THE INTERNATIONAL DEMONSTRATION EFFECT

Phases of imperial contraction were briefer than expansionist phases. If anything, assigning four decades to phase 5 underestimates the speed with which empires collapsed. The vast bulk of colonized peoples and more than forty territories gained independence between 1947 and 1962.

The two types of international demonstration effects, observation and direct influence, were present in phase 5. A distinctive feature of 1940-80 is a third factor, termed the indirect influence effect. In this situation a new state worked within an international organization to shape the organization’s agenda. The policies and ini­tiatives of the organization in turn strengthened independence movements in other territories or reduced a metropole’s capacity and will to retain power. All three processes are illustrated in the examples that follow.

The independence of India/Pakistan in 1947 had an enormous observation effect. Here was a subcontinent containing hundreds of millions of people, the most important possession of the most important imperial power, and a focus of world attention as the dramatic events of 1946-47 unfolded. Independence for such a key territory so soon after World War II ended signaled that the postwar era would be unlike any that had gone before. The techniques Indian nationalists employed to mobilize popular support inspired leaders elsewhere, particularly in English- speaking colonies. Nkrumah’s “positive action” campaigns in the Gold Coast and Kenneth Kaunda’s organizing efforts in Northern Rhodesia against the settler-backed Central African Federation were inspired by Gandhi’s satyagraha campaigns.⁴¹ That Asia affected Africa in this way seems fitting compensation, for Gandhi’s techniques were developed in South Africa.

Another widely observed event was Ghana’s independence in 1957. The first territory in sub-Saharan Africa in which sovereignty was won by indigenous leaders, Ghana under its dynamic prime minister Nkrumah was seen throughout the conti­nent and the New World diaspora as heralding a new day for black people every­where. British-supervised elections preceding the formal transfer of power there became the model for decolonization in other territories. Ghana’s neighbors were all French colonies. Its example emboldened francophone activists to criticize France for not permitting a comparable devolution of power.⁴²

As noted earlier, the outbreak of war in Algeria accelerated pressures for independence in neighboring Morocco and Tunisia. President de Gaulle’s visit to the French Congo in 1958 had unintended effects in the Belgian Congo. Guinea’s ability to survive the cutoff of French financial and technical assistance emboldened African leaders to abandon the French Community and press for independence.

Numerous instances of the direct influence effect may be cited. From the outset, a central theme in India’s foreign policy was an attack on colonialism as an evil that must go. India was an outspoken critic of French and Dutch military action in Indochina and Indonesia, respectively. In a press release a few weeks after indepen­dence Prime Minister Nehru stated that “no European country, whatever it might be, has any business to use its army in Asia. The fact that foreign armies are functioning on Asian soil is itself an outrage against Asian sentiment.”⁴³ Nehru convened a meeting of independent Asian states in early 1949 to organize support for Indo­nesian independence. Indonesia in turn hosted the Bandung Conference in 1955. High on the agenda when Sukarno, Nehru, Nasser, Chou En-lai, and other Afro- Asian leaders met was the design of workable anticolonial strategies. The Bandung Conference marks the start of what one analyst called “the Third World coalition in international politics.”⁴⁴

Ghana’s direct influence in Africa was even more substantial than India’s or Indonesia’s in Asia.

Several newly independent African countries gave crucial logistical support to movement/armies struggling against Portuguese and settler regimes. Congo- Leopoldville was a training and recruitment ground for Roberto’s Uniao des Popu­lates de Angola (upa), renamed Frente Nacional de Liberta^ao de Angola (fnla) in 1961. Tanzania offered bases for frelimo fighters and community organizers prepar­ing to cross the Ruvuma River to northern Mozambique. When frelimo took power in 1975 it permitted zanu’s military wing to open up a war front along Mozambique’s border with Rhodesia. Algerians passed lessons about guerrilla warfare to southern African movement/armies.

The third external impact—indirect influence—was made possible by interna­tional organizations, whose presence was a distinctive feature of postwar global politics. There was no equivalent in phase 2 of the United Nations, the complex of specialized agencies affiliated with it, or the Commonwealth. New states in phase 5 had opportunities unavailable to their New World predecessors to shape the agenda of international organizations, and they used their large and steadily growing num­bers to take advantage of them.

Terminating overseas empires was not a goal of the United Nations at its founding. Indeed, because metropoles figured prominently among the charter’s fifty-one signatories and because Britain and France exercised veto power as perma­nent members of the Security Council, an important bloc favoring the imperial status quo was in place at the outset. But the United Nations was amenable, both ideologically and structurally, to pressures from the opposite direction. Article I of the charter urged “respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.” The General Assembly operated on a one-country one-vote basis, and its annual opening ceremonies enabled leaders of all member states to speak in a globally publicized setting. With every new entry the balance of opinion shifted in a more anticolonial direction. By the late 1960s the United Nations’ founding member­states were outnumbered by those that had been colonies in 1945.

