scholarly journals Between Colonialism and Despotism

Prism ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 538-553
Author(s):  
Jianing Tuo

Abstract The Mengjiang 蒙疆 puppet regime was established in Inner Mongolia by Japanese colonizers, in collaboration with the Mongolian Prince Demchugdongrub, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Mengjiang regime tried to revive Mongolian culture in the name of resisting Chinese despotism. However, the Japanese supported the Mongols' desire for “self-determination” merely to use it as a vehicle for their colonial designs. Through a close reading of several texts that appeared in Sinophone magazines published in Japanese-occupied Inner Mongolia during the war, this article explicates the distinctions between Han writers' and Mongol intellectuals' nationalist writings, in order to theorize the dual oppression of the Mongol minority culture under Japanese colonialism and Chinese despotism. Despite the mission of this so-called Mongolian nation-state to write in a Mongolian style, the Han writers in Mengjiang expressed their ethnic identity through Sinophone literature; at the same time, Sinicized Mongol intellectuals failed to revive Mongolian culture through the same vehicle. In the end, both the former Han despots and the new Japanese colonizers tried to instrumentalize Mongol minority culture to establish their own cultural hegemony. Under this dual oppression of foreign colonialism and native despotism, the Sinophone nationalist writings of the Han majority and the Mongol minority problematize any simple binarism of colonizer and colonized.

Author(s):  
Dmitry Shumsky

This introductory chapter discusses the unquestioned identification between “Zionism” as a national movement that sought to realize the Jewish nation's self-determination in Palestine, and “the Jewish nation-state,” which has no room for the national collective existence of any particular national group other than the Jews and which represents the ultimate and teleological realization of the Zionist project. The vast majority of those who support the two-state solution, who are known as the “Zionist left,” base their position on the need to avoid the formation of a binational state in which the Jewish demographic majority would be endangered. They argue that this is the way to rescue what they consider to be the political core of the Zionist idea: a mono-national state for the Jewish political collective.


Author(s):  
Martin Hébert

Indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination and self-government are recognized by several international instances. Deliberation plays a key role in the exercise of these rights, and its forms are as diverse as the cultures and social structures of which it is part. However, efforts to understand commonalities and differences between contexts and experiences have led to discussions of what Rodolfo Stavenhagen has termed the “indigenous situation.” This chapter looks at some ways in which self-identified Indigenous peoples have maintained, repurposed, and developed practices of political deliberation within such contexts of colonialism, nation-state formation, and capitalist expansion. A particular emphasis is put on the various scales at which deliberation takes place, be it in community life, regional organizations, or national and international political movements.


2018 ◽  
pp. 77-90
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Zavidovskaya ◽  

This paper focuses on a scope of short stories starting from 1980s produced by writers, who are ethnic Tibetans or come from mixed Sino-Tibetan families, but write in Chinese, which is either their native language, or have been acquired in childhood. I am interested in discerning specific features of this literature, which make it stand apart from modern sinophone literature produced by ethnic Hans and represent ethnic identity by means of a medium unfamiliar to many of these writers.


Author(s):  
John Breuilly

This chapter examines the role of nationalism and national self-determination (NSD) in shaping the major institution of modern international relations: the nation-state. It considers different types of nationalism and how they vary from one another, whether the commonly accepted sequence of nation > nationalism > nation-state is actually the reverse of the normal historical sequence, and whether the principle of NSD is compatible with that of state sovereignty. The chapter also explores the contribution of nationalism to the globalization of world politics and the changing meanings of NSD since 1918. Four case studies of nationalism are presented: Kurdistan, Germany, India, and Yugoslavia. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether the principle of NSD threatens stable international relations.


Author(s):  
John Breuilly

This chapter examines the role of nationalism and national self-determination (NSD) in shaping the major institution of modern international relations: the nation-state. It considers different types of nationalism and how they vary from one another, whether the commonly accepted sequence of nation > nationalism > nation-state is actually the reverse of the normal historical sequence, and whether the principle of NSD is incompatible with that of state sovereignty. The chapter also explores the contribution of nationalism to the globalization of world politics and the changing meanings of NSD since 1918. Four case studies of nationalism are presented, in Kurdistan, Germany, India, and Yugoslavia. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether the principle of NSD threatens stable international relations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-246
Author(s):  
Hui-Yi Katherine Tseng

