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(Neta C. Crawford) Argument and Change in World

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: 81 Argument and Change in world politics. Neta Crawford proposes a theory of argument that focuses on the role of ethical arguments in fostering changes in long-standing practices. The aim of the series is to publish the best new scholarship in international relations.

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100% found this document useful (1 vote)
770 views490 pages

(Neta C. Crawford) Argument and Change in World

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: 81 Argument and Change in world politics. Neta Crawford proposes a theory of argument that focuses on the role of ethical arguments in fostering changes in long-standing practices. The aim of the series is to publish the best new scholarship in international relations.

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Argument and Change in World Politics


Arguments have consequences in world politics that are as real as
the military forces of states or the balance of power among them.
Neta Crawford proposes a theory of argument that focuses on the role
of ethical arguments in fostering changes in long-standing practices.
Analyzing colonialism and slavery, the author shows how ethical
arguments helpedbringabout the abolitionof slaveryandforcedlabor,
anddecolonization. Suggestingthat decolonizationis perhaps the most
signicant change in world politics over the past 500 years, the author
examines ethical arguments from the sixteenth century justifying the
conquest of the Americas, through the twentieth-century debates over
decolonization and humanitarian intervention. The author explicitly
considers alternative explanations for decolonization and abolition,
and shows that economics cannot fully account for either change. She
also offers a prescriptive analysis of the role of ethical argument in
humanitarian intervention.
NETA C. CRAWFORD is anAssociate Professor (research) at the Thomas
J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies at Brown University.
She is co-editor (with Audie Klotz) of How Sanctions Work: Lessons from
South Africa (1999) and author of Soviet Military Aircraft (1987).
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: 81
Argument and Change in World Politics
Editorial Board
Steve Smith (Managing editor)
Thomas Biersteker Chris Brown Alex Danchev
Phil Cerny Joseph Grieco A. J. R. Groom
Richard Higgott G. John Ikenberry
Caroline Kennedy-Pipe Steve Lamy
Michael Nicholson Ngaire Woods
Cambridge Studies in International Relations is a joint initiative of
Cambridge University Press and the British International Studies
Association (BISA). The series will include a wide range of material,
from undergraduate textbooks and surveys to research-based mono-
graphs and collaborative volumes. The aim of the series is to publish
the best new scholarship in International Studies from Europe, North
America and the rest of the world.
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
81 Neta C. Crawford
Argument and change in world politics
Ethics, decolonization, and humanitarian intervention
80 Douglas Lemke
Regions of war and peace
79 Richard Shapcott
Justice, community and dialogue in international relations
78 Phil Steinberg
The social construction of the ocean
77 Christine Sylvester
Feminist International Relations
An unnished journey
76 Kenneth A. Schultz
Democracy and coercive diplomacy
75 David Houghton
US foreign policy and the Iran hostage crisis
74 Cecilia Albin
Justice and fairness in international negotiation
73 Martin Shaw
Theory of the global state
Globality as an unnished revolution
72 Frank C. Zagare and D. Marc Kilgour
Perfect deterrence
71 Robert OBrien, Anne Marie Goetz, Jan Aart Scholte and Marc Williams
Contesting global governance
Multilateral economic institutions and global social movements
70 Roland Bleiker
Popular dissent, human agency and global politics
Series list continues after index
Argument and Change
in World Politics
Ethics, Decolonization, and
Humanitarian Intervention
Neta C. Crawford
iuniisuio n\ rui iiiss s\xoicari oi rui uxiviisir\ oi caxniioci
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
caxniioci uxiviisir\ iiiss
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
Ruiz de Alarcn 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa
http://www.cambridge.org
First published in printed format
ISBN 0-521-80244-X hardback
ISBN 0-521-00279-6 paperback
ISBN 0-511-03256-0 eBook
Neta C. Crawford 2004
2002
(Adobe Reader)

For Rose, Greta and Robert


Contents
List of illustrations page x
List of tables xi
Acknowledgments xii
Introduction 1
1 Argument, belief, and culture 11
2 Ethical argument and argument analysis 82
3 Colonial arguments 131
4 Decolonizing bodies: ending slavery and
denormalizing forced labor 159
5 Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood 201
6 Sacred trust 249
7 Self-determination 291
8 Alternative explanations, counterfactuals,
and causation 343
9 Poiesis and praxis: toward ethical world politics 399
Appendix: African decolonization 436
Select bibliography 440
Index 457
ix
Illustrations
1 Ethical argument and new starting points page 108
2 Europeans in Africa in 1880 206
3 Europeans in Africa in 1914 219
x
Tables
2.1 Variations in normative beliefs and behavioral norms page 92
2.2 A method of formal argument analysis 120
2.3 Informal argument analysis of ethical arguments 125
3.1 Topoi for early arguments in favor of colonialism 142
6.1 League of Nations Mandates 263
6.2 Process of League Mandate supervision 267
7.1 United Nations Trust Territories 313
7.2 International plebiscites and referenda 326
8.1 Numbers in the armed forces of Angola, Mozambique,
South Africa, and Zimbabwe, 19751990 371
8.2 South Africas expenditures for arms acquisition 373
xi
Acknowledgments
I startedwritingthis bookin1992as ashort articleondecolonizationfor a
project on norms of humanitarian intervention sponsored by the Amer-
ican Academy of Arts and Sciences. I am grateful to Laura Reed and
Carl Kaysen for thinking that I was up to the task. Since then, this book
has made its ever-evolving appearance in many places, and I have been
inspired, educated, and inuenced by the work of scholars and friends,
some of whom will no doubt disagree with nearly everything I say. If
I leave anyone out, it is because the process was long and frequently
interrupted for months at a time.
I am grateful to Hayward Alker. His eclectic mind, scholarship, and
intellectual enthusiasm, or more accurately, exuberance and genuine
interest in all sorts of approaches to the questions of international rela-
tions andphilosophies of social science inspires. I have written this book
with Hayward in mind: holding an attitude of respect for all modes of
inquiry, looking everywhere I could think of for insight, regardless of
discipline, and taking everything seriously, at least for the moment, so
that I can see what others have to offer.
E. P. Thompson and Joan Scott were vital exemplars of courageous
intellectual and political engagement and the best of arguers. It was
an education to work with them on something we all cared about in
the 1980s. Randy Forsbergs unagging commitment to making peace
and her belief in reasoned discourse has also inspired over the past two
decades. Jackie Cock has been a generous and critical reader and the
model of intellectual and political engagement. Lynn Edens work on
organizational frames was an inspiration for its economy, vivid wri-
ting, and blending of the empirical and theoretical; I know I have not
met the standards set by Lynns example but the effort to do so has
made this a better book. And Lynn introduced me to Kathy Goldgeier,
xii
Acknowledgments
without whose help this would be an even longer book. James Der
Derian andBarbara Cruikshank, wonderful colleagues at the University
of Massachusetts, forced me to read Foucault and other posties.
Tom Biersteker, Elise Boulding, John Brigham, Carol Cohn, Cynthia
Enloe, Matt Evangelista, Sheldon Goldman, Joshua Goldstein, Laura
Jensen, Willard Johnson, Robert Keohane, Robert Latham, John Odell,
Amir Pasic, Bruce Russett, Steve Smith, Ann Tickner, and Tom Weiss
all helped me intellectually, by example, and in the concrete ways that
make a career work. Though I rarely ask for advice (preferring to make
my own mistakes) all of these colleagues directly or indirectly gave
me the benet of their perspectives. Katherine Sikkink, Bud Duvall,
Jim Bennett, Alexander George, Robert Jervis, Deborah Welch Larson,
Lily Ling, Jack Levy, John Mercer, Nicholas Onuf, Freidrich Kratochwil,
Martha Finnemore, Karen Jacobsen, Jim Rosenau, Beth Kier, and Jutta
Weldes are also among those whose work I have found stimulating and
provocative.
Support by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Re-
search CouncilMacArthur Foundation program on peace and inter-
national security, and a post-doctoral fellowship from the University
of Southern Californias Center for International Studies were essential
early in my career. The Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International
Studies at Brown University provided the space and the resources for
me to reconceptualize the book. Tom Biersteker and Tom Weiss, in par-
ticular, along with all of the support staff, worked to make the Watson
Institute a stimulating environment. They succeeded. Students at the
University of Massachusetts, and Brown University made teaching
enjoyable.
I presented an early version of the arguments at the International
Studies Association in early 1994, at Yale University in December 1994,
and at Harvards seminar on Ethics and International Affairs in Novem-
ber 1995. At Yale, Bruce Russett and Alexander Wendt asked me why
I wasnt focusingmybookentirelyonethical arguments about colonial-
ism and decolonization since there was surely enough material there.
They were right, and I thank them for the gentle nudging. I also pre-
sented portions of the argument at the International Studies Association
in 1994 and at a roundtable for the American Political Science Associ-
ation meeting in Washington, DC in August 1997. Drafts of the rst
two chapters were presented at University of California, Riverside and
Duke University in March and May 1998. At these talks I beneted
from the comments of Juliann Allison, Tom Beirsteker, Seyom Brown,
xiii
Acknowledgments
Peter Feaver, Chris Gelpi, Andrew Kydd, Cecelia Lynch, Amir Pasic,
Bruce Russett, Alex Wendt and others. I also thank Beth Kier for arrang-
ing a small critical seminar for me at Harvards Center for Science and
International Affairs in December 1998 and for asking me to clarify the
table on which arguments occur. The last chapter was rst presented at
a conference on international ethics organized by Amir Pasic at Brown
University in the spring of 1997. Substantially revised it appeared in the
1998 edition of the journal Ethics & International Affairs. An invitation
by Wayne Sandholtz to talk about the problem of humanitarian inter-
vention at the University of California, Irvine in March 2000 pushed
me to further develop the ideas presented in the last chapter. A pr ecis
of the whole book was presented at Stanford University in March 2000
and I thank the participants of that seminar, especially Lynn Eden and
Judith Goldstein, who went after my arguments relentlessly. Hayward
Alker, Jill Breitbarth, Lynn Eden, Martha Finnemore, Peter Katzenstein,
Meg McLagan, Barry ONeill, and Jack Snyder gave me detailed com-
ments on all or parts of the manuscript.
I nished the rst draft of the book while I was the Peace Fellow at
the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College. What a privilege. Anthropol-
ogist Meg McLagan and economic historian Gail Triner read portions of
the manuscript and argued generously with me, while historians Kate
Baldwin and Ann Blair gave me many citations. The blessing and prob-
lemof conversations with historians and anthropologists is the vastness
of their knowledge. I am appropriately humbled. Rachel Manleys gift
for passionate expression also humbled. I also beneted from stimula-
ting conversations with Tracy Isaacs, Deborah Valenze, Meridel Ruben-
stein, Aaronette White, Wu Man, Maggie Keane, Evelyn Barbee, Tamar
Diesendruck, Sheila Kennedy, Loretta Mickley, Marsha Moses, Ellen
Winner, Christina Shea, Marlene Goldman, Jill Reynolds, Sheila Pepe,
Carol Mason, Tytti Soila, Deborah Woodcock, Jeanne Nightingale and
Lynnette Bosch. Their work will affect me for years to come in ways
I havent yet gured out.
While colleagues provided example, critical comments, real inspira-
tion, and imaginary audience over the years, my greatest debts are to
those who encouraged me to continue to have fun, put work in con-
text, and to aim for clarity. I am sure this book took longer to write
because of my propensity for play (and for writing other things when I
should have been writing directly about argument), but I wouldnt have
had it any other way. Elizabeth Cohen, Lisa Mascaro, Ann Ferguson
and Carol Shea were wonderful and too rarely hiking and Indian food
xiv
Acknowledgments
eating companions. Taylor, Meredith, and Zoe Adams lent their humor.
My brother Robert was endlessly amusing, my sister Greta, full of argu-
ment. My parents, Robert and Jeanne Crawford, encouraged in a sort of
back door way by continually asking when I would be nished. Lisbeth
Gronlund, David Wright and Kirsten were the best of Arlington bud-
dies. Karen Kurlander and Jade McGleughlin gave generous assistance
when the going got rough, as did Ellen Grossman and Gail Phillips.
Barry ONeill gave his humor and an occasional song. Bob and Laurel
Breitbarth, Jackie Cock, David Fig, Carl Nightingale, Lisa Mascaro,
Leslie Vinjamuri, and Oliver Wright opened their homes to me on three
continents; though they may not have realized it, I wrote portions of
the book in their houses. My dog Shana certainly wished her human
would play stick and ball more often; many typos in the manuscript
were the result of her long nose nudging my arm and I am grateful to
Cambridge UniversityPress for catchingthose, as well as for all the other
work they did on the book. Jill Breitbarth, the sine qua non, was a source
of both calm and distraction and a wonderful partner through numer-
ous adventures. Finally, my late grandmother, Odell, who reminded me
(repeatedly) that she was the grandaughter of Jordan and Amy Ware,
American slaves, is never far from my thoughts and I hope this book is
something that would have stood up to her supportive criticism.
xv
Introduction
This book follows three lines of inquiry, each equally important. First, it
proposes a new theory of argument and change in world politics, focus-
ing in particular on the role of ethical argument and normative change.
Second, it intervenes in an older academic dispute, the problem of why
colonialism ended.
1
Third, in the prescriptive voice of international po-
litical theory and ethics, it suggests how, building on the practices of
ethical argument that are already in place, certain practices of interna-
tional relations might be used to make world politics more just and
peaceful.
Why focus on argument and change? International relations theorists
havetwogeneric social conditions toexplain: order andchange. Scholars
have done well at explaining more stable aspects of world orders, such
as bi-polar and multi-polar systems, but much less well at explaining, or
more ambitiously, predicting signicant changes in world political and
economic relations. Of course accounting for stability, equilibrium, and
change is no easy task and probably no single variable can do all or even
most of the explanatory work. But that has not stopped international
relations theorists from proposing master variable accounts of world
politics for example, stressing the drive for power or the operation of
markets.
International relations theory has difculty accounting for change in
part because it has thus far not developed a clear understanding of pro-
cess. The world is ordered or it changes; stasis or rupture. This view
is a consequence of our meta-theoretical building blocks. International
1
These explanatory aims are both constitutive and causal in the sense that Alexander
Wendt describes in On Constitution and Causation in International Relations, Review of
International Studies 24 (December 1998), 101117.
1
Introduction
relations theorists usuallyfocus ontheactors (or agents) of worldpolitics
and the big structures of states and alliances within an anarchic envi-
ronment. Actors or agents have characteristics (rationality) andinterests
(power), while structures such as anarchy or hierarchy (colonialism)
constrain and dispose the relations among states. There is little room
for argumentation in this understanding because argument is a process.
Once we begin to see world politics as constituted by agents, structures,
and processes, it is possible to grasp the role of processes like argument
and persuasion and to see how change may occur. I do not intend with
my focus on argument to sweep all other accounts to the side or to ban-
ish complexity or contingency. Rather, I showthat once we pay attention
to political argument, we will see the role the making and persuasive-
ness of arguments plays in maintaining orders, changing relations, and
overturning practices. A focus on argument may also allow us to see
room for human agency within the operations of seemingly inexorable
political and economic forces.
The major arguments are these. First, the usual understanding of
agents andstructures as constituting the major forces of worldpolitics is
incomplete without an understanding of the processes of world politics.
Second, political argument, persuasion, and practical reason are funda-
mental processes within and among states. Third, beliefs and culture
are respectively the content and the context of political argument; with-
out them actors could not understand the arguments that others make,
nor could actors successfully argue with others. Fourth, ethical argu-
ment analysis is a way to understand and explain normative change in
world politics. Fifth, once the central importance of the processes of ar-
gument and reason in world politics is recognized, it is possible to think
prescriptively about using ethical argumentative processes to re-make
world politics.
I did not begin this work with a clear theory of argument and per-
suasion. Rather, I began by wanting to understand a puzzle: why did
one of the most enduring practices of world politics come to an end so
close to the peak of its practice? While some small colonial territories
remain, the end of formal colonialism as a legitimate practice is perhaps
the biggest change inthe structure andpractice of international relations
in the last 500 years. Many colonies became independent in the 1960s
and in 1997, with much ceremony, Great Britain returned Hong Kong to
China after more than a century of colonial rule. At least in the popu-
lar imagination, the peaceful withdrawal from the island by the empire
meant that the sun had nally set not only on the British empire but also
2
Introduction
on colonialism itself.
2
Why did old-fashioned colonialism end? Why
did colonialism end when it did? Why didnt colonialism end much
earlier?
Colonialism ended when it was arguably still protable and coloni-
zers could, if they wanted to, still enforce their will on the colonized.
There was nothing inevitable about decolonization in the realm of ideas
or normative beliefs. There are probably no economic laws that in-
hibit the protability of colonialism, even in the age of industrialization
and free markets, nor any reasons why militarily powerful states cannot
impose themselves on weaker states should they choose to do so. The
powerful could still cut off the hands or heads of those who resist impe-
rial rule, they could still deny the weak the franchise, and tell them how
they must order their political, economic, and religious affairs. Yet, as
Julius Nyerere, Tanzanias rst independence political leader said, Mil-
itary occupation of another country against the wishes of the people of
that country is internationally condemned. This means that colonialism
in the traditional and political sense is now almost a thing of the past.
3
Explaining the end of colonialism is obviously important. Particular
colonial systems have risen and fallen over the past several thousand
years, but there is something distinctive about the decolonization of the
late twentieth century. No new colonies were formed in the last twenty-
ve years. And colonizers did not just stop acquiring colonies at mid
century, they began to give up the colonies they already held. In the few
instances during the late twentieth century when states tried to annex
land, such as Indonesias 1975 invasion of East Timor, those actions were
contested not only by the subjects of colonization, but by outsiders. In
one case, Iraqs attempted annexation of Kuwait in 1990, states used
military force under the authority of the United Nations to remove Iraq
and nullify its conquest. Colonizers, once proud, now express remorse.
In 1993, the president of the United States apologized for the US annex-
ation of the Hawaiian Islands one hundred years earlier. Colonialism
made the world map look much as it does, and decolonization began at
what was perhaps the peak of that ancient practice.
2
Chinas occupation of Tibet is among the exceptions. While Tibets legal status is hotly
debated, the occupation denies the political self-determination and religious freedom of
the people of Tibet. Several other territories, many small interms of population, andothers
muchlarger, remaininconditions rather likethat of colonies, albeit withcrucial differences.
See Robert AldrichandJohnConnell, The Last Colonies (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998).
3
Julius Nyerere, Forward, in Chakravarthi Raghavan, Recolonization: GATT, The
Uraguay Round & the Third World (London: Zed Books, 1990), pp. 1925: 19.
3
Introduction
Colonialism did not just fade away; it became illegitimate. Why and
how did this change occur? To rephrase the question in more abstract
terms, how do dominant behavioral norms change? Do normative be-
liefs have anything to do with those changes? If so, how?
There are competing explanations but no consensus about why colo-
nialism is no longer legitimate. Most observers think that colonialism
ended because it began to cost more than it proted the colonizers.
Colonizers, being rational, thus let the practice go out of use and found
less costly, more protable, ways of getting what they wanted from
former colonies. Or perhaps decolonization occurred not because any
one colony was too costly to maintain, but because the imperial powers
had overstretched their reach, and could no longer beat down the con-
stant and rising resistance to empire in the periphery. Thus, the most
commonly given explanations for the end of colonialism stress both the
material worldof extractionwhere conquest does or doesnt pay, andthe
cognitive world of rational calculators who are either wise or insensible.
I give an account of the end of colonialism that stresses factors other
than prot, capabilities, and the rational calculation of costs and bene-
ts. It is certain that those factors were important. Or rather, I shouldsay
that the beliefs actors held about prot, military and economic capabili-
ties, and the costs and benets of colonies mattered causally in terms of
motivating colonialism and decolonization. But what mattered more in
the long run was the making of persuasive ethical arguments containing
normative beliefs about what was good and right to do to others. While
the colonized had always resisted colonialism, sometimes with great
success, what changed in the twentieth century was the content and ba-
lance of normative beliefs and the burden of proof. Whereas colonialism
had been the dominant practice, or norm, for thousands of years, sup-
ported by strong ethical arguments, colonialism was denormalized and
delegitimized in the twentieth century because anti-colonial reformers
made persuasive ethical arguments.
Colonialism could still be considered legitimate and acceptable if the
powerful still believed in human inequality and thought it was accept-
able to take and hold territory by arms and dictate the life of others
with brute force. Colonialism ended, ostensibly for good, in the mid
twentieth century, because most Westerners no longer think it is accept-
able to control others in precisely that same way. The engine for this
change was ethical argument, not force, or changing modes of produc-
tion, or declining protability. Ethical arguments, once used to support
colonialism, were used to undermine and ultimately to eliminate the
4
Introduction
practice. While it is possible to account for the practices of colonialism,
the abolition of slavery, and decolonization with primarily economic
or material explanations, such accounts are decient to the extent that
they fail to appreciate the process and content of argument, especially
ethical arguments deployed by domestic and transnational advocates.
In focusing on the content of the arguments deployed by advocates
of reform, I give relatively little attention to the tactics and mobiliza-
tion strategy of reformers. This is not because social movement strategy
is unimportant in understanding how arguments become heard and
were, or were not, persuasive. On the contrary, the politics of social
movements and reform is vital. However, since the techniques of social
movement mobilization are much better understood and well known
than the account I give here of ethical argument, the emphasis here is
less on who argues and how they organize, and more on the content
and process of argument and how arguments may prompt changes in
political power.
4
The rst chapter, Argument, Belief, and Culture, lays the concep-
tual ground for an understanding of the process of ethical argument. It
begins by developing the concept and role of argument as a practice of
reason and persuasion.
5
Though argument is only one process in world
politics, its role is obviously important, andstrangely underemphasized
and undertheorized by international relations theorists. World politics
is characterized by several kinds of argument. Instrumental or practi-
cal arguments are about how to do things most effectively in the social
world. Identity arguments suggest that people of a certain kind, such
as we the civilized, ought to act in a particular way. Scientic argu-
ments use the laws of science, technology, or nature to dene situations
4
On social movements and transnational activism see: Jeffrey W. Knopf, Domestic Society
and International Cooperation: The Impact of Protest on US Arms Control Policy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists
Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1998). Whereas these scholars mention persuasion and inuence at several points in their
books, they are primarily concernedwith demonstrating the existence andeffectiveness of
domestic and transnational advocacy networks. An excellent book giving more attention
to persuasion is Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End
the Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).
5
The chapter focuses on two (ideal-type) forms of reasoning that arguments generally
take: top-down (syllogism) and sideways (comparative or associative). Top-down rea-
soning in the case of a practical argument looks rather like a syllogism where conclu-
sions follow logically from premises. Arguments in the form of side-ways associations,
or symbolic arguments, compare cases. They use metaphor, metonym, and analogies to
help others draw inferences from one situation that imply actions about other complex
situations.
5
Introduction
and show how they ought to be addressed. Ethical arguments are about
what it is right to do in particular contexts.
Argumentationandpersuasiondependoncontent or beliefs. The con-
tent of beliefs held by foreign policy decisionmakers shapes their per-
ceptions, priorities, andpreferences, especiallyas beliefs become institu-
tionalized in practices organizational routines and knowledge making
processes. Yet as Dan Reiter suggests, There is no space in realist theory
to permit states to have different beliefs about how international poli-
tics work.
6
Beliefs, which address all areas of social life, are translated
into political action through reason what Aristotle called practical
inference which involves reection and political, that is, public, ar-
gument. I describe philosophical/ontological, normative, instrumental,
and identity beliefs. I also review belief system theory, and specify how
the theory developed here builds on and is different from that earlier
work. Inaddition, I discuss theories of the foundationof belief andbelief
change or learning.
Next, I suggest four ways that culture is relevant to an understanding
of argumentative processes in worldpolitics. First, sharedcultural back-
groundallows meaningful conversations andarguments to occur. With-
out this backgroundmeaning, all speech, including argument, wouldbe
unintelligible. Second, culture often provides the content for specic be-
liefs; it is thesourceof philosophical, normative, identity, andinstrumen-
tal beliefs. Third, culture provides the background meaning by which
particular beliefs and arguments are consciously judged, and cultures
contain the metaphors and historical events which actors consciously
use to frame problems. That is, culture is a resource that argument mak-
ers draw upon when attempting to be persuasive. Fourth, while culture
is one source of the rootedness of beliefs, it can be a source of new
beliefs.
Practical, scientic, and identity arguments are ubiquitous in world
politics and it might be (relatively) easy to convince you that, for exam-
ple, practical arguments are at work in decisions over whether or not
to intervene militarily, or that scientic arguments used within and out-
side epistemic communities, such as those of atmospheric scientists, can
change worldpolitics. But ethical arguments are the hardcase. Doethical
arguments make a difference? Are they causal, or are they epipheno-
menal?
6
Dan Reiter, Crucible of Beliefs: Learning, Alliances, and World Wars (Ithaca: Cornell Univer-
sity Press, 1996), p. 5.
6
Introduction
Chapter 2, on Ethical Argument and Argument Analysis, gives
a theoretical account of how normative beliefs and ethical arguments
work in world politics. I chose to highlight the role of ethical argument
because skeptics of the role of argument will probably be most skepti-
cal about the causal signicance of ethical arguments. I review several,
conicting, theories of norms in world politics, specify the differences
between behavioral norms and normative beliefs, and show how ethi-
cal arguments may link the two. I discuss the conditions under which
ethical arguments can be persuasive and describe the process of per-
suasive ethical argument. Specically, ethical arguments are generally
used to do one of three things: uphold existing beliefs and practices,
extend normative beliefs to newareas of practice, and change dominant
practices.
How can ethical arguments be used to change dominant practices?
The process occurs in three phases. First, persuasive ethical arguments
deconstruct: they denormalize and delegitimize dominant beliefs and
practices. Second, persuasive ethical arguments offer a reconstruction,
the articulation of an alternative that meets normative criteria. In this
phase, alternative conceptions of possibility and interest are discussed
and adopted by some actors. And, in the third phase, actors begin to
change their social world. If arguments are persuasive among enough
individuals and groups (and enough depends on the context), then
the balance of capabilities between those who favor the dominant nor-
mative belief and the new normative belief will begin to change. Fur-
ther, normative beliefs that change as a consequence of ethical argument
may become institutionalized, altering the structures of the world and
the starting point for new ethical arguments. In the rst two phases, the
action is primarily discursive or rhetorical; in the last phase, the action is
more obvious in the political and institutional world as capabilities shift
and standard practices are modied. This is a dynamic understanding
of how ethical argument can be used to change dominant beliefs and
practices. To see whether this understanding makes sense, I then pro-
pose a method of informal argument analysis by which it is possible
to analyze ethical argument andthe process of persuasion. Finally, some
of the methodological objections to the argument analysis approach are
raised and answered in the last part of chapter 2.
Chapters 3 through 7 show how ethical arguments shaped colonia-
lismandwere also usedby reformers who sought to abolish slavery and
to end colonialism. Chapter 3, Colonial Arguments, outlines the con-
tent of arguments that characterized early debates on colonialism and
7
Introduction
describes the famous debate between Bartolom e de Las Casas and Juan
Gin es de Sepulveda in 1550 over the humanity of New World Indians.
Chapter 4, Decolonizing Bodies, focuses on the movements to end
slavery and forced labor, arguing that these were crucial steps on the
pathto weakening colonialism. Chapter 5, Faces of Humanitarianism,
describes the height of colonialism in Africa and the ways that humani-
tarian arguments were used by both colonizers and colonial reformists.
Chapter 6, Sacred Trust, focuses on the role of the League of Nations
Mandate system in institutionalizing new normative beliefs about colo-
nial practice. Chapter 7, Self-Determination, discusses the post-1945
period when decolonization occurred at a rapid pace and became the
international norm.
7
Chapters 5 through 7 also include more discus-
sion of colonialism and decolonization in South West Africa/Namibia
to illustrate the development of both successful and unsuccessful argu-
ments in greater detail over a 100 year period. Chapter 8, Alternative
Explanations, Counterfactuals, and Causation, summarizes the ethi-
cal argument explanation for the end of colonialism, raises competing
economic and power political explanations for decolonization, and con-
siders counterfactual possibilities. It also concludes the discussion of
South West Africa by comparing economic and strategic factors to the
role of ethical argument.
This book could not have been written without utilizing the work of
many historians of colonialism, slavery, and decolonization. Too many
of the primary sources I consulted especially the translations of Las
Casas sixteenth-century arguments at Valladolid on behalf of Indians,
the anti-slaverybriefs of abolitionists, andthe Britishgovernments Blue
Book on German South West Africa were vivid descriptions of what
Joseph Conrads ctional character Kurtz from Heart of Darkness would
call the horror, the horror! Because relativelylittle secondaryworkand
analysis has been done on the Mandate system, chapter 6 builds on the
work of historians but has been supplemented by deeper investigation
into primary material, especially League of Nations documents and the
records of the Permanent Mandates Commission.
7
The termdecolonizationis, of course, problematic because it implies the exit of colonizers
and the return of social, economic, and political life in colonies to a pre-conquest status.
In every instance, however, the colonized are deeply and forever changed by the colonial
experience, specically by the introduction of wage labor, the concept of the sovereign
state, and ties to European and American economies, while pre-existing institutions and
social relations are altered or erased. In this sense no former colony has been able to fully
decolonize.
8
Introduction
If this were a comprehensive history of the rise and fall of colonialism,
I would have been compelled to use more primary sources and to dis-
cuss, in much greater depth, colonialism and decolonization in areas of
the world that I hardly mention. As it is, some may think the historical
analysis andcase material is too long, too descriptive, too wide-ranging,
and contains too many citations and events. On the contrary, this work
is surely too short as history and does not even mention many events,
actors, and arguments some might consider crucial. My explanation
for this brevity is the simple fact that I do not intend a comprehensive
account but only to persuade you of the importance of argument, es-
pecially ethical argument, in the practice and end of colonialism. My
admiration for the skill of narrative historians has only grown through
the process of writing this book and I have not attempted to duplicate
their work. Rather, I hope to have provideda template for the analysis of
argument andhistorical change fromwhichother, more comprehensive,
histories can be read and re-interpreted.
8
Chapter 9, Poiesis and Praxis: Toward Ethical World Politics, de-
velops an approach for making the practices of world politics more
ethical and legitimate. In a world of clashing cultures and conicting
beliefs about what is right, how ought we decide what to do about the
pressing questions of world politics? Specically, how can we decide
the important ethical and policy questions of when and how to con-
duct humanitarian interventions? Poiesis and Praxis unlike previ-
ous chapters which are historical and analytical is forward-looking
and prescriptive. Using and elaborating on the approach to argument
knownas discourse ethics, it discusses the process of ethical argument
by which world politics might be remade with regard to the problem of
humanitarian intervention.
International politics and foreign policy decisionmaking involve de-
liberation and choice, though decisions are made in highly constrained
choice situations. The answer to the why question why this thing and
not another is found in the content of the arguments and the process of
reason. The process and content of argument are fundamental forces in
world politics they are constitutive of the world. The beliefs that actors
hold about the world and the outcome of political arguments, whether
8
Careful readers will note that in a few cases in the book my spelling of place names
and organizations change. The inconsistency is not mine, but the fact that over decades,
the names themselves sometimes changed or were written differently by sources. Simi-
larly, to avoid anachronism, I use names for groups of people, in their historical context,
e.g.Hottentot, whichare nowor might be consideredderogatory. Nooffense is intended.
9
Introduction
they are considered persuasive, make world politics and foreign po-
licy what it is, as much or more than the distribution of power among
states. The content of worldpolitics is foundinparticular beliefs, andthe
process of politics is shaped by the arguments and beliefs of everyday
discourse, public political rhetoric, legislation, court proceedings, and
private memos. In turn, the process of argument and the content of
beliefs are institutionalized in practices organizational routines and
knowledge-making processes that are part of the cultural environ-
ments of domestic and world politics. This argument about arguments
offers an alternative theory of choice in international relations that is not
based on rational actor theory, but on the role of practical reason and
the importance of beliefs rooted in culture. The major evolutionary or
revolutionary changes of world politics are thus a consequence of rea-
soned choice as much as change is due to accident or material forces
and structures.
10
1 Argument, belief, and culture
Soldiers and their generals ght for many causes, worthy and unwor-
thy, and when it comes to the battleeld the considerations are pretty
much the same, whatever the cause. The generals study each others
tactics across thebattlelines, oftenwithadmiration. Theyarethetechni-
cians of warfare. The soldiers of the contending armies display courage
(and sometimes cowardice), and the people they ght for make heroic
sacrices (or exploit the war for gain) on both or all sides, although
perhaps to different degrees and in different ways. To learn what the
ghtingandthe courage andsacrices meant one must lookelsewhere,
behind the physical contest to loyalties and emotions, thoughts and
ideas, moral convictions and arguments. One must ask what moral
and mental content shaped the decisions that brought these people to
the battleeld.
1
To be of greatest interest to us, the act of demolishing another must
be enshrined in justications. The muscle movements must occur in a
context of verbal legitimacy.
2
Why do people, either alone or in groups, choose one action and not
another? How do they even come to know that they must make a de-
cision? Why choose blockade over invasion, or confrontation over ap-
peasement? Indeed, how do people decide what is worth ghting for
at all? Surely actors are often circumscribed by resources, or their op-
tions seem limited by the structure of choice (such as time pressure),
but generally decisionmakers still have options even within constraint.
Individuals and groups make decisions through a process of practical
1
William Lee Miller, Arguing About Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), p. 4.
2
Harold Lasswell, World Politics and Personal Insecurity (New York: The Free Press (1935)
1965), pp. 2324.