India skillfully employed U.N. membership to pressure the Dutch to leave Indonesia. From 1947 through 1949 Indian diplomats urged the Security Council to label Dutch military actions a threat to the peace. Although the Security Council was unable to take decisive action, India’s initiatives placed the United States in an awkward position. Support for Indonesia’s republicans in Security Council resolu­tions was consistent with the U.S. self-image as the first new nation and might win friends for America in other parts of Asia likely to become independent. But the United States did not want to break with the Netherlands, particularly in the late 1940s, when western Europe’s future hung in the balance. The Dutch needed Mar­shall Plan aid for their war-ravaged economy, and the Americans desired Dutch support in the drive to halt the spread of Soviet-assisted communism in Europe. The Americans tried to resolve their dilemma by quietly but firmly urging the Dutch to leave Indonesia while restraining the anti-Dutch tone of U.N.

As the independence wave swept west from Asia to Africa, new states further increased their influence over United Nations decision making. In 1963 the Security Council was expanded from eleven to fifteen members on the understanding that at least five seats would be held by Afro-Asian countries. African states did everything they could to focus attention on Portugal’s refusal to leave Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau, South Africa’s occupation of Namibia, and the “internal colonialism” of white-minority regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa.⁴⁷ Western countries that for strategic or economic reasons preferred not to press for changes in southern Africa found themselves on the defensive and had to adjust policies as well as rhetoric in response to sustained criticism directed their way in various U.N. settings.

The United Nations not only reflected changes in the international system; it was also an agent of change. The Trusteeship Council, established by chapter XIII of the charter, was not dominated by administering powers, as was the League of Nations’ Mandates Commission which it replaced. Half the council’s members were countries not administering overseas territories. This arrangement permitted new states to join the council and shape its goals, timetables, and procedures in accord with their preferences. League mandates were justified on benevolent paternalist grounds as protection for peoples not considered fully civilized by European stan­dards. No time limit was set for terminating mandates. In practice the mandatory power was unaccountable to those under its charge or to the league.

Events in Tanganyika illustrate the system in operation. A U.N. visiting mis­sion traveled throughout the territory in 1954 and issued a report critical of Britain’s performance. The mission included an American and an Indian, representatives of phase 2’s first state and phase 5’s first major state. Nyerere, leader of tanu, visited U.N. headquarters in 1955 and pleaded eloquendy for more rapid African political advance than London wanted to concede. Publicity attending Nyerere’s visit pres­sured the British from above, as it were, as well as from below to speed up the pace of change.⁴⁹

Participation in the trusteeship system was not a serious challenge for Britain, as the United Nations’ goals did not deviate fundamentally from those articulated in London from 1945 onward. But accepting trusteeship responsibilities proved bur­densome for France and Belgium, which neither envisaged nor actively prepared for colonial independence. Yet this is precisely what they were expected to do in territo­ries administered on the Trusteeship Council’s behalf: portions of Togoland and the Cameroon (France) and Ruanda-Urundi (Belgium). Once France and Belgium un­dertook these responsibilities it was far less tenable to argue that self-government in other colonies was out of the question.⁵⁰

South Africa, the league’s designated mandatory power for neighboring South- West Africa (Namibia), foresaw the domestic as well as regional problems it would confront if it operated under trusteeship system rules. The South African government therefore refused to report to the United Nations, arguing that the mandate lapsed when the league died. A lengthy legal dispute ensued, the International Court of Justice ruling in 1971 that South Africa lacked the right to administer Namibia and that the United Nations itself was the legitimate agent to arrange the transition to independence. Until the late 1980s the apartheid regime paid scant attention to this ruling. Indeed, its obduracy at home and in Namibia in response to decolonization elsewhere in Africa may qualify as a phase 5 instance of the negative demonstration effect noted in phase 2. By 1989 and 1990, however, the cumulative effect of changes in southern Africa and in U.S.—Soviet relations led South Africa to agree to turn over power. Jointly with the United Nations, it administered an election open to all adults without regard to race. The result was victory for the South West African People’s Organization (swapo), the movement/army that had led the struggle against South Africa. In Namibia the United Nations was not simply the vehicle through which new members expressed their concerns; it was itself the agent of political transformation.

Indirect influence may be observed in the Commonwealth’s evolution from an instrument of imperial power to its opposite. Britain’s ex-colonies in Africa were too weak to challenge white-minority governments in South Africa and Rhodesia. Rec­ognizing their limits, they employed the Commonwealth to pressure officials in London to take stronger punitive action than officials would have preferred. It is no coincidence that South Africa left the organization in 1961, the year after more than a dozen African countries gained independence, with many more expected soon. Afri­can leaders presented Britain with a stark choice: either South Africa leaves or they do. An old white dominion departed in time to avoid being expelled. Its isolation was not merely symbolic. The cumulative effect of being excluded from practically all in­ternational events doubtless figured in the 1990 decision by President F. W. de Klerk to abandon decades of racially restrictive policies. As noted earlier, Commonwealth members successfully pressed Britain in the late 1970s to intervene in Rhodesia.

The international demonstration effect thus operated at several levels in phase 5. Observation and direct influence effects, which have their parallels in phase 2, were supplemented by the indirect influence effect, which has no phase 2 parallel. International organizations were not simply responsive to the concerns of new mem­bers but also took initiatives of their own to hasten the demise of the old order.