Towards a History of Decolonization

Itinerario ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
H.L. Wesseling
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

Decolonization has finished. It definitely belongs to the past, but somehow it has refused to become history. A great deal has already been written on this subject, and yet it seems that there is little to say about it. After the Second World War, the colonized countries wanted to become independent, struggled with their oppressors and threw off the yoke of colonial rule. Within a few years they all achieved their aim. That is the song that has now already been sung for about thirty years, in various keys, it is true, but with a remarkable consistency of tune and melody. The entire colonial history seems to have been no more than a prologue to an inevitable and triumphant independence. A new Whig interpretation of history has come into being.

The Pattern of Administrative Reforms in the Closing Years of Dutch Rule in Indonesia

1966 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 589-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry J. Benda
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Students ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
World War ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
Administrative Reforms ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
Second World

The history of Indonesia in the last two or three decades of Dutch colonial rule still has to be written, and it can only be written when the abundant archival materials for this period, both in Indonesia and in the Netherlands, come to be opened up for scholarly investigation. Scholars who, since the Second World War, have turned their attention to modern Indonesian history have tended to focus on the development of Indonesian nationalism, and for understandable reasons. The Indonesian Revolution, crowned by the attainment of Indonesian independence in 1949, rendered an understanding of the Indonesian nationalist movement in colonial times imperative not only to Indonesian historians attempting to come to grips with their country's recent past but also to an ever-increasing number of foreign students. Welcome as this ongoing re-examination of Indonesian nationalism is, it, too, must remain incomplete until documentary evidence, whether archival or (auto)-biographical, can substantially enrich it.

World History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürgen Osterhammel
Keyword(s):  
World History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Global History ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Migration ◽  
Second World

This chapter examines different approaches to global history. Modern world history differs from older universal-historical constructions in that it presupposes an empirical idea of geography and of both the unity and plurality of humanity’s historical experience. After the Second World War, historians paid more attention to the interaction of the nation-state (the local) and the world (the global). The newer global history, while it does not negate the nation-state, strives to understand the reasons for the success of the West, without however reverting to a Eurocentric and essentializing perspective. Aware of the constructedness of history, it nonetheless pays attention to agency in the past, and to the plurality of perspectives and divergent historical paths. It does so by focusing on topics such as the history of migration, the environment, and economic globalization.

Coercion, Internalization, Decolonization

2019 ◽  
pp. 66-89
Author(s):  
Felix Lange
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Contextual Approach ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
Second World

The chapter discusses competing narratives of ‘rise’ and ‘decline’ of international law in the historical writings of international lawyers and historians. The author proposes a contextual approach to the history of international law which takes the terminology of the actors of the past seriously, but also leaves room for an assessment of functional equivalents. The author applies his contextual approach to the story of international law’s universalization. He claims that from the seventeenth century, European international law universalized via processes of forceful coercion by Western powers, internalization through non-Western states, and decolonization after the Second World War.

Some Problems in Redefining European Expansion as a Historical Discipline: Taking Stock

Itinerario ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-143
Author(s):  
Manfred Mimler
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
World War ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third World ◽  
Second World ◽  
Selection Of

If historians nowadays still talk of “colonial history” they do so because they are at a loss for an adequate term which would express the new quality this discipline has assumed in the course of decolonization. Rudolf von Albertini has edited a volume which presents a number of articles relevant to this problem. In his introduction he emphasizes the departure from the traditional view of overseas empire-building in which only the creative genius of European colonial powers was considered of historical interest — amidst a comparatively static scenery of exotic opacity. He draws attention to the ever growing shift towards a history of the peoples of the Third World which — whether of national or more regional orientation — shows an increasing concern for questions of social and economic history and draws on the latest findings of social and cultural anthropology, thus limiting Europe's role overseas in a decisive way. European worlddominance, once an epoch—making phenomenon, is reduced to a short—term period of alien rule over the majority of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Albertini takes account of this change, not only in the selection of the contributions to his volume, but its title reflects this change as well: it is a “new colonial history” that he presents, and Albertini gives us to understand that by this he is not concerned with the periodization of colonial history, but rather with the new approaches in this field since the end of the Second World War.

scholarly journals Dietetic practice: the past, present and future

2004 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 716-730
Author(s):  
N. Hwalla ◽  
M. Koleilat
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Registered Dietitians ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Military ◽  
Deficiency Diseases ◽  
Second World

The history of dietetics can be traced as far back as the writings of Homer, Plato and Hippocrates in ancient Greece. Although diet and nutrition continued to be judged important for health, dietetics did not progress much till the 19th century with the advances in chemistry. Early research focused focuses on vitamin deficiency diseases while later workers proposed daily requirements for protein, fat and carbohydrates. Dietetics as a profession was given a boost during the Second World War when its importance was recognized by the military. Today, professional dietetic associations can be found on every continent, and registered dietitians are involved in health promotion and treatment, and work alongside physicians. The growing need for dietetics professionals is driven by a growing public interest in nutrition and the potential of functional foods to prevent a variety of diet-related conditions

scholarly journals Resurgence of the past: political and media discourse during the breakup of the former yugoslavia