11
Argument and change in world politics
reason or argument, while the beliefs containedin those arguments help
actors, both in groups and by themselves, decide what to do. Reason is
the process individuals go through in deciding how the world works
and how they will act in it.
3
Political argument is public reason.
The necessity of making good arguments, ones that convince oth-
ers, preoccupies domestic governments, social movements, and asso-
ciations. Why? Because justication is necessary. What is not clear to
scholars of world politics is how argument could have any importance
outside the domestic realm. Focusing on argument thus runs against the
grain of international relations theory.
4
However, analysis of the pro-
cess and content of arguments is crucial for understanding constancy
and change in world politics. Argument is not merely rhetoric.
5
Even
those who use brute force make arguments about why it was neces-
sary or wise to do so.
The tendency to downplay argument, belief, culture, andpolitical dis-
course has deeproots. Political philosopher Thomas Hobbes proclaimed
covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to se-
cure a man at all.
6
Hans Morgenthau, in Politics Among Nations, urges
scholars of international politics to assume rationality and a drive for
3
Rational actor theories describe one kind of reasoning but certainly do not encompass
all forms of reasoning.
4
Exceptions include: Thomas Risse, Lets Argue! Communicative Action in World Pol-
itics, International Organization 54 (Winter 2000), 139; Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp,
and Kathryn Sikkink, eds., The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domes-
tic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Hayward R. Alker, Redis-
coveries and Reformulations: Humanistic Methodologies for International Studies (Cambridge:
Cambridge UniversityPress, 1996); FriedrichV. Kratochwil, Rules, Norms and Decisions: On
the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Thomas F. Homer-Dixon and Roger S.
Karapin, Graphical Argument Analysis: ANewApproach to Understanding Arguments
Applied to a Debate about the Window of Vulnerability, International Studies Quarterly
33 (September 1989), 389410; Anatol Rapoport, Fights, Games, and Debates (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan, 1960); Gavan Duffy, Brian K. Federking, andSeth A. Tucker, Lan-
guage Games: Dialogical Analysis of INF Negotiations, International Studies Quarterly 42
(June 1998), 271294; Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Histor-
ical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1992); and Martti Koskenniemi, From Apology to
Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument (Helsinki: FinnishLawyers Publishing
Company, 1989); AndrewLinklater, The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foun-
dations of the Post-Westphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998). Outside international
relations see: Brian M. Barry, Political Argument: AReissue with a NewIntroduction (London:
Routledge, 1990); Deirdre N. McCloskey, The Rhetoric of Economics, 2nd edn (Madison, WI:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1998) and Michael Billig, Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical
Approach to Social Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
5
And like casuistry, rhetoric is not bad, though in recent years both terms have the
connotation of empty speech that is separate from and/or conceals real interest.
6
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New York: Penguin (1651) 1986), p. 223.
12
Argument, belief, and culture
power.
7
Given an assumption of rationality, dened as the pursuit of
ones interests, it matters little what actors think or how they use ar-
guments to persuade others to act. Structural theories of international
politics, which emphasize the anarchical character of the international
system and suggest that most outcomes can be explained by reference
to the distribution of capabilities (most importantly, power) among
states, similarly assume and emphasize a narrowly dened rational-
ity. Kenneth Waltz argues that systemic forces of international politics
(the balance of power) pushactors to be sensitive to costs . . . whichfor
convenience can be called an assumption of rationality.
8
Further, even
constructivists who argue that rules regulate behavior and constitute
actors identities appear to hold the view that there is a rational core
to behavior in international politics.
9
Post-structural and critical theory
approaches to world politics, which emphasize discourse, come closest
to articulating a role for argument.
10
The process of foreign policy decisionmaking and international rela-
tions is characterized by political arguments that occur among elites,
within organizations, between elites and masses, in the public sphere,
within authoritarian states, and in the anarchical international system.
There is a tight relationship between belief and argument: beliefs are
translated into political action through reasoned argument. Even when
beliefs appear, by themselves, to lead to actions such as the use of force
by states, actors reason and give reasons to others about why force must
be used. Reasoning involves both individual reection and political,
or public, argument. Arguments and beliefs gain their content and are
7
The tendency of Hobbes and Morgenthau to downplay the role of ideas and argument
is ironic given the centrality of political argument in Thucydides.
8
Kenneth N. Waltz, Reections on Theory of International Politics: A Response to My
Critics, in Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1986), pp. 322345: 331.
9
Constructivist primers include Peter Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Secu-
rity: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996);
Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999); Emanuel Adler, Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World
Politics, European Journal of International Relations 3 (September 1997), 319364; Audie
Klotz, Norms in International Relations: The Struggle Against Apartheid (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1995); Nicholas Greenwood Onuf, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule
in Social Theory and International Relations (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1989).
10
See David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of
Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992); KarenLitn, Ozone Discourses:
Science and Politics in Global Environmental Cooperation (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1994); Roxanne LynnDoty, Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North
South Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
13
Argument and change in world politics
intelligible through and within cultures. In other words, arguments de-
pend on and refer to beliefs and those beliefs are embedded in a context
of other beliefs which may or may not be explicit or structured. Argu-
ment in foreign policy decisionmaking and international politics is only
one species of the processes of international politics.
11
Argument
The dominant view of how issues are decided was well articulated
in 1862 by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck: The great ques-
tions of the age are not settled by speeches and majority votes . . . but
by iron and blood.
12
Yet, as foreign policy decisionmakers come to
believe it is time to act, and there is no obvious course of action dic-
tated by preexisting beliefs and policies, they begin to argue over the
correct action. Arguments are an effort to persuade others to see the
world in a particular way and to act in accordance with the conclu-
sion that follows from the argument. Practical arguments are about
how to act in the social world; scientic arguments are about the
natural world; ethical arguments are about what it is right to do in
particular situations; and identity arguments are about how different
understandings or actions in the world are implied on the basis of
identity.
Argument as reasoning and persuasion
Political argument is a form of persuasion and intersubjective reason-
ing. While decisionmaking is characterized by reection and often keen
intelligence, it is not rational, at least not in the sense scholars usually
think of as rational (dispassionate utility maximizing). Rather, foreign
policy decisions are the product of preexisting beliefs and the process
11
Processes are the regular practices that the agents of world politics engage in as they
create, maintain, and transform themselves and the structure of world politics. Other pro-
cesses are: constitutive, reproductive, communicative, discursive and oppositional. Ar-
guments communicate beliefs and information about how others understand the world.
Argumentation is also a discursive practice; arguments only make sense within discursive
or knowledge structures and within the larger cultural/historical context within which
they take place. Arguments can bolster, modify, or destroy knowledge structures. Argu-
ments are also constitutive in that they dene, make, and maintain corporate/collective
agents and some aspects of social structure. Reproductive and oppositional processes are
also dependent on arguments. We could oppose each other or reproduce ourselves in any
number of ways. How groups choose to do so, or to change from one mode of production
or opposition to another, is by a process of persuasive arguments and reasoning.
12
Quoted in Hagan Schulze, Germany: A New History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1998), p. 140.
14
Argument, belief, and culture
of argument within and among groups they are reasoned. Such polit-
ical reasoning takes the form of an argument that contains beliefs and a
logic or logics of inference.
13
The goal of political arguments may be to
convince or persuade another (or some third party), or discourse ethical
argument can be used by interlocutors to reason or to nd truth to-
gether. In the former instance, the focus of most of this book, those who
argue are convinced of their position and are trying to persuade the
other or an important audience that they are right.
14
In the latter case,
actors are more open to challenges to their position and to changing
their beliefs and conclusions.
Practical reasoning or inference is an internal act of deliberation that
individuals can use to work through problems; it is a route to dis-
covery, not just to retrospective explanation or justication, or to self-
encouragement.
15
Public or political arguments attempt to inuence
private reasoning and affect a groups choice: political arguments pro-
vide reasons that actors think and hope others will nd persuasive. Of
course, coercion is possible and frequently used, but it is very expen-
sive to coerce others over prolonged periods. To get other states to go
along with yours, whether in a coalition, alliance, or large international
organization (or at least not to oppose your state) those others must be
convinced to act, or at least not to block your action. Thus, politics is
thick with places where arguments can and must be persuasive. When
practical reason is a public process of argument, advocates in effect take
their audience through the steps of practical inference and/or associa-
tive reasoning.
16
Thus, a strict division between internal and external
reasoning breaks down in practice since individuals acquire and under-
stand history and historical analogies as part of a social process.
Reason and persuasive argument have been discussed for millennia
by philosophers and rhetoricians. Aristotle distinguished practical from
theoretical reasoning (or wisdom) in the Nichomachean Ethics, where he
says that practical wisdomis concernedwithaction.
17
Theoretical rea-
soning or wisdom concerns answering the question of what is or is not
13
I say more about logics of inference later.
14
Risse, Lets Argue, calls this rhetorical action.
15
Robert Audi, Practical Reasoning (New York: Routledge, 1989), p. 184.
16
Aristotle links practical reasoning and politics in book 6 of The Nichomachean Ethics,
translated with an Introduction by David Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980).
17
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, p. 146 (book 6, ch. 7). Also see Aristotle, The Art of
Rhetoric, translated with an Introduction by Hugh Lawson-Tancred (New York: Penguin,
1991). Habermas relates Aristotelian practical reason to discourse ethics in J urgen Haber-
mas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).
15
Argument and change in world politics
true, while practical reasoning is concerned with answering the ques-
tionof howtoact inresponse topractical problems.
18
Practical reasoning
concludes with an answer to a practical question, such as, paradigmat-
ically, What am I to do?, asked in the context of a felt problem.
19
Further, as Aristotle notes, deliberation over practical problems may
consist of chains of practical reasoning, as people reason about how to
achieve something they have dened as a good.
We deliberate not about ends but about means . . . Having set the end,
they consider how and by what means it is to be attained; and if it
seems to be produced by several means they consider by which it is
most easily and best produced, while if it is achieved by one only they
consider how it will be achieved by this and by what means this will
be achieved, till they come to the rst cause, which in the order of
discovery is the last . . . and what is last in the order of analysis seems
to be rst in the order of becoming.
20
Forms of argument: top-down, rule-based and sideways,
associative
There are different ways to deconstruct and represent practical reason
and arguments.
21
Political debates and arguments may often be de-
scribed as Aristotelian practical reason where actors, who are goal or
norm driven make arguments that move from general premises to
specic conclusions. For example, si vis pacem para bellum/ if you
want peace prepare for war. Though we seldom make arguments in a
form where the architecture is so transparent, practical reasoning may
be illustrated in the form of a syllogism or practical inference: the rst,
18
Aristotle distinguished episteme or theoretical knowledge from phronesis, or practical
wisdom, used for resolving particular problems. Theoretical statements or arguments are
idealized, atemporal, and necessary in the sense that they depend on the initial axioms
being correct and on the consistency of subsequent deductions. Practical statements or
arguments are concrete (resting on experience), temporal, and presumptive in the sense
of being revisable. Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: AHistory
of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 2628.
19
Audi, Practical Reasoning, pp. 1819.
20
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, pp. 5657. Toulmin calls larger arguments macro-
arguments, and the arguments embedded in larger arguments micro-arguments.
Stephen Toulmin, The Uses of Argument (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1958), p. 94.
21
I am for the most part omitting explicit discussion of formal theories of argument
and discourse because I have chosen to emphasize the process of argument in world
politics specically in understanding colonialism, decolonization, and humanitarian
intervention rather than theories of argument. Further, I am not developing a formal
method for analyzing arguments but rather, in chapter 2, proposing an informal method.
16
Argument, belief, and culture
or major, premise expresses a goal, the second, or minor, premise artic-
ulates a cause-effect belief, and the conclusion regards a practical neces-
sity, the statement of an action to bring about the desired goal realizing,
of course, that there may be more than one way to achieve the goal.
22
Form of practical syllogism/Inference
Premise: desired goal or norm/good
Premise: causeeffect argument or representation of the situation
Conclusion: description of action implied by the argument
Practical inferences are the single step from a set of premises to a
conclusion and practical reasoning is a sequence of practical infer-
ences linked by more than one step of inference.
23
Practical reasoning
may then be represented as a syllogism with prior syllogisms, linked in
inferential or purposive chains, and such arguments may be analyzed
in terms of their deductive logic. Good arguments of this sort ought to
have conclusions that followlogically fromtheir premises, and whether
something follows logically depends on the content of beliefs embed-
ded in the argument and the wider background of culture.
All practical arguments are vulnerable to being questioned. First, an-
tagonists may debate the desirability of the proposed goal and whether
the goal is worth the actions required to achieve it (meta-argument).
Second, they may focus on the second premise, specically on whether
the particular meansend relationship given as part of the argument is
correct whether the beliefs given about how the world actually works
in the ways presumed by the argument are correct. Third, interlocu-
tors may question the validity of a practical inference; in other words,
whether the correct conclusion was drawn from the argument. Fourth,
actors may agree on the goal, the endsmeans premise, and the infer-
ences drawn from the argument, but argue over whether the actions
requiredto reach the goal are feasible. Or nally, using a powerful rhetor-
ical move, opponents to a dominant argument may raise a competing
syllogism or suggest different relevant comparisons.
In contrast to top-down reasoning, when actors perceive similarities
between situations they may reason horizontally, by association, that it
is wise to act in ways that worked in the rst instance, assuming that
what applies inone situationought toapplyina similar case. Arguments
22
Douglas N. Walton, Practical Reasoning: Goal-Driven, Knowledge-Based, Action-Guiding
Argumentation(Savage, MD: RowmanandLittleeld, 1990), pp. 16-21 discusses alternative
formulations of premises and conclusions of a practical inference.
23
Ibid., p. 129.
17
Argument and change in world politics
which take this formdepend for their power on howclosely the present
circumstances resemble those of the earlier precedent cases for which this
particular type of argument was originallydevised. . . the truths andcer-
titudes established in the precedent cases pass sideways, so as to provide
resolutions of later problems.
24
Inferences in horizontal/associative
reasoning are based on simplifying, or in some cases caricaturing com-
plex situations through the use of metaphor, metonym (recalling a part
or aspect of something to refer to characteristics of the whole), or anal-
ogy, and comparing them with other situations.
Metaphor, metonym, and analogy are thus a crucial part of the in-
ternal reasoning of individuals how they come to understand, learn,
and decide by themselves and public argument. Intended analogies
may often be conveyed in one word or phrase that is synonomous with
lessons learned: Munich recalls appeasement and ultimately the
failure to prevent aggression; Pearl Harbor recalls a surprise attack
with devastating consequences. Yuen Foong Khong argues that as a
form of reasoning, analogies are cognitive devices that help policy-
makers performsixdiagnostic tasks central topolitical decision-making.
Analogies (1) help dene the nature of the situation confronting the
policymaker (2) help assess the stakes, and (3) provide prescriptions.
They help evaluate options by (4) predicting their chances of success,
(5) evaluating their moral rightness, and (6) warning about dangers
associated with the options.
25
In sum, actors are asserting that the
present situation is like the one recalled, attempting to frame a situa-
tion and simultaneously implying that one ought to act according to the
lessons of the analogy. Metaphor is one, if not the major, cognitive
means that communicating minds have for simplifying and making
sense of highly complex phenomena.
26
In sum, reasoning can be used by an individual actor as a route to
discovery to help them determine the right course of action to solve
a particular problem and also as a form of public reason or political
argument.
27
In making arguments, individuals give reasons, and evi-
dence to support those reasons, to persuade others of the rightness of a
course of action or opinion that they advocate. Although psychologists
24
Jonsen and Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry, p. 35.
25
Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam
Decisions of 1965 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 10.
26
Paul Chilton, Security Metaphors: Cold War Discourse from Containment to Common House
(New York: Peter Lang, 1996), p. 28.
27
Audi, Practical Reasoning, p. 184.
18
Argument, belief, and culture
may debate whether human reasoning is top-down, rule-following, or
associative, research on foreign policy decisionmaking suggests that
arguments and inferences are made both ways.
28
Major political argu-
ments, especially those involving ways of life and fundamental social
concerns, usually occur over long periods of time and sometimes fea-
ture discrete debates over supporting issues and points of evidence.
Meta-arguments are also part of the process.
Meta-arguments: the real, the good, the frame
Coherent arguments are unlikely to take place unless and until actors,
on at least some level, agree on what they are arguing about. The at least
temporary resolution of meta-arguments regarding the nature of the
good (the content of prescriptive norms); what is out there, the way we
know the world, how we decide between competing beliefs (ontology
and epistemology); and the nature of the situation at hand (the proper
frame or representation) must occur before specic arguments that
could lead to decision and action may take place.
Meta-arguments over epistemology and ontology, relatively rare, oc-
cur in instances where there is a fundamental clash between belief sys-
tems and not simply a debate within a belief system. Such arguments
over the nature of the world and how we come to know it are partic-
ularly rare in politics though they are more frequent in religion and
science. Meta-arguments over the good are contests over what it is
good and right to do, and even how we know the good and the right.
They are about the nature of the good, specically, dening the quali-
ties of good so that we know good when we see it and do it. Ethical
arguments are about how to do good in a particular situation.
More common are meta-arguments over representations or frames
about how we ought to understand a particular situation. Sometimes
actors agree on how they see a situation. More often there are differ-
ent possible interpretations. Thomas Homer-Dixon and Roger Karapin
suggest, Argument and debate occur when people try to gain accep-
tance for their interpretation of the world.
29
For example, is the war
defensive or aggressive? Dening and controlling representations and
images, or the frame, affects whether one thinks there is an issue at
28
On the debate in psychology, see Steven A. Sloman, The Empirical Case for Two
Systems of Reasoning,Psychological Bulletin 19 (January 1996), 122; Gerd Gigerenzer
and Terry Regier, How Do We Tell an Association from a Rule? Comment on Sloman,
Psychological Bulletin 19 (January 1996), 2326.
29
Homer-Dixon and Karapin, Graphical Argument Analysis, p. 390.
19
Argument and change in world politics
stake and whether a particular argument applies to the case. An actor
ghting a defensive war is within international law; an aggressor may
legitimately be subject to sanctions.
Framing andreframing involve mimesis or putting forwardrepresen-
tations of what is going on. In mimetic meta-arguments, actors who are
struggling to characterize or frame the situation accomplish their ends
by drawing vivid pictures of the reality through exaggeration, anal-
ogy, or differentiation. Representations of a situation do not re-produce
accurately so much as they creatively re-present situations in a way that
makes sense. Mimesis is a metaphoric or iconic augmentation of the
real, imitatingnot the effectivityof events, but their logical structure and
meaning.
30
Certainfeatures are emphasizedandothers de-emphasized
or completely ignored as the situation is recharacterized or reframed.
Representation thus becomes a constraint on reasoning in that it limits
understanding to a specic organization of conceptual knowledge.
31
The dominant representation delimits which arguments will be consid-
ered legitimate, framing how actors see possibilities. As Roxanne Doty
argues, the possibilityof practices presupposes the abilityof anagent to
imagine certain courses of action. Certain background meanings, kinds
of social actors and relationships, must already be in place.
32
If, as Donald Sylvan and Stuart Thorson argue, Politics involves
the selective privileging of representations, it may not matter whether
one representation or another is true or not.
33
Emphasizing whether
frames articulateaccurateor inaccurateperceptions misses therhetorical
import of representation how frames affect what is seen, or not seen,
and subsequent choices.
34
Meta-arguments over representation are thus
30
Alker, Rediscoveries and Reformulations, p. 298.
31
Donald A. Sylvan and Deborah M. Haddad, Reasoning and Problem Representation
in Foreign Policy: Groups, Individuals and Stories, in Donald A. Sylvan and James F.
Voss, eds., ProblemRepresentation in Foreign Policy Decision Making (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), pp. 187212: 189.
32
Roxanne Lynn Doty, Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A Post-Positivist Analysis
of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines, International Studies Quarterly 37
(September 1993), 297320: 298.
33
Donald A. Sylvan and Stuart J. Thorson, Ontologies, Problem Representation, and the
Cuban Missile Crisis, Journal of Conict Resolution 36 (December 1992), 709732: 731.
34
Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis (New York: Harper, 1974); Paul Slovic, Baruch
Fischhoff, and Sara Lichtenstein, Response Mode, Framing, and Information-Processing
Effects in Risk Assessment, in David E. Bell, Howard Raiffa, and Amos Tversky, eds., De-
cision Making: Descriptive, Normative, and Prescriptive Interactions (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), pp. 152166; Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, Rational
Choice and the Framing of Decisions, in Bell, Raiffa, and Tversky, eds., Decision Making,
pp. 167192.
20
Argument, belief, and culture
crucial elements of political argument because an actors arguments
about what to do will be more persuasive if their characterization or
framing of the situation holds sway. But, as Rodger Payne suggests, No
frame is an omnipotent persuasive tool that can be decisively wielded
by norm entrepreneurs without serious political wrangling.
35
Hence
framing is a meta-argument.
Associative reasoning, especially analogies, are particularly useful in
meta-arguments about the frame. Thus, Dwain Mefford argues, the
process of reasoning by analogy probably exerts greatest impact in the
initial steps of the overall process. It helps shape the decision makers
initial orientation and posture. It is here that candidate interpretations
are rst marshaled, later to be scrutinized and reworked or rejected.
36
Historical analogy is both a frame and a mechanism for internal discov-
ery andreason. The ambiguous andincomplete information that a new
situation typically presents is often pieced together and completed on
the basis of parallels drawn to past incidents. The parallels, once recog-
nized, guide actors expectations as to what may ensue fromthe present
situations if the parallel holds.
37
In some cases, analogies that in retro-
spect seemmisplacedor poorlyrememberedhelpedpolicymakers settle
on what are regarded as mistaken policies.
38
Some scholars are wary of analogy because it seems to do too many
things in argument. For example, Jack Levy distinguishes between
analogies that help us reason and those that are rhetorical. Some fail
to differentiate between genuine learning and the rhetorical or strate-
gic use of historical lessons to advance current preferences or fail to
construct research designs that expedite the empirical distinction be-
tween these causal processes.
39
Levy discounts the rhetorical. Instead
of genuinely learning from historical experience, individuals might use
35
Rodger Payne, Persuasion, Frames, and Norm Construction, unpublished
manuscript (University of Louisville, 2000).
36
Dwain Mefford, Analogical Reasoning and the Denition of the Situation: Back to
Snyder for Concepts and Forward to Articial Intelligence for Method, in Charles F.
Hermann, Charles W. Kegley, Jr., and James N. Rosenau, eds., New Directions in the Study
of Foreign Policy (London: HarperCollins Academic, 1987), pp. 221244: 222.
37
Ibid., p. 223.
38
See Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1976), pp. 275279; Yaacov Y. I. Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds:
Information Processing, Cognition, and Perception in Foreign Policy (Stanford: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 1990), pp. 296341. Also see Khong, Analogies at War; Ernest May, Lessons
of the Past (New York: Oxford, 1973); Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, Thinking in Time:
The Uses of History for Decision-Makers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989).
39
Jack S. Levy, Learning and Foreign Policy: Sweeping a Conceptual Mineeld, Inter-
national Organization 48 (Spring 1994), 279312: 282.
21
Argument and change in world politics
historyinstrumentally. Theyoftenselect fromhistorical experiencethose
cases that provide the greatest support for their preexisting policy pref-
erences, or they reinterpret a given case in a way that reinforces their
views, so as to rally support for their preferred policies, whether they be
driven by views of the national interest or partisan political interests.
40
Discountinginstrumental uses of analogymisses the purpose andeffects
of historical/analogical statements as meta-arguments. The intention is
preciselytopersuade andthe framingeffect is oftenquite powerful.
41
As
Khong says, that policymakers use the same analogies to justify their
choices does not vitiate the diagnostic role of the analogies in helping
policymakers arrive at those choices.
42
Why do actors nd one framing analogy or metaphor more persua-
sive thananother? The answer probablylies inthe personal histories and
cultural contexts of decisionmakers. Further, as Vertzberger argues, the
logic of analogical reasoning dictates that the greater the perceivedcor-
respondence between the past and the present or future, the greater the
credibility of the analogy and the appropriateness of analogical reason-
ing are perceived to be.
43
This perceived correspondence is crucial.
Consequently the weight given to inferences and denitions of the sit-
uation based on lessons from history is higher than the weight given
to competing inferences and denitions of the situation based on other
knowledge structures, such as deductive logic. In the same vein, the
greater the perceived correspondence, the more likely is high credibility
and trust in the validity of the analogy. . . .
44
But correspondence is
not merely recognized or perceived. Rather, policymakers often argue
that the case corresponds with their preferred analogy, making the sit-
uation correspond with the past that they want to emphasize. Further,
framing is shaped and constrained by dominant cultures.
To understand which arguments are persuasive, and how one ar-
gument is chosen over another, it is important to know which repre-
sentation or characterization of the situation was believed and why one
representation was chosen over competing frames. Winners of the fram-
ing contest, or more importantly, the content of the representation they
employ, have powerfully set the terms of subsequent argument. The
content of the accepted representation focuses debates simply because
40
Ibid., 306.
41
For a psychological approach, see Keith Holyoak and Paul Thagard, Mental Leaps:
Analogy in Creative Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).
42
Khong, Analogies at War, p. 16.
43
Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds, p. 319.
44
Ibid.
22
Argument, belief, and culture
when the same issues are framed one way versus another, some argu-
ments will seemmore persuasivethanothers. Further, the at least tempo-
rary settling of meta-arguments over the good, ontology, epistemology,
and representations, is the topoi or starting point of other arguments.
45
Among like-minded individuals, and in cases where the issue was less
what the starting point was than what to do about a particular ques-
tion, decisionmaking will likely feature much less meta-argument than
debate on the content of arguments on the table, a search for consensus,
and a focus on the best means of implementing decisions. The settling of
arguments can lead to a new round of meta-argument, however, as the
practices implied and entailed by the conclusion of arguments change
the way the world works and is understood.
Content of argument
Political arguments can be classied into four ideal-type categories that
vary in terms of their content: practical/instrumental, ethical, scientic,
and identity. In complex situations that demand complex arguments,
more than one, in some cases all these types of arguments may be de-
ployed. Although the bulk of the empirical part of this book concerns
the role of ethical argument the other types are also common in world
politics.
Practical or instrumental arguments involve beliefs about cause and
effect relations among individuals; they are about how to do things in
the social world. For example, prior to World War I, strategists in the
French, German, and Russian militaries argued that offensive military
doctrines were the best defense, and convinced the civilian leaders of
those states to adopt offensive strategies.
46
Practical arguments work by
giving good accounts of the social world, and thus they rely on hearers
being convinced by the practical beliefs that support those arguments.
Practical arguments mayalsoshowthat aprevious or alternative process
for accomplishinga certaintaskinthe social worldwas inadequate or in-
effective. Words like counter-productive, futile, or ineffective will
convey this sense. Those employing practical arguments may also then
make the claim that an alternative process is better (e.g. more efcient,
more effective, or less costly) than the dominant practice. Such a claim
may or may not rest on the belief that advocates of the new practical
alternative have a better understanding of how the social world works.
45
Kratochwil, Rules, Norms and Decisions, pp. 3839, 41, 218219.
46
See Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters
of 1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).
23
Argument and change in world politics
Scientic arguments are about the constraints and possibilities of the
physical and natural world, using the laws of science, technology, or
nature, as they are understoodat the time. Scientic arguments are often
made by members of scientic epistemic communities and by others
who invoke natural laws.
47
For example, the interlocutors in inter-
national policy debates about global warming rely on scientic (and
economic) arguments. Old-fashioned realist theories and a good deal
of contemporary foreign policy rely on what are thought to be scien-
tic views of human nature as at root concerned with the acquisition
of power. Scientic arguments work, or are persuasive, to the extent
that they make powerful ontological claims about the natural world
that are coupled with epistemological, procedural, claims about how
to make new knowledge. These procedures for producing new knowl-
edge become the only valid grounds for judging whether or not in-
formation and arguments should be heard and how they should be
judged. Scientic arguments work by defeating other claims to un-
derstanding the natural world and by posing plausible accounts of
the processes of the natural world that cohere with other scientic
accounts.
Ethical arguments concern how to act in a particular situation so as to
be doing good, assuming that the good has been dened through cul-
tural consensus or meta-argument. Ethical arguments may assert that
an existing normative belief or moral conviction ought to be applied
in a particular situation, and they are used to promote new norma-
tive beliefs. To simplify in a way that parallels the model of practical
inference, ethical arguments may take the form of positing the exis-
tence of an ethical or prescriptive normative belief (premise 1), then
specifying that the particular context is an instance covered by the pre-
scriptive norm (premise 2), which implies (conclusion) that to do good,
one ought to act in ways consistent with the prescription. Ethical argu-
ments may also be characterized by sideways reasoning, where simi-
larities and differences between cases suggest what is right to do in a
new situation.
48
Chapter 2 describes in detail how ethical arguments
work.
Identity arguments posit that people of a certain kind act or dont
act in certain ways and the audience of the argument either positively
or negatively identies with the people in question. Identity arguments
47
See Peter Haas, Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coor-
dination, International Organization 46 (Winter 1992), 136.
48
See Jonson and Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry.
24
Argument, belief, and culture
mayapplyto groups or to individuals, but theyare specicallyabout the
characteristics of those individuals andwhat those characteristics imply
in terms of actions or reactions. Asimple example is the following: civi-
lized nations do not permit genocide (premise 1); we are civilized
(premise 2); those who permit or conduct genocides are barbarians and
we, the civilized should not allow this practice (conclusion).
Identity arguments work by producing or calling upon previously
existing identities and differences among groups and claiming that
specic behaviors are associated with certain identities. Identity argu-
ments therefore dependheavily onthe depthandtaken-for-grantedness
of identities or identity beliefs. To be most persuasive, identity and
difference must be seen as deeply embedded and natural. Identity
arguments work to the extent that hearers are not immediately con-
scious of the ways that identity and difference are produced and nat-
uralized by the individual performance of actions, the discourses of
insiders and outsiders which articulate the characteristics and repro-
duce the histories of groups, and the institutions that produce iden-
tities such as schools, religious societies, or states. Further, identity
arguments are often linked with practical or scientic arguments, as
for example in this statement by a member of the French parliament
in 1930:
France has not yet become sufciently conscious of the extent to which
its colonies offer possibilities of prestige, elements of power and pros-
perityfor its material recoveryandopportunities todiffuse anddisplay
the splendor of its spirit. None of our national preoccupations is as im-
portant as that one. They all, whether they concern our security, our
nancial recovery, problems of population or of the reinforcement of
our inuence in the universal concord of people, they all have their
full signicance and precise implications only if viewed from this as-
pect. In fact on reection one may rightly say: France will be a great
colonizing power, or it will cease to be France.
49
Identity and ethical arguments are often tightly linked. To be a good
person, or in the above case, a great and splendorous nation, implies
or perhaps even requires, certain good behaviors. France will be a
great colonizingpower, or it will cease tobe France.Identityarguments,
perhaps more obviously than other arguments, also make use of and are
bolstered by emotions or feelings of belonging and love, or alternatively
49
L eon Archimbaud quoted in Rudolf von Albertini, Decolonization: The Administration
and Future of the Colonies, 19191960 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company Inc., 1971),
p. 265.
25
Argument and change in world politics
of hatred and contempt. Nationalist discourses, for example, depend on
ethnocentric and national identity, which entails love and we-feeling
for the ingroup and imply a political program of state-building. Thus,
arguments do not depend solely on cold cognitive processes for their
persuasiveness, but also on emotions.
50
Emotion and argument
Arguments are more or less well received depending on the emotional
status of the hearer and the emotional content of the argument. When
individuals are angry or hostile toward an interlocutor, they are less
open to persuasion than if they are neutral or feeling empathetic. More
subtly, some arguments may trigger feelings as well as thoughts. Histor-
ical analogies are cognitively persuasive in arguments if they convince
us that there are similarities between one situation and another; the les-
son learned in the previous situation, therefore, ought to be applied to
the new situation. If the events match (are similar in respects deemed
signicant) it is more likely that individuals who belong to generations
with direct experience of an event used in the analogy, or who have had
some direct contact with those who experienced the event, will likely
have a greater emotional reaction.
Analogies may also be emotionally persuasive. Emotions are often
purposefully evoked by political actors to increase our receptivity to
their arguments. Nationalist leaders may promote fear of outsiders and
love of country. International and non-governmental organizations use
guilt and empathy to prompt disaster relief and foreign aid. Emotional
appeals may be particularly effective when conicts are represented
in ethnic or racial terms, and when there is a reservoir of pre-existing
negative beliefs and feelings toward outgroups, or where those beliefs
and feelings can be easily stimulated and stoked. Both ethical and
identity arguments are emotional and derive much of their persuasive-
ness from how well they elicit appropriate emotions, such as love or
shame.
Both cognition and emotion inuence persuasiveness, but the effects
are not straightforward or easily disentangled. Persuasiveness that de-
pends on careful cognition may be impaired by positive moods. Con-
versely, attempts to evoke emotions such as fear may backre since
the kind of arguments used in fear appeals appear to disrupt careful
50
See Neta C. Crawford, The Passion of World Politics: Propositions on Emotion and
Emotional Relationships, International Security 24 (Spring 2000), 116156.
26
Argument, belief, and culture
evaluation of message content.
51
But arguments that evoke fear may
have positive consequences when interlocutors want fearful subjects to
pay less attention to logic.
Process and meaning
If the process of political argument is ubiquitous, why do one thing and
not another? And why are particular arguments understood to be per-
suasive enough to change the prevailing practice? In other words, the
entire causal story is not capturedby the process of argument. To answer
questions about the particular constitution of the world at one moment,
and how world political practices change, one must turn to content.
52
Meaning-content is found in the individual words used by those who
are making arguments, andin the context that is readily apparent to par-
ticipants because of their cultural background and immediate historical
experience.
