THE INTERNATIONAL DEMONSTRATION EFFECT

The timing of hegemonic wars makes the timing of decolonization phases more understandable. But wars by themselves cannot account for the magnitude and temporal compression of these phases.

Independence of the United States and India had far-reaching observation ef­fects, emboldening people elsewhere to act once they could point to real examples of political change. Leaders of other phase 2 movements were impressed, among other things, that Americans were willing to fight for freedom. Many phase 5 nationalists were impressed by the peaceful mass mobilization techniques pioneered by Gandhi and adopted them in their own work That phase 5 was more peaceful than phase 2 may owe something to the types of struggles the precedent-setters modeled.

Observation effects crossed imperial lines. What bna colonists achieved was noted in Haiti and Spanish America; what India did was noted in Indonesia and Indochina. Francophone Africans noted Ghana’s independence; residents of Leo­poldville in the Belgian Congo heard of General de Gaulle’s independence offer, made across the river in Brazzaville. If postwar crises were intra-imperial, pitting colonies against their metropoles, observation effects had wide-ranging impacts on two or more empires.

The direct influence effect also crossed imperial lines. Haitians assisted Bolivar when he was in dire straits.

There were no international organizations in phase 2 to bring diplomatic pressures from many sources to bear, either to limit or prevent vertical violence. The presence of international organizations in phase 5 added the indirect influence op­tion. The United Nations was very important both in accelerating new-state forma­tion and in limiting the violence associated with power transfers. The U.N. Charter embodied principles of national self-determination articulated earlier by President Wilson and the Atlantic Charter, ensuring efforts to apply them universally. In this setting defenders of overseas empires were placed ideologically and morally on the defensive. As each new state entered the United Nations, the organization became even more a forum for anticolonial lobbying. It hastened the Dutch departure from Indonesia (see chapter 7). The trusteeship system subtly but surely forced Belgium and France to abandon adamant opposition to independence in their sub-Saharan possessions. Another international structure, the Commonwealth, pressured Britain to move its colonies more rapidly toward self-government and to intervene to end the Rhodesian civil war.

The American War of Independence had two observation effects, initially on Canada and then on Britain. The result, as unexpected as it was unintended, was a set of procedures permitting the peaceful breakup of Europe’s greatest empire. English- speakers in Canada reacted against the American Revolution, especially after the influx of Loyalists bitter over mistreatment by the revolution’s supporters. This negative response kept Canada within the empire, giving Britain opportunities to experiment with new ways of treating settler communities.

what went wrong in bna and resolved to avoid the same mistakes elsewhere. The Durham Report can be seen as the application of a metropolitan learning process to a territory kept within the imperial fold by rejection of America’s revolutionary past and worry over its expansionist designs. Canada became the precedent-setter for po­litical evolution within the British Empire. In this respect it may have influenced the course of European empire as much as its southern neighbor. Successful transfer of the Westminster model to Canada was followed by transfer to other white do­minions, then to Britain’s occupation colonies. With the passage of time English- speaking settlers pushed to extend control over public policy from domestic to foreign affairs. With the expansion of education non-European nationalists pushed to emulate the white dominion example. Peaceful negotiation of de facto indepen­dence for the dominions in 1931 became the model in India, Ghana, Tanganyika, Jamaica, and many other territories. One reason the British Empire unraveled peace­fully in phases 4 and 5 is that its initial loss in phase 2 was violent.

Cross-phase variations in international demonstration effects are not acciden­tal. They illustrate international learning, the formation of new institutions to avoid the repetition of problems encountered in the past. Britain learned from its bna losses to treat settlers in the white dominions with greater caution. Non-Europeans in Britain’s colonies, observing the white dominions’ evolution toward autonomy, shaped goals and tactics to follow up the precedents set by settler communities. The Commonwealth was the result of continual, incremental redefinitions of empire to adjust gracefully to the leading metropole’s loss of dominance. The League of Na­tions and United Nations were born in the aftermath of hegemonic wars, their purpose being to avoid more of the same. The United Nations’ availability as a forum for peacefully arranging transfers of power contributed to a less violent decoloniza­tion process after 1945 than in the earlier phase, when no comparable mechanism for indirect influence was in place.