Abstract Statehood and sovereignty have been mutually implicating in the Westphalian international order. The spatially characteristic tenet of sovereignty has not been questioned, which collaterally fortifies the one-nation/one-state formula prescribed in modern sovereignty. However, fissures inhered in this nation-state formula are discernible, particularly when the conventional statist sovereignty has remained indefinite and inchoate. Taiwan’s statist sovereignty has been overshadowed by its undetermined statehood and indefinite territorial domain. Intriguingly, once the rigidity of statist sovereignty is lifted, the development of national sovereignty becomes irrepressible. Reinvention of national sovereignty is informed by both universal values and case-specific particularity. For the former, individualism, multiculturalism, and self-determination serve exemplary cases. For the latter, the particularity is mostly presented in the wrestling between statist and national sovereignty. Taiwan’s constitutional jurisprudence serves to verify the universal, as well as the particular development of Taiwan’s national sovereignty. However, dangers loom large, in that identity reconfiguration has been cultivated collaterally, which brings about not only a sophisticated Taiwanese consciousness, but also a more uncertain outlook for cross-Strait relations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 98
Author(s):  
Sun Jing

From the end of the Yuan Dynasty to the early Qing Dynasty, when Inner Mongolia was still a special administrative region of the Qing Empire, the Mongolian nomad's territory went through numerous significant changes. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the administrative divisions in Inner Mongolia underwent three major changes and after continuous integration they were incorporated into the administrative territory of the People's Republic of China in a manner that was compatible with the behavior of a modern nation-state. Such changes can neither be ascribed to the natural process of national development and it’s accompanying fissions nor to the sinocization of Inner Mongolian initiated by Han migrants. Instead, it is derived from the game of power played in the region by various forces, from the Manchu and Han peoples, to the Mongolians, Russians and Japanese, and the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party in the period of surging modern nationalism. This is evidenced by the changes of division in Hulunbuir in particular. This case is enough to demonstrate that the issues of China’s border and nations are not simply equivalent to the binary opposition between Central Plains and border areas, between Han and ethnic minorities, but a process teeming with complex and diverse points of contention, political wrestling matches and other interactions.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 443-484
Author(s):  
Gaetano Pentassuglia

Abstract In this article I examine selective dimensions of the nexus among the right to self-determination, human rights, and the ‘nation-state’ as they relate to claims made by certain ethno-cultural minority groups. I first discuss some conceptual extensions of ‘national’ claims and their underlying relation to international law and state sovereignty. Then, I critique elements of ‘national’ self-determination that are supposedly constitutive of the law of self-determination, including arguments about sub-national groups as ‘peoples’, and discuss some alternative approaches to the role of international law vis-à-vis this sort of claims. Finally, I argue that international human rights law can offer a synthesis of the above nexus insofar as it works, not so much as a platform for accepting or rejecting seemingly ‘absolute’ rights or solely enabling legal-institutional ad hocism, but rather as a general process-based framework for assessing group- related pathologies that are (directly or indirectly) of international law’s own making.


2008 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred Stepan

AbstractSome polities have strong cultural diversity, some of which is territorially based and politically articulated by significant groups that, in the name of nationalism, and self-determination, advance claims for independence. In this article such polities are defined as ‘politically robustly multinational’. If the goal is peace and democracy in one state in such a polity, this article advances theoretical and empirical arguments to show that ideal typical ‘nation-state’ making policies are less appropriate than policies associated with new ideal type I construct called ‘state-nation’. Countries discussed are Spain, Belgium, and Canada and the ‘matched pair’ of successful Tamil political integration via state nation policies in India, and failed Tamil political integration due to nation-state policies in Sri Lanka.


Author(s):  
Dmitry Shumsky

The Jewish nation-state has often been thought of as Zionism's end goal. This bracing history of the idea of the Jewish state in modern Zionism, from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century until the establishment of the state of Israel, challenges this deeply rooted assumption. In doing so, the book complicates the narrative of the Zionist quest for full sovereignty, provocatively showing how and why the leaders of the pre-state Zionist movement imagined, articulated, and promoted theories of self-determination in Palestine either as part of a multinational Ottoman state (1882–1917), or in the framework of multinational democracy. In particular, the book focuses on the writings and policies of five key Zionist leaders from the Habsburg and Russian empires in central and eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Leon Pinsker, Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha'am, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and David Ben-Gurion to offer a very pointed critique of Zionist historiography.


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