Words are a part of human behaviour. They are mental categories
which both represent, and are part of, the world and which impose
intentionality and coherence on that world. Language is not just an
intellectual activity distinct from the material world. Concepts and
contexts are inseparable. Language is part of the social and political
structure; it reveals the politics of a society. Hence analysis of political
discourse will indicate how the political world is perceived, and a di-
achronic analysis of concepts can be helpful in uncovering long-term
structural changes by showing how words acquire new meanings in
the contexts of such changes.
53
Further, as Aristotle noted, arguments are nested: more difcult so-
cial andpolitical issues will often be tiedto other complex andcontested
arguments and belief systems, linked to chains of prior argument. Con-
sider the following syllogism about achieving peace. The rst premise
articulates the goal of actors, the second premise makes a claim about
a causal relationship, and the conclusion states a logical action that
51
Francine Rosselli, John J. Skelly, and Diane M. Mackie, Processing Rational and Emo-
tional Messages: The Cognitive and Affective Mediation of Persuasion, Journal of Exper-
imental Social Psychology 31 (March 1995), 163190: 167.
52
Meaning is the manifest understanding of beliefs and arguments and the related web
of associations including the background beliefs held by interlocutors and observers by
which they are able to understand the arguments and beliefs. Linguists call this deep
structure. Associative arguments are particularly rich with meanings that may not be
obvious to interlocutors and which may vary among interlocutors.
53
K.H.F. Dyson, The State Tradition in Western Europe: A Study of an Idea and Institution
(Oxford: Martin Robinson, 1980), pp. 12 quoted in Chilton, Security Metaphors, p. 25.
27
Argument and change in world politics
follows from the premises. The context is a question about how to use
ones military to promote peace.
Example of Practical Inference in Foreign Policy Arguments
Premise: We desire international peace. (goal of actor)
Premise: The best waytoachieve peace is througha strongmilitary.
(causal argument)
Conclusion: We ought to make a strong military. (An action is required
or desired; follows from premises)
There are nearly always competing practical arguments on the table
or in the background. An alternative position to the argument pre-
sented above is the condence-building perspective where the goal or
major premise is the same the expression of a desire for peace but
the premise concerned with end-means relations makes an alternative
claimbased on different beliefs. The causal argument might be phrased,
The best way to achieve peace is through assuring the other side that
you have peaceful intentions where the conclusion might be commu-
nicate or disarm.
Both examples illustrate that there are multiple supporting beliefs
and arguments that underpin complex arguments.
54
Instrumental be-
liefs frequently come into play in arguments about practical questions
such as howshall the state defend itself. For example, military doctrines
include a mix of strategic, operational, andtactical beliefs about the most
efcient and effective ways to deter and ght wars. Those beliefs affect
decisions about the acquisition of equipment, the structure and content
of training, and the conduct of military campaigns. But those beliefs
are also used in arguments by those within and outside militaries to
legitimize or delegitimize other arguments about which weapons to ac-
quire in what number, how forces ought to be trained, and how wars
ought to be fought. Thus, reasoning is contextual, including particular
knowledge or larger belief contexts (culture).
Actors, persuasive context, and non-ideal speech
Political argument is institutionalizedin worldpolitics, albeit under dif-
ferent rules of procedure and standards of evidence, in several venues.
Indeed, diplomacy is not only the mediation of estrangement and alien-
ation, as James Der Deriansuggests, it is the formal andinstitutionalized
process of argumentationamongstates carriedonbyofcial or unofcial
54
On using articial intelligence to model practical reasoning see Alker, Rediscoveries
and Reformulations and Walton, Practical Reasoning.
28
Argument, belief, and culture
representatives of governments.
55
Besides bilateral diplomacy, venues
for argument in world politics include international courts, commis-
sions, and the resolution-making bodies of international organizations
as well as transnational movements. In domestic settings, argumenta-
tion is institutionalized in the peer review process of disciplinary jour-
nals, in the op-ed and letter pages of newspapers, and in public institu-
tions such as courts, legislatures, and political campaigns. Many kinds
of actors in world politics are involved in making arguments, fromindi-
viduals in governmental bureaucracies to diplomats who wish to make
treaties to avoid or end wars, to members of the press and intellectuals
who write opinion pieces about foreign policy, to staff members of non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) who desire a change in a states
foreign policies or the policies of inter-governmental organizations such
as the United Nations or the World Bank.
56
If argument-making is institutionalized and ubiquitous, it is not unaf-
fected by the purpose, context, and the identities of speakers and hear-
ers. Some scholars of argument, notably J urgen Habermas, talk about
the conditions for ideal speech where only the force of the better ar-
gument convinces.
57
No institutional power, physical threats, or lies get
in the way of the logic of argument and inference. In an ideal speech
situation, all actors are competent and able to challenge the premises of
their interlocutor, and the interlocutor must be prepared to justify their
claims to validity.
Thus, those who presume that argumentation is primarily a proce-
dure whereby two or more individuals try to arrive at an agreement or
truthpotentiallymiss animportant context of argumentation.
58
Asearch
for agreement may characterize some interpersonal arguments, but po-
litical arguments are different insignicant respects.
59
First, participants
55
See James Der Derian, On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Estrangement (New York: Basil
Blackwell, 1987).
56
Much of what transnational advocacy networks do involves making meta-arguments
and arguments. See Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Ad-
vocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).
57
See J urgen Habermas, Justication and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993) and Habermas, Between Facts and Norms.
58
Frans H. vanEemeren, RobGrootendorst, SallyJackson, andScott Jacobs, Reconstructing
Argumentative Discourse (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993), p. 12. Also see
H.P. Grice, Logic of Conversation, in P. Cole and J.L. Morgan, eds., Syntax and Semantics
3: Speech Acts (New York: Academic Press, 1979), pp. 4158; Denis J. Hilton, The Social
Context of Reasoning: Conversational Inference and Rational Judgement, Psychological
Bulletin 118 (September 1995), 248271.
59
While I share the desire of political theorists who seek to create non-coercive ideal
speech communities I amhere describing world politics, not at this point trying to remake
it. The last chapter is prescriptive.
29
Argument and change in world politics
in political argument, while they may sincerely want to persuade the
other and come to agreement, sometimes have no thought of trying to
persuade their immediate interlocutor; rather theyare playingtoalarger
audience, hoping to persuade non-participants and thus shift the polit-
ical balance of power. Moreover, while persuasion of ones counterpart
is often the point of making arguments, there are also other reasons to
argue. Specically, advocates of a particular positionmaybe attempting,
by stating their case, to rally their own supporters as a way of mobiliz-
ing their preexisting political power. Or advocates may be attempting
to lay the rhetorical grounds (change the frame) as the background for
a future argument. Or someone may give an argument in order to pro-
claim and establish their identity as a standard bearer or person who
holds particular beliefs.
Second, in major political arguments that occupy domestic and inter-
national societies over long periods of time, larger issues and relations
of power in addition to the ostensible issue being debated are usually
at stake. The occurrence of a major political argument means the dissat-
isfaction that is characteristic of all political arrangements is occurring
in a context of shifting ideas and power relations: there would be no
argument if all were settled. Rather, justications in the form of argu-
ments would perhaps be used to maintain the taken for grantedness of
the existing relationship. The occurrence of political argument indicates
that there is either a normative belief that the issues at stake should not
be decided by force alone or a practical judgment that a conict cannot be
decided by force. This is the case in all domestic societies, regardless of
the level of authoritarianism.
Third, the scope for argument varies within and across institutional
settings. For example, there is potentially greater scope for argument
in democracies if only and simply because the dominant institutions
have regular occasions, times, and venues for hearing arguments. A
normative belief in public deliberation underlies the institutionaliza-
tion of argument. In a democracy, when no side has the power to simply
impose their view (and they often get that power by having won prior
arguments and institutionalizing their victory), a decision often comes
about as a result of the process of argument. The scope for argument is
decreased in authoritarian settings. Specically, one cannot neglect the
important role of both simple allegiance (unreasoned faith) or unques-
tioned belief in the normality and legitimacy of certain institutions and
practices, and fear, which can be quite effective in holding authoritarian
states together. For fear to work, it requires that people believe adverse
30
Argument, belief, and culture
consequences will come about if they violate the dictates of the lead-
ership. Authoritarian elites demonstrate their power against potential
dissenters by making dissidents the subject of, for example, ridicule, job
loss, kidnapping, torture, or execution.
But the role of argument is not entirely absent in authoritarian set-
tings. Hegemons often make arguments so that they may maintain
their position and because they believe what they argue. Even coer-
cion requires arguments that are persuasive enough to convince those
who will operate the mechanisms of coercion that coercion is neces-
sary and that they must participate. Intimidation intended to produce
fear cannot go all the way to the top at all times. Indeed, political ar-
guments occur even among elites in authoritarian societies and the felt
need and the practice of using arguments to mobilize constituencies
testies to the importance of argument.
60
Counter-arguments may be
raised by those who are already in a counter-hegemony, or who seek
to form one; they are using these arguments to change not only the
beliefs and practices of the society but also the capabilities of the hege-
monic social order, perhaps to overturn it. In other words, the people
who make arguments come fromandconstitute elements of civil society
that seek either to maintain or to overturn social practices. In the case of
those who seek to overturn practices, their arguments may be successful
enough to change the arrangement of authority and power within the
civil society. In fact, they may have to do so to change dominant social
practices.
Fourth, though everyone may argue, not all are persuasive. Politics,
even in democratic contexts, is certainly not an ideal speech situation
where preexisting power and authority have been removed from the
scene or equalized and only the force of the better argument convinces.
Political argument occurs on a decidedly unlevel playing eld of
discourse between differently powerful actors. Those whose beliefs are
dominant usually hold an advantage in arguments; their position has
set the terms of debate, dening what will be considered at all, and
within that realm, what will be considered legitimate. In addition, those
who hold the dominant position are usually the dominant class, with all
the tools of privilege media access, positions of political and social vis-
ibility and authority, recognized expertise, and presumed legitimacy
at their disposal. These elites are, in other words, hegemonic in a
60
I thank Seyom Brown for suggesting this clear phrasing of my argument.
31
Argument and change in world politics
Gramscian sense.
61
Moreover, authority is not accidental. To advance
the newthinking inthe Soviet Union, for example, Gorbachevreplaced
many old thinkers with new thinkers who could further promote
those ideas in their agencies.
62
Further, as the work on decisionmaking
under conditions characterized by high degrees of uncertainty and
complexity suggests, interlocutors with specialized knowledge may
have rhetorical power disproportionately greater than their ostensible
rank.
63
For example, in a Western medical context physicians will have
greater authority attributed to their arguments over non-physicians
in discussions of human health and neurologists will have greater
authority than oncologists in discussions on treating multiple sclerosis
or Parkinsons disease.
Finally, although in ideal speech situations, everything should be on
the table, in most political arguments, much goes unsaid. For example,
actors commonly make other assumptions about fellowconversational-
ists and inferences about content that go beyond the explicit contents of
arguments. Hearers may assume that speakers utterances are true. If
the hearer attributes properties such as sincerity, reliability, and knowl-
edgeability to the speaker, then the hearer may well consider the proba-
ble truthvalue of anutterance to be high. If, onthe other hand, the hearer
considers the speaker to be insincere, unreliable or unknowledgeable,
then the hearer may well consider the probable truth of the utterance to
be low.
64
Andhearers alsouse contextual knowledge toll inthe blanks
of explicit arguments.
65
Contextual factors generally held exogenous
to game models may prove decisive for outcomes. These factors include
actors beliefs about the nature of the interaction, their beliefs about
other actors beliefs, and the means by which actors convey and infer
intentions to and from one another.
66
In sum, while meta-arguments as well as more specic identity, sci-
entic, practical, and ethical arguments are made all the time by many
actors, not all arguments have the same chance to be persuasive. Per-
suasive context the purpose and intended audience of the argument,
61
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (New York:
International Publishers, 1971). Also see Stephen Gill, ed., Gramsci, Historical Materialism
and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
62
Levy, Learning and Foreign Policy, p. 300.
63
Haas, ed., Special Issue: Knowledge, Power, and International Policy Coordination.
64
Hilton, The Social Context of Reasoning, p. 250.
65
Grice called this practice conversational implicature. See H.P. Grice, Logic of Con-
versation; Duffy, Frederking, and Tucker, Language Games.
66
Duffy, Frederking, and Tucker, Language Games, p. 271.
32
Argument, belief, and culture
whether larger issues are on the table, the relative power and identities
of the interlocutors, and the relevant cultural contexts affect the suc-
cess of persuasive efforts. The existence of argument as a practice is
consistent; what varies across social formations and depending on the
structure of power within groups, are the resources of authority and
publicity (the ability to make arguments heard). Those who wish to
form counter-hegemonies must make persuasive arguments to bolster
their position and form a social movement.
Argument, belief, and legitimation
Even in cases where one side has imposed their views or practices on
another, the process of argument and persuasion is still crucial: hege-
mons must convince others to carry out their wishes because even the
leviathan falls asleep. In other words, although it is especially important
to politically insecure elites, legitimation is a preoccupation of all ruling
elites because at all times, even in totalitarian systems, governance re-
quires some level of voluntary submission to authority.
67
To minimize
resistance leaders of states must convince people that their actions are
legitimate (done for a good reason and/or under right authority) on
some level, or else they could not govern without the use of expensive
surveillance and coercive mechanisms. To a greater or lesser degree
leaders have to legitimate their policies, to themselves, to their legisla-
tors, and to their electorates. They do this by the use of language and
concepts. Consequently they must draw, proactively or retroactively, on
the discourses (beliefs, practices and associated linguistic realizations)
of the society of which they are a part.
68
Elites can use any number of legitimating ideologies to show that
there are good arguments for a political orders claim to be recognized
as right andjust.
69
Legitimatingideologies usedinpolitical orders have
included divine right, meritocracy/elitism, democratic/republican rep-
resentation, and socialism. Legitimating ideologies are more or less
67
Michel Foucault, The Subject and Power, in Herbert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow,
eds., Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd edn (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1984) and Thomas Franck, The Emerging Right to Democratic Gov-
ernance, The American Journal of International Law 86 (January 1992), 4691. Loyalty and
idealism can, to a certain extent, function in place of good reasons. See David Lumsdaine,
Moral VisioninInternational Politics: The ForeignAid Regime, 1949-1989 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993), p. 12.
68
Chilton, Security Metaphors, p. 31.
69
See J urgen Habermas, Legitimation Problems in the Modern State, in J urgen
Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979),
pp. 178205: 178.
33
Argument and change in world politics
acceptable as societies move from one historically distinct situation to
another that is, as their beliefs change. Fascism and divine right are
now mostly discredited legitimating ideologies, made unacceptable to
Westernsocieties as the belief assumptions behindthose ideologies were
understood differently and were delegitimized.
Legitimation crises are a sense that the government or governing
group does not deserve the allegiance and compliance of the people
because their actions are no longer understood as being done for a good
reason. A fundamental legitimation crisis occurs when a governments
legitimating ideology is discredited or successfully challenged, for ex-
ample, when divine right is no longer seen as a legitimate basis for rule.
Aregime legitimation crisis occurs when a particular clique, for example
a social class or ethnic group, is seen as illegitimate. A policy legitima-
tion crisis occurs when specic policies of a government are seen as so
troubling as to throw into question the policy or programs of the rul-
ing group. A personal legitimation crisis occurs when the leadership of
a particular individual is seen as illegitimately obtained or they have
misused the trust of the people. A personal legitimation crisis is likely
when a governments leader and/or their close associates are suspected
of or proven to have broken the law or social norms by, for example,
accepting bribes or intimidating political opponents. There may also be
cultural or societal legitimation crises, when longstanding practices are
no longer taken for granted and seen as legitimate.
70
States that cannot convince their populations that their actions are le-
gitimate eventuallysuffer legitimationcrises; if those crises are not reme-
died through persuasion, the state may modify its policy or be forced to
undergo a serious restructuring, perhaps a revolution. Individuals may
be more receptive to ethical arguments if they live in societies that are in
the midst of a legitimation crisis; and vice versa, ethical arguments may
become the seeds of a legitimation crisis. Of course a legitimation crisis
of one type may spark other sorts of legitimation crises as, for example,
whenthe anti-slavery movement createdproblems for conservative rule
inBritainandwhenit sparkedtensions over states rights andfederalism
in the United States.
71
70
This is a simpler model of legitimation needs and crisis than J urgen Habermas, Legiti-
mation Crisis (Boston: BeaconPress, 1975) where Habermas focuses onthe consequences of
the decreasing role of the lifeworld andthe decline of cultural expectations as rationality
and expectations about the states role in providing well being increase.
71
Habermas suggests stages of legitimationare connectedwithsocial-evolutionarytran-
sitions to newlearning levels andthat the legitimations of a supersededstage, no matter
34
Argument, belief, and culture
States must provide arguments, which are seen to be legitimate, for
their actions. Environments thick with international institutions (such
as the United Nations, the world court, regional organizations of states,
and non-governmental organizations) and transnational advocacy net-
works provide venues where states, corporations, and individuals have
to justify their international behavior. International institutions and
governments must also increasingly justify their actions and inactions
to attentive international and domestic publics.
72
As Martha Finnemore
argues: When states justify their interventions, they are drawing on
and articulating shared values and expectations held by other decision
makers and other publics in other states. Finnemore suggests that this
is literally an attempt to connect ones actions to standards of justice,
or perhaps more generically, to standards of appropriate and acceptable
behavior. Thus, through an examination of justications we can begin
to piece together what those internationally held standards are and how
they may change over time.
73
Within international society, arguments
and behaviors are judged on the basis of prevailing international belief
systems, including normative beliefs. Thus, successful arguments in
world politics must pass both domestic and international muster.
Why do arguments succeed?
To say that argument is ubiquitous, and how certain arguments might
work, does not yet fully answer the question of whether argument is
causally important. Meta-arguments are causally important when their
exponents succeed in setting the framework for understanding events.
This framing effect is particularly important in crises, when actors may
what their content, are depreciatedwith the transition to the next higher stage; it is not this
or that reason which is no longer convincing but the kind of reason. Habermas, Legit-
imation Problems, p. 185. I agree with Habermas that once certain types of justication
are understood as illegitimate, a state is not likely to successfully resort to another variety
of the same type of legitimating ideology. But whether there are progressive stages of
legitimation connected to social-evolutionary stages is not clear. Nor is it clear that a soci-
ety must hold only one type of legitimating ideology at a time. Indeed, it seems possible
to use two or more legitimating ideologies simultaneously, with perhaps one reinforcing
the weaknesses of the other. In sum, all political institutions face legitimation problems,
but those problems do not always become fundamental, regime, policy, or personal legit-
imation crises.
72
Thomas Risse-Kappen, Public Opinion, Domestic Structure, and Foreign Policy in
Liberal Democracies, World Politics 43 (July1991), 479512; Paul Wapner, Politics Beyond
the State: Environmental ActivismandWorldCivic Politics, World Politics 47 (April 1995),
311340.
73
Martha Finnemore, Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention, in
Katzenstein, ed., Culture of National Security, pp. 153185: 159.
35
Argument and change in world politics
have little time toreconsider a frame once it has beenacceptedor become
dominant. We can infer that scientic, identity, ethical, and practical
arguments were causally important if actors change their beliefs and
behavior after they have heard arguments and if other explanations fail
to account for the change. A more detailed discussion on cause and
ethical arguments appears in chapter 2.
If argument is ubiquitous, why are some arguments persuasive and
others not? Persuasive arguments often have one or more of the charac-
teristics of being emotionally appealing, accounting for evidence, and
addressing the concerns raised by counter-arguments. Persuasive argu-
ments are alsooftenconsistent withpreexistingbeliefs. Further, some ar-
guments are persuasive simplybecause the frame has beenset sowell by
advocates that no other argument seems plausible. Additionally, there
may be a bias toward coherentism, with successful meta-arguments dis-
posing hearers to accept subsequent arguments that cohere with them.
Further, especially in the case of practical arguments, the logic of cer-
tain arguments may be more compelling than the alternatives. Other
arguments are persuasive because they are made by authorities or ex-
perts, andthe culture defers tothose experts. (The literature onepistemic
communities is implicitly an example of the effectiveness of scientic
arguments.)
74
Persuasive arguments must also often change underly-
ing beliefs. Finally, arguments may, as suggested above, resonate with
or evoke an important emotional response. Thus, the content of argu-
ments is important in explaining their persuasiveness, but so too is the
cultural context within which arguments are made and heard.
Why do some arguments win out over others? Of course, more
persuasive arguments may win. But we know that not all com-
pelling arguments succeed in changing minds or behavior, and
thus we must take into account the four aspects of the discursive
context that affect the success of arguments: access, organizational
ability, chance, and coherence with the larger material and ideational
context. First, to have a possibility of succeeding, arguments must
be heard. Since politics is far from an ideal speech community or
level playing eld, many arguments will never be heard or achieve
the same legitimacy as those made by advocates with the power to
squash alternative perspectives or to pay for media access. Second,
successful arguments are made by savvy political actors who mobilize
support, while those who do not mobilize and change the balance
74
See Haas, Introduction.
36
Argument, belief, and culture
of political power may have good arguments, but poor organizing
ability. Third, there is a degree of chance involved in the success of some
arguments over others. For example, if the proponents of an argument
happen to be unskilled rhetoricians, their arguments may fail decisively
while weaker arguments may have more skilled proponents.
Finally, arguments are less likely to be persuasive if the social and
material context economics and strategic interests do not align with
the argument. This does not mean that argument actually boils down
to material conditions, but rather it acknowledges the complexity of the
relationship between arguments and preexisting cultural, strategic, and
economic factors. On the other hand, arguments that have already suc-
ceeded in reframing actors understanding of their interests, and assist-
ing social movements or reformers in restructuring important elements
of economy and politics, are more likely to be persuasive.
Belief
Decisions for war will always be affected by the beliefs about war which
prevail within the society in question and the effect these have on na-
tional behaviour. These beliefs have varied greatly from one age to an-
other. In some war has been seen as glorious and honourable, in some
as wicked; in some as cheap and in some expensive. A widespread
belief that war is a normal and inevitable feature of international life
must affect the behaviour of all states (if only because every one must
be in a position to counter the expected onslaught of others). In other
words, it is not only beliefs that exist within particular states that will
affect their propensity to war, but also the beliefs they know to ex-
ist elsewhere within their [international] society. All are affected by
the expectations and assumptions of the international community as a
whole.
75
There are essentially three views of the role of belief in decisionmak-
ing. Many scholars suggest that we should start analysis of decisions
by assuming rationality or else we will be lost in a realm of thick de-
scription and mired in the quicksand of idiosyncratic explanations and
unpredictability.
76
Different rational actors, given the same situation,
should essentially be interchangeable as they weigh costs, risks, and
75
Evan Luard, War in International Society (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1986), p. 21.
76
See Gary S. Becker, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1976).
37
Argument and change in world politics
benets and maximize given utilities. The content of beliefs seems less
important, inthis view, thanthe rational process of decisionmakinggiven
particular beliefs, preferences, and probabilities.
A second view supposes that the process of decisionmaking is es-
sentially rational, but because individuals are limited in their cognitive
capacities and are occasionally, especially in crisis situations, inuenced
by feelings or other (ir/rational) considerations, beliefs may bias an indi-
viduals processing of information and their decisions. Herbert Simon,
for instance, distinguishes betweensubstantive, ideal type decisionmak-
ing, andprocedural or boundedrationality, whichrecognizes a decision-
makers cognitive limits.
77
In this view, we can use tools that include
an understanding of belief (cognitive belief systems, misperception the-
ory, organization theory, or even psychological analysis of individual
decisionmakers) to ll in the gaps of the master rational actor narra-
tive. From this perspective, we expect both affective (emotion driven)
and cognitive (information processing) biases inside the black box.
78
Or, as Max Weber said: the construction of a purely rational course of
action. . . serves the sociologist as a type . . . By comparison with this it
is possible to understand the ways in which actual action is inuenced
by irrational factors of all sorts . . . in that they account for the deviation
from the line of conduct which would be expected on the hypothesis
that the action was purely rational.
79
Sydney Verba argued that [o]ne
of the major values of the rationality model may be that it facilitates the
systematic consideration of deviations from rationality.
80
Thus, even those who use cognitive and abnormal psychology to
explain decisionmaking under stress, or those who look to explain
unsuitable military doctrines by the pathologies of militarismand na-
tionalism, presume a rational outline for decisionmakinganda rational
irrational dichotomy. Similarly, rationalist scholars have begun to
77
Herbert Simon, Human Nature in Politics: The Dialogue of Psychology with Political
Science, The American Political Science Review 79 (June 1985), 293304.
78
See Jervis, Perception and Misperception; Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The
Nature of International Crises (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); Robert
Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow, and Janice Gross Stein with contributions by Patrick Morgan
and Jack Snyder, Psychology and Deterrence (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1985); Deborah Welch Larson, Origins of Containment: A Psychological Explanation
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Janice Gross Stein, Building Politics into
Psychology: The Misperception of Threat, Political Psychology 9 (June 1988), 245271.
79
MaxWeber, trans. A.M. HendersonandTalcott Parsons, The Theory of Social and Economic
Organization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 92.
80
Sidney Verba, Assumptions of Rationality and Non-Rationality in Models of the In-
ternational System, in Klaus Knorr and Sidney Verba, eds., The International System: The-
oretical Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 93117: 116.
38
Argument, belief, and culture
acknowledge the role of ideas but regard them as always a valuable
supplement to interest-based, rational actor models.
81
Barry Weingast
regards belief systems, when held by all actors in a system as a co-
ordinating device that functions like complete information, solving a
large scale coordination problem.
82
A third view, taken here, argues that beliefs are neither rational nor
irrational: beliefs are the propositions that individual people andgroups
have about themselves, others, and the world around them. They think
those ideas are true they believe them. When nearly everyone in a
group holds a certain belief, and it is taken for granted, perhaps even
conrmed by experience, then beliefs may have the status of knowl-
edge, truth, or reality. More often than not, however, although one
particular belief may be dominant (have the most political and social
clout), other beliefs about the same subject may compete with a dom-
inant belief. The meaning statements that members of a society dont
believe at all, or dont yet believe, are described by skeptics with vary-
ing degrees of respect as a notion, idea, knowledge, theory, myth,
ideology, faith, or dogma.
83
If others dont share our beliefs, we may try
to convince them of their truth. But regardless of the truth of a belief, as
Luard argues, All are affected by the expectations and assumptions of
the international community as a whole.
84
Philosophical, instrumental, normative, and identity beliefs
Philosophical beliefs are ontological and epistemological. They are about
the kind of reality humans inhabit, the general qualities of human
beings or human nature and the natural world, and about how to know
more about the world. Philosophical beliefs include views about howto
decide between competing beliefs and when to add newbeliefs or mod-
ify or even eliminate already held beliefs. For example, we could believe
that we will know more about the world if a god reveals truth to us, or
we might believe in the scientic method, or we might trust that history
81
John Kurt Jacobsen, Much Ado About Ideas: The Cognitive Factor in Economic
Policy, World Politics 47 (January 1995), 283310: 285.
82
Barry R. Weingast, A Rational Choice Perspective on the Role of Ideas: Shared Belief
Systems andStateSovereigntyinInternational Relations,Politics andSociety23(December
1995), 449464: passim 460461. Similarly, Katzenstein says, Collective expectations can
have strong causal effects. Peter J. Katzenstein, Introduction: Alternative Perspectives
on National Security, in Katzenstein, ed., Culture of National Security, pp. 132: 7.
83
My emphasis on belief and the process of argument does not mean that other aspects
of agents, such as their dispositions (e.g., to be skeptical or accepting), desires, habits, and
feelings, are unimportant.
84
Luard, War in International Society, p. 21.
39
Argument and change in world politics
repeats itself andour guide to the present andthe future lies inanunder-
standing of the past. Realist foreign policy decisionmakers generally
believe that humans are by nature aggressive or at least interested in
acquiring power. Realists also tend to hold positivist epistemologies
in the sense of believing that observation of the empirical world the
world revealed by our senses is trustworthy.
85
Philosophical beliefs
are often the content of meta-arguments.
Normative beliefs are ideas individuals and groups hold about how
they ought to act (or not act) to do what is right or expected. They are
prescriptions with justications attached to them. Prescriptive norma-
tive statements follow from normative beliefs, e.g. thou shall not kill.
Normative beliefs are the content of ethical arguments.
Although multiple, conicting meanings attributed to the term
normmaynot bethegreatest shortcomingintheworkoninternational
norms, there is conceptual confusion about the idea of norms.
86
Many
use norm to mean the most common practice, while others talk about
norms as oughts or ethical prescriptions. Unfortunately, international
relations theorists frequently use norms to denote both senses.
87
Fur-
ther, it is also not uncommon to imply norms are synonymous with
shared ideas, a form of common knowledge. For example, Kratochwil
says that norms are standards of behavior dened in terms of rights
and obligations.
88
But Kratochwil also says that norms reduce uncer-
tainty, allow the pursuit of goals and shared meaning, dene situations
and rules of the game, and provide the template for solutions. In these
senses, for Kratochwil, norms are not prescriptive, but like other forms
of common knowledge or shared belief.
89
A distinction between norms and normative beliefs should minimize
confusion. Norms describe the dominant practice or behavior. The behav-
ioral normis the behavior that typies the mode ina distributionof be-
haviors, while those that fall outside of the range of dominant practices
are often considered abnormal. Behavioral norms (or conventions),
may, like common knowledge, create expectations about how actors
85
See Alker, Rediscoveries and Reformulations, pp. 612 on ontological, epistemological,
and methodological orientations in international relations theory.
86
Gregory A. Raymond, Problems and Prospects in the Study of International Norms,
Mershon International Studies Review 41 (November 1997), 205245.
87
See Janice E. Thompson, Norms in International Relations: A Conceptual Analysis,
International Journal of Group Tensions 23 (1993), 6783. Thompson argues that we should
reserve the term norms to describe normal practices.
88
Kratochwil, Rules, Norms and Decisions, p. 59.
89
Ibid., passim, e.g., pp. 9, 10, 48, and 50.
40
Argument, belief, and culture
will behave in certain situations. When discussing norms as domi-
nant practices or expectations about such practices, I use the phrases
convention, dominant practice, norm or behavioral norm. If the behav-
ioral norm is respect for sovereignty, dened as non-interference in the
domestic affairs of governments, then actors expect non-interference.
What if a practice is not universally adhered to? It may still be con-
sidered a behavioral norm if the behavior is commonly expected, and
if, when actors do not follow the expected behavior, sanctions are con-
sidered and/or applied against those who violate the norm. In sum,
statements about social conventions or behavioral norms describe the
dominant practice and the shared expectation that actors will followthe
norm in the appropriate context.
Principles, rules, and laws are prescriptive normative statements
that rest on normative beliefs. Behavioral norms are identied by wide
compliance and are usually justied with normative beliefs that are
themselves justied by other normative or practical beliefs.
90
Behav-
ioral norms and prescriptive norms/normative beliefs are clearly re-
lated but should not be equated. A norm describes the dominant
practice or behavior, and normative beliefs often justify the normal
practice.
91
Legal or social sanctions for violating norms signal the exis-
tence of prescriptive norms and normative beliefs. Beliefs that are pre-
scriptive statements about what dominant practices ought to be, are
termed prescriptive norms or normative beliefs depending on whether
I am describing an injunction to behave a certain way, or the beliefs
about why it is good to behave this way. Ethical arguments are char-
acterized by the use of prescriptive statements that rest on normative
beliefs.
Instrumental beliefs are the practical ideas we have about cause andef-
fect in the natural and social worlds and about howto get what we want
accomplished. They are both general and specic guides to action, with
the level of specicity usually related to the specicity of the task. They
suggest what to do once we have perceived and evaluated the nature of
a situationandidentiedour goals. Instrumental beliefs maybe codied
90
Conventions or behavioral norms are similar to Jon Elsters social norms and pre-
scriptive norms are similar to his moral norms. See Jon Elster, Norms of Revenge,
Ethics 100 (July 1990), 862885, especially 863866.
91
Douglas Foyle argues that in the realmof public opinion foreign policy decisionmakers
hold normative beliefs about the desirability of input from public opinion affecting
foreign policy choices. Douglas C. Foyle, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: Elite Be-
liefs as a Mediating Variable, International Studies Quarterly 41 (March 1997), 141169:
145.
41
Argument and change in world politics
in organizational routines (institutionalized) and used, in combination
with philosophical (ontological and epistemological) beliefs, to produce
new knowledge. Instrumental beliefs are often the content of scientic
and practical arguments. For example, one can think of foreign policies,
whichare composedof manydifferent elements, as instrumental beliefs.
One element of a states foreign policy is military doctrine, instrumen-
tal beliefs that help determine how a state organizes its military forces
and intends to use those forces in war. Military doctrines rest on ever-
more specic instrumental beliefs, such as the utility of certain weapons
(based on experience and scientic-technical knowledge/beliefs) under
various conditions or the ratio of offensive to defensive forces needed
to successfully engage in a breakthrough assault.
Identity beliefs include related and probably co-dependent beliefs
about self and other. Self-identity beliefs are the beliefs we hold about
our individual selves andabout our group, includingwhobelongs inthe
group. Self-identitybeliefs are often, perhaps always, pairedwithbeliefs
about other individuals or groups. They include stereotypes, whether
positive or negative, and notions of essential self and essential other,
including the idea that self and other do not change and that groups
are homogeneous there is little variation among individuals who be-
long in certain categories of us and other/them. Yet according to the
pragmatic and historically contingent view of the foundation of beliefs,
there is not much about identities that is natural or xed (except by our
understanding of our history); identities, like norms, are socially con-
structed and simultaneously constitutive of the social world. Identities
seem to be both mutually constitutive and historically/sociologically
determined.
