Europe, the War, and the Colonial World

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Causal Link ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
World War ◽  
Undue Influence ◽  
End Points ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Second World

The fact that we know the end points of formal colonial rule may lead us to forget that, for those involved, the process appeared less determined and more contingent. It is deceptively easy to trip over the supposed ‘milestone’ of the Second World War, ascribing undue influence to a failing capacity or will to rule among the colonial powers themselves. Such generalizations leave no room for agency among colonized peoples themselves and dismiss both rulers and ruled as essentially homogenous, almost preprogrammed to behave stereotypically as reactionaries or revolutionaries. Recognizing these interpretive problems, political analysts of European decolonization are now more divided over the extent to which the Second World War prefigured the end of European colonial rule. Much of the evidence for a strong causal link is powerful. By 1950 the geopolitical maps of eastern, southern, and western Asia were markedly less colonial. The justificatory language for empire was also different, evidence of the turn towards a technocratic administrative style that would soon become the norm in much of the global South. If basic political rights were frequently denied within dependent territories, a stronger accent on improved living standards gave imperial powers something with which to muffle the rising chorus of transnational criticism against colonial abuses. For all that, the concept of the Second World War as a watershed in the end of empires should not be accepted uncritically. This chapter explores the reasons why.

Commitment to Colour-Blindness

2019 ◽  
pp. 160-208
Author(s):  
Henrice Altink
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
World War ◽  
Civil And Political Rights ◽  
Colour Blindness ◽  
Racial Harmony ◽  
Second World

This chapter zooms in on colour blindness. Focussing on the racial domains of politics and criminal justice, it explores the correlation between race and colour and the enjoyment of civil and political rights. It argues that it was not just government inaction but also a lack of collective action from race-first and other groups why dark-skinned Jamaicans struggled more than others to exercise their civil and political rights. But while successive governments lacked the commitment to create a society where all Jamaicans irrespective of race and colour could enjoy their ‘fundamental rights’, they did their best to present Jamaica as a colour-blind nation. This chapter will also explore the purposes of this myth of racial harmony that was developed after the Second World War.

“We Have to Wait for Riots and Disturbances,” 1931–1941

2020 ◽  
pp. 70-86
Author(s):  
Luke Messac
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
World War ◽  
Government Health ◽  
New Rhetoric ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Second World

This chapter demonstrates the recrudescence of neglect during and after the Great Depression. Waves of civil and labor unrest compelled the Colonial Office and Treasury to raise levels of health-care spending in many imperial holdings. But Nyasaland, viewed as a relatively insignificant and peaceful backwater, received little of this funding. A reformist colonial physician, H.S. de Boer, advocated for expanded government health services for subject Africans, but London officials largely dismissed these proposals as inappropriate applications of metropolitan living standards to colonial settings. Even new rhetoric and legislation in support of colonial welfare at the start of the Second World War did not bring meaningful improvements in health care for Nyasaland’s subject Africans.

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.

scholarly journals Those Who Left and Those Who Arrived

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-129
Author(s):  
Francesca Rolandi
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
World War ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
Final Destination ◽  
Good Living ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World ◽  
Insight Into

In the years after the Second World War, the city of Rijeka found itself caught in the middle of various migratory trajectories. The departure of locals who self-identified as Italians and opted for Italian citizenship occurred simultaneously with other population movements that drained the city of inhabitants and brought in newcomers. Many locals defected and traveled to Italy, which was either their final destination or a country they transited through before being resettled elsewhere. Furthermore, after the war ended, workers from other Yugoslav areas started arriving in the city. A flourishing economy proved capable of attracting migrants with promises of good living standards; however, political reasons also motivated many to move to this Adriatic city. The latter was the case for former economic emigrants who decided to return to join the new socialist homeland and for Italian workers who symbolically sided with the socialist Yugoslavia. Rijeka was not simply a destination for many migrants—it was also a springboard for individuals from all over the Yugoslav Federation to reach the Western Bloc. This article argues that examining these intertwining patterns together rather than separately offers new insight into the challenges the city experienced during its postwar transition.

Towards a Postcolonial Genealogy of International Organizations Law

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 841-869 ◽  
Author(s):  
GUY FITI SINCLAIR
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
World War ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The World ◽  
International Legal System ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Second World

AbstractThis article sketches the contours of a postcolonial genealogy of international organizations law. Contrary to conventional accounts, which remain strongly Eurocentric, the article claims that international organizations law did not emerge until the closing stages of the Second World War, and that its evolution was strongly influenced by the accelerating processes of decolonization that accompanied its birth. More specifically, the article argues that the emergence of international organizations law was spurred by a series of perceived problems regarding the adequacy of the international legal system in the aftermath of the end of formal colonial rule, in which the relations of power constructed through colonialism remained profoundly implicated. The politics of decolonization thus shaped the practice of international organizations, provided the catalyst for many of the foundational cases in international organizations law, and motivated much of its early doctrinal scholarship. Moreover, the article argues that the functionalist logic of international organizations law is deeply embedded in a postcolonial imaginary which, by supporting the division of the world into formally equivalent nation-states, ostensibly cuts against the hegemonic territorialism of colonial governance.

