globalised European war. The main participants were European powers, but the involvement of the colonies held by those powers resulted in a truly global war. The colonies not only provided vital supplies to both sides during the conflict but also provided manpower to bolster the European armies,¹⁴⁹ and it was thus clear to both sides that by ridding the other of its colonial supply-chain they could gain a considerable advantage. In due course, therefore, the colonies became frontlines, both as direct theatres of engagement and battlegrounds of ideas.¹⁵⁰ Wishing to destabilise enemy colonies and guarantee the loyalty of their own, both sides promised greater independence or full self-governance in an effort to win and keep allies.¹⁵¹

That process only increased with the rise to power of the Bolsheviks in Russia. The right of nations to self-determination was a mainstay of Lenin’s political thought, and was the official policy of the Bolshevik movement.¹⁵² According to Lenin’s theory, the actualised right of those nations that wished it to secessionary self-determination was a first and necessary step towards an end of nationalism and, ultimately, the great socialist awakening.¹⁵³ It was, Lenin argued, the duty of all to reject nationalism in all its forms, yet self-determination he divorced from nationalism per se, identifying it as a necessary aspect of a declaration that all nations are equal in rights.

In this situation, the proletariat of Russia is faced with a twofold or, rather, a two-sided task: to combat nationalism of every kind, above all, Great-Russian nationalism; to recognise, not only fully equal rights for all nations in general, but

149 Henri Grimal, Decolonization: The British, French, Dutch and Belgian Empires 1919-1963 (Stephan De Vos tr, Westview Press 1978) 9.

150 Musgrave (n 130) 15.

151 ibid 15–17.

152 ibid 17–18.

153 Vladimir Ilich Lenin, ‘The Right of Nations to Self-Determination’ in Julius Katzer (ed), Bernard Isaacs and Joe Fineberg (trs), V I Lenin: Collected Works (Progress Publishers 1964) 413.

also equality of rights as regards polity, i.e., the right of nations to self-determination, to secession.¹⁵⁴

Lenin’s thought on self-determination was to prove to be highly influential.

1919 saw the end of the war, and the defeat of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. By that time most of the colonies of the Central Powers had fallen into Allied hands, and it became increasingly important to determine their future.¹⁵⁵ It was the leaders of the Russian revolution who first advocated that the colonies be permitted to self-determine, but their calls were swiftly echoed by others.¹⁵⁶ In particular, Lenin’s call for self-determination influenced Henry Balfour—the first to moot the idea of international control of the territories—whose ideas were in turn taken up (most influentially) by Woodrow Wilson.¹⁵⁷

During the course of the War and the subsequent peace process, Wilson became a strong advocate of self-determination, although it seems clear that his was a narrower conception than that advocated by Lenin. In January 1917, Wilson addressed a joint session of Congress.

His address was entitled ‘Peace Without Victory’, and in the course of the speech he laid out a vision for peace in Europe which, he hoped, would encourage the Central Powers to submit to a negotiated ceasefire. Central to his vision of a stable Europe was the principle of political self-determination:

No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the

154 ibid 453–54.

155 The League of Nations, The Mandates System: Origin - Principles - Application (Series of League of Nations Publications 1945) 13.

156 ibid 14.

157 ibid 14–15.

governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.¹⁵⁸

It is not clear from this passage whether Wilson was advocating a division of contested European territories along national lines in accordance with the wishes of their inhabitants, or whether his goal was to ensure that the war would not result in the acquisition of territories by either side. It may be indicative, though, that the impermissibility of territorial acquisitions was the focus of Wilson’s letter to the Pope of the 27^th August 1917.¹⁵⁹

Although it seems clear that Wilson was not seeking to institute a right to secessionary self-determination, nor to establish definitive principles for the determination of territorial claims, he insists on the superiority of the rights of ‘peoples’ over the rights of ‘Governments’. All peoples, he argues, have an equal right to freedom and self-government. These statements establish Wilson’s commitment to political self-determination, and his conviction that the peace process in Europe should take self-determination principles into consideration. In the early part of 1918, his thoughts on the peace process were to be refined and formalised in his famous ‘Fourteen Points’ speech of January 1918. Wilson’s fourth point stated that there must be:

A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.¹⁶⁰

While the address was not a ringing endorsement of self-determination, Wilson established that the will of the population was a factor to be considered in the determination of colonial claims. Cassese is, of course, correct to strike the cautionary note when he comments that for Wilson ‘self-determination should not be the sole or even the paramount yardstick in this area,

158 Woodrow Wilson, ‘Peace Without Victory’ (22 January 1917).

159 Letter from Woodrow Wilson, ‘Reply to the Pope of 27th August 1917’ (27 August 1917).

160 Woodrow Wilson, ‘Fourteen Points’ (8 January 1918). [Emphasis added].

but must be reconciled with the interests of colonial powers.’¹⁶¹ Nevertheless, it is difficult to overstate the importance of the idea that colonial peoples should be given some measure of influence over their future circumstances.

Peoples are not to be handed about from one sovereignty to another by an international conference or an understanding between rivals and antagonists.

National aspirations must be respected; peoples may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. “Self-determination” is not a mere phrase.

It is an imperative principle of actions which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.¹⁶²

Although it would be many years before the idea would achieve general acceptance, Wilson had set in motion the creation of a right to colonial determination. Although colonial self-determination shares a similarity of outcomes with the secessionary form, its ideational foundations are distinct (it is more closely connected ideationally to the political than the secessionary form), and it merits its own category because of its political status. In 1918 Wilson began a process which would eventually yield a political conviction that colonialism is inherently reprehensible, and that colonial peoples should be granted self-government.¹⁶³ In determining the form that government should take in any particular case, self-determination became the accepted tool of the international community.

161 Cassese (n 3) 21.

162 Woodrow Wilson, ‘President Wilson’s Address to Congress, Analyzing German and Austrian Peace Utterances’

(11 February 1918).

163 I refer, here, to colonialism as a whole. Although individual cases of colonial rule had previously been seen as illegitimate, and although colonialism was often (if not always) seen as illegitimate by those under colonial rule (a prime example is Haiti under French rule pre-1804), the international community continued to recognise colonial rule as acceptable, or even laudable—for many years colonialism was arrogated as part of a “civilising mission”—and the great powers were understood to have a perfect right to continued possession of the colonial holdings. 1918 marks a watershed moment: before this, claims by colonies to independence were generally justified on the basis of mistreatment or other failure by the colonial power (and thus fall more readily under the heading of remedial self-determination). In the years that were to follow, however, it was increasingly widely believed that colonies have a right to independence because of their status as such, and not only as a result of abuse by the colonial power.