Often identities include conceptions of roles arguably different
from and overlapping with identities for both self and others. Roles
are a combination of situation-specic behaviors (driven by normative
beliefs) and identity: individuals know which roles to assume in part
because of their identity, and they know who they are, their identity, in
part by the roles they perform. Roles expectations and customs about
behavior only make sense in certain contexts.
92
There is often a re-
ective and reasoned interaction of identity, role expectations (context-
and norm-inuenced) and prescriptive social norms.
93
For example,
US Senator Richard Russells identity argument for a surprise attack
92
See Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 155159, 164170.
93
On national role conceptions see, for instance, Stephen G. Walker, ed., Role Theory and
Foreign Policy Analysis (Durham: Duke University Press, 1987). Similarly, constitutive
42
Argument, belief, and culture
during the Cuban missile crisis included a role belief: It seems to me
that we are at a crossroads. Were either a rst class power or were
not.
94
Foundations of belief
Foundations are the grounds for holding a particular belief or set of
beliefs. To focus on foundations, ask: on what is the belief based and
how can it be justied or shown to be true.
95
There are at least four
views about the foundations of belief.
Foundationalists, or materialists, argue that well-founded beliefs
about the world reect a material reality (ontology) that we come to
know through our sense experiences or observations (epistemology).
Individuals base their beliefs on observation just as empiricists base
their science on observables or sense impressions. Perceptions can be
more or less accurate; accurate perceptions correspond to reality and
directly justify basic beliefs. Beliefs based on observation may in turn
indirectly, or inferentially, justify other beliefs. Rational individuals only
hold those beliefs which they can justify rationally either directly or
indirectly from empirical observation. Others beliefs will be intelligi-
ble to us, if the other is rational, because their beliefs rest on the same
foundations. A justied belief is grounded on some observation, or it
is grounded on or entailed in some other belief that is itself grounded
on observation. In other words, one can give a reason, rooted in the
world of material observation, for the particular belief being held. Good
arguments rest on empirically justied beliefs.
The anti-foundationalist position holds that beliefs are accidental,
historically contingent, and essentially arbitrary. We must accept the
introduction of chance as a category in the production of events.
96
norms are those which create new actors, interests or categories of action. They are
beliefs about the properties or characteristics of a role. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn
Sikkink, International Norm Dynamics and Political Change, International Organization
52 (Autumn 1998), 887917: 891.
94
Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House
During the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 258.
95
This is similar tobut not thesameas askinghowapersoncametoholdaparticular belief.
Someone may acquire a belief second-hand, e.g. through education or hearsay, rather than
by coming to hold the belief in some rst-hand (experiential or reective) way. For an
introduction to philosophical approaches to belief, see Robert Audi, Belief, Justication and
Knowledge (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1988). An introduction to psychological approaches
is Susan T. Fiske and Shelley E. Taylor, Social Cognition (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley
Publishing Co.: 1984).
96
Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language (New York:
Pantheon, 1972), p. 231.
43
Argument and change in world politics
In this case we would expect a wide variety of beliefs. According to
anti-foundationalists, beliefs should also be highly sensitive to cultural
context and the arrangement of discursive power within social groups.
[W]hat ties Dewey, Foucault, James and Nietzsche, together the sense
that there is nothing deepdown inside us except what we have put there
ourselves, no criterion that we have not created in the course of creat-
ing a practice, no standard of rationality that is not an appeal to such a
criterion, no rigorous argumentation that is not obedience to our own
conventions.
97
Inthecoherentist perspective, ones beliefs, nomatter howtheyarede-
rived, are mutuallysupporting, formingacoherent network: one accepts
as justied those beliefs which t with other beliefs. Abasic criterion
for a coherent epistemic state is that it should be logically consistent.
98
The beliefs in a coherent belief system entail each other, they are tied
to other beliefs in a system where beliefs are justied if they are part of
that system.
In the pragmatic view, beliefs do not necessarily accurately reect a
material reality, nor are they necessarily consistent with other beliefs,
but they come about and remain because they work to help an indi-
vidual get along psychologically or they coordinate social and practical
activity. Correspondence to reality is not necessarily the foundation
of belief.
99
The foundation of a belief is its utility. A justied belief in
the pragmatic view is one that works or is useful in a particular context.
According to pragmatists, beliefs that do not work will or ought to be
rejected or revised.
There is good evidence for all of these perspectives on the foun-
dation of belief. That is, some kinds of belief seem to be founded
on observation, others on nothing in particular but habit or social
convention, while some beliefs are held because they cohere with
some other belief, or because they work to help actors understand
or act with efcacy. It is not necessary to decide that particular be-
liefs are well justied to see that beliefs are used and useful in argu-
ments. However, beliefs and arguments that rest on foundations that
97
RichardRorty, Consequences of Pragmatism(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1982), p. xlii.
98
Peter Gardenfors, The Dynamics of Belief Systems: Foundations Versus Coherence
Theories, in Cristina Bicchieri and Maria Luisa Dalla Chiara, eds., Knowledge, Belief and
Strategic Interaction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 377398: 380.
99
See Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1979).
44
Argument, belief, and culture
are perceived as shaky will obviously be more vulnerable to counter-
arguments.
Belief system theories
The theory of belief systems presentedhere grows out of, but diverges in
signicant ways from, earlier theories of belief systems and operational
codes. Yet, as Steve Smith notes, a bewildering variety of terms is used
in international relations to describe the essential features of the concept
of belief system: terms such as the image, operational code, cogni-
tive map . . . All of these focus on basically the same factor: the nature
of the ltering device of existing beliefs about empirical and normative
issues.
100
Most scholars of belief systems inworldpolitics holdfounda-
tionalist or coherentist views of beliefs. They also tend to presume that
belief systems affect decisionmaking by inuencing information pro-
cessing tasks specically that beliefs bias perceptions (assuming that
objective observers, not inuenced by preexisting beliefs, would have
accurate perceptions and make rational decisions unbiased by their
prejudices).
For example, Ole Holsti characterizes belief systems as composed of a
group of images of the past, present, and future: they are a set of lenses
through which information concerning the physical and social environ-
ment are received that establish goals and order preferences.
101
Holsti
argues: [O]ur behavior is in large part shaped by the manner in which
we perceive, diagnose, and evaluate our physical and social environ-
ment. Our perceptions, in turn, are ltered through clusters of beliefs
about what has been, what is, what will be, and what ought to be. He
says beliefs provide us with a more or less coherent code by which
we organize and make sense out of what would otherwise be a confus-
ing array of signals picked up from the environment by our senses.
102
Similarly, Stephen Walker argues that belief systems inuence, but do
not determine, diagnostic and choice propensities. The dominant in-
ference pattern is the principle of cognitive consistency, from which
are derived two general propositions: (a) beliefs tend to reinforce one
100
Steve Smith, Belief Systems andthe Studyof International Relations,inRichardLittle
and Steve Smith, eds., Belief Systems and International Relations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1988), pp. 1136: 11.
101
Ole Holsti, The Belief System and National Images: A Case Study, Journal of Conict
Resolution 16 (September 1963), 244252; 245.
102
Ole R. Holsti, Foreign Policy Decision Makers Viewed Psychologically: Cognitive
Process Approaches, in James Rosenau, ed., In Search of Global Patterns (New York: The
Free Press, 1976), pp. 120144: 122.
45
Argument and change in world politics
another to form a coherent belief system; (b) under specied conditions
beliefs constrain the range of alternative choices and thereby inuence
the nal decision.
103
Robert Jervis argues that preexisting beliefs are rational in the sense
that they help actors make sense of the world. Beliefs can help decision-
makers increase the signal-to-noise ratioof environmental cues, but they
can also be misleading if they are inappropriate or held without critical
reection.
104
As Jervis suggests, There is no way to draw a neat, sharp
line between that degree of holding to existing beliefs and disparaging
discrepant information that is necessary for the intelligent comprehen-
sion of the environment and that degree that leads to the maintenance
of beliefs that should be rejected by all fair minded men.
105
Individu-
als may ignore discrepant information because it simply does not make
sense from within their paradigm and perhaps they do not see what
they cant understand. Or individuals may misperceive the information,
assuming that the presently held paradigm accounts for the incoming
data. Those lacking rm preexisting beliefs may be more prone to be-
ing swayed by the latest argument or alternative presented, while those
who hold rm beliefs may be prone to premature cognitive closure, cut-
ting off analysis of information or policy alternatives because they are
alreadyconvincedof the correct path.
106
Individual andgroupbelief sys-
tems may change over time, for instance due to changes in personnel, or
dramatic historical events which cause people to learn something new
because their previous beliefs were inadequate. Jervis argues quite per-
suasively, however, that individuals are often quite resistant to change
and they may employ any number of strategies to avoid changing their
beliefs.
107
Alexander George, building on the work of Nathan Leites, pro-
posed identifying an actors operational code belief system through
a systematic content analysis of an actors philosophical and instru-
mental beliefs.
108
George argued that the way to determine the effect of
103
Stephen G. Walker, The Evolution of Operational Code Analysis, Political Psychology
11 (June 1990), 403-418: 409. Also see Stephen G. Walker, Operational Codes and Content
Analysis: The Case of Henry Kissinger, in Imtrad Gailhofer, William E. Saris, Marrianne
Melman, eds., Different Text Analysis Procedures for the Studyof DecisionMaking(Amsterdam:
Sociometric Research Foundation, 1986), pp. 1327; and Coding Instructions for the OC
Procedure, in ibid., pp. 111120.
104
Jervis, Perception and Misperception, pp. 143ff., 156161.
105
Ibid., p. 177.
106
Ibid., pp. 175, 187. Also see Larson, Origins of Containment, p. 65.
107
See Jervis, Perception and Misperception, especially pp. 291296, on the methods indi-
viduals employ to preserve their beliefs.
108
Alexander George, The Operational Code: A Neglected Approach to the Study of
46
Argument, belief, and culture
operational code beliefs on decisions is either by demonstrating congru-
ence between beliefs and decisions or by tracing the process of decision-
making. In process tracing one seeks to establish the ways in which the
actors beliefs inuenced the receptivity to and assessment of incoming
information, his denition of the situation, his identication and evalu-
ation of options, as well as, nally, his choice of a course of action.
109
The congruence methodrequires muchless informationabout the actual
decision process. The researcher identies the nature of the subjects be-
liefs and policy preferences and then determines whether the decisions
follow from those beliefs. The causal signicance of operational codes
is not necessarily proven by this procedure, its plausibility is merely
established.
110
In sum, work on belief systems has been primarily cognitive
and focused on perceptions, assuming that preexisting beliefs bias
perceptions.
111
Beliefs are understood to be privately held by indi-
viduals and those beliefs affect perceptions and sometimes help them
organize their responses to situations. For example, Dan Reiter suggests
that states act as if they have beliefs, or ideas about international
politics.
112
Alexander George argues: Neither . . . diagnosis of situa-
tions nor . . . choice for action is rigidly prescribed and determined by
these beliefs.
113
Despite this last caveat, there is little discussion of the
exact role of beliefs in the decisionmaking processes of individuals or
groups. These cognitively inuenced theories of belief presume that
beliefs are rst of all (biasing) lenses, and secondly lead reexively or
somewhat unreectively(thoughnot rigidly) topolicychoices. Actors
behave in ways that are essentially unreectively consistent with their
beliefs.
Political Leaders and Decision-Making, International Studies Quarterly 13 (June 1969),
190222. Nathan Leites rst suggested the phrase operational code in The Operational
Code of the Politburo (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951).
109
George, The Causal Nexus, p. 113.
110
Ibid. pp. 106113.
111
Others have examined the role of beliefs and related concepts in social life e.g.
cognitive psychology, the sociology of knowledge, the history of ideas, and philosophy
of science: schemas, wertrationality, discourse, episteme, ideas, ideology, and paradigms.
Some of these concepts from outside political science, namely Max Webers ideas about
wertrationality, Michel Foucaults ideas about discourse, episteme, and knowledge, and
Thomas Kuhns arguments about scientic paradigms, and feminist theorists of gender,
are similar to mine.
112
Dan Reiter, Crucible of Beliefs: Learning, Alliances, and World Wars (Ithaca: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1996), p. 12.
113
George, Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy, p. 45.
47
Argument and change in world politics
The emphasis on perception is partly explained by the close relation-
ship belief system scholars have had with cognitive psychology, draw-
ingparticular inspirationfromschema theory. Schemas helpdecision-
makers deal with complexity by providing a framework of concepts
and connections; they are higher order knowledge structures . . . that
embody expectations guiding lower order processing of the stimulus
concept.
114
Schemas are, in a sense, like grammar, providing the frame-
work for understanding incoming information and quickly articulating
a response.
115
So schemas are abstract concepts and notions about ex-
pectedrelationships, theories that inuenceperceptionbyorganizingin-
coming informationandinuence behavior by providing a guide to suc-
cessful responses in similar instances. In certain stylized situations, one
type of schema, knownas ascript, maydescribe the waythat individu-
als approach frequently encountered situations that offer little variance.
In sum, a script is a hypothesized cognitive structure that when acti-
vated organizes comprehension of event-based situations. In its weak
sense, it is a bundle of inferences about the potential occurrence of a
set of events and may be structurally similar to other schemata that do
not deal with events. In its strong sense, it involves expectations about
the order as well as the occurrence of events. In the strongest sense of a
totally ritualized event sequence (e.g., a Japanese tea ceremony), script
predictions become infallible but this case is relatively rare.
116
Vertzberger argues: information that ts into existing schemata that
is cognitive structures of organized prior knowledge abstracted from
specic experiences is noticed earlier, considered more valid, and pro-
cessed much faster than information that contradicts or does not t into
any particular schema.
117
While schema and belief system theory point to the ways individuals
respond to what they see as routine situations, it is deterministic. This
kind of theorizing too often neglects both the reective characteristics of
humans, how we deal with multiple, sometimes contradictory, ideas at
once, and ignores the political context of decisionmaking in foreign pol-
icy where individuals must make arguments to justify their perceptions
114
Robert Abelson, Psychological Status of the Script Concept, American Psychologist 36
(1981), 715729: 715.
115
See George, The Causal Nexus, p. 97, and Larson, Origins of Containment, pp. 50
57; Deborah Welch Larson, The Role of Belief Systems and Schemas in Foreign Policy
Decision-Making, Political Psychology 15 (March 1994), 1733. Also see chapter 6 in Fiske
and Taylor, Social Cognition.
116
Abelson, Psychological Status of the Script Concept, p. 717.
117
Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds, p. 60.
48
Argument, belief, and culture
andactions. The process of political argument andthe fact that individu-
als are reective sometimes changing beliefs suggests that observers
ought not to expect a determinative relationship between beliefs, deci-
sions, and behavior. Rather, beliefs are part of the process of political
argument that characterizes foreign policy decisionmaking. Nor should
we necessarily be concerned with whether beliefs accurately reect
the real world or bias perceptions. What is of concern is the content
of beliefs, whether or not they are true, and the ways beliefs, which can
change, are used in inference and argument.
Beliefs and belief system theory revised
Beliefs are arguments that we have become convinced of, whose conclu-
sions we take for granted. Beliefs help us not only to perceive the world
and organize our perceptions, they also help us constitute the so-
cial world, make the world according to our beliefs. As John MacLean
argues, beliefs are not separate or apart from the social world: what
the beliefs, practices and institutions of a society actually are depends
on what they mean to its members and, in this sense, meaning is not
merely descriptive of things in society; it is necessarily constitutive of
them too.
118
That is, when we believe our beliefs, and others believe
them, we often act as if they were real. Belief has meaning and gives
meaning. We act according to those meanings. Further, we use beliefs
to reason, to gure out new meanings.
And while beliefs are privately held, their content is a product of the
individuals social interactions. Put another way, beliefs are not simply
private but both individual and social. The fact that beliefs are intersub-
jectively shared, or at least publicly contested, is important for under-
standing their role beyond structuring individual cognition. Beliefs are
held by individuals and groups they are intersubjective.
It is common to draw a distinction between interests and belief
Choices of specic ideas may simply reect the interests of actors
119

as if interests were self-evident, and beliefs followed unproblematically


from interests. But as Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes argue, by main-
taining this distinction, the investigation of the social construction of
interests is in practice disavowed because it is assumed. . . that inter-
ests are given and can be determined in isolation from ideas. Further,
they argue this distinction creates a tendency to understand ideas
118
MacLean, Belief Systems and Ideology, p. 76.
119
Goldstein and Keohane, Ideas and Foreign Policy, p. 11.
49
Argument and change in world politics
merely as tools which are used by policy-makers to manipulate various
audiences, such as international elites, domestic publics or bureaucra-
cies. As a consequence, when decision-makers interests are dened
as analytically distinct from ideas, then ideas are easily dismissed as
mere justication, as post-hoc rationalizations of policies made on the
grounds of already given material interests.
120
Thus, a distinction be-
tween interests and beliefs should not be drawn too sharply if only
because beliefs and arguments help people decide what they think of as
interests.
Acluster of beliefs is a belief systemwhenit is characterizedbya focus
on a particular subject or problem (although the exact nature of the subject
and its relation to other subjects may at times be under dispute) and
there are multiple and overlapping belief systems within societies. For
example, within the issue area of domestic policy there may be health
care or welfare belief systems that are themselves related to different
beliefs about the role of the state. Foreign policy belief systems are fo-
cused on the problem of a states relation to other states and the content
of the beliefs articulates how to understand and deal with other states.
Within a general foreign policy belief system, particular sets of beliefs
are focused on political, economic, cultural, and military components
of the subject. And, as suggested earlier, there may be contentious dis-
agreements within groups about whether certain beliefs are properly
part of the larger subject area. For example, beliefs about human rights
may or may not be considered part of the realm of foreign policy.
A focus on a particular problem is not enough to make a collection of
beliefs a belief system. The adherents to a particular set of beliefs will
usually argue that the beliefs themselves come out of or were revealed
from within an historical tradition. In addition, those who hold the par-
ticular belief system, and perhaps even the critics of the belief system,
argue that the ideas are related to each other somehow (besides their his-
torical relationship). They argue that there is an internal logic to the
system that is sometimes claimed to be religious, or natural, or at other
times scientic. Belief systems consist of related beliefs at various levels
of generalization core, contingent, and role-specic. Assuming that
the beliefs in a belief system are characterized by both coherence and
a historical relationship, one will often be able to predict elements of a
belief system from knowledge of a few core elements and the history of
120
Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes, Beyond Belief: Ideas and Symbolic Technologies in
the Study of International Relations, European Journal of International Relations 3 (1997),
193237: 200201.
50
Argument, belief, and culture
the belief system. But beliefs and belief systems are not always coherent.
And within societies different, even conicting, belief systems may be
held within and among social groups.
Previous work on foreign policy decisionmaking notes variation in
the relative importance, taken-for-grantedness, and exibility of beliefs
within a belief system, suggesting that there are hierarchies of belief.
121
For example, Douglas Blum argues that there are core, intermediate,
and peripheral beliefs. The core level of the belief system consists of
philosophical beliefs, or basic assumptions and values from which ev-
erything else in the belief system is ultimately derived. Because inter-
national politics is by denition an interactive realm, we may postulate
that core beliefs provide the most basic concepts relevant to interac-
tion. Intermediate beliefs are abstract but presuppose and are logically
subordinate to core beliefs: they function to provide normative direc-
tion as well as additional analytic concepts. Peripheral beliefs include
detailed, tactically relevant information about the political world.
122
Others propose that beliefs are hierarchically structured and that these
structures compare across states; individuals hold general foreign pol-
icy postures which rest on underlying core values which structure more
specic policy beliefs.
123
While one can agree or disagree with these particular schemes, some
beliefs in belief systems are clearly more central, and possibly more dif-
cult to modify, than others. Core beliefs, whether philosophical, norma-
tive, instrumental, or about the identities of self and others, are general
and fundamental and they seem to be held with little variation, regard-
less of context. Like the foundations of a building, core beliefs provide
121
Ideologies are belief systems that are consciously articulated, developed, promoted,
and defended. They often have explicit agendas or action orientations that adherents
promote. Thus, the difference between belief systems and ideologies is the consciousness
with which beliefs are held and the explicitness of the action agenda.
122
Douglas W. Blum, The Soviet Foreign Policy Belief System: Beliefs, Politics, and For-
eign Policy Outcomes, International Studies Quarterly 37 (December 1993), 373394: 375
376. Also see George, The Operational Code.
123
Jon Hurwitz, Mark Pefey, and Mitchell A. Seligson, Foreign Policy Belief Systems in
Comparative Perspective: The United States and Costa Rica, International Studies Quar-
terly 37 (September 1993), 245270; Hurwitz and Pefey take a cognitive approach: be-
cause humans have severe cognitive limitations, they often behave as cognitive misers,
coping with their shortcomings by taking short cuts whenever possible. Jon Hurwitz
and Mark Pefey, How are Foreign Policy Attitudes Structured? A Hierarchical Model,
American Political Science Review 81 (December 1987), 10991120: 1099. Philip Tetlocks hi-
erarchy is fundamental, strategic and tactical beliefs. Philip E. Tetlock, Learning in U.S.
and Soviet Foreign Policy: In Search of an Elusive Concept, in George W. Breslauer and
Philip E. Tetlock, eds., Learning in U.S. and Soviet Foreign Policy (Boulder: Westview, 1991),
pp. 2061: 2731.
51
Argument and change in world politics
the support and basic architecture around which other beliefs are held.
Contingent beliefs and their relation to behavior are more contextually
specic. They are like rules of thumb that are evoked, referred to, and
used to guide action, depending on a particular circumstance. And like
rules of thumb, contingent beliefs may be ignored or overruled if they
are seen to conict with core beliefs. Role-specic beliefs are the ideas
that people have about how they or others ought to behave when they
are performing a particular role or job. As noted, role-specic beliefs
and normative beliefs are connected. For example, an identity one is
a citizen of the United States may be further specied by the context
of an individual and the situation: the individual is a male over the age
of 18 who must, they believe, register for the military draft. Thus, it is
that individuals duty in their role as a good citizen to register for
the draft. Here, identity and behavioral norms are both constituted and
reinforced by laws about who is a citizen and the rights and obligations
of those citizens. Whether or not individuals behave in accordance with
the lawand social expectations will further depend on the particular so-
cial pressures they confront, their personal religious and philosophical
beliefs, and their personal reection/reasoning. Of course this example
shows that roles are not always completely voluntarily assumed or en-
acted and such an understanding is implicit in such terms as reluctant
imperialists and the involuntary roles of international pariah and
rogue states.
Belief systems are held intersubjectively and produced by groups
of individuals at various levels of aggregation. Belief systems may be
held by small decisionmaking groups, such as military planners, or
there may be a dominant institutional belief system, shared by mem-
bers of particular bureaucracies such as the US State Department. Fur-
ther, within larger and smaller groups there will often be dominant
belief systems as well as rival belief systems that challenge core, contin-
gent, and perhaps even the role-specic elements of the dominant belief
system.
The idea of coherence and interdependence of beliefs in a belief
system does not necessarily mean that there is a naturally logical re-
lationship between beliefs; the beliefs may simply be related by his-
torical circumstances. In this sense, the system-ness of the belief
system may only make sense internally and historically, while indi-
vidual beliefs that are part of a larger belief system, may contradict
each other. Moreover, belief systems consist of a set of beliefs that are
organized and relatively constant over time that is, the beliefs do not
52
Argument, belief, and culture
uctuate abruptlyfromdaytoday.
124
Still, beliefs andbelief systems do
change.
Belief change and learning
Belief systems heldbyindividuals andgroups maybe elastic (malleable)
or inelastic (xed). Individual belief systems are probably formed (or
adopted) early in ones life and the exibility of an individuals be-
liefs probably decreases over time. States leaders and propagandists
recognize this property of belief systems, which is why the control of
institutions that shape the ideas of youth have been so important to
states andpolitical movements. DanReiter argues that formative events,
specically world wars, structure the beliefs of states.
125
However, in-
dividual beliefs and belief systems tend to persist, even in the face of
disconrming evidence as individuals ignore information that discon-
rms the schema or, in some cases, struggle to make the evidence t the
existing schema.
126
Yet we know that individual beliefs do change and
such change is a crucial aspect of the persuasiveness of arguments. How
is it that people change their beliefs and under what circumstances will
they do so?
Theories of belief change generally follow from the foundational,
pragmatic, coherentist, and accidental perspectives on the foundations
of belief. Foundationalists expect belief change to occur either if the
material world changes, or if the rational justications for holding a
particular belief change or can no longer be supported. According to
theories in cognitive psychology, schemas may change if the incoming
evidence is undeniably, unambiguously, not inkeepingwiththe existing
schema. Belief systems are sometimes gradually modied, but, at other
times, individuals may experience a dramatic conversion where, if core
beliefs are revised, large portions of preexisting belief are jettisoned in
favor of new beliefs.
According to the pragmatic view, beliefs are revised or jettisoned
when they no longer work in a particular context. This working
may or may not be dependent on material realities. For example, the
perceived failure of Soviet-style communism to produce material pros-
perity led many to abandon their belief in it.
124
Jerel A. Rosati, The Carter Administrations Quest for Global Community: Beliefs and Their
Impact on Behavior (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987), p. 16.
125
Reiter, Crucible of Beliefs.
126
See Jervis, Perception and Misperception, pp. 217287.
53
Argument and change in world politics
Coherentists, while not providingaunique argument about the causes
of belief revision, argue that belief change will be minimal. Peter Garden-
fors describes this as a conservative process of belief revision. When
we change our beliefs, we want to retain as much as possible of our old
beliefs; information is in general not gratuitous, and unnecessary losses
of information are therefore to be avoided. We thus have a criterion of
informational economy motivating the coherentist approach.
127
Foucault
argued that the eld of the history of ideas was itself characterized by a
coherentist bias.
The history of ideas usually credits the discourse that it analyzes with
coherence. If it happens to notice an irregularity in the use of words,
several incompatible propositions, a set of meanings that do not adjust
to one another, concepts that cannot be systematized together, then it
regards it as its duty to nd, at a deeper level, a principle of cohesion
that organizes the discourse and restores it to its hidden unity. This law
of coherence is a heuristic rule, a procedural obligation, almost a moral
constraint of research. . . But this same coherence is also the result of
research. . . It appears as an optimum: the greatest possible number of
contradictions resolved by the simplest means.
128
Finally, if beliefs are historically contingent, we would expect them to
change either willy-nillylike fashioninclothing; or accordingtochanges
in the discursive, cultural, and institutional context. As the relations of
power change, so might the content of beliefs.
While these questions are discussed at greater length below, I remain
agnostic on the question of the source of beliefs and on the way that
beliefs change. All four views of the grounding and change of belief
foundational, pragmatic, coherent, andanti-foundational maybe cor-
rect depending on the beliefs in question. In any case, arguments play
a role in all these methods of belief change.
How are beliefs spread? Individuals are, for the most part not passive
receptacles of beliefs. Reective individuals consider new beliefs and
arguments and make decisions about whether to adopt those beliefs on
the basis of the form of reasoning they are using, the t of those be-
liefs with other beliefs they hold, their need for the belief to explain
something, and whether others whom they respect take the belief se-
riously. Thus, beliefs do not spread like contagious disease, by simply
being in the air or through mere contact. Individuals and groups
127
Gardenfors, The dynamics of belief systems, p. 381.
128
Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, p. 149.
54
Argument, belief, and culture
must be receptive to new beliefs, and people usually reect on beliefs
before adopting them or modifying longstanding beliefs. And as Jack
Levy argues, individuals learn how to learn. They learn new decision
rules, judgmental heuristics, procedures, and skills that facilitate their
ability to learn from subsequent experience.
129
Of course there are exceptions to the rule of reectivity: some individ-
uals are relatively passive and malleable and this probably varies over
time and cultures. For example, in places and eras where charismatic
authority, in the sense described by Max Weber of personnal charisma,
is dominant, one would expect many individuals to simply adhere to
the beliefs espoused by the charismatic authority. Others may require
some other form of conviction.
In traditionally stereotyped periods, charisma is the greatest revolu-
tionary force. The equally revolutionary force of reason works from
without by altering the situations of action, and hence its problems, -
nally in this way changing mens attitudes towards them. . . Charisma,
on the other hand, may involve a subjective or internal reorientation
born out of suffering, conicts or enthusiasm. It may then result in
a radical alteration of the central system of attitudes and direction of
action with a completely new orientation of all attitudes toward the
different problems and structures of the world.
130
Mass and elite beliefs
The public is generally considered less interested, less well informed,
and less powerful in determining the foreign policies of states than are
elites.
131
Yet non-elite input into the making of world politics occurs
more frequently, and is more fundamental to the process of foreign pol-
icy, than is generally assumed.
129
Levy, Learning and Foreign Policy, p. 286.
130
Max Weber, The Principal Characteristics of Charismatic Authority and its Relation
to Forms of Communal Organization, in J.E.T. Eldridge, ed. Max Weber: The Interpretation
of Social Reality (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), pp. 229234: 234.
131
For instance, authoritarian personality literature examines this question. Also see Paul
Sniderman and Philip Tetlock, Interrelationship of Political Ideology and Public Opin-
ion, in Margaret Hermann, ed., Political Psychology: Contemporary Problems and Issues (San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1986), pp. 6296; Ora Sliktar, Identifying a Societys
Belief Systems, in Herman, ed., Political Psychology, pp. 320354; Philip Converse, The
Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics, in David Apter, ed., Ideology and Discontent
(London: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), pp. 206261; William A. Gamson and Andre
Modigliani, Knowledge and Foreign Policy Opinions: Some Models for Consideration,
The Public Opinion Quarterly 30 (Summer 1966), 187199.
55
Argument and change in world politics
Is there a divergence between mass and elite beliefs? There are sig-
nicant differences.
132
The notion of the masses needs disaggregation
into, for example, classes, races, genders, social formations, andpolitical
parties. Mass beliefs appear to be less tightly structured, and more ex-
ible than elite beliefs, perhaps only because the masses that constitute
public opinion are of many different types with more or less coherent
andclearly structuredbeliefs about worldpolitics. Elites tendto be more
homogeneous.
Does public opinion inuence policy and elite beliefs? There is some
evidence for consistency between public opinion and foreign policy.
133
Douglas Foyle argues that mass beliefs or public opinion, inuence for-
eign policy when decisionmakers believe that such inuence is desir-
able and that public support is necessary for a foreign policy to suc-
ceed: decisionmakers beliefs and attitudes about public opinion can
profoundly inuence their reaction to public opinion.
134
Mass beliefs
constrain decisionmaking behavior at the extremes and in the general
conduct of world politics. More precisely, mass beliefs have little ef-
fect if the beliefs are not strong in one direction or another. But when
mass beliefs are strongly held in one direction, foreign policy decisions
and behavior will be constrained because elites need to mobilize public
support (in both democracies and non-democracies) for the implemen-
tation of labor and/or capital intensive decisions. That is, mass beliefs
are especially important because the masses provide much of the capital
(in the form of taxes) and labor (for armed forces, extraction of natural
resources, and industrial production) necessary for modern warfare.
135
Elites may successfully appeal to mass beliefs to increase the acceptabil-
ityof a preferredpolicyoption(tothe masses andother elites) while they
may, conversely, feel unable to select options they feel the masses will
ndunacceptable. Thus, mass beliefs inuence elite decisionmaking be-
havior by setting acceptability constraints. Decisionmakers who hope to
132
For example, see Benjamin I. Page and Jason Barabas, Foreign Policy Gaps between
Citizens and Leaders, International Studies Quarterly 44 (September 2000), 339364.
133
See Bruce Russett, Controlling the Sword: The Democratic Governance of National Security
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); Foyle, Public Opinion and Foreign
Policy.
134
Foyle, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy p. 164.
135
This point is not new, yet we tend to forget it. See, for instance, Vasquez: War cannot
be initiated, as Bueno De Mesquita would have us believe just by a simple decision of
the leader. The public must be mobilized not only to accept the decision, but to ght
and sacrice enthusiastically in order to give the state the highest chances of success. For
this reason, even if the decision maker wants to go to war, he (or she) may not initiate it
because of domestic constraints. John A. Vasquez, Foreign Policy, Learning and War,
in Hermann, Kegley, and Rosenau, eds., New Directions, pp. 366383: 367.
56
Argument, belief, and culture
retain power over the long haul believe that they must make decisions
that are acceptable to the masses and other (non-decisionmaking) elites,
and they are constrained by this belief.
136
In addition, the size and level of sophistication of the politically ac-
tive masses determines their effect on elites. Of course, if the decision
requires little in the way of mass mobilization, or if the effects of mo-
bilization can somehow be minimized or deferred, then the content of
mass beliefs and public opinion will be less important as a constraining
force unless elite opinions or behavior precipitate a legitimation crisis.
While the content of elite beliefs, especially those of foreign policy de-
cisionmakers, will most often be at the forefront here, the content of
beliefs held by other members of society is still important. This is be-
cause elites come from the wider social milieu, are dependent upon it
for political support even in authoritarian states and must make
their decisions in ways that can be justied to these more attentive and
organized masses. This is the role of public opinion.
Perhaps more immediately important in shaping elite behavior than
mass belief is the role of organized publics. When masses are or-
ganized into coherent social movements and transnational advocacy
networks of activists driven by values rather than by material con-
cerns or professional norms they may be both norm entrepreneurs,
deploying arguments based on principled beliefs, and shape the po-
litical context or conditions of acceptability within which states and
other social actors try to act.
137
Through direct action, these move-
ments may also make large-scale behavioral change, without the di-
rect involvement of governments, desirable, possible, and a fact on
the ground. In sum, the content of beliefs held by both unorga-
nized and organized publics affects the making and receptivity of
arguments.