scholarly journals WHEN NUMBERS REPRESENTED POVERTY: THE CHANGING MEANING OF THE FOOD RATION IN FRENCH COLONIAL AFRICA

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 463-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
VINCENT BONNECASE
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
World War ◽  
Food Ration ◽  
Daily Food Intake ◽  
Dietary Knowledge ◽  
Daily Food ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Second World ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThis article examines the evolution of dietary knowledge about French colonial Africa, from the 1920s to the early 1950s. More specifically, it focuses on efforts to quantify daily food intake by tracing the different meanings assigned to nutrition over time. While such statistics were used as early as the 1920s to evaluate the food consumption of populations most useful to the imperial economy, it was only after the Second World War that they became a means of measuring living standards according to universal metrics. This history invites us to reflect on how poverty in Africa came to be recognized as a problem, by showing that such a process has neither been based entirely on social reality nor on the knowledge produced to delineate privation. Rather it also emerged from the changing set of meanings associated with this knowledge.

scholarly journals Increasing Women's Representation in France and India

2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 375-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gill Allwood ◽  
Khursheed Wadia
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
World War ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Head Of Household ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Male Head ◽  
Democratic Nation ◽  
Second World

The immediate post–Second World War period saw women gain equal political rights in a number of countries, including France and India. Political participation researchers began to consider women's involvement in politics. However, because they focused on state institutions and political parties as the most important sites of political participation, and because the presence of women within these sites was insignificant, the conclusions drawn were either that women were uninterested in and/or uninformed about politics or that their interest and knowledge derived from the male head of household. Moreover, when women's political participation was considered, the preferred location of study was the Western liberal democratic nation–state (Dogan, 1955; Duverger, 1955).

Filipino Identity in Fiction, 1945–1972

1994 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mina Roces
Keyword(s):  
The Philippines ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Dance Theater ◽  
Democratic Ideals ◽  
Filipino Culture ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The Philippines in the immediate post-war years may be described as a nation in search of an identity. This preoccupation with what one journalist has dubbed ‘the question of identity’ spurred a sudden interest in the research and discussion of things Filipino: Filipino dance, theater, literature, language, music, art and cultural traditions. After four hundred and fifty years of colonial rule the Filipino intelligentsia began to wonder if indeed the western legacy of colonial rule was the annihilation of the very essence of Filipino culture. Under the aegis of American rule Filipinos were adamant about proving to their colonizers that they had been good pupils in western democratic ideals and were fit to govern themselves. From the 1920s to the early 1940s, the Filipino had become a sajonista (pro-American). The Japanese colonizers who replaced the Americans in the second world war were appalled not only at the pro-Americanism of the Filipino but at the magnitude of American influence absorbed by Filipino culture. In fact it was the Japanese who promoted the use of Tagalog and the ‘revival’ and appreciation of Filipino cultural traditions as part of the policy of ‘Asia for the Asians’. Once independence was achieved at last in 1946, the focus shifted. The nagging question was no longer ‘Are we western enough to govern ourselves?’ but its opposite—‘Have we become too westernized to the point of losing ourselves?’.

Explaining Fertility Changes since the 1930s

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Anderson ◽  
Corinne Roughley
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
General Tendency ◽  
World War ◽  
Purchase Patterns ◽  
Value Changes ◽  
Immigration And Religion ◽  
Second World

The post-Second World War period saw major fluctuations in fertility in both Scotland and England and Wales, but the oscillations decreasingly moved in tandem, though, as elsewhere in western Europe, the general tendency of family sizes was downward from the 1980s. This was accompanied by major changes in the ages at which women were most likely to bear a child and, in Scotland, significant alterations in the spatial distribution of the highest and lowest fertility areas. Many possible explanations have been offered for these changes and some specifically Scottish features which may have affected the scale and timing of changes north of the border are briefly reviewed, including access to efficient contraception; immigration and religion; council housing and house purchase patterns; living standards, expectations and insecurity; women’s education, employment and household division of labour; and wider value changes.

Beer and Whisky in Japanese Marketplaces

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey W. Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Sweet Potatoes ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
Beer Brewing ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World

Japan has a local, centuries-old tradition of brewing sake from rice and distilling spirits from ingredients such as grain and sweet potatoes, but pioneering entrepreneurs began producing imported “Western liquors” (yōshu) in the late 19th century. This Western liquor marketplace was driven chiefly by beer brewing and whisky distilling. Western liquors were marketed, advertised, and consumed with rising popularity through the early 20th century, as living standards rose and ordinary Japanese came to afford them regularly. Following the Second World War (1939–1945), these Western commodities were no longer viewed as foreign imports, and were instead broadly regarded as domestic, if not indigenous, products. The impact of wartime rationing transformed beer into a lighter-tasting beverage that became very popular with women and young people, and whisky advertising focused closely on professional “salarymen” seeking increased prestige as well as escape from their demanding jobs.

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