Linguistica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-151
Author(s):  
Gregor Perko
Keyword(s):  
Hate Speech ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Military Violence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media Discourses ◽  
National Languages ◽  
Second World

The wars and conflicts that accompanied the breakup of the former Yugoslavia are inextricably linked to “language”. The “breakup” of Serbo-Croat into several national languages and the determination of Slovenes and, to a lesser extent, Ma­cedonians to restrain the influence of Serbo-Croat on their respective languages ​​was a prelude to the country’s political breakup. Military violence was carefully prepared by linguistic means: hate speech, which quickly turned into war speech, dominated the words of politicians, media, culture and everyday conversation. This would not have been possible without resorting to the past and to the mythologized history of the warring parties (the Battle of Kosovo Polje, Yugoslavia before the Second World War, the Second World War itself). The analysis of the political and media discourses carried out in this study revealed three major types of semantic inversions on which the underlying discursive mechanisms largely rely: diachronic inversions (the resurgence of the terms “Ustashe”, “Chetniks”, “Turks”), semantic and logical travesties (in which terms such as “defend” and “liberate” lose their primary meanings) and semantic asymmetries (the enemy is an inhuman “aggressor” and “slaughterer”, while “our” side is made up of “innocent victims”, “martyrs” or “heroes”). As a result, the terms and utterances used lose their semantic and referential “basis”, so that they can no longer fully function except within the discursive universe that generated them.

scholarly journals The Second World War in Southeastern Europe. Historiographies and Debates

Südosteuropa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Rutar
Keyword(s):  
Public History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Southeastern Europe ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Agendas ◽  
Second World

AbstractIntroducing this special issue on historiographies and debates on the Second World War in Southeastern Europe, the author reflects on the conditionalities of a better balancing of research agendas in terms of the interdependencies between local dynamics and wider scales—be they the regional, national and transnational, or global dimensions of the war. She draws attention to the role the European Union has played in crafting public history, in which processes of ‘internationalizing’ and of ‘nationalizing’ the past have been entangled. She concludes that Southeast Europeanists could greatly enhance international research agendas by taking the lead in fostering a bottom-up, multiscale, and multiperspective history of postimperial, nationalizing societies at war.

That Which Is Carved in Stone: Nanjing’s Monuments and Chinese Commemoration of the Second World War

Modern China ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 009770042094285
Author(s):  
Jonathan Henshaw
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Past ◽  
Occupied Territory ◽  
Nanjing Massacre ◽  
History Of ◽  
Memorial Sites ◽  
Second World

Chinese commemoration of the Second World War and of the Nanjing Massacre that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s has been framed as a “new remembering” in response to political change in China and Japanese denial. This periodization obscures both earlier Chinese commemorations and the multiple ways the past has been (re-)remembered. In fact, Chinese commemoration of the victims of the Nanjing Massacre began much earlier, in 1937. Nanjing and its history of building, bulldozing, and restoring wartime monuments and memorial sites offer a case study of how China’s shifting political priorities have provided frameworks that alternately enable and restrain commemoration of the wartime past. This article explores these frameworks, with particular attention to occupied territory, in order to more fully understand the war’s legacy in the People’s Republic of China.

scholarly journals Debating the Greek 1940s: histories and memories of a conflicting past since the end of the Second World War

HISTOREIN ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Manos Avgeridis
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
First Century ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Politics Of History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Core Issue ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Second World

The article examines aspects of the long history of a major field of public debate in the second half of the twentieth century, that of the Greek 1940s, taking as its starting point the recent “history war” in Greece. It attempts to trace histories and memories from the immediate postwar years and to place them within a broader process: the historisation of the Second World War in Europe. In that context, the article begins by exploring one part of the initial efforts to form a European history of the resistance, from the perspective of the Greek case. Then, the focus is transferred to Greece, and to the mapping of a constellation of different memory and history communities, and the practices of history of the same period: the activities of veteran partisans and eye-witnesses with regard to their contribution to the formation of the first narratives on the war is a core issue at this level. Last, by following the developments in the academy and the politics of history during the Metapolitefsi, the focus returns to the current discussion, attempting a first approach to the subject through the strings that connect it with the past and, at the same time, as a debate of the twenty-first century. 

scholarly journals Muranów czyli karczowanie. O książce „Festung Warschau” Elżbiety Janickiej

2012 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Irena Grudzińska-Gross
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Land Clearing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jewish Resistance ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Vision ◽  
The Times ◽  
Second World

Muranów, or about land clearing The article is a review of “Festung Warschau” by Elżbieta Janicka which maps the clash between the recently built monuments celebrating Jewish or Polish places of martyrdom from the times of Second World War. Janicka walks through the streets of the former Jewish neighbourhoods of Warsaw; she photographs and discusses the new plaques, crosses, monuments, and other forms of public marking of history on the buildings, squares and streets. She convincingly shows that the new historical commemorative signs of Polish martyrdom are often placed in the sites that were marked by Jewish resistance or suffering, and that the marks of Polish suffering are rarely linked materially to the site. The new monuments obstruct and hide the past presence of Warsaw Jews and, by submerging their past, create a new vision of ethnically cleansed history of Warsaw, especially in its relation to Second World War. The review applauds the book and rejects some of the criticism against it.

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