Culture
No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by
a denite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking. Even
136
See Philip Tetlock, Accountability: The Neglected Social Context of Judgement and
Choice, in Research in Organizational Behavior, vol. VII (London: JAI Press, 1985), pp. 297
332; Barbara Farnham, Political Cognition and Decision-Making, Political Psychology
11 (March 1990), 83111; and Jennifer S. Lerner and Philip E. Tetlock, Accounting for
the Effects of Accountability, Psychological Bulletin 125 (March 1999), 255275. Note that
acceptability, accountability, and responsibility are not necessarily rational concepts.
137
Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders, p. 2.
57
Argument and change in world politics
in his philosophical probings he cannot go behind those stereotypes;
his very concepts of the true and the false will still have reference to
his particular traditional customs.
138
Most history, when it has been digested by a people becomes myth.
Myth is an arrangement of the past, whether real or imagined, in
patterns that resonate with cultures deepest values and aspirations.
Myths create and reinforce archetypes so taken for granted, so seem-
ingly axiomatic, that they go unchallenged. Myths are so fraught with
meaning that we live or die by them. They are the maps by which
cultures navigate through time.
139
Aculture makes some things possible, some things desirable, andsome
things unimaginable.
140
If there were one global culture and humans lived without a sense of
history we might not be conscious of culture as a concept, nor think it
was interesting. Yet historical experience and contact with others who
believe differently and have different practices makes us conscious of
culture. For example, in the 1490s, a Catholic Pope, not war, decided the
NewWorldboundaries betweenSpanishandPortuguese explorers, and
the Popes decision was ratied by the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. The
foreign policy practices of European states in the late 1400s were em-
beddedwithinbothChristianreligious andsecular beliefs andpractices,
while international authority was vested in the Catholic Church. The for-
eign policy practices of the early twenty rst century, at least in most
Westernstates, aremorestronglyembeddedintherational belief system,
and authority is vested in separate states whose leaders and peoples are
for the most part loathe to give power to international religious author-
ities. Chronological distance makes the practices of fteenth-century
international actors seem strange.
In the late 1950s Margaret Mead summarized anthropologys con-
cept of culture as the systematic body of learned behavior which is
transmittedfromparents to children.
141
RuthBenedict, Meads teacher,
described culture as the ideas and standards that people have in com-
mon and that hold them together; culture includes the motives and
emotions and values that are institutionalized. . . habits of thought.
142
138
Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1959), p. 2.
139
Ronald Wright, Stolen Continents: The New World Through Indian Eyes (New York:
Houghton Mifin, 1992), p. 5.
140
Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine Between the Wars
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 165.
141
Margaret Mead, A New Preface in Benedict, Patterns of Culture, p. vii.
142
Benedict, Patterns of Culture, pp. 16 and 49.
58
Argument, belief, and culture
Further, Benedict argued, The signicance of cultural behavior is not
exhausted when we have clearly understood that it is local and man-
made and hugely variable. It also tends to be integrated. A culture,
like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought and
action.
143
Culture, a property of social groups, is the organization and practice
of interconnectedbelief systems inparticular places andtimes. Whenso-
cieties organize meaning and make their social reality through practices
that conform with widely held beliefs, they are maintaining their cul-
ture. Just as beliefs are arguments whose conclusions we have become
convinced of, cultures are the beliefs, symbols, and practices that social
groups are convinced of or in great measure take for granted. While
keeping in mind that simple cultural explanations may seem satisfying
when they are made about another culture, and simplistic if applied
to ones own culture, the challenge is to understand how culture (un-
derstood as a system of background beliefs and practices which make
life meaningful in particular settings) may inuence, but not necessarily
determine, argument-making and the reception of arguments.
144
Culture is important for understanding the process of argument in
world politics for several reasons. First, culture is the background of
shared interpretations (unconsciously held intersubjective beliefs) and
practices, the starting point or topos that allows meaningful conversa-
tions and arguments to occur among individuals and groups; culture is
the lifeworld that serves as the stable foundation upon which action
and arguments are understood. Second, because cultures contain and
organize belief systems, they provide the content for specic identity,
normative, practical, and scientic beliefs. Third, culture provides the
background meanings the metaphors and historical events by which
specic beliefs and arguments are consciously judged and which actors
intentionally use to frame problems. Fourth, culture can be a source of
new beliefs and arguments and can thus be a source of innovation.
Culture in international relations theory
Rational actor theories tend to treat culture as irrational and exogenous,
and for many realist scholars of world politics, culture is irrelevant. This
view is, however, relatively recent. In the 1930s, students of world poli-
tics argued that culture was relevant and in fact that certain institutions
143
Ibid., p. 46.
144
Belief systems focus on specic issue areas while cultures contain webs of belief sys-
tems and practices.
59
Argument and change in world politics
of international relations were deeply inuenced by culture. Margaret
Mead argued that war is a social invention, and Freud contended that
civilization and culture could tame human instincts and reduce the
drives towardwar.
145
After MeadandFreud, however, culture was not a
termthat sawmuch use among international relations theorists andRob
Walker could justiably argue that there is a relative neglect of culture
among mainstreamscholars of international relations.
146
To an extent,
Vertzberger notes, this neglect is understandable, since ultimately sub-
societal units are the bodies actually carrying out decisionmaking tasks,
whereas societal factors are less apparent to the observer.
147
When
culture is noted and theorized by mainstream international relations
scholars, it is usually assumed that cultures exist within states and civ-
ilizations while conict reigns between cultures, as is the argument in
Samuel Huntingtons ideas about the clash of civilizations.
148
Yet, as
Walker argues:
If questions about culture turn out to be little more than questions
about sovereignty and national identity, then there are only two inter-
esting avenues worth exploring. One is the way in which culture,
understood as anthropological difference, constitutes the central prob-
lem to overcome, a corroboration of the deeply fractured character of
human communities. The other is the way such divisions have in fact
been overcome by the fragile accommodations of statesmanship.
149
Scholars of comparative politics have paid more attention to culture.
For example, Lucien Pye, Sydney Verba, andothers describedwhat they
thought were distinctive national political cultures.
150
This work was
145
Margaret Mead, Warfare is Only an Invention Not a Biological Necessity, in Leon
Bramson and George W. Goethals, eds., War: Studies from Psychology, Sociology and Anthro-
pology (New York: Basic Books, 1964), pp. 269274; and Sigmund Freud, Why War? in
Bramson and Goethals, War, pp. 7180.
146
R.B.J. Walker, The Concept of Culture in the Theory of International Relations, in
Jongshuk Chay, ed., Culture and International Relations (New York: Praeger, 1990), pp. 3
17: 9.
147
Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds, p. 260.
148
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations? Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer 1993),
2249.
149
Walker, The Concept of Culture in the Theory of International Relations, p. 11.
150
Gabriel Almond and Sydney Verba, The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1963); Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba, eds., Political Culture and Political Develop-
ment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965); Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy
Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); John S.
Dufeld, Political Culture and State Behavior: Why Germany Confounds Neorealism,
International Organization 53 (Autumn 1999), 765803.
60
Argument, belief, and culture
criticized for reifying and stereotyping cultures, and interest in culture
waned, until recently. Writing in what has become a new wave of atten-
tion to political culture, Lucien Pye argues, Since political power rests
largely upon expectations, communications, and shared sentiments and
values, politics is essentially a cultural phenomenon. Indeed, politics
would be impossible without culture, and cultures, of course, differ ac-
cording to time and place.
151
For the anthropologists Sonia Alvarez,
Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar, political culture is the particu-
lar social construction in every society of what counts as political. In
this way, political culture is the domain of practices and institutions,
carved out of the totality of social reality, that historically comes to be
considered as properly political (in the same way that other domains
are seen as properly economic, cultural, and social).
152
So, there
are two concepts of culture a wider one, and a narrower, political
culture.
Contrarytothe ideaof relative neglect,international relations schol-
arship on culture does exist, though culture is often confused with belief
in this literature. In the late 1970s, Ken Booth argued that ethnocentrism
was both an important feature of politics among nations and deeply
embedded in international relations theory and the practice of threat
assessment.
153
Stephen Rosen suggests that culture, specically social
structure, may inuence military effectiveness.
154
Elizabeth Kier, who
denes a militarys organizational culture as collectively held beliefs
within a particular military organization, suggests that culture, espe-
cially beliefs about the role of armed force, affects the formation of mil-
itary doctrine.
155
Military organizations cultures shape their members
understandings and choices: military organizations develop strong
collective understandings about the nature of their work and the con-
duct of their missions, and these organizational cultures inuence their
choices between offensive and defensive military doctrines.
156
Further,
151
Lucien W. Pye, Introduction: The Elusive Concept of Culture and the Vivid Reality
of Personality, Political Psychology 18 (June 1997), 241254: 247.
152
Sonia E. Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar, Introduction: The Cultural
and Political in Latin American Social Movements, in Sonia E. Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino,
and Arturo Escobar, eds., Cultures of Politics, Politics of Cultures: Re-visioning Latin American
Social Movements (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998), pp. 129: 8.
153
Ken Booth, Strategy and Ethnocentrism (New York: Holmes and Meyer, 1979).
154
Stephen Peter Rosen, Military Effectiveness: Why Society Matters, International Se-
curity 19 (Spring 1995), 531.
155
ElizabethKier, Culture andFrenchMilitary Doctrine Before WorldWar II, inKatzen-
stein, ed., The Culture of National Security, pp. 186215: 203.
156
Kier, Imagining War, p. 4.
61
Argument and change in world politics
she argues, civilians cultural understanding of the role of military
force in the domestic arena governs their participation in developing
doctrine.
157
Similarly, Alastair Johnston argues that strategic cultures
affect military strategy, dening strategic culture as an integrated
system of symbols (i.e. causal axioms, languages, analogies, metaphors,
etc.) that acts to establish pervasive and long-lasting strategic prefer-
ences by formulating concepts of the role and efcacy of military force
in interstate political affairs, and by clothing these conceptions with
such an aura of factuality that the strategic preferences seem uniquely
realistic and efcacious.
158
Culture has alsobeenhypothesizedas a factor inpromotingpeace and
war. EchoingMeadandLuard, JohnVasquez argues that, Not all histor-
ical periods and not all actors (or dyads) experience the same amount of
war. This suggests that war is not as culturally acceptable in some times
and places as in others.
159
Johan Galtung warned against cultural vi-
olence or cultural elements used to justify or legitimatize direct or
structural violence.
160
Bruce Russett has suggested, among other pos-
sible explanations, that the peace observed among democracies may be
due to common culture.
161
Marc Howard Ross argues that psychocul-
tural dispositions shape howgroups andindividuals process events and
the emotions, perceptions, and cognitions the events provoke. These
dispositions link particular events to culturally shared threats to self-
esteem and identity and the culture of conict is specic norms,
practices, and institutions associated with conict.
162
Elise Boulding
argues that to promote peace one should promote a peace culture.
163
Samuel Huntington believes that in the post-cold war world the great
divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conict will
be cultural.
164
Huntington regards civilizations as the highest cultural
157
Ibid. p. 21.
158
Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism and Strategy in Maoist China, in
Katzenstein, ed, The Culture of National Security, pp. 216278.
159
John A. Vasquez, Foreign Policy, Learning and War, in Hermann, Kegley, and
Rosenau, eds., New Directions, pp. 366383: 372.
160
JohanGaltung, Cultural Violence, Journal of Peace Research 27 (August 1990), 291305:
291.
161
Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 35.
162
Marc Howard Ross, The Culture of Conict: Interpretations and Interests in Comparative
Perspective (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 10 and 21.
163
Elise Boulding, Cultures of Peace: The Hidden Side of History (Syracuse: Syracuse Uni-
versity Press, 2000).
164
Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations? p. 22.
62
Argument, belief, and culture
grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people
have.
165
Others emphasize the cultural foundations of regional and global in-
ternational society. Luard argued that, It is not possible to consider
the behaviour of states without regard to the social context, the interna-
tional environment, within which they exist; nor to consider a society of
states without regardtothe motivations andbehaviour whichcharacter-
ize the individual states which are its members.
166
As Bull argued, a
common feature of . . . historical international societies is that they were
all founded on a common culture or civilization.
167
Further, Bull dis-
tinguished between diplomatic culture and international political cul-
ture or the intellectual andmoral culture that determines the attitudes
towards the states system of the societies that compose it.
168
Bull be-
lieved that the future of international society is likely to be determined,
among other things, by the preservation and extension of a cosmopoli-
tan culture, embracing both common ideas and common values, and
rooted in societies in general as well as in their elites, that can provide
the world international society of today with the kind of underpinning
enjoyedby the geographically smaller andculturally more homogenous
international societies of thepast.
169
Bull andAdamWatsonarguedthat
international society grew out of and follows a Western European pat-
ternandthat, it is not our perspective but the historical recorditself that
can be called Eurocentric.
170
Ronald Jepperson, Alexander Wendt, and
Peter Katzenstein argue that an international cultural environment is
the context of national security policymaking where culture refers to
both a set of evaluative standards, such as norms or values, and to
cognitive standards, such as rules or models dening what entities and
actors exist in a systemand howthey operate and interrelate.
171
Specif-
ically, they suggest, this international cultural environment includes a
layer of formal institutions or security regimes, a layer of world
165
Ibid., p. 24.
166
Luard, War in International Society, p. 13.
167
Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1977), p. 16.
168
Ibid., p. 316.
169
Ibid., p. 317.
170
Hedley Bull and Adam Watson, Introduction, in Hedley Bull and Adam Watson,
eds., The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 19: 2.
Also see Adam Watson, European International Society and its Expansion, in Bull and
Watson, eds., Expansion of International Society, pp. 1332.
171
Ronald L. Jepperson, Alexander Wendt, and Peter J. Katzenstein, Norms, Identity,
and Culture in National Security, in Katzenstein, ed., Culture of National Security, pp. 33
75: 34 and 56.
63
Argument and change in world politics
political culture which includes elements like rules of sovereignty
and international law, norms . . . and standardized social and political
technologies, and nally, a layer of international patterns of amity
and enmity.
172
Thus, while it would be an exaggeration to say that culture gures
prominently in international relations theory, many scholars give cul-
ture an important role in shaping beliefs, practices, and identities in
organizations, nations, and international societies.
Character and location of culture
Culture is often conceptualized as having the same properties as belief.
For instance, Vertzberger describes culture in such a way that it is syn-
onymous with a cognitive understanding of belief. Culture represents
a unied set of ideas that are shared by the members of a society and
that establish a set of shared premises, values, expectations, and action
predispositions among members of a nation that as a whole constitute
a national style.
173
Vertzberger hypothesizes several cultural affects on
foreign policy decisionmaking (that are not distinct fromthe affects oth-
ers attribute to beliefs), arguing that Individuals, organizations, and
groups information processing and denitions of the situation are af-
fected and sometimes actually dictated by their being part of a distinct
societal-national environment, culture, and experience.
174
He also ar-
gues that, At the core of culture, in most cases, are broad and general
beliefs and attitudes about ones own nation, about other nations, and
about the relationships that actually obtain or that should obtain be-
tween the self and other actors in the international arena.
175
Culture
thus biases attention to danger, assessment of risk, modes of cognitive
operation such as associative versus abstract thinking, and perceptions
about the most acceptable means of conict resolution, and interferes
with correctly understanding what actors from another culture say.
176
Yet culture is more than belief. As a set of practices culture con-
tains behavioral norms, symbols (meanings attached to objects, social
events, and action), and ways to reproduce philosophical, instrumen-
tal, normative, and identity beliefs. Within cultures, the belief systems
of individuals and groups are embedded in, and sit side by side with,
172
Ibid., p. 34.
173
Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds, p. 267.
174
Ibid., p. 260.
175
Ibid., p. 268.
176
Others attribute these effects to individual beliefs.
64
Argument, belief, and culture
other belief systems (such as religious, ethical, and scientic traditions).
Together these webs of beliefs andpractices constitute a societys culture
or rather its multiple cultures. Thus, culture is the larger background of
beliefs andpractices (sometimes routinizedandstandardizedwithin in-
stitutions) withinwhichthe particular belief systems andsub-cultures of
groups sit. Culture is conveyed in a groups language or more precisely
in the meaning of discourse. A discourse, i.e., a system of statements
in which each individual statement makes sense, produces interpretive
possibilities by making it virtually impossible to think outside of it. A
discourse provides discursive spaces, i.e. concepts, categories, metaphors,
models and analogies by which meanings are created.
177
As Kier ar-
gues, when actors are totally inside their culture, it consists of many
assumptions that are rarely debated and seem so basic that it appears
impossible to imagine things could be different.
178
Further, cultures
exist in time and place, they are situated within groups.
While actors are more or less unself-conscious about aspects of their
culture, they may be quite self-conscious about other elements of it.
Further, actors must constantly work to reproduce their cultures as new
members are born and old members die. And because groups are rarely
completely homogenous and/or devoid of contact with other groups,
challenges to a dominant culture are constant. Part of the socialization
of new members into a community with a particular culture includes
teaching members their groups history. This history is inculcatedalong-
side the practices, rules, and philosophical, instrumental, normative,
and identity beliefs held by most group members. For example, to be
part of a monetary culture, one must learn the normof paying for things
with money rather than taking them or trading for them. Of course, an-
alyzing anothers culture is also rather like holding up a mirror to ones
own culture.
179
Thus, another part of the work of making a culture, and
maintaining it, can include comparing a culture with itself at a previous
time or comparing one culture with other cultures.
So far, I have described culture as if it were located somewhere in
an exclusive community. But it is possible to locate complex webs of
meaning andregular practices among groups of individuals, andwithin
larger cultures among groups who are characterized by race, class, reli-
gion, occupation, and sex as well as by political afliations. I consider
177
Doty, Foreign Policy as Social Construction, p. 302.
178
Kier, Imagining War, p. 26.
179
See Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).
65
Argument and change in world politics
cultures in ve locations: epistemic communities, formal organizations,
bounded political communities (nations and states), civilizations, and
global cultures. Obviously, any one person may participate in several
cultures.
Epistemic communities and formal organizations have belief systems
and culture in the sense of regular and accepted practices. Peter Haas
denes an epistemic community as a network of professionals with
recognized expertise and competence in a particular domain and au-
thoritative claim to policy relevant knowledge within that domain or
issue area. Epistemic communities have (1) a shared set of normative
and principled beliefs . . . (2) shared causal beliefs . . . (3) shared notions
of validity. . . (4) a common policy enterprise.
180
Epistemic communi-
ties share a culture in the sense that these beliefs entail larger world
views that they subscribe to and which make their practices and discus-
sions meaningful.
Culture also exists within organizations, shaping the way organiza-
tions do their job. Elizabeth Kier denes organizational culture as, the
set of basic assumptions, values, norms, beliefs, and formal knowledge
that shape collective understandings.
181
LynnEdenshows howthe par-
ticular knowledge-making practices of nuclear weapons organizations
frame their understandings of nuclear weapons effects.
182
Organizations
have methods for socializing their members into the beliefs characteris-
tic of members of the organization. They have ways of ridding blatant
non-believers fromthe group, and they have practices, or standard op-
erating procedures, which they recognize as normal and which guide
their actions in particular contexts.
Cultures also exist in bounded political communities. Martin Samp-
son suggests that a set of norms, standards, rules or collective mental
programming refers to a national culture that has certain properties.
183
Sampson says these socially created and learned factors exist across a
variety of institutions within a single nation-state; one may detect them
inmany different functional settings families, associations, businesses,
and governmental organizations and one may also detect them over
a large range of time periods . . . and he argues that these factors affect
180
Haas, Introduction, p. 3.
181
Kier, Imagining War, p. 28.
182
Lynn Eden, Whole World on Fire: The Making of Organizational Knowledge about U.S.
Nuclear Weapons Effects (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, forthcoming).
183
Martin W. Sampson, Cultural Inuences on Foreign Policy, in Hermann, Kegley, and
Rosenau, eds., New Directions, pp. 384405: 385.
66
Argument, belief, and culture
the processes of foreignpolicydecisionmaking.
184
Similarly, Vertzberger
argues that national political cultures are the source of biases in infor-
mation processing. While these national political cultures are much less
homogenous than they are generally described, there are such cultures.
In addition, groups of states and groups of organizations that tran-
scend states may share more general historical, religious, ethical, and
scientic traditions. Shared beliefs, common institutions, and regular
interactionof states andnon-state actors (such as multinational corpora-
tions andsocial movements) constituteinternational societies.
185
Hedley
Bull argues that, if contemporary international society does have any
cultural basis, this is not a genuinely global culture, but is rather the
culture of so-called modernity. And if we ask what is modernity in cul-
ture, it is not clear how we answer this except by saying that it is the
culture of the dominant Western powers.
186
It is possible now more than at any other point in world history to
speak of emergent world cultures. Globalization, the catch-phrase for
the emergence of these world cultures, the spread of international mar-
kets, and the growing interdependence of productive processes, sug-
gests the technological capacities and the economic, social, and political
interactions that have createdthe emergent worldculture. Further, some
twentieth-century events the cold war, ozone depletion, global envi-
ronmental change, and the AIDS pandemic, as well as the development
of a universal human rights discourse were experienced and inter-
preted as global phenomena. As Scott Turner argues, civil society is
increasingly global not only because groups are establishing linkages
across national borders, but also because of the nature of the issues
around which NGOs and social movements converge.
187
There are at least three overlapping spheres of an emerging global
culture: political structures and processes, economic structures and pro-
cesses, and issue-specic belief systems. The global culture is charac-
terized by: dominant belief systems that sometimes conict with each
other (namely, individual human rights, commercialism, capitalism,
militarism, increased respect for the rule of law or liberalism); a set
of common international institutions (such as the United Nations, the
184
Ibid., pp. 385386.
185
See Christian Reus-Smit, The Constitutional Structure of International Society and
the Nature of Fundamental Institutions, International Organization 51 (Autumn 1997),
555589.
186
Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 39.
187
Scott Turner, Global Civil Society, Anarchy and Governance: Assessing an Emerging
Paradigm, Journal of Peace Research 35 (January 1998), 2542: 31.
67
Argument and change in world politics
World Court, and the World Trade Organization); and transnational
epistemic communities of scientists, social scientists, nancial experts,
critical social movements, and cultural intellectuals. In the political
sphere, as Dorothy Jones has noted, there is an emerging Code of
Peace resting on international law alongside the older international
cultures of military force and realpolitik.
188
Critical transnational social
movements challenge the militarism, prot-orientation, andauthoritari-
anismof dominant social institutions andcultural representations play
a pivotal role in the formation and maintenance of social protest.
189
To
highlight the emergence of a global culture is not to say that local, na-
tional, and regional cultures are dying, though they might be, or to say
that the now dominant cultures will always be dominant. Rather, the
shape of global cultures is emerging out of sometimes contradictory cul-
tures. Finally, to some extent, the dominant emerging world culture is
marked by a certain respect for pluralism, which probably means that
despite the form of globalization that is synonymous with homogeniza-
tion, other cultures will remain for centuries.
But simply noting that groups hold some shared beliefs, and partici-
pate in common practices that may or may not be institutionalized, does
not tell us how culture affects the process of argument. I go further than
those who suggest that culture (like belief) is the source of mispercep-
tions and cognitive biases. Culture is the stable foundation that makes
and allows intelligible argument; cultures are the source of specic be-
liefs; culture is consciously used to frame and judge arguments; and
culture can foster belief innovation.
Culture as lifeworld or stable foundation
Culture is the background of shared interpretations and practices, the
unstated topos or starting point that allows meaningful conversations
and arguments to occur. Beyond language, taken for granted beliefs
that members of a society share, and the practices associated with these
beliefs, allowand enable actors within a community to understand each
other without having to make everything explicit. Culture provides the
188
DorothyV. Jones, Code of Peace: Ethics and Security inthe World of Warlord States (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1989).
189
Richard G. Fox and Orin Starn, Introduction, in Richard G. Fox and Orin Starn,
eds., Between Resistance and Revolution: Cultural Politics and Social Protest (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1997), pp. 116: 6. Also see R.B. J. Walker, One World, Many
Worlds: Struggle for a Just World Peace (Boulder: Lynn Reinner, 1988), pp. 6162; Keck and
Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders.
68
Argument, belief, and culture
oor or background of meaning on which actors can construct other
meanings and interpret each other.
Habermas development of Edmund Husserls idea of Lebenswelt, or
lifeworld, best captures this aspect of culture formed from more or less
diffuse, always unproblematic, background convictions.
190
The life-
world seems real or objective to those who share it even as it stores
the interpretive work of preceding generations.
191
This fundamental
background which enables hearers to understand speakers is
an implicit knowledge that cannot be represented in a nite number of
propositions; it is a holistically structured knowledge, the basic elements
of whichintrinsicallydene one another; andit is a knowledge that does
not standat our disposition, inasmuchas we cannot make it conscious and
place it in doubt as we please. When philosophers nevertheless seek to
do so, then that knowledge comes to light in the formof commonsense
certainties. . . .
192
Actors who hold different ideologies (understood as explicitly devel-
oped belief systems) may share a lifeworld and this allows arguments
between ideologies to be intelligible, at least to a certain extent, to par-
ticipants. Conversely, as Habermas suggests, lifeworlds constrain what
will be seen as a valid argument since the taken-for-granted aspect of
cultures is the rst level, or order, of interpretation of arguments, al-
though the act of interpretation at this point is generally unconscious.
The linguistic worldview is reied as the world order and cannot be
seen as an interpretive system open to criticism.
193
Antonio Casseses understanding of the role of prevailing ideolo-
gies of international law illustrates the relationship between belief sys-
tems and the lifeworld. International legal rules are, however, a simple
190
J urgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, Volume One: Reason and the Ratio-
nalization of Society trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), p. 70. Fred
Dallmayr argues: In the weak conception, the life-world is basically viewed as a pream-
ble to reason or rational reection, as a non- or pre-rational antechamber to cognition but
the antechamber that pliantly submits to thought (as the result of an inherent afnity be-
tweenprereasonandreason). Inthe strongversion, bycontrast, the life-worldfunctions no
longer as a mere precursor of reason or as its relatively immature or embryonic modality,
but rather emerges as an integral dimension of thought, a dimension impinging power-
fully on the status of rational or cognitive claims (not by nullifying them but by changing
their sense). FredR. Dallmayr, Life-World: Variations on a Theme, in Stephen K. White,
ed., Life-World and Politics: Between Modernity and Postmodernity (Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame, 1989), pp. 2565: 26.
191
Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, p. 70.
192
Ibid., p. 336.
193
Ibid., p. 71.
69
Argument and change in world politics
reection of the constellation of power in the world community, as well
as the prevailing ideologies and political concerns. For Cassese, both
power and the content of the prevailing international culture provide
the content and limits of international law. The scholar, however dis-
satised he may be with this state of affairs, cannot but take note of
the present legal regime with all its aws and lacunae, and pinpoint the
emerging strands of the international system.
194
Casseses legal regime
is a belief system, embedded within a lifeworld where legal systems or
prevailing ideology make sense, and is essentially taken for granted.
Legal practices, including argument andproof, are institutionalizedand
legitimate.
The importance of this backgroundstock of meaning has not gone un-
noticedby scholars of domestic andforeignpolicy. For example, Charles
Elder and Roger Cobb argue that a political culture acts to limit the
range of problems and problem solving alternatives that are likely to
be considered, or for that matter, even entertained or recognized.
195
Vertzberger argues that accumulated historical experience, political
culture, as well as geopolitics, provide enduring perspectives, attitudes
and beliefs, within which defense and security policy predispositions
emerge.
196
Michael Shapiro argues that it is important to recognize
that policy thinking is not unsituated. . . representational practices arise
out of a societys more general practices . . .
197
Shapiro further suggests
that Representations of public policy, then, have an ideological depth
to the extent that they engage in a stock of signs with which people
make their everyday lives intelligible.
198
Similarly, Roxanne Doty ar-
gues: The reception as meaningful of statements revolving around pol-
icy situations depends on how well they t into the general system of
representation in a given society.
199
The taken-for-granted aspect of culture provides stability. And, like
other forms of common knowledge, culture can make communication,
cooperation, andcoordinationeasier amongthose who share beliefs and
expectations because they can anticipate how others within the culture
194
Antonio Cassese, Self-determination of Peoples: A Legal Reappraisal (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 162.
195
Charles D. Elder andRoger W. Cobb, The Political Uses of Symbols (NewYork: Longman,
1983) p. 85.
196
Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds, p. 272.
197
Michael J. Shapiro, Representing World Politics: The Sports/War Intertext, in James
Der Derian and Michael J. Shapiro, eds., International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern
Readings of World Politics (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1989), pp. 6996: 71.
198
Shapiro, Representing World Politics, p. 73.
199
Doty, Foreign Policy as Social Construction, p. 303.
70
Argument, belief, and culture
will think and act in particular contexts. These aspects of culture as
communicative background, stable arena, the common knowledge that
facilitates cooperation and coordination, and boundary for argument
are generally in the background of social interactions, where members
of a group are unaware or unconscious of their situatedness within that
culture. This property also makes understanding other cultures in and
on their own terms difcult.
Finally, as the deep background of social interaction and discourse,
culture and the particulars of a decisionmaking situation inuence a
groups openness to argument as a process. In a culture that places a
high value on agreement and conformity, arguments will be rare and
relatively minor. Culture may also delimit the scope of arguments, that
is, how deeply one can raise objections to beliefs and practices. In some
contexts, it may not be possible to challenge core beliefs, especially if
this suits elites who wish to maintain their hold on the reins of cul-
tural power. Dominant hegemonic practices attempt to achieve some
sort of closure of the social, that is, to produce a relatively unied and
normalized set of categories to understand reality . . .
200
Culture as a source of specic beliefs
Perhaps most obviously, culture often provides the content for spe-
cic philosophical, instrumental, normative, and identity beliefs at the
core, contingent, and role levels. Further, epistemic communities, small
groups, and organizations may develop beliefs that are particular to
their culture.
One can see how cultures are the source of particular foreign policy
beliefs by examining the beliefs that are dominant in a states foreign
policy. Vertzberger, for example, argues that concepts of national be-
longing in the sense of which group of nations the state sees itself
as belonging to, as well as international role and status, are culturally
determined.
201
Nationalists posit continuity of past and present culture,
history, and genetic material. But while we can argue that there are
certain common characteristics of nationalism, the specic character of
nationalist beliefs varies. For instance, one of the rst uses of the term
nationalism was in an essay published in 1774 by the German paci-
st Johann Gottfried Herder.
202
Herders conception of nationalismwas
200
Arturo Escobar, Culture, Practice and Politics: Anthropology and the Study of Social
Movements, Critique of Anthropology 12 (December 1992), 395432: 406.
201
Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds, p. 282.
202
Anthony Smith, Theories of Nationalism, 2nd edn (New York: Holmes & Meier Publish-
ers, 1983), p. 167.
71
Argument and change in world politics
both spiritual and linguistic in the sense that he believed in an evolved
organic volkgeist (folk-spirit), and that only through expression in ones
native tongue could humans reach their fullest potential.
203
A gener-
ation later, Prussian nationalist Johann Fichte espoused the idea that
Germans were specially suited for leadership because their language,
unlike other European languages, was original and unpolluted.
204
The ingredients of a particular dominant foreign policy belief sys-
tem within a state are based on the particular history of the state (or
dominant political group) as mythologized by national historians, dra-
matic personal and group experiences such as war or occupation, and
individual socialization (parents/family, schools, peer groups). As Dan
Reiter argues, foreign policy beliefs are often lessons drawn from past
events.
205
The most vivid events will have the greatest impact. And,
as Robert Jervis argued two decades earlier, individual learning and
belief change may occur when foreign policy decisionmakers are con-
fronted with dramatic stimuli.
206
Certain events are seen and coded as
paradigmatic for members of a culture. For example, members of post-
World War II European and North American policy elites came to see
Munich as a paradigm of appeasement, with the lesson that appease-
ment only encourages aggressors. Thus, to understand the source and
substance of the foreign policy belief system of states, one has to un-
derstand the particular history of the state as it has been mythologized
by national historians, and also the social and political history of the
individuals dominant in foreign policy decisionmaking. Foreign policy
belief systems are embedded in larger belief systems (religious, ethical,
and scientic traditions) and common historical experience; in other
words, they are grounded in the historically situated culture(s) of the
community in question. As in the case of common historical analogies,
the transmission of culture involves the socialization of its members
in the dominant discourse, that is the symbols and interpretations of
historical events.
Cultural framing
Some symbols are so widely understood within a culture, so taken for
granted, and so powerful, that they merely have to be invoked for
203
Hans Kohn, Nationalism: Its Meaning and History (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand,
1955), pp. 3032.
204
Ibid., p. 36.
205
Reiter, Crucible of Beliefs, p. 12.
206
Jervis, Perception and Misperception.
72
Argument, belief, and culture
participants in a conversation to make the standard emotional and cog-
nitive associations. Yet, as Vertzberger argues, the images of particular
past events or situations are often based to some degree on a m elange of
fact and ction not always clearly distinguished from each other. There
are historical facts, mass media reports, national mythologies, artistic
impressions in writing, painting, or artifacts all reinforced by the per-
sons own imagination and selective memory.
207
Further, multiple and
conicting cultural frames are available as actors viewevents fromepis-
temic, organizational, national, or international cultural perspectives.
As Kier argues, there are not denitive meanings attached to an objec-
tive empirical reality. As important as material factors may be, they can
be interpreted in numerous ways.
208
Actions are thus intelligible rst
through an unconscious cultural lens, the lifeworld.
But the effect of culture is not only deep and unconscious. Advocates
consciously and unconsciously use culturally dominant interpretations
in their meta-arguments to represent situations to others. They use his-
torical experience, cultural signs (including metaphors, myths andcom-
mon analogies), and beliefs to reason and to make arguments to others.
Contemplating the sins of the system, painting banners, making
speeches, marchingthese boldactions are woundaroundanarmature
of cultural meanings before they power up social protest. As dissent
grows and protest erupts, there may be improvisation, there must be
inclusion (and exclusion), there can be persistence and success and,
very often, there will be failure. Every step in the process involves the
creation and diffusion of cultural meanings. At every step, too, histor-
ical events create new social conditions within which these meanings
deploy.
209
Cultural framing may be used as part of a justication for positions
already taken, or as part of publicly communicated evaluations of the
validity of positions others have taken. The fact that actors consciously
employ culture, perhaps even cynically or disingenuously, as a part of
their rhetorical menu does not mean that we should discount cultural
framing. Rather, this use underscores the importance of cultures role in
argumentation and the grounding of particular beliefs.
207
Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds, p. 297.
208
Kier, Imagining War, p. 3.
209
Fox and Starn, Introduction, p. 8.
73
Argument and change in world politics
Culture as obstacle to and source of innovation
Though there is sometimes a tendency to think of culture as monolithic,
resilient and unchanging, culture is not static, nor does culture simply
constrain and dispose. Cultures can enable innovation in at least three
ways.
First, andmost obviously, whenpeople froma relatively homogenous
culture come into contact with a different set of cultural beliefs, new
beliefs and practices may be introduced into both cultures. After some
reection, some of these beliefs may be adopted wholesale or melded in
a syncretic way. Sub-cultures withina dominant culture mayalsoexpose
new beliefs to the larger culture. But it is important to emphasize that
the transmission of beliefs does not guarantee their adoption. Members
of cultures often resist new beliefs, and why any new belief is adopted
must be explained since some beliefs and practices are adopted while
others are not. The cultural aspects of resistance to, and adoption of,
new beliefs is perhaps best seen in debates within traditions, such as
those documented by scholars of the philosophy and history of science
who have written about debates within scientic belief systems when
scientists proposed radical new ideas.
210
Highly cohesive groups or cultures that are isolated from outside in-
uences and who hold rigid, self-reinforcing, standards of proof for
the adoption of new beliefs may be most resistant to change. They
may also be prone to groupthink where group members strivings for
unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alterna-
tive courses of action.
211
Irving Janis suggests that in circumstances
of extreme crisis, group contagion occasionally gives rise to collective
panic, violent acts of scapegoating, and other forms of what could be
called group madness. But, Janis argues, much more frequent . . . are
instances of mindless conformity and collective misjudgement of seri-
ous risks, which are collectively laughed off in a clubby atmosphere
of relaxed conviviality.
212
Thus, according to Janis, a policymaking
group which displays the symptoms of groupthink will not survey all
210
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientic Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press,1955); Paul Thagard, Conceptual Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1992).
211
Irving Janis, Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes (Boston:
Houghton Mifin, 1982), p. 9; Irving Janis, Victims of Groupthink (Boston: Houghton
Mifin, 1972). Also see Irving L. Janis, Crucial Decisions: Leadership in Policymaking and
Crisis Management (New York: The Free Press, 1989).
212
Janis, Groupthink, p. 3.
74
Argument, belief, and culture
the objectives and policy alternatives, nor candidly assess the risks and
costs of alternatives.
213
Moreover, individual decisionmakers in group-
think settings tend to think in less cognitively complex ways.
214
Janis is
correct in pointing to the contributing role of homogeneity in the group-
think process: the primary cause of groupthink is the desire to maintain
consensus in a group of like-minded individuals. Crisis situations may
be more likely to generate groupthink because decisionmaking groups
tend to decrease in size at those times and there may be great pressures
felt to come to consensus quickly.
215
Groupthink and censorship are, of course, not the same. Censorship
is a more direct and conscious process where individuals with informa-
tion or opinions that directly contradict the dominant view are silenced
or their views systematically screened out of the discourse and the deci-
sionmakingprocess. Intotalitariansettings, individuals withsuchviews
may frequently silence themselves (self-censorship), to preserve their
lives or their position within the hierarchy. Thus, censorship and self-
censorship may contribute to groupthink and both may be more likely
in extremely homogenous cultures that stress cohesion and consensus.
Second, when individuals and groups face new social and material
challenges, suchas overpopulationor climate change, innovationis pos-
sible. But innovation is not guaranteed. Groups may hold on to their
old beliefs and ways of acting even if others might consider change
imperative. The content of webs of preexisting belief, and a groups
knowledge-making practices will affect whether changes in social and
material conditions will be understood as challenges to old beliefs, and
whether the pre-existing beliefs are changed.
216
Ineither case, those who
213
Ibid., pp. 174175.
214
PhilipTetlock, Identifying Victims of Groupthink FromPublic Statements of Decision
Makers, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (August 1979), 13141324.
215
Ole R. Holsti, Crisis Decision Making, in Philip E. Tetlock, Jo L. Husbands, Robert
Jervis, Paul C. Stern, and Charles Tilly, eds., Behavior, Society and Nuclear War, Volume One
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 884: 2021. Of course, even in crisis situa-
tions small groups do not always fall prey to groupthink. For critiques of groupthink and
discussionof small groupdecisionmaking, see RamonJ. Aldag andSally Riggs Fuller, Be-
yond Fiasco: A Reappraisal of the Groupthink Phenomenon and a New Model of Group
Decision Processes, Psychological Bulletin 113 (May 1993), 533552; Paul tHart, Eric K.
Stern, and Bengt Sundelius, eds., Beyond Groupthink: Political Group Dynamics and For-
eign Policy-Making (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997); and Robert Abelson
and Ariel Levi, Decision Making and Decision Theory, in Gardner Lindzey and Elliot
Aronson, eds., The Handbook of Social Psychology, 3rd edn (New York: Random House,
1985), pp. 231309: 292293.
216
On change and resistance to it, see Elder and Cobb, The Political Uses of Symbols,
pp. 106109.
75
Argument and change in world politics
advocate belief change will have to make arguments to others to show
why they should adopt new beliefs.
Even if the group is not confronted by substantially novel circum-
stances, new beliefs and arguments may be developed by those who for
some reason (their economic, social, or cultural position or the logical
development of their beliefs) have come tosee the worlddifferentlyfrom
the social formations or classes of the dominant culture. These individ-
uals may attempt to develop a cohort of likeminded people, promoting
a social movement, who work to develop an analysis that re-frames the
dominant understanding of the world and outlines a program for re-
form or revolution. For example, human activity had long affected the
environment. The environmentalism of the 1960s and 1970s grew out
of the experiences and understanding of individuals who felt the pre-
vailing actions of humans harmed the environment and ultimately the
quality of human life. Activists work to persuade others to see the world
as they see it, and set about trying to change aspects of the dominant
culture. As Fox and Starn suggest, protest builds and sometimes trans-
forms the cultural meanings shared by communities and groups.
217
Powerful new beliefs and arguments have the capacity to fracture the
prevailing belief consensus and consequently fracture the political con-
sensus among the dominant elites themselves.
Third, cultures maycontainwithinthemtheattitudinal seeds for belief
revision and innovation. Specically, conservative cultures may go to
great lengths to preserve and transmit unchanged beliefs and practices.
Onthe other hand, cultures that containbelief systems that are extremely
self-reective, putting their own beliefs and modes of reasoning on trial,
or that contain elements which consciously foster innovation in the arts
and sciences, may be more prone to belief revision and change. It is
possible that these cultures are characterized by a form of reasoning
that de-emphasizes formal logic as the sole mode of reasoningandprizes
diversity and experimentation.
The source of culture
Not surprisingly, there are intense debates amonganthropologists about
the source of culture. Specically, is culture autonomous, is it an effect
of biological forces, or does it reect the material base and the organi-
zation of production? The latter is a naturalist functional utility account
217
Fox and Starn, Introduction, p. 7.
76
Argument, belief, and culture
of culture where culture is an effect of material forces.
218
As Marshall
Sahlins argues: At rst glance the confrontation of the cultural and
material logics does seem unequal. The material process is factual and
independent of mans will; the symbolic, invented and therefore ex-
ible. The one is xed by nature, the other is arbitrary by denition.
Thought can only kneel before the absolute sovereignty of the physi-
cal world.
219
If culture is an ideational effect of material forces, then
those who argue that material forces are the cause of social behav-
ior have not been defeated by an account that stresses the importance
of culture. Politics still boils down to material causes and biological
drives.
Yet there is good reason to doubt materialist/functionalist accounts
of the origins of culture. As Sahlins argues, nothing in the way of their
capacity to satisfy a material (biological) requirement can explain why
pants are produced for men and skirts for women, or why dogs are
inedible but the hindquarters of the steer are supremely satisfying of
the need to eat. Nor are the relations of production the division of
labor by culturally dened categories and capacities deducible from
materially determined categories and capacities of the population.
220
In other words, while it is true that cultural practices include activi-
ties that are motivated by material factors and biological needs (e.g.
building houses to stay warm or dry; eating meat to satisfy hunger),
one ought not to fall into the functionalist trap of assuming that there
is only one way to satisfy a need. Humans could and do satisfy
their material needs for shelter and food in other ways. The mate-
rial forces taken by themselves are lifeless.
221
As Sahlins suggests,
nature rules only on the question of existence, not on specic form.
222
He argues:
So far as the denite properties of a cultural order are conceived,
the laws of nature are indeterminate . . . Culture is not merely nature
expressed in another form. Rather, the reverse: the action of nature un-
folds in the terms of culture; that is, in a form no longer its own but
embodied as meaning. Nor is this a mere translation. The natural fact
assumes a new mode of existence as a symbolized fact, its cultural de-
ployment and consequence now governed by the relation between its
218
This dichotomy is familiar as the free will versus determinism and the agent versus
structure debates.
219
Marshall Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago,
1976), p. 207.
220
Ibid.
221
Ibid.
222
Ibid., p. 209.
77
Argument and change in world politics
meaningful dimension and other such meanings, rather than the rela-
tion between its natural dimensions and other such facts. All of this of
course within the material limits . . . From the moment of cultural syn-
thesis, the action of nature is mediatedby a conceptual scheme . . . Such
being the feature of nature culturalized, nature as it exists in itself is
only the raw material provided by the hand of God, waiting to be
given meaningful shape and content by the hand of man. It is as the
block of marble to the nished statue; and of course the genius of the
sculptor in the same way as the technical development of culture
consists in exploiting the lines of diffraction within the material to his
own ends.
223
But if materialist-functionalist accounts of culture seem inadequate,
especially in the face of contemporary and historical cultural diversity,
then what accounts for culture? Sahlins puts a premium on human re-
ection, how we actively make meaning out of the natural world, order
it and our relations to each other. Which leaves social scientists in the
awkward position of being interpreters of interpretation. Despite the
importance of the question, an account of origins is not necessary at this
juncture if what one wants to understand is the consequences of culture.
Summary and caveats
Political arguments and debates are forms of reasoning in a political
context where the aim can be both private discovery or deliberation as
well as public motivation, justication, and mobilization. Ethical, sci-
entic, practical, and identity arguments are frequent in world politics,
as are meta-arguments over framing, the nature of the world, how we
know it, or what is good. Arguments may occur in a simple form, such
as single practical or identity arguments, or they may be more complex
concatenations of arguments. Further, the contexts of arguments (the
who, when, why and where) affects their persuasiveness. Arguments
may be subject to dissection as one moves back and forth along infer-
ential and belief chains of reasoning to support or attack elements of a
particular argument or supporting arguments.
Good arguments are ones that give hearers good reasons to believe
their conclusions. Persuasive arguments also use emotional appeals and
draw on our feelings as much as they use vertical logic or horizontal
associative reasoning. Arguments are not necessarily rational in a simple
utility maximizing sense, but they will be reasoned: they will aim to
answer some questions and consist of beliefs and supporting beliefs,
223
Ibid., pp. 209210.
78
Argument, belief, and culture
giving reasons for conclusions. Similarly, symbolic arguments which
use sideways or associative forms of reasoning, such as analogies, may
or may not be appropriate. Nevertheless, inappropriate analogies may
be persuasive.
The reason one argument wins over another is rst of all that its advo-
cates have been heard, while many arguments are never heard. Second,
successful arguments are made by savvy political actors who mobilize
political support. Third, accidents of history, such as the skill and access
of those making the case, may affect the success of arguments. Fourth,
arguments are less likely to be persuasive if the social and material
context does not cohere with the argument. Again, this does not mean
that argument actually boils down to material conditions. Rather the
relationship between arguments and preexisting cultural, strategic, and
economic factors is complex since previous argument shaped the world
in which present arguments occur.
Beliefs are neither rational nor irrational features of a decision-
making process. Beliefs philosophical, instrumental, identity, and nor-
mative are historically and socially contingent. The persuasiveness of
arguments and judgments about the validity (legitimacy) or logic of po-
litical arguments are also contingent. There is no rational (or irrational)
foundationfor social beliefs. We canonlyunderstandbeliefs historically,
by examining their unfolding within particular historical contexts or as
the result of reason. Moreover, there are fewreal material interests that
cannot be viewed in more than one way. That does not mean certain ac-
tions should not be considered counter-productive, but the criteria for
judging foreign policy decisions should be the framework of reason, not
ideal-type rationality. Rational actor theory itself consists of a set of be-
liefs organized in a belief system that stresses natural foundations for
belief and accurate assessments of costs, risks, and benets.
The argument rests on several key premises and assumptions. First,
thoughwe oftenspeak of individuals alone as making decisions, foreign
policy decisionmaking and policy implementation is both an individ-
ual and a group activity. Many are involved in its various steps, from
informationgatheringtooptionformulation, decision, andimplementa-
tion. Even in dictatorships, it matters what participants think about the
reasons given for a particular decision, and action. In other words, the
non-coercive aspects of politics are ultimately about legitimacy andthus
we must understand the processes by which certain activities become
legitimate and normal and by which individuals are persuaded to act
or believe.
79
Argument and change in world politics
Second, in the process of making arguments, decisionmakers must
constantly remind each other of their identities, goals, reasons, and jus-
tications. Thus, shared belief systems are crucially important for the
simple reason that shared beliefs help individuals see the same things,
share a vision of the group, and come to an agreement about goals and
policies. Belief systems do what rational actor theorists and game theo-
rists woulddescribe as facilitate coordination. But philosophical, instru-
mental, normative, and identity beliefs also shape understanding and
interests: the content of these coordinating ideas is crucially important.
Third, what is self-evident, and taken for granted in an individuals
belief systemis not necessarily basedon real, objective, andobvious ma-
terial interests. Much of the scholarly literature and popular discussion
of foreign policy assumes that the material interests of states are obvious
and essentially unproblematic and can be taken for granted. Indeed,
the terms self-interest and national are rarely dened and their mean-
ing has usually been unproblematized, as were the ways foreign policy
decisionmakers argued for their particular view of national interest.
224
But, I argue, both individual and intersubjectively shared beliefs are the
foundation for most of these taken-for-granted assumptions. Little is
self-evident about national interests.
Fourth, there is nothing rm, everlasting, or immutable about these
beliefs whether they are philosophical, instrumental, normative, or
about identities. Foreign policy beliefs are constructed, maintained, and
modied through social practices. Beliefs are as constructed and open
to reinterpretation as the arguments that decisionmakers use to con-
vince themselves and others of the correct foreign policy decision.
Major foreign policy shifts are as likely to be the result of changes in
belief systems as they are to be the result of changes in the structure
of international politics or in the composition of the ruling elite of an
individual nation.
Fifth, beliefs donot recognize borders inside states or outside them. As
Luard argues, international politics is a milieu of social interaction and
there are dominant beliefs in this environment which structure actions:
it is the ideology of international society the set of assumptions and
expectations whichare establishedthere whichdetermine the thinking
of individual decisionmakers, and so the way they will respond when
facedwith a particular threat, dignity, or affront.
225
Luardargues that it
224
Exceptions include Katzenstein, ed., Culture of National SecurityandMarthaFinnemore,
National Interests and International Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).
225
Luard, War in International Society, p. 3.
80
Argument, belief, and culture
is not possible to consider the behavior of states without regard to the
social context, the international environment, within which they exist;
nor to consider a society of states without the motivations and behav-
ior which characterize the individual states which are its members.
226
Interdependence includes belief inhis view. Nostate is anisland(what-
ever its geographical situation). All states at all times have had regular
contact with some other states.
227
Thus, individuals and groups do not
come up with beliefs, evaluate them, or make persuasive arguments in a
social vacuum. Foreign policy belief systems are embedded within and
reect larger social and historical complexes of meaning.
While we can see cultures in various social and political groups in-
cluding epistemic communities, organizations, states, civilizations, and
international or global settings, scholars must take care not to reify cul-
tures in particular locations. Rather, it is possible to recognize that in
certain times and places, people share beliefs and practices and ways of
understanding their history, at least enough to supercially understand
the arguments of those within their culture. The practice of colonialism
variedover time as cultures changedandthose who triedto alter aspects
of colonialismconstantlyranintoculture. It wouldbe extremelydifcult
to understand how colonialism changed from the dominant practice to
one that is considered illegitimate without examining the larger cultural
context whichshaped, andwas usedtoshape, its constitutive arguments
and practices.
This theory of the causal and constitutive role of arguments offers a
specication of howbeliefs (or what most call ideas) work in worldpoli-
tics. A theory of argument offers a way to understand the links between
domestic political processes, nongovernmental organizations, and in-
ternational institutions to international structures and processes not
simply as multilevel games but also as multilocal and multivocal argu-
ments where the goal is to persuade others and change practices. By
focusing on the content of beliefs and the role of argument and reason,
this theory moves away from the implicit rational/irrational dualism
that dominates international relations theory. My argument focuses in-
stead on how the meaning-content of beliefs and arguments is both
historically and logically related to, and dependent upon, the meaning
of other beliefs and arguments that are themselves not necessarily related
to material interests or perceptions/misperceptions of the social world.
226
Ibid., p. 13.
227
Ibid., p. 15.
81
2 Ethical argument and argument
analysis
I want to account for the ways in which men and women who are
not lawyers but simply citizens (and sometimes soldiers) argue about
war, and to expound the terms we commonly use. I am concerned
precisely with the present structure of the moral world. My starting
point is the fact that we do argue, often to different purposes, to be
sure, but in a mutually comprehensible fashion: else there would be
no point in arguing. We justify our conduct; we judge the conduct of
others. Though these justications cannot be studied like the records
of a criminal court, they are nevertheless, a legitimate subject of study.
1
Ethical argument is ostensibly the hard case for demonstrating the im-
portance of argument in world politics. To make an ethical argument,
as opposed to any other kind of argument is to propose three things
simultaneously: that a behavior or course of action is good and right;
that others ought to do this good thing; and that despite the strength of
my conviction, I will not force you to do what I believe is the good, but
rather I seek to persuade you to believe as I do and act according to that
belief. Further, ethical arguments clearly rest on normative beliefs, but
they are also usually closely related to identity and constitutive beliefs.
To do the right thing is to be a good human either as an individual or a
member of a group (identity) or as part of ones role (constitutive belief).
And ethical arguments, because of their relation to beliefs about how
it is that we are good, how it is that we relate to others, are emotional
and this is part of their distinctive appeal and power. Those who make
ethical arguments at least want to be seen as good and at most believe
that they are suggesting what is good.
1
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations
(New York: Basic Books, 1992), p. xxvii.
82
Ethical argument and argument analysis
The dominant account of the role of ethics in international relations is
that it is a stand in for material interests and is the product of power.
Such is the view of E.H. Carr:
Theories of social morality are always the product of a dominant group
which identies itself with the community as a whole, and which pos-
sesses facilities denied to subordinate groups or individuals for impos-
ingits viewof life onthe community. Theories of international morality
are, for the same reason and in virtue of the same process, the product
of dominant nations or groups of nations . . . morality is the product of
power.
2
These and similar claims are found in the writings of Thucydides and
Hobbes.
Arguments about the irrelevance of ethics or morality are power-
ful. Translated into their assumptions, those who say that morality is
the product of power are actually making several claims. First, they
suppose that when individuals make ethical claims, those statements
mask some real interests that are not moral. Rather, the interests are
selsh. Further, these selsh interests or self-interested behavior
and arguments are motivated at root by material causes such as the de-
sire for power or survival. Moreover, to act self-interestedly is to be
rational, in the sense of utility maximizing, while action motivated
by ethical concerns is irrational. Since states are rational, and since
in the world of international politics militarily/materially powerful
states dominate (the strong do as they will, the weak as they must),
international ethics is an oxymoron. Representatives of states who say
they act for moral reasons are covering up some other, self-interested
motive. In this view, theories of world politics that give ethical
accounts of behavior are at best mistaken and at worst mislead-
ing.
Another strong argument, as articulated by Joshua Cohen, grants
some causal weight to morality but suggests that morality has been
internalized and is part of the interests of individuals. He argues
that some ethical explanations . . . have force. That force derives from
the general claim that the injustice of a social arrangement limits its
viability. Cohen continues: Social arrangements better able to elicit
voluntary cooperation have both moral and practical advantages over
2
Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, 19191939: An Introduction to the Study of
International Relations (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), pp. 79 and 81.
83
Argument and change in world politics
their more coercive counterparts.
3
Cohen makes this argument with
specic reference to the demise of slavery, suggesting that slavery
conicted with slave interests in material well-being, autonomy, and
dignity. Slavery is unjust because it could not be the result of a free,
reasonable, and informed agreement.
Suppose, then, that one comes to understand certain facts, all of which
can be recognized independent from the procedures of moral reason-
ing: that slaves share the natural properties that are sufcient for being
subjects of legitimate interests, that they have the fundamental inter-
ests, and that slavery sharply conicts with those interests. Moral rea-
soning about slavery, proceeding in light of these facts, and giving due
consideration to the interests of slaves, is bound to recognize the inter-
ests as legitimate and to condemn slavery as unjust. To say, then, that
the wrongness of slavery explains the moral belief is to note the fol-
lowing: that moral reasoning mandates the conclusion that slavery is
unjust; and that the moral belief is produced in part by that kind of rea-
soning. And once the injustice is recognized, it is reasonable to expect
that recognition plays some role in motivation, that it contributes to
the antagonism of slaves to slavery, that it adds nonslave opponents to
slave opponents, and that, once slavery is abolished, it helps to explain
why there are not strong movements to bring it back.
4
Cohens arguments are actually a version of rational actor the-
ory, where it is rational to act in accordance with normative beliefs.
The moral weight also gures implicitly in the conicting interests
view . . . The conict of slavery with legitimate slave interests, and
the fact that masters interests in preserving slavery are not legitimate,
plausibly helps to tip the balance in favor of stable departures from
slavery.
5
The basic assumptions of rational actor theory are familiar yet bear
repeating. First, people are means to ends rational: theydevise strategies
and engage in behaviors that move them efciently toward achieving
their goals. Second, people are utility maximizers: they will choose the
course of action with the greatest perceived benets. Third, people cal-
culate costs, risks, and benets in an unbiased manner. Fourth, prefe-
rences are given and stable. Rational actor theory does not pretend to
tell us about the source of preferences or interests, nor how preferences
change. In sum, human behavior can be explained in terms of rational
3
Joshua Cohen, The Arc of the Moral Universe, Philosophy & Public Affairs 26 (Spring
1997), 91134: 93.
4
Ibid., p. 131.
5
Ibid.
84
Ethical argument and argument analysis
decision processes. Individuals weigh costs, risks, and benets of alter-
native actions, and they choose the course of action with the least costs
and risks, and the greatest benet. In the case of Cohens argument
about the demise of slavery, an ethical explanation makes sense because
slavery conicts with the rational slaves interest, and because it con-
icts with slave interests the institution of slavery is costly, in fact more
costly than benecial in most circumstances. Morality and self-interest
are thus still distinct from each other in this view, although as Gregory
Raymond argues, self-interests and norms frequently coexist.
6
However, normative beliefs can have force, and the power of those
beliefs in argument is related specically to their content. People use
arguments (instrumentally) because they want to persuade the other
and they nd that ethical arguments are often persuasive. In the case of
ethical arguments they want to persuade the other that behaving in a
certainway is normatively goodandtherefore they ought to behave that
way. Convincing ethical arguments provide good normative reasons to
do one thing versus another. The reasons given in a persuasive ethi-
cal argument seem good, rst because people believe in the values put
forward in the argument, and second, because they believe that the pro-
posed course of action will help to realize those values. In other words,
when they are successful, ethical arguments work primarily because of
their persuasive power and the source of this persuasive power is their
content. Ethical arguments may also have political power if the balance
of belief shifts to the position articulated by the ethical argument, which
means that those who deploy successful ethical arguments must be as
politically savvy as those who deploy practical, identity, or scientic
arguments. Ethical arguments that occur within political groups and
among them are as important and ubiquitous as practical, scientic,
and identity arguments in world politics.
The key question is whether there is a causal relationship between
normative beliefs and behaviors that become dominant. I argue that
there is, and that the causal power of normative beliefs lies in ethical
argument. The aims in this chapter are to articulate the workings and
role of ethical argument; to explicate the relationship between ethical
arguments, normative beliefs, and behavioral change; and to suggest
a way to study ethical arguments in world politics. I make my case
for the importance of ethical argument in several steps. First, I develop
6
Gregory A. Raymond, Problems and Prospects in the Study of International Norms,
Mershon International Studies Review 41 (November 1997), 205245: 232.
85
Argument and change in world politics
the concepts of behavioral norms and normative beliefs, distinguishing
between them and discussing their potential relationships. Second,
I briey discuss alternative theories of behavioral norm and normative
belief change. Third, I developthe theory of ethical argument that shows
how ethical arguments can be persuasive. Fourth, I explore some of the
reasons behavioral norms and normative beliefs are difcult to change,
but how, nevertheless, ethical arguments might seem persuasive.
Finally, I discuss methodological questions and propose a method of
ethical argument analysis.
Behavioral norms and normative beliefs
International relations scholars frequently talk about norms but
do so in ways that frustrate analysis by blurring the distinction be-
tween behavioral norms and normative beliefs. They also emphasize
common knowledge properties of norms that are not unique to
norms. Further, it is not uncommon for the norms literature to
proceed as if the dominant practice were the same as the normative
belief.
Behavioral norms are simply typical, or modal, behavior or the
dominant practice in certain contexts.
7
Normative beliefs are beliefs
about what it is right to do. What is distinctive about prescriptive nor-
mative statements and normative beliefs is their emphasis on what is
right and good. This prescriptive normative quality is precisely what
theorists are asserting or denying has causal import, so it is vital
not to confound normative beliefs and behavioral norms or else one
risks circular and imprecise arguments (in the form of norms cause
norms).
8
It is not unusual, even among the most careful scholars, to procede
as if common knowledge and normative beliefs are one and the same.
For instance, Friedrich Kratochwil suggests that norms are used to as-
cribe praise or blame, but he highlights the function of norms in deci-
sionmaking and problem solving ordering and coordination effects
arguing that norms decrease uncertainty, allow the pursuit of shared
7
Robert O. Keohane uses the phrase typical, or modal, behavior in The Demand for
International Regimes, in Stephen D. Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1983), pp. 141171: 145.
8
See Raymond, Problems andProspects inthe Studyof International Norms, andJanice
E. Thompson, Norms in International Relations: A Conceptual Analysis, International
Journal of Group Tensions 23 (1993), 6783.
86
Ethical argument and argument analysis
meanings, and help actors coordinate by dening situations and the
rules of the game.
9
For Audie Klotz, norms are beliefs, or shared
(thus social) understandings of standards for behavior.
10
Klotz says
that Discrimination based on raci ally dened categories, evident in
racist language, personal actions, or social policies, is bad, and indi-
vidual equality (lack of racial discrimination) is good.
11
Failing to dis-
tinguish dominant behaviors from the beliefs that might cause them,
Klotz says: Nor are all norms moral, since these standards can have
functional and nonethical origins and purposes.
12
Christopher Gelpi
also confounds common knowledge with normative, that is, prescrip-
tive force, when he emphasizes the role of norms as focal points
for interpreting behavior and as reputational constraints.
13
Gregory
Raymond argues that contrary to the Hobbesian assertion that the in-
dependence of states implies that there are no rules, acknowledged
normative standards exist in the absence of a common power to
keep everyone in awe.
14
But when Raymond argues that Norms
are ubiquitous . . . The web of expectations created by norms guide
behavior; even in the absence of centralized mechanisms to enforce
compliance, he does not distinguishnormative beliefs fromother kinds
of beliefs or common knowledge.
15
And while focusing on the pre-
scriptive aspect of norms as a standard of appropriate behavior,
Finnemore and Sikkink nevertheless say, Norms channel and reg-
ularize behavior; they often limit the range of choice and constrain
actions.
16
As shared expectations about behavior, both behavioral norms and
normative beliefs may have common knowledge effects, decreasing un-
certainty about what actors are likely to do in certain circumstances,
and facilitating coordination because norms, that is, both behavioral
norms and normative beliefs, are functional in ways that are similar
9
Friedrich Kratochwil, Rules Norms and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal
Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989), passim, esp. pages 911; 48; 50; 5859; 6970 and 100.
10
Audie Klotz, Norms in International Relations: The Struggle Against Apartheid (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 14.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
Christopher Gelpi, Crime and Punishment: The Role of Norms in Crisis Bargaining,
American Political Science Review 91 (June 1997), 339360: 339.
14
Raymond, Problems and Prospects in the Study of International Norms, p. 207.
15
Ibid., p. 208.
16
Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, International Norm Dynamics and Political
Change, International Organization 52 (Autumn 1998), 887917: 891 and 894.
87
Argument and change in world politics
to the role of other ideas (conventions) or knowledge and institutions.
17
In this sense, norms are not unique. Non-normative beliefs (e.g.
scientic propositions), habits, and rules indeed any form of common
knowledge and agreed upon procedures may help actors coordinate
or limit the range of choice. Because there is nothing unique about this
aspect of normative beliefs, scholars ought to take care not to confuse the
possible coordinating effects of normative beliefs (that are similar to the
effects of any form of common knowledge and focal-point agreements)
with the unique prescriptive characteristic of normative beliefs.
Both behavioral norms andnormative beliefs usually have a traceable
history; actors will often be able to say when and sometimes why they
or their ancestors began a practice and why they thought a normative
belief was right. But behavioral norms may also be arbitrary. In other
words, there may be no goodethical or practical reasons for a behavioral
norm, yet, for some accidental reason, the practice is accepted and ex-
pected. In this situation, no one seems to have what might be recognized
as an ethical or logical argument to justify the practice, though post-hoc
rationalizations for the practice might spring to mind if practitioners are
pressed. Finally, in the sense that dominant practices and expectations
do these things (normalize, decrease uncertainty, shape interests and
the scope of consideration, and legitimize behaviors), they are struc-
tural features of international and domestic politics. In other words,
behavioral norms and normative beliefs are both constitutive (meaning
making) and regulative (constraining).
Anillustrationmay helpclarify the distinctions andoverlaps between
behavioral norms and normative beliefs. It is possible to view complex
international practices, suchas warmaking, colonialism, diplomacy, and
trade in certain contexts, as behavioral norms. These complex prac-
tices are composed of other behavioral norms (regular behaviors) and
normative beliefs. For instance, war is composed of several behavioral
norms regarding violence that leads to injury, mutilation, and death.
And within the conceptual domain of these particular practices, there
are normative beliefs prescriptions about how injury, mutilation, and
deathought to (or ought not to) come about, that rest onother normative
beliefs about what it is goodandright to do. Since the widespreadadop-
tion of the convention on chemical weapons in the twentieth century, as
17
Institutionalists stress the role that institutions and ideas can play in reducing trans-
action costs, providing focal points, and decreasing uncertainty among rational actors.
Also see Gary Geortz, Contexts of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994), p. 98.
88
Ethical argument and argument analysis
RichardPrice andNina Tannenwaldargue, the use of chemical weapons
in war has been seen as something that ought not to be done, accord-
ing to international law, while other methods of injury, mutilation, and
death, such as machine guns, remain more or less acceptable and ex-
pected or normal.
18
But even the acceptability of methods in war is
constrained by the pre-existing web of normative beliefs in a culture
such as the belief that it is not right to kill prisoners of war or non-
combatants.
19
Types and variations of behavioral norms and normative
beliefs
As Raymond notes, Over time all norms vary with regard to commu-
nal meaning, perlocutionary effect, degree of internalization, extent of
conformity, patterns of deviance, and so on.
20
It is worthwhile saying
more about the variations in behavioral norms, normative beliefs, and
the possible relationships between behavioral norms and normative be-
liefs. Normative beliefs, as propositions about what it is good and right
to do, vary along several dimensions: basic type; scope of obligation;
specicity; and links to other normative beliefs. Behavioral norms vary
in terms of prevalence, degree of institutionalization, links to normative
beliefs or normativity, and the costs of non-compliance.
It is possible to distinguish four basic types of normative belief: sub-
stantive (more commonly called regulative norms), procedural, con-
stitutive, and meta-normative.
21
Substantive normative beliefs dene
and prescribe what qualities and behaviors are good, for example the
belief that truth is good. Procedural normative beliefs prescribe how
to decide what is good and right, for example that democratic or re-
publican procedures ought to be used. Constitutive normative beliefs
are about the characteristics of a good social entity or what makes in-
dividuals or social groups count as something.
22
For example, those
who follow the particular prescriptions entailed by the normative be-
lief in question are (good) soldiers, states, allies, and so on. Those
18
See Richard Price and Nina Tannenwald, Norms and Deterrence: The Nuclear
and Chemical Weapons Taboos, in Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National
Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press,
1996), pp. 114152.
19
On the constraining effects of culture see Tracy Isaacs, Cultural Context and Moral
Responsibility, Ethics 107 (July 1997), 760684.
20
Raymond, Problems and Prospects in the Study of International Norms, p. 235.
21
It is more common to distinguish regulative and constitutive norms.
22
These are sometimes related to identity beliefs.
89
Argument and change in world politics
who do not follow the particular normative prescriptions may cease
to be considered soldiers, states, and allies. Meta-normative beliefs
prescribe that normative prescriptions ought to be followed. The dis-
tinction between substantive normative beliefs and meta-normative
beliefs is that Moral codes and various moral taboos have a connec-
tion with custom. . . But rules such as that promises ought to be kept, or
that it is immoral to tell a lie seem to be rather different . . . Their exis-
tence cannot truly be said to depend on historical contingencies . . . the
rule such that promises ought to be kept presupposes the existence of
the institution of promising. . . [that] need not be universal.
23
Some
normative beliefs such as those promoting truth-telling, promise-
keeping, treating like cases alike, and following legitimate rules are
meta-normative since they are prescriptions that are intended to guide
norm following in general and help create an intersubjective expecta-
tion that normative prescriptions will be followed because it is good to
do so.
Despite the existence of meta-normative beliefs, prescriptions are not
always followed. There are context specic beliefs about the scope of
obligations arising from a particular normative belief about when to
behave in the ways prescribed by the normative belief. Universal nor-
mative beliefs dene the scope of obligation such that everyone must
all the time without exception, follow the prescription (in international
law, the principle of jus cogens where absolutely no derogation is per-
missible). Role normative beliefs limit the scope of obligation to those
whose formal or informal role it is to comply with the prescribed or
proscribed behavior. For example, neutral states are expected to behave
one way and not another, while allies can be expected to follow dif-
ferent prescriptions. Normative beliefs are also often conditional; the
scope of obligation depends on the conditions of the specic situation.
Under conditional normative beliefs, for example, actors ought to fol-
low the prescription if there is time, if they are able, if doing so does
not conict with another specied normative belief, such as not caus-
ing greater harm, and so on. For example, food-rich states ought to
contribute to famine relief while food-poor states are not expected to
do so.
Normative beliefs also vary by the explicitness of their specica-
tion. The normative belief may be vague in terms of the scope of the
23
Georg Henrik von Wright, Norms, Truth and Logic, in Georg Henrik von Wright,
Practical Reason (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1983), pp. 130209: 138.
90
Ethical argument and argument analysis
obligation, or the belief may be well specied, with the conditions for
its scope of obligation well elaborated. Further, the articulated justica-
tion (persuasive reasons to hold the belief) for the normative belief may
be vague or explicit.
Finally, normative beliefs also vary by the density of their relation
to other normative beliefs. Normative beliefs are articulated in laws,
myths, and religious doctrines and they rarely stand alone. Behavioral
norms and prescriptive normative statements are linked to, and embed-
dedin, wider webs of normative beliefs andbehavioral norms whichare
in turn embedded in wider social institutions and networks of beliefs
or culture.
Like normative beliefs, behavioral norms vary in their prevalence, de-
gree of institutionalization, normativity, andthe cost of non-compliance.
By denition, behavioral norms are a dominant practice. Publicity about
behavioral norms becomes commonknowledge andmayhave the prop-
erty of easing coordination. But several behaviors may be possible in
different situations, and the prevalence of a behavior may vary from
always, to frequently or infrequently practiced. For example, in the last
several centuries most, though not all, states have establishedorganized
armed forces. In cases where a practice is infrequent, it ought not to be
considered a behavioral norm.
The degree of institutionalization of behavioral norms is the extent
to which routines and procedures that facilitate or constitute the per-
formance of the behavioral norm are built into standard operating pro-
cedures and regulations of organizations that function in the relevant
issue area. Institutionalization is how normative beliefs are both inter-
nalized within organizations as they are incorporated into practices,
policies, andrules andexternalized, as rules are adoptedby other bod-
ies. Highly institutionalized norms will be associated with rules about
when to engage in practices that facilitate the conduct of the behavioral
norm and actors will consciously practice the behavioral norm and de-
vise routines for its execution. Moreover, institutionalization can con-
tribute to changing actors understandings of their interests; as Kathryn
Sikkink has argued about human rights norms in US policy, ideas em-
bodied in institutions created bureaucratic interests based on the per-
petuation of those policies.
24
24
Kathryn Sikkink, The Power of Principled Ideas: Human Rights Policies in the United
States and Western Europe, in Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, eds., Ideas and
Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1993), pp. 139170: 167. Sikkink also stresses the importance of NGOs.
91
Argument and change in world politics
Table 2.1 Variations in normative beliefs and behavioral norms
Normative Beliefs Behavioral Norms
Type Prevalence
substantive infrequent
procedural frequent
constitutive invariable
meta-normative
Scope of Obligation Degree of Institutionalization
universal none
role some
conditional highly
Specicity Normativity
vague or explicit scope none: habit
vague or explicit justication weak/implicit
strong/explicit w/ sanctions if
violated
Links to Other Normative Beliefs Costs of Non-compliance
few low
many high
Behavioral norms may also vary in terms of normativity, the artic-
ulation of justicatory links between behavioral norms and normative
beliefs. Sovereignty, for example, has high normativity. Habits are the
behavioral norms that are not at all explicitly and consciously linked to
normative beliefs. Those behavioral norms that are linked may be tied
strongly and explicitly, or weakly and implicitly, to normative beliefs.
Violations of behavioral norms that are strongly linked to normative
beliefs are probably more likely to be sanctioned than those with weak
or non-existent links to normative beliefs. It may still be costly to violate
norms which are not strongly linked to normative beliefs, but the costs
will be due more to the loss of efciency and ease of coordination.
Alternative theories of norms and normative belief
There are several ways to think about the possible causal relationships
between normative beliefs and behavioral norms: normative beliefs as
irrelevant; normative beliefs and behavioral norms as rational; and nor-
mative beliefs as part of reason or elements of ethical argument.
92
Ethical argument and argument analysis
Some realist theories of international relations argue, as noted above,
that normative beliefs are causally irrelevant. As Hans Morgenthau
claimed, A realist theory of international politics will also avoid
the other popular fallacy of equating the foreign policies of a states-
man with his philosophic or political sympathies, deducing the for-
mer from the latter.
25
Thus, Morgenthau argued, the role of nor-
mative beliefs may be simply embodied in the tendency of foreign
policy decisionmakers to think that their own views are right. Mor-
genthau implored scholars of foreign policy to avoid making that
mistake. To know that nations are subject to the moral law is one
thing, while to pretend to know with certainty what is good and
evil in relations between nations is quite another . . . On the other
hand, it is exactly the concept of interest dened as power that
saves us both from that moral excess and that political folly.
26
If
normative content does matter, realists see the role of ethical argu-
ments as only instrumental, as moral justication for the power
quest.
27
Realists answer the question of the origins of behavioral
norms with the argument that behavioral norms are contingent,
accidental historical phenomena that are maintained by habit and ex-
tended by custom or further accident. Or, as E.H. Carr argued, morality
reects the interests of the dominant power.
The second view, that norms are rational and functional, is ar-
ticulated by both realist and liberal international relations theorists.
In this view, the causal force of normative beliefs, and actors re-
ceptivity to particular ethical arguments, derives from the extent to
which norms are seen as customary. Several scholars take this
approach. As Keohane argues, international regimes perform the
function of reducing uncertainty and risk by linking discrete is-
sues to one another and by improving the quantity and quality of
information available to participants.
28
As Robert Axelrod argues,
norms may reduce uncertainty and facilitate coordination by pro-
viding a focal point.
29
Similarly, Christopher Gelpi suggests that
25
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace sixth
edition, revised by Kenneth W. Thompson (New York: Knopf, 1985), p. 6.
26
Ibid., p. 13.
27
Nicholas Spykman, quoted in Jack Donnelly, Twentieth Century Realism, in Terry
Nardin and David R. Mapel, eds., Traditions of International Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), pp. 85111: 94.
28
Keohane, The Demand for International Regimes, p. 162.
29
Robert Axelrod, An Evolutionary Approach to Norms, American Political Science
Review 80 (December 1986), 10951111.
93
Argument and change in world politics
Norms are enabling when they serve as focal points, which I label
normative referents, to help states coordinate their behavior. In this
case, norms alter state behavior by helping them interpret the be-
havior of other states in an uncertain international environment.
30
Conceptual confusion confounding prescriptive norms with com-
mon knowledge effects and dominant behaviors is evident in these
statements. This has the effect that, rather like the rst normative be-
liefs are irrelevant view, the rational and functional explanation for the
causal force of norms boils down to the position that specic qualities
of perceived goodness are irrelevant. This is because the causal force of
norms, under this hypothesis, derives from their ability to decrease un-
certainty and coordination costs by, for example, providing focal points.
Another versionof the rational norms perspective is anevolutionary/
practical account of behavioral norms, such as proposed by Robert
Axelrod, where what works well for a player is more likely to be used
again while what turns out poorly is more likely to be discarded.
31
There is some randomness, but the emphasis is on functionality and
trial anderror processes. More efcient norms triumph; states dowhat
works and the analysis of what is chosen at any specic time is based
upon an operationalization of the idea that effective strategies are more
likely to be retained than ineffective strategies.
32
Ann Florini, who ar-
gues that norms are like genes, suggests that the reproductive success
of norms depends on natural selection processes. First, whether a
norm becomes prominent enough in the norm pool to gain a foothold;
second, how well it interacts with other prevailing norms with which
it is not in competition, that is the normative environment; and -
nally, the external environmental conditions such as the distribution
of power and the availability of human or natural resources.
33
Rational norms theorists also sometimes argue, consistent with the
norms are irrelevant school, that behavioral norms and normative be-
liefs (to the extent that there are normative beliefs) are imposed and
maintainedbyhegemons tosuit their material interests.
34
The reasonthe
hegemon prefers one norm over another is not a normative belief in the
goodness or rightness of the behavior. Under this hypothesis, the causal
30
Gelpi, Crime and Punishment, p. 340.
31
Axelrod, An Evolutionary Approach to Norms, p. 1097.
32
Ibid.
33
Ann Florini, The Evolution of International Norms, International Studies Quarterly 40
(September 1996), 363389: 374.
34
For instance suggested by Axelrod in An Evolutionary Approach to Norms p. 1108
and Carr, The Thirty Years Crisis.
94
Ethical argument and argument analysis
force behind behavioral norms is rational material interests and the fact
that the behavior has become a norm is only a testament to the power of
the hegemon to impose the desired behavior and impose costs on trans-
gressors. The norm simply suits the interests of a hegemon and the
preferences of more powerful actors will be accordedgreater weight.
35
In sum, according to these rational/functional accounts of behavioral
norms, the adoption of norms is a rational activity which facilitates
coordination and reduces uncertainty for many, or at least for one pow-
erful actor. Normative content is basically irrelevant normative beliefs
are epiphenomenal; any ethical meaning is essentially a gloss on ma-
terial interests. Particular behavioral norms are preferred because they
provide stability rather than the instability of having no expectations;
they are devices to overcome the barriers to more efcient coordina-
tion in an anarchic environment.
36
Actors keep their normative com-
mitments because of the costs that international audiences (i.e. other
governments) may impose on state leaders if they do not keep their
commitments.
37
But, as the discussion above should have made clear,
any common knowledge and agreement on a convention could be ra-
tional. The specically normative content would seem to be irrelevant
in the rational actor account of norms. Thus, for the most part, the ra-
tional interest account boils down to the position that normative beliefs
are irrelevant/epiphenomenal.
A third view is that the prescriptive content of normative beliefs
matters in how one behavioral norm is chosen over another.
38
For ex-
ample, Robert Jackson argues that normative ideas that originated
in the West were a crucial factor in the abolition of colonialism and
the institution of self-determination in the greater part of the non-
Western world . . .
39
Ethan Nadelmann argues that norms emerge
and are promoted because they reect not only the economic and se-
curity interests of dominant members of international society but also
35
Keohane, The Demand for International Regimes, p. 146.
36
Ibid., p. 151.
37
Gelpi, Crime and Punishment, p. 341.
38
Klotz, Norms in International Relations; Gary Geortz and Paul F. Diehl, Toward a
Theory of International Norms: Some Conceptual and Measurement Issues, Journal of
Conict Resolution 36 (December 1992), 634666; David Welch, Justice and the Genesis of War
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Martha Finnemore, Norms, Culture,
and World Politics: Insights from Sociologys Institutionalism, International Organization
50, (Spring 1996), 325347. An analysis of how normative beliefs affect politics is of course
different from making the claim that world politics ought to be concerned with ethics.
39
Robert H. Jackson, The Weight of Ideas in Decolonization: Normative Change in Inter-
national Relations, in Goldstein and Keohane, eds., Ideas and Foreign Policy, pp. 111138:
112.
95
Argument and change in world politics
their moral interests and emotional dispositions.
40
This suggests that
for new behavioral norms to become dominant, the most powerful ac-
tors must nd that their economic and security interests must coincide
with the proposed new norm, or at least not be counter to it, and that
they may also believe the prescription is good on substantive normative
grounds.
41
My arguments are closest to this school. Yet these accounts of behavi-
oral norm change are often vague about the precise relationship they
suggest between behavioral norms and normative belief. For instance,
JohnMueller suggests that norms aresoldbynormentrepreneurs, that
is, people who peddle norms. Mueller argues that people sort through
this huge market of ideas and prove receptive to some while remaining
immune to others.
42
But in Muellers account one has to explain re-
ceptivity, that is, the conditions under which people and states buy a
particular normandinternalize certainnormative beliefs andnot others.
Nadelmann suggests an answer. This is not to argue, I should stress,
that states or governments hold moral views; rather, the capacity of
particular moral arguments to inuence government policies, particu-
larly foreign policies, stems from the political inuence of domestic and
transnational moral entrepreneurs as well as that of powerful individ-
ual advocates within the government.
43
Again, after a certain point,
the particular normative content of norms doesnt seem to matter so
40
Ethan A. Nadelmann, Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in Inter-
national Society, International Organization 44 (Autumn 1990), 479526: 524.
41
Both argument and imposition are necessary unless actors share a common normative
framework. This applies to both good and bad norms. In other words, bad nor-
mative beliefs like unequal treatment of women or persons of a different race must be
imposed by force because those who are treated unequally will not submit without resis-
tance. Similarly, those who hold good normative beliefs may not be able to persuade
the holders of bad norms to change their practices without compulsion.
42
For example, John Mueller, Changing Attitudes Towards War: The Impact of the First
World War, British Journal of Political Science 21 (January 1991), 128: 2527. Mueller may
have been the rst to use the phrase norm entrepreneurs. Mueller does not specify
how norm entrepreneurs succeed, only that their work is difcult. Robert Keohane uses
the phrase political entrepreneur to describe those who promote regimes, usually . . . a
government. Keohane, The Demand for International Regimes, p. 155. Laffey and
Weldes argue that describing entrepreneurs and the marketing of ideas suggests a
metaphor of ideas as commodities. They propose instead to use the metaphor of ideas as
capital. Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes, Beyond Belief: Ideas and Symbolic Technologies
in the Study of International Relations, European Journal of International Relations 3 (1997),
193237.
43
Nadelmann, Global Prohibition Regimes, p. 483. Similarly, Wapner credits transna-
tional interest groups with promoting ecological sensibility. Paul Wapner, Politics
Beyond the State: Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics, World Politics 47
(April 1995), 311340.
96
Ethical argument and argument analysis
much for either Mueller or Nadelmann. Morality among states boils
down to power and political inuence inside them; it is difcult in
these accounts to say why one normative belief and a practice entailed
by it, was preferred over another, only that one side had more political
power than another.
44
Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink propose an account of the
life-cycle of norms (although they seemto be eliding the distinction
and possible causal connection between prescriptive normative beliefs
and behavioral norms). The rst stage in their life-cycle, when norm
entrepreneurs persuade others to embrace their norm, is norm
emergence. The second stage in the life-cycle, norm acceptance, is
a cascade characterized by a dynamic of imitation as norm leaders
attempt to socialize other states to become norm followers. In this
stage, norm cascades are facilitated by a combination of pressure for
conformity, desire to enhance international legitimation, and the desire
of state leaders to enhance their self-esteem. The third stage, inter-
nalization of the norm, is when norms acquire a taken-for-granted
quality and are no longer a matter of broad public debate. They further
suggest that though there is no guarantee that a norm will inevitably go
through the process they describe, in those cases where norms cascade
and are internalized, they may eventually become the prevailing stan-
dard of appropriateness against which newnorms emerge and compete
for support.
45
Finnemore and Sikkink may be on the right track, but
normative content has faded from view with the emphasis on stages.
What is interesting and important about these accounts is their
assertion that the prescriptive normative content of norms is, more
or less, causally important in changing dominant practices. In general
terms, I agree with these scholars but fear that an account which
insufciently explains the process of persuasion, and fails to show how
the prescriptive content of normative beliefs is causally important, will
not itself be persuasive.
Thus, I give an explicitly normative account of behavioral norm
change. Certainly the adoption of behavioral norms could be accidental
or rational, but it is also often a consequence of people being convinced
44
For example, see Chaim D. Kaufmann and Robert A. Pape, Explaining Costly Inter-
national Moral Action: Britains Sixty-year Campaign Against the Atlantic Slave Trade,
International Organization 53 (Autumn 1999), 631668.
45
Finnemore and Sikkink, International Norm Dynamics and Political Change, p. 895.
The life-cycle metaphor also suggests scholars of norms ought to try to account for the
decline, metamorphosis, and death of both behavioral norms and normative beliefs, as
well as the emergence, acceptance, and internalization of norms.
97
Argument and change in world politics
by persuasive ethical arguments. Specically, some behavioral norms,
namely those with a normative content, are developed and adopted be-
cause they reect or are implied by normative beliefs; these behavioral
norms are adopted over other possible practices because the advo-
cates of the norm made persuasive ethical arguments that appealed to
normative beliefs. It is not to say that the normative beliefs are in re-
ality good or true or will always be seen as so; only that actors, when
they make ethical arguments, are trying to convince others that the be-
liefs they champion are good and the practices that necessarily follow
from subscribing to those beliefs are good. What makes an ethical ar-
gument persuasive? How is it seen to be good? In this ethical argument
explanation of the adoption of normative beliefs and behavioral norms,
interpretation and meaning are a central element of a theory of beha-
vioral norm and normative belief change.
Ethical arguments, like other kinds of argument, are ubiquitous in
world politics. Advocates for newbehavioral norms certainly engage in
horse-trading, propaganda, andcoercion, but theyalso engage indebate
and argument. This is so even in the case of inter-state war. As Michael
Walzer argues: whether or not its specic terminology is adopted, just
war theory has always played a part in ofcial arguments about war. No
political leader can send soldiers into battle, asking them to risk their
lives and to kill other people, without assuring them that their cause is
just and that of their enemies unjust.
46
Successful ethical arguments
set the terms of debate, even to the point where people who are moved
by other reasons, for instance by emotions or practical considerations,
feel compelled to make ethical arguments. Walzer recognizes this. And
if the [just war] theory is used, it is also misused. Sometimes it serves
only to determine what lies our leaders tell, the complex structure of
their hypocrisy, the tribute that vice pays to virtue.
47
The question,
then, is understanding the ethical arguments that people make and the
force those arguments have to persuade.
Ethical arguments
Maintaining beliefs and practices
Normative beliefs are the ethical arguments we already hold as true.
When people make ethical arguments they are rst using normative
46
Walzer, Preface to the Second Edition, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. xixii.
47
Ibid., p. xii.
98
Ethical argument and argument analysis
beliefs in an attempt to get others to believe as they believe, and then
often trying to get them to act in ways that are implied by or entailed
in holding such a belief. Ethical arguments are used in three contexts:
to uphold existing practices, to extend normative prescriptions to new
areas of practice, or to change dominant practices andnormative beliefs.
When advocates use themto upholdpractices, ethical arguments nor-
malize, legitimize, and also support and reproduce the existing cogni-
tive, political, and institutional order. Specically, normative beliefs can
be enunciated in prescriptive statements that indicate what is normal.
In other words, normative beliefs can normalize make certain ac-
tions and actors appear to be normal (and often unquestioned) and
others abnormal.
48
Even practices that are not done by the majority of
a population may be considered normal if they t into the dominant
framework or web of normative beliefs. If actions can be relatedto a nor-
mative belief, they can be seen as legitimate more than actions which are
not prescribed by a normative belief. Ethical arguments also legitimize
behaviors by giving good reasons for a practice. Ethical arguments that
we already believe thus support and reproduce a larger cognitive world
order (because people believe the normative prescriptions and ethical
arguments), and help maintain relations of power as people act in ac-
cordance with the prescriptions implied by the dominant normative
beliefs.
49
Ethical arguments that are used to uphold dominant practices
are institutionalized: the routines or standard operating procedures of
an institutional practice performed for normative reasons being justi-
ed by ethical arguments. Much of the work done by ethical arguments
occurs in the context of upholding existing or dominant practices and
remains part of the background, taken for granted.
Advocates may also use ethical arguments to apply or extend existing
normative beliefs (rules, laws, standards of conduct) tonewsituations or
problems. To apply existing normative beliefs in newcontexts, one must
win the contest of representations and successfully frame a situation
as an instance covered by the existing normative belief. The argument
may be extended by an analogy that takes this form: We do X in certain
situations because it is good; this other case, or new situation, is very
muchlike or the same as the situations where we doX: therefore we must
48
See for example Geortz, Contexts of International Politics, p. 27.
49
Ethical arguments are a discursive strategy in a Foucauldian sense although Foucault
did not emphasize the process of argument in the way I do here. Michel Foucault,
The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language (New York: Pantheon, 1972).
99
Argument and change in world politics
extend the practice of X to this new situation if we want to do good.
50
This use of ethical arguments to extend practices is perhaps the most
common form of such arguments where we are conscious that ethical
arguments are being made. One should not assume, however, that the
attempt to apply and extend ethical arguments to a situation is always
genuine. One of the best ways to make something bad look good is
to say that it is so. Hypocrisy is rife in wartime discourse, because it is
especially important at such a time to appear to be in the right. It is not
only that the moral stakes are high; the hypocrite may not understand
that; more crucially, his actions will be judged by other people who are
not hypocrites, and whose judgments will affect their policies toward
him.
51
Ethical arguments and normative change
Actors use ethical arguments when they try to change dominant nor-
mative beliefs and behaviors. Advocates use prescriptive normative
beliefs in arguments to normalize and proclaim the abnormal, to
legitimize or delegitimize their actions and the actions of others, and
to inuence the construction of interests and the sense of possibility
in decisionmaking. Challenging old normative beliefs and creating
new normative-ethical standards is more difcult, however, than main-
taining old practices or applying dominant normative beliefs to new
situations.
52
Advocates of a new normative belief or new behavioral
norm, even one within the bounds of the dominant belief system, must
persuade others that their position is superior on ethical grounds, or
that ethical grounds are outweighed by or, conversely, trump other
considerations.
53
In the role of resisting dominant (behavioral) norms or establish-
ing new norms, ethical arguments can be used to denormalize (that is
50
For example, after World War II, it became increasingly clear to the majority of white
males in the U.S. that the norm that all men were created equal clashed with the
unequal treatment and political rights of minorities and women. Those who advocated
change deployed arguments that rested on already accepted arguments of equality and
claimed that therefore political rights must be extended.
51
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 20.
52
There are parallels here to Thomas Kuhns understanding of scientic revolutions.
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientic Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1962).
53
If someone argues only on practical grounds, they argue within the dominant discourse
though practical arguments may also be deployed by those who wish to win on ethical
grounds. Thus, ethical arguments may be given as purely ethical arguments, but they are
often linked to practical, identity, philosophical, and scientic arguments.
100
Ethical argument and argument analysis
defamiliarize or make strange) the dominant norm. Ethical arguments
may also delegitimize a dominant norm, showing how it is wrong and
ought to be questioned. If successful, denormalization and delegitima-
tion deconstruct the existing discourse. Next, ethical arguments offer a
reconstruction. Those making an ethical argument may pose alternative
prescriptions and suggest that an alternative order is conceivable, de-
sirable, and possible, and this may have the effect of changing actors
conceptions of their interest. And persuasive ethical arguments may
help overturn the status quo as the powerful who uphold the dominant
normcan no longer convince others to abide by or impose the old norm.
Even hegemons must convince their henchmen that they must uphold
an existing order or impose a new one. If they cant do that, their politi-
cal support may wane. Finally, new normative beliefs, and the practices
impliedby holding such beliefs, may be institutionalized. In sum, world
politics is always already based on ethical argument. Note however that
arguments do not necessarily proceedin the orderly way I have laidout:
reconstruction may precede and indeed cause deconstruction and not
all may be convinced at once, with signicant portions of the popula-
tion coming to change their beliefs only after the social world has been
reorganized.
54
Deconstruction of dominant beliefs and practices
Denormalization. Widespread and traditional practices are familiar and
seem normal to the majority, and there is little reason to question those
beliefs and behavioral norms as long as they are considered normal
and good. For such practices to be changed, they must be questioned.
Why were actors engagedin these particular practices? Why believe one
thing or engage in one particular behavior and not another? Unques-
tionedpractices are normal, while normal practices are unquestioned.
Simply asking why? may cause participants in a system to question
dominant beliefs and behaviors, while posing an alternative may also
defamiliarize or denormalize the dominant practice, making it seem
strange. Symbolic arguments, especially analogies, are also often suc-
cessful strategies for denormalizing practices. Beliefs and practices that
are successfully denormalized will be seen as one of many possible op-
tions or may even seem abnormal. Denormalization is thus actually a
meta-argument, where what is at stake is the framing of a practice as
54
As utopians know, simply asserting an alternative may denormalize and delegitimize
the dominant practice.
101
Argument and change in world politics
normal or abnormal. The move to denormalize is successful to the ex-
tent that previously taken-for-granted practices are no longer seen as
givens. If denormalization succeeds, the framing of a dominant prac-
tice shifts from unquestionable and unproblematic to questionable and
problematic. Without denormalization, it is unlikely that delegitimation
will be successful.
Delegitimation. Legitimate actions are done for a good reason (as op-
posed to being performed out of habit or fear of punishment). Legit-
imate commands are developed using the right process, given under
the direction of the appropriate authority, and made for a good rea-
son. Ethical arguments may upset or alter the perceptions of legiti-
macy associated with a dominant practice by showing a disjuncture
or hypocrisy between present behavior and an already existing nor-
mative belief. In this case, what once seemed acceptable is no longer
acceptable on the basis of arguments that mobilize logic, empathy,
or analogy to question the legitimacy of a practice. The exposure of
hypocrisy is certainly the most ordinary, it may also be the most impor-
tant form of moral criticism.
55
Delegitimized practices can no longer
pass the test of being done for good reason because we no longer think
the reason is good, or at least, good enough. Criticism of the action
or behavior may shade over into an implicit or explicit critique of
the institution conducting the behavior, prompting the sorts of legit-
imation crises described above. Linkages of non-dominant prescrip-
tive norms to already established dominant beliefs and norms may
help boost the legitimacy of new practices. As Finnemore and Sikkink
suggest, the construction of cognitive frames is an essential compo-
nent of norm entrepreneurs political strategies, since, when they are
successful, the new frames resonate with broader public understand-
ings and are adopted as new ways of talking about and understanding
issues.
56
Denormalization and delegitimation are crucial meta-arguments:
without this initial stepof deconstruction, subsequent steps inthe ethical
argument, especially the posing of alternatives, are unlikely to be un-
derstood or successful. Denormalization and delegitimation, together
serve to deconstruct the dominant beliefs, and throw into question pre-
viously unquestioned behaviors. Dominant normative beliefs and the
practices associated with them are unlikely to be abandoned unless and
55
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. xxix.
56
Finnemore and Sikkink, Norm Dynamics and Political Change, p. 897.
102
Ethical argument and argument analysis
until actors also see new possibilities for action and understand their
moral interests in new ways. Deconstruction is crucial in this regard
because it creates a moral space, an opening, through which new beliefs
and arguments may be heard.
Reconstruction
Changing conceptions of possibility and interests. By positing a new nor-
mative belief and advocating new behaviors, ethical arguments may
change actors conceptions of what is possible or what is desirable.
As some new good is seen as possible or more urgent, ethical argu-
ments can even result in actors reframing their interests, or the order
of their preferences. This is the power of utopian or visionary narra-
tives: utopians not only critique the normality and legitimacy of the
present order by contrasting it with a better place, they are obvi-
ously articulating the particulars of the better place and, they hope,
making that better place seem both desirable and achievable. New nor-
mative beliefs are also more likely to win acceptance if advocates suc-
ceed in changing actors conceptions of their interests (what they want
or believe they need). An interest is formulated when agents believe in
the value or goodness of something.
57
For example, in the early 1990s,
promoting democratization was seen as a good, and (re-)dened as a
U.S. interest that would structure foreign policy. The order of prefer-
ences would be changed by adopting this normative belief if promot-
ing democracy became more important than promoting free trade and
prots.
Political and institutional change
Changingcapabilities. Changecancertainlyoccur intheabsenceof norma-
tive consensus; not everyone has to be persuaded by ethical arguments
for the inuence of ethical arguments to be felt.
58
Ethical arguments that
have persuaded enough people that a dominant practice is strange, ille-
gitimate, and undesirable can mobilize groups to take strategic action
to change the dominant practice. Normatively based and motivated re-
sistance, when focused in the political arena in the form of organized
57
As FinnemoreandSikkinkargue, manynormentrepreneurs donot somuchact against
their interests as they act in accordance with a redened understanding of their interests.
Ibid., p. 898.
58
Scholars of social movements have already observed this. See for instance, Jeffrey
Knopf, Domestic Society and International Cooperation: The Impact of Protest on U.S. Arms
Control Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
103
Argument and change in world politics
boycotts, sanctions, op-eds, electoral campaigns, legislation, court chal-
lenges, and lobbying, may alter the capacity of the actors who held the
dominant normative belief to carry out the practices associated with
that belief as they change the balance of belief within a population.
Those who take strategic action based on normative commitments may
be particularly committed, dedicated to long-term, seemingly losing,
struggles with dominant institutions.
59
And as Keck and Sikkink ar-
gue, some issues may be easier than others to mobilize around: Issues
that involve ideas about right and wrong are amenable to advocacy
networking because they arouse strong feelings . . . and infuse meaning
into these volunteer activities.
60
Indeed, ethical arguments that res-
onate with the emotions and pre-existing normative commitments of
activists are probably more likely to mobilize activists to take the sort
of sustained strategic action that can change the balance of capabilities
within states and across borders.
Those who hold the dominant normative belief may be disabled by a
strategically powerful minority who hold a different belief, or the bal-
ance of those holding new normative beliefs may shift so that those
who were once in the majority become a minority. Ethical argument
explanations do not, therefore, completely replace accounts of change
based on the rational political action of politicians who, for instance,
want to remain in ofce by pleasing the voters; rather, an ethical argu-
ment explanation can show why one behavior, and not another, pleased
the voters. Pragmatic reformers, discussed at greater length below, may
thus initiate reforms sought by those motivated by normative concerns,
just so that they can maintain their position.
Further, piecemeal reforms may alter the system, and the capabilities
of actors within it, in ways that either normatively or pragmatically
motivated reformers do not anticipate and perhaps never intended.
As Robert Jervis powerfully argues, this is because of interconnections
within social systems which mean that many effects are indirect, me-
diated and delayed.
61
Thus, relatively small changes may avalanche
into large, unanticipated, openings for reform, further argument, and
59
Finnemore and Sikkink rightly focus on the affective and principled components of
those who deploy ethical arguments: it is very difcult to explain the motivations of
normentrepreneurs without reference to empathy, altruism, andideational commitment.
Ibid., p. 898.
60
Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in
Transnational Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 26.
61
Robert Jervis, System Effects: Complexity in Social and Political Life (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1997), p. 29.
104
Ethical argument and argument analysis
institutionalization. For example, ending slavery decreased the prof-
itability of colonialism and the power of colonial actors to press for
their interests in the metropole. Weakened colonizers could not resist
the efforts of colonial reformers, who, for example, pushed for im-
provements in political representation and working conditions within
colonies, which in turn enabled the colonized to more effectively resist
the colonizer and push for greater reform.
Institutionalization. Once new prescriptive normative beliefs have
been accepted, they may become institutionalized in a two-step process.
First, practices designed to enact and ultimately realize the normative
belief are articulated and measures of successful compliance are de-
vised. The beliefs are instantiated in rules, laws, regulations, standard
operating procedures, or other kinds of expected practices within in-
stitutions; they become practical and measurable. Second, compliance
is monitored by administrators or bureaucrats, and even outsiders, to
ensure that the normative prescriptions implied by the normative be-
liefs are followed. Actors become accountable. Institutionalization may
create new structures of political opportunity for actors who would
seek to expand the scope of application for newly accepted norma-
tive beliefs.
62
For example, normative beliefs about the treatment of
slave and then forced labor in colonies was gradually institutional-
ized in domestic law and international organizations in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, eventually leading to the outlawing of both
practices.
63
Institutionalization of normative beliefs both requires some base level
of consensus and, in turn, usually entails even more ethical and practi-
cal (perhaps even scientic and identity) arguments as actors choose
among options for realizing the prescriptive normative beliefs they
have adopted. Failures at institutionalization or implementation may
prompt a reevaluation of underlying normative beliefs and ethical
arguments.
62
Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, Mayer N. Zald, eds., Comparative Perspectives
on Social Movements: Political Opportunity, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
63
Several scholars have rightly stressed the importance of institutionalization. See for
example, Edward Weisband, Discursive Multilateralism: Global Benchmarks, Shame,
and Learning in the ILO Labour Standards Monitoring Regime, International Studies
Quarterly 44 (December 2000), 643666; Sikkink, The Power of Principled Ideas; Ronald
Jepperson, Alexander Wendt, and Peter J. Katzenstein, Norms, Identity, and Culture in
National Security, in Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security, pp. 3375; and
Finnemore and Sikkink, Norm Dynamics and Political Change.
105
Argument and change in world politics
Once institutionalized, or made practical by diplomats, lawyers, bu-
reaucrats, and administrators, normative beliefs are implemented as
part of the taken for granted of international politics, further chang-
ing the structure of world politics. The articulation of expectations
in the form of benchmarks and timetables, and the establishment of
new routines and standard operating procedures allows other ethi-
cal arguments to be bootstrapped into the system, accelerating the
dynamic of ethical argument and normative change. United Nations
treaty making on self-determination is one example of the process
and consequences of institutionalization by the making of international
agreements:
Treaty-making has contributed to the emergence and consolidation
of general rules in two ways. Firstly, when the treaty rules were
elaborated, Member States of the UN had an opportunity to take a
stand, to voice their views and concerns as well as to react to the
statements of other governments. All these pronouncements had an
impact that went beyond their nal result the treaty provisions
because they stimulated debate and prompted States to adopt po-
sitions that were conducive to their gradual acceptance of general
standards on the matter. Treaty-making is also relevant in another
respect. Once adopted, treaty rules had a signicant spin-off effect,
in that together with the monitoring mechanisms overseeing their
implementation they led to contracting States being increasingly
amenable to the adoption of the course of action dictated by the
rules. As membership in the UN came practically to coincide with
membership of the world community and the number of contract-
ing Parties to the Covenants increased at a rapid pace, a growing
number of States became bound by international legal standards on
self-determination and consequently behaved as required by those
standards.
64
Institutionalization has two important consequences. First, future
actions that can be represented as relevant in terms of the new nor-
mative standard are judged differently once the new standards, and
in particular, the criteria for approval and disapproval including
rewards and sanctions have been articulated. Once normative be-
liefs are institutionalized, they are measurable, enabling compliance
and non-compliance with the prescriptive standards to be identied
64
Antonio Cassese, Self-determination of Peoples: A Legal Reappraisal (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 67.
106
Ethical argument and argument analysis
and named.
65
Second, with institutionalization, the table on which all
subsequent arguments occurs has changed, with newly institutional-
ized normative standards becoming the starting point, topoi, for future
ethical arguments. Normative belief change that becomes institution-
alized may create a path dependent dynamic for subsequent cogni-
tions, emotional reactions, political arguments, and behaviors as initial
choices preclude future options and make other options available.
66
Insum, complexprevailinginternational practices (behavioral norms)
may change as a result of a process of ethical argumentation.
67
Ethical
arguments that are intended to change dominant beliefs and beha-
vioral norms work by denormalizing/defamiliarizing dominant prac-
tices, delegitimizing them, changing actors conceptions of their inter-
ests, and sometimes by changing the capabilities of dominant actors
to carry out the practices associated with those norms.
68
Institutional-
ization articulates and embeds prescriptive normative standards in the
65
As Finnemore and Sikkink argue, institutionalization contributes strongly to the pos-
sibility of a norm cascade both by clarifying what, exactly, the norm is and what consti-
tutes a violation (often a matter of some disagreement among actors) and by spelling out
specic procedures by which norm leaders coordinate disapproval and sanctions for
norm breaking. Finnemore and Sikkink, Norm Dynamics and Political Change,
p. 900. Finnemore and Sikkink talk about tipping and threshold points, arguing that
tipping occurs after about one-third of states in the system adopt the norm or if crucial
or critical states adopt the norm. Some states may be crucial, for instance, Britain was
crucial in the case of ending the slave trade in the nineteenth century, but as Finnemore
and Sikkink acknowledge, tipping does not have a theoretical underpinning. Ibid., p. 901.
66
Walter Powell, Expanding the Scope of Institutional Analysis, in Walter Powell
and Paul DiMaggio, eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago:
University of Chicago, Press, 1991), pp. 183202: 192.
67
Finnemore and Sikkink stress socialization arguing that states change their behavior
because of emulation, praise, and ridicule. Finnemore and Sikkink, Norm Dynamics and
Political Change, pp. 902903.
68
I agree with much of Freidrich Kratochwils excellent book Rules, Norms and Decisions.
Like him, I argue that normative beliefs are part of the discourse of actors in international
and domestic politics. Kratochwil emphasizes the process of practical and legal reasoning
as an antidote to the conception of international politics as anarchic and points out the
importance of what might be called meta-norms of argument: fairness, predictability, and
reliability. I emphasize the prescriptive, normative content of ethical arguments and thus
their ability to legitimate, normalize, and so on. I also focus more directly on the source
of normative beliefs and ethical arguments by suggesting that normative beliefs and re-
ceptivity to ethical arguments are based on the dominant belief systems and identities
of actors. Some scholars hypothesize the source of norms, but many who study norms
often have little to say about the sources of particular practices and normative beliefs.
Exceptions include Martha Finnemore, Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Interven-
tion, in Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security, pp. 153185; David Halloran
Lumsdaine, Moral Vision in International Politics: The Foreign Aid Regime, 19491989
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Paul A. Kowert, The Cognitive Origins
of International Norms: Identity Norms and the 1956 Suez Crisis, paper prepared for
delivery at the 1994 Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association.
107
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Ethical argument and argument analysis
routine practices of states, international organizations, and even corpo-
rations, which in turn changes the starting point for future perceptions,
evaluation, and behavior with reference to the issue area covered by
the now dominant normative belief. Institutionalization changes the
starting point (topoi) of future arguments. Institutionalization of nor-
mative beliefs, adopted because ethical arguments have been success-
ful, changes the course of politics as it opens some paths and closes
off others. Figure 1 includes an arrow representing the pathway from
institutional change to a new rhetorical starting point.
This argument about ethical argument will be supportedif the content
and process of arguments follows certain patterns. Dominant behaviors
will be challenged with ethical arguments that question the normality,
legitimacy, and the conception of interests inherent in the dominant
practice. Second, an alternative prescription will be put forward. Third,
those who make ethical arguments may seek to mobilize the masses or
particularly inuential elites (e.g. depending on the issues, members of
the media or religious groups) in order to force the dominant practice
to change; in so doing, they will alter the capabilities of those who carry
out the dominant practice.
Resilience of behavioral norms and normative
beliefs
While ethical arguments may be effective in changing normative beliefs
and behavioral norms, it is not easy to bring such changes about.
69
Both
behavioral norms and normative beliefs are quite resilient for several
reasons, some having to do with the normativity of the belief or practice,
and others having to do with the difculty of changing any belief or
long-standing practice.
There are several non-normative reasons that belief and behavior
change are difcult. First, change can be costly, because, to the extent
that a convention or prescriptive norm coordinates behavior, actors will
comply with a behavioral norm if they expect others to conform.
70
Fur-
ther, actors may comply with dominant practices or beliefs simply out
of unreective habit and/or the difculty of bucking deeply institutiona-
lized normative beliefs.
69
Keck and Sikkink put this even more strongly, Normative change is inherently dis-
ruptive or difcult because it requires actors to question this routinized practice and
contemplate new practices. Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders, p. 35.
70
Cristina Bicchieri, Norms of Cooperation, Ethics 100 (July 1990), 838861: 842.
109
Argument and change in world politics
Further, individuals and groups may be reluctant to alter normative
beliefs, as well as behavioral norms which are strongly normative, if
doing so requires rethinking an entire complex of related normative,
scientic, practical, and identity beliefs which an individual has become
convinced are good and sees no other reason to challenge. Resistance to
taking on new normative beliefs if they require massive belief revision
may also be due perhaps to desire for economy, or a wish for coher-
ence, or because putting many beliefs up to re-evaluation is cognitively
difcult or even emotionally painful.
Perceptive and articulate individuals may acknowledge their reluc-
tance to change normative beliefs specically because it requires them
to change many other beliefs and behaviors. This was the case in 1917
when Charles Buxton, a member of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines
Protection Society, argued against a post-World War I peace arrange-
ment that included consulting with African natives. Are we prepared
to say that what we would apply to the natives of Africa should apply
also to the natives of India? If not, then we lay ourselves open to this
charge of hypocrisy.
71
Thus, once establishedandinstitutionalized, it is
particularly difcult for behavioral norms to change. In these instances,
whenpeople adhere toestablishedpractices because it maybe inefcient
or costly to alter behavior, or they do not think to try something else, or
because deeply institutionalized behaviors are difcult to alter because
they are tightly linked to other beliefs and behaviors, the goodness or
normativity of the practice is not the primary reason for resilience.
In addition, individuals may conform if doing so brings approval
and/or there is a clear material benet to conformity, while non-
conformity leads to disapproval or sanction. If individuals or groups
want to do what is required by law or social pressure because they fear
disapproval, they may comply with prevailing normative beliefs and
practices. But again, the normativity of the behavior (its link to pre-
scriptive normative beliefs) may not be what motivates individual com-
pliance, although normativity may motivate the imposition of sanctions
for non-compliance.
Groups and cultures also vary in their openness to argument, and this
may account for the resilience of some beliefs and practices. Though
people may hold divergent views, they may go along to get along if
they and others place a high value on conformity and group cohesion.
Every groupof any kindwhatsoever demands that eachof its members
71
See chapter 6, note 17 this vol.
110
Ethical argument and argument analysis
shall help defend group interests. Every group stigmatizes any one who
fails in zeal, labor and sacrices for group interests . . . The group force is
also employed to enforce the obligations of devotion to group interests.
It follows that judgments are precluded and criticism is silenced.
72
Moreover, homogenous groups may be less likely to entertain changes
in practice, simply because it never occurs to them.
I have emphasized several non-normative reasons why it is difcult
for arguments to change beliefs. Is there something distinctly normative
about the resilience of normative beliefs? In other words, do actors ad-
here to them because they are thought to be good? Actors could be
moved (or not) by other kinds of non-ethical arguments, for instance
practical arguments. If, to change a practice, it is unnecessary for actors
to deconstruct (denormalize and delegitimize) normative beliefs, then
one could argue that it was not normative belief, but other kinds of be-
lief that underpinned a dominant practice and resilience was due to the
non-normative reasons, for example, the costliness of any change, or the
failure to consider other alternatives.
Yet there are reasons for normative belief resilience and adherence
to established behavioral norms that appear to be uniquely normative.
The simplest reason to resist change implied by new ethical arguments
would be because an individual agrees with the dominant normative
belief and thinks its content is good in itself. Or someone could believe
that in following the prescription they are likely to bring afrmation
of their own goodness as a person in a specic role they are good
because they follow the existing prescription. In this case, they have
internalized the role, they believe it, and also believe in the content
of the normative beliefs. An ethical argument that is unpersuasive in
this instance fails to convince the actor that they ought to change their
evaluation of an already held normative belief, and fails to convince the
person that they ought to think differently about their role.
In sum, there are powerful reasons both normative and non-
normative why individuals adhere to pre-existing practices. Ethical
arguments that succeed in changing beliefs and practices must be ex-
tremelypersuasiveinorder toovercometheinertiaof habit, theobstacles
of institutionalization, the possible confusion and loss of efciency as-
sociated with change, the personal identication and stakes individuals
may have in the practice, and the belief that the old practice is good.
72
William Graham Sumner, Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Man-
ners, Customs, Mores and Morals (Boston: Athenaeum Press, 1906), p. 15.
111
Argument and change in world politics
Increasing receptivity and persuasiveness
Ethical arguments are unlikelyto be persuasive if actors are unreceptive.
Receptivity depends on a number of factors that are both intrinsic and
extrinsic to the content of the ethical arguments, and those seeking to
identify factors that, ex ante, indicate which arguments will succeedover
others, should pay careful attention to extrinsic and intrinsic conditions.
The extrinsic characteristics of persuasive ethical arguments described
in chapter 1, in the discussion of persuasive context, are briey recalled
here.
Arguments must rst be heard. Since most domestic andinternational
political arguments do not occur on a level playing eld, whether or not
an argument is heard depends on the discursive space within which the
argument takes place. In other words, if those who challenge dominant
normative beliefs cannot get a broad hearing of their arguments, those
arguments are unlikely to have a chance or opportunity to be persua-
sive. Democracies and egalitarian groups may be more open to ethical
arguments that compete with the dominant belief system because those
groups already hold substantive normative beliefs about freedom of ex-
pression, they may have forums where new ideas can be articulated,
and in the case of relatively egalitarian settings, the economic barriers
to broadcasting speechmay be relatively lower thaninnon-democracies
or highly stratied societies.
Asecondextrinsic constraint is the credibilityof those whoare making
the ethical argument. If those who make the ethical argument can claim
some relevant expertise or have beengrantedauthoritybyaninstitution,
the audience is usually more likely to give their arguments a hearing.
The relevant expertise and institutions from which individuals can gain
authority of course varies with the culture, although religious author-
ities and moral philosophers are often given great credence in making
and judging ethical arguments. Yet even here, extrinsic and intrinsic
constraints overlap because who will be considered a legitimate inter-
locutor depends onthe institutionalizationof beliefs, since as Jepperson,
Wendt, and Katzenstein note, institutionalization of ideas in research
institutions, schools of thought, laws, government bureaucracies deter-
mines not only policy, as they say, but who is able to critically comment
on policy.
73
73
Jepperson, Wendt, and Katzenstein, Norms, Identity and Culture in International Se-
curity, p. 50.
112
Ethical argument and argument analysis
Once heard, how might an ethical argument defeat the formidable
intrinsic barriers to changing normative beliefs? First, the pre-existing
system must be deconstructed but not entirely. Those who hear eth-
ical arguments usually compare those arguments with the beliefs they
already hold. This view of receptivity is related to a school of ontol-
ogy known as coherentism, which supposes that beliefs are justied
by their connection and similarity to other already held beliefs. Ethical
arguments that hearers nd persuasive usually make sense within the
framework of an individuals already existing beliefs about the partic-
ular issue area, their identity, and t the existing social structure. Thus,
the meaning of the web of beliefs that normative arguments are made
within and against helps to determine the receptivity of individuals to
a particular ethical argument.
But even if ethical arguments do not naturally t within dominant
webs of belief, advocates of new beliefs and practices can try to make
them t by reinterpreting the pre-existing webs of belief, or by fabricat-
ing plausible connections with analogical arguments. As Mark Laffey
andJutta Weldes argue, t does not just happen; rather, it is made. That
is, the t between new and existing ideas is actively constructed rather
than simply there in the ideas themselves.
74
Just as successful meta-
arguments reframe existing practices so that they are denormalized and
delegitimized, newnormative beliefs are oftenframedas consistent with
some pre-existing normative beliefs. Those wishing to block adoption of
normative beliefs, and the practices associated with them, could argue
that those beliefs do not t with the culture and therefore ought not be
adopted.
What does it mean exactly for normative beliefs to cohere with pre-
existing beliefs and for receptivity to ethical arguments to depend on
the congruence between the content of ethical arguments and the dom-
inant belief systems of actors? Normative beliefs gain their legitimacy
by their substantive content (meaning) relationship to other beliefs.
75
Ethical arguments that match or complement the content of religious,
social, or scientic belief systems that are part of the dominant culture
are more likely to be successful than arguments that clash with existing
webs of belief. The pre-existing logic of accepted behavioral norms
74
Laffey and Weldes, Beyond Belief, p. 203. Similarly, Finnemore and Sikkink argue
that Activists work hard to frame their issues in ways that make persuasive connections
between existing norms and emergent norms. Finnemore and Sikkink, NormDynamics
and Political Change, p. 908.
75
See Audi, Belief, Justication and Knowledge.
113
Argument and change in world politics
and normative prescriptions will inuence receptivity to new norma-
tive beliefs and practice. Symbolic arguments, in particular those us-
ing analogies, may be particularly useful in showing or constructing a
coherent t.
Further, receptivity to ethical arguments also depends on the t
between the self-conceptualization of actors identity and the proposed
normativebelief. Thereareat least threecomponents topolitical identity:
(1) a sense of the political self, and what is distinctive about self in
relation to others
76
; (2) a historical narrative about self often partly
mythical and religious, involving certain lies or constructions about
the homogeneity of the self and howgood and honorable the self is; and
(3) an ideology or political program. Advocates of a new practice often
say that their proposed normbetter ts with the kind of people that they
are or would like to see themselves as. The identities of actors will be
used as part of the argument usually by appealing to the consistency
of the argument with the identity being evoked. For example, if we
are good, virtuous, just, and superior to others as most ethnocentrists
believe then we are justied in imperial conquest. If we are good,
virtuous, just, and equal to others, then imperialism cannot be justied.
Similarly, arguments for humanitarian intervention may rest on identity
andconceptions of roles in a particular situation. America was founded
onamoral purpose, andits peopleretainastrongcommitment toamoral
foreignpolicy. Theyare alsoextremelygenerous. Givenable andforceful
leadership, it should be possible to generate a spirit of disinterested
altruism that will support humanitarian intervention.
77
Foreign policy decisionmakers and members of the public hold mul-
tiple identities that include their nation, race, gender, class, family,
religion, age, occupation, and education.
78
States are collections of
individuals and groups, with both distinct and overlapping identi-
ties, and transnational identities are not uncommon. These multiple
identities, and their malleability, are important in the context of eth-
ical arguments to the extent that argument makers call upon, create,
and manipulate identities. These identities or roles may offer con-
icting normative guidelines even as they are potential openings for
76
This is similar to what Wendt calls social identity. Alexender Wendt, Collective
Identity Formation and the International State, American Political Science Review 88 (June
1994), 384396: 385.
77
Guenter Lewy, The Case for HumanitarianIntervention, Orbis 37 (Fall 1993), 621632:
624.
78
See Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security.
114
Ethical argument and argument analysis
normative appeals. Conversely, ethical appeals may at the same time
include the techniques of constructing new identities or not recogniz-
ing or disavowing other identities. If an existing conception of identity
cannot be changed actors may try to change the composition of the de-
cisionmaking group so it will be more receptive to the particular ethical
arguments they want to see adopted.
And because ethical arguments are about how to act toward others
so as to be a good person, ethical arguments are inherently emotional.
Specically, most humans want to be good, do good, and feel well re-
garded by others. Thus, one can increase receptivity to ethical argu-
ments that seek to change practices that affect others by showing that
the other deserves our empathy and good treatment even while exist-
ingpractices meanthat we are not doinggoodbythem. Greater empathy
may enable actors to get past the rst threshold, that of being heard,
thus increasing the hearers receptivity.
Receptivity of actors to new ethical arguments also depends on the
prescriptions t with existing social structures (which are themselves
dependent on beliefs). It is common sense that if the majority of a so-
ciety is, for example, dependent on unequal relationships of extraction
and exploitation, it will be more difcult for people to reconceptualize
their interests, see hypocrisy, or to mobilize resistance to the dominant
behavior.
79
Radically new prescriptive norms that clash with many so-
cial practices are likely to take hold only gradually, or piecemeal. In a
context where advocates of new normative beliefs and practices face a
complex institution with multiple sources of support, a great deal has
to be changed to achieve the desired state. When many of the support-
ing constitutive practices and prescriptive normative beliefs have to be
changed the advocates of new normative beliefs will be regarded as
utopians. Advocates of new normative beliefs and practices may then
attempt to gradually change the aspects of the world that are obstacles
to normative change so that individuals will be more receptive to their
larger ethical argument.
Emphasizing the dependence of receptivity on existing social prac-
tices and structure is not to fall back on interest. Rather, social practices
and structures are in great measure a consequence of the belief systems
that rationalize and order societies as, for instance, modes of production
or class relations. Capability is also obviously important but it is also
79
Aside from providing greater political opportunities for discourse, democracies may
also be more vulnerable to ethical arguments than non-democracies because democracies
are relatively more vulnerable to the charge of hypocrisy.
115
Argument and change in world politics
clear that societies make resources available for those activities, how-
ever costly, that they consider important, e.g. national military forces
and the arts. Outside of the rare extreme cases where there is absolutely
no way to do something, material capabilities and constraints matter
little unless and until they are perceived.
In sum, successful ethical arguments are able to reframe issues and
set the terms of debate, even to the point where people who are moved
by other reasons, such as practical considerations, feel compelled to
make ethical arguments. Ethical appeals work well when their content
is linked to the dominant belief systems, social institutions, and iden-
tities of actors. Those who make arguments often intuitively recognize
the importance of increasing receptivity by explicitly or implicitly mak-
ing links to larger ethical belief systems, identities, and existing social
structures.
80
The plausibility and extent of those links are then judged
by interlocutors.
When the proposed ethical argument does not t or even strongly
conicts with dominant beliefs, identities, and institutions, advocates of
newnormative beliefs and practices must try to win the meta-argument
of representation and completely reframe the situation, or at least se-
riously destabilize the dominant frame. The persuasiveness of ethical
arguments that clash with the dominant beliefs and institutions of a so-
ciety may increase if the argument offers an entirely new conception of
a situation or problem that individuals nd persuasive.
81
In this way,
the t of the new beliefs with the dominant beliefs, identity, and social
structure will not matter so much and ethical arguments can escape the
conservatism of being judged by existing ethical world views. Those
making ethical arguments that attempt to alter the dominant frame will
try to denormalize and delegitimize not only the particular beliefs and
practices they seek to alter but will denormalize, delegitimize, and offer
alternatives for the larger web of beliefs andinstitutions that support the
dominant behavioral and prescriptive norms. If interlocutors succeed
in entirely reframing the situation, the ethical argument is then judged
by other criteria, standards of its own making, and this may increase
receptivity to the ethical argument.
Ethical arguments are made in different venues or forums; or to bor-
row from parliamentary discourse, arguments are put on a table. Some
80
On social movements and framing, see Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social
Movements and Contentious Politics, 2nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), pp. 106122.
81
These are conceptual revolutions or paradigm shifts.
116
Ethical argument and argument analysis
venues may lower the extrinsic constraints to ethical argument by being
relatively egalitarian and having rules of procedure that provide op-
portunities for ethical argument. Other forums will be relatively closed
procedurallyor substantivelyinterms of the kinds of arguments that can
be brought up. The intrinsic constraints of the table have to do with the
lifeworld aspect of cultures (whether the relevant cultural venue is an
epistemic, organizational, political community, civilizational or global
context), where the background of shared interpretations is the uncon-
scious basis for understanding arguments. The importance of the table
and venue become clear when the table changes over time or across
social settings.
There is no way to know for certain which arguments will be per-
suasive and over what period of time. But we can predict that argu-
ments which fail to overcome extrinsic constraints (cannot be heard
and do not come from authority) will be less likely to succeed than ar-
guments that can be heard. Further, advocates who are unable to win
the meta-argument and reframe prevailing practices so that they are
vulnerable to ethical critique are unlikely to succeed. Argument is a dy-
namic process conducted by reective individuals advocates can alter
their rhetorical tactics in an attempt to increase their persuasiveness,
and opponents of change may try to counteract potentially successful
challengers.
Reason versus rationality
Some scholars of norms are concerned that their arguments not be
taken as a repudiation of rational actor theories where actors are sup-
posed to make choices and behave accordingly in ways that will bring
them the greatest rewards at the least cost. This view of rationality
stresses cold cognitive processes. But ethical arguments are neither ra-
tional nor irrational. They are convincing to the extent that they give
persuasive reasons for believing and doing. Neither receptivity to eth-
ical arguments, nor the intrinsic appeal of arguments, is necessarily
rational in the former sense. In other words, scholars of world politics
are better off thinking in terms of the process of reason rather than in
terms of rationality.
Those who make arguments are giving reasons for a belief or course
of action and their appeals may be emotional as well as cognitive.
Emotional appeals work because individuals want to feel good about
themselves by knowing they are doing good, and others see them as
117
Argument and change in world politics
doing good.
82
Or emotions may help individuals feel empathy toward
others. Cognitive appeals, for instance arguing that holding one nor-
mative belief is consistent with or entails holding another belief, are
also not necessarily entirely un-emotional. Strong emotions that are
associated with some normative beliefs may affect, either positively
or negatively, the receptivity to ethical arguments on the basis of co-
herence. As the following chapters on slavery, forced labor, and colo-
nialism show, emotional and cognitive appeals were important aspects
of ethical arguments whether those arguments were made by people
who wanted to keep or overturn these institutions. The process was
internal reasoning or public argumentation that involved giving rea-
sons. Some of the reasons took the form of rational calculation, es-
pecially on the issue of whether colonial institutions were protable,
but that was only one form of reasoning at work. In other words, ar-
gumentation is not simply and only a rational process, if what one
means by rationality is the unemotional and narrow pursuit of real
interests using costbenet analysis. Persuasive ethical arguments
are emotional, rooted in social contexts, and related to webs of other
arguments.
Is a theory of ethical argument merely a reiteration of rational ac-
tor theory? Ethical argument explanations are different from ration-
al actor accounts in at least two senses. First, rational actor theories
generally regard normative beliefs, when they are considered at all,
as secondary to interests, whereas a theory of ethical arguments re-
gards normative beliefs on equal ground with other beliefs, and sug-
gests that normative beliefs sometimes constitute interests. Second,
to the extent that at the point of nal decision, decisionmakers fol-
low what might be considered a rational process of weighing options
and choosing among alternatives, every part of reasoning before then
was based on the content of pre-existing beliefs and the outcome of
prior arguments. The implementation of the nal decision will also
essentially be determined by how those same or evolving beliefs are
used in arguments. In other words, the work of decisionmakers is
reason and persuasion, not so much rational calculation. The work
of scholars is to interpret their reasoning and the effects of actors
persuasive efforts.
82
See Vaughn P. Shannon, Norms are What States Make of Them: The Political Psychol-
ogyof NormViolation, International Studies Quarterly, 44 ( June 2000), 293316; Weisband,
Discursive Multilateralism.
118
Ethical argument and argument analysis
Ethical explanations
Ethical arguments madebyparticipants inapractical situationarediffer-
ent fromethical explanations whichare givenby people who are observ-
ing a behavior and trying to say what caused it. When normative beliefs
are used in arguments about what it is good to do, people are making
ethical arguments. When someone says that they or someone else acted
ethically, or that an individual or group behaved in a certain way be-
cause of ethical reasons, they are giving an ethical explanation of social
behavior. That ethical arguments occur everywhere, all the time, does
not meanthat they are necessarily signicant causally. Arguments could
be merely rationalization or post-hoc justication.
A method of informal argument analysis
While it may be that one method of argument analysis suits all types
of political arguments, it is more likely that the method would vary
with the scope and types of arguments to be understood. Most scholars
of political argument use formal and semi-formal approaches. Formal
argument analysis, or articial intelligence modeling of logic, focuses on
validity and the structure of inferences, tracing the logical structure and
identifying the substantive support (warrants) for arguments.
83
Formal
argument analysis is better suited to tracing debates that are relatively
short term, where moves andcounter-moves are immediate andexplicit,
and focused on relatively small areas of contention in instances where
we can assume that actors were trying to come to an agreement with
their interlocutors and their arguments are relatively clearly laid out in
a logical form. Similarly, semi-formal argument analysis is also focused
onspecic exchanges.
84
Anexample of one approach, takenfromGavan
Duffy, Brian Federking, and Seth Tucker is summarized below.
85
Obviously not all political arguments are about relatively narrow or
technical issues; in some instances, political arguments address major
social and political institutions and therefore require comprehensive
83
For an example of formal approaches used in international relations theory, see
Hayward R. Alker, The Dialectical Logic of Thucydides Melian Dialogue, American
Political Science Review 82 (September 1988), 805820; Hayward R. Alker, Rediscoveries and
Reformulations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 2363; Gavan Duffy,
Brian K. Federking, and Seth A. Tucker, Language Games: Dialogical Analysis of INF
Negotiations, International Studies Quarterly 42 (June 1998), 271294.
84
See Thomas F. Homer-Dixon and Roger S. Karapin, Graphical Argument Analysis: A
New Approach to Understanding Arguments Applied to a Debate about the Window of
Vulnerability, International Studies Quarterly 33 (September 1989), 389410.
85
See Duffy, Federking, and Tucker, Language Games, p. 272.
119
Argument and change in world politics
Table 2.2 A method of formal argument analysis
1. List explicit moves, including non-verbal actions that convey
meaning.
2. Specify an inventory of propositions (non-controversial facts or
beliefs of the relevant parties) that express the background
knowledge necessary to understand the dialogue.
3. Pragmatic analysis of the dialogue, constructing inventories of
propositions conveyed implicitly, noting those aspects of meaning
that are context dependent.
4. Formal argument analysis of moves conveyed implicitly and
explicitly. Test: certain action theorems follow logically from the
contents of the inventories.
Source: From Duffy, Federking, and Tucker, Language Games,
p. 272.
arguments. Nor do political arguments only occur in a focused way in
one forum where advocates are intent on coming to an agreement with
fellow interlocutors. In many cases, it may not be the intention of par-
ticipants to directly inuence their immediate counterparts; rather, the
point is to sway a wider audience andinuence the balance of belief and
power. These larger political arguments may occur over several years,
some for decades or centuries andare oftencharacterizedbyaninformal
style. To focus on the formal structure of the smaller debates that com-
prise long, comprehensive, and informal arguments would certainly be
illuminating, but one runs the risk of missing the larger landscape. I use
a method of informal argument analysis that may be better suited to
understanding and tracing the effects of the looser, and more long-term
arguments that characterize these long informal discourses.
The method of informal argument analysis developed here occurs
in ve steps.
86
First, having identied a problem or issue area, ana-
lysts seek to identify the purpose of particular arguments that are be-
ing used in efforts to maintain or challenge a practice. Analysts must
then specify the arguments role. Whether arguments are intended to
facilitate deliberation, reframe the issues, persuade others, or do all of
these things, may be inferred from what the speaker says and by the
86
I could just as well have called my approach rhetorical analysis since I am concerned
with what Aristotle called rhetoric. Both rhetoric and casuistry have negative associations
in our present context, so I use the more neutral, or relatively less laden term argu-
ment. See Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, translated with an introduction by H.C. Lawson-
Tancred (New York: Penguin Books, 1991); Thomas B. Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
120
Ethical argument and argument analysis
location (forum) where the arguments are made.
87
Argument analysis
is easier in some instances than in others. In the transition from estab-
lished behavioral norms to new norms, there are likely to be periods
of confusion and uncertainty. With two or more conicting (and per-
haps nearly equally legitimate) prescriptive normative beliefs on the
table, expectations will be uncertain, coordination will be more dif-
cult, and the sense of approval or disapproval associated with certain
practices may be in ux. It is at these points that ethical arguments
may be the most prolic and explicit, as interlocutors strive to be
clear and persuasive in their attempts to maintain an existing prac-
tice or establish a new mode of behavior. South African arguments
to maintain their rule over South West Africa/Namibia after many
powers had given up their colonies are an example. Similarly, crisis
may make ethical arguments more pointed, as President Kennedys
Secretary of State Dean Rusk suggests in a discussion of the Cuban
missile crisis: at the end of the day, moral and ethical considerations
play a very important part, even though people dont wear these things
on their shirtsleeves or put these things in ofcial memoranda . . . People
act in reference to their basic moral commitments [which] are likely to
come to the fore when situations become critical.
88
Second, one must identify the specic beliefs (core, contingent, and
role) that are heldby dominant actors andthat are at work ina particular
political context. As Jonson and Toulmin note, Each discipline has its
special eld of debate, within which people of experience share konoi
topoi (commonplaces) that is, bodies of experience that underlie the
forms of argument that guide deliberationanddiscussioninthe particu-
lar eld.
89
The goal is to nd the topoi (starting point) of the arguments
actors used to uphold or change practices and the background of preex-
isting beliefs that interlocutors presupposedin making their arguments.
By intending, implicating, presupposing, and entailing, speakers con-
vey far more than they say. Efforts to analyze the contents of political
talk that restrict themselves to surface utterances are thus likely to miss
much of the politically relevant content.
90
87
On forums, see Stephen Toulmin, Richard Rieke, and Allan Janik, An Introduction to
Reasoning (New York: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 1416. Also see, Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical
Culture, pp. 280288.
88
Quoted in James G. Blight, The Shattered Crystal Ball: Fear and Learning in the Cuban
Missile Crisis (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littleeld: 1990), p. 93.
89
Albert R. Jonson and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral
Reasoning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 74.
90
Duffy, Frederking and Tucker, Language Games, p. 276.
121
Argument and change in world politics
Third, informal argument analysis expands the time horizon and asks
where immediate and background beliefs came from and why and how
they changed. As Nardin suggests, arguments about international af-
fairs, like ethical and political arguments more generally, have a his-
tory. Accordingly, the study of international ethics must be, at least in
part, historical.
91
Analysis of political arguments must thus be con-
text sensitive, looking for the deeper beliefs that are the starting points
and background assumptions without which the arguments would be
unintelligible. This entails examining the process and content of deci-
sionmaking over long periods of time within particular historical and
cultural contexts.
The idea of a tradition encourages us to ask what kinds of arguments
were characteristic of particular communities at particular moments. It
also suggests the importance of looking at the concepts or languages
employed by particular kinds of argumentation. And because these
conceptual languages change through time, in some cases becoming
transformed into new languages, the study of tradition leads naturally
to the study of conceptual change.
92
Fourth, informal argument analysis attempts to show how and why
some beliefs and arguments won out over others and ultimately why
certain policies were chosen. In practice this means tracing whether and
howthe ethical arguments put forwardsucceededinchangingthe terms
of debate (winning meta-arguments and reframing the issues), and
whether an ethical argument meant to overturn a practice was able to
denormalize, delegitimize, change actors conceptions of possibility and
their interests, alter the balance of political power, and have its norma-
tive beliefs institutionalized. This also entails looking at the grounds for
change in the support for conformity and receptivity to newarguments.
Informal argument analysis thus emphasizes the content and process
of arguments the words used (and not used), appeals actors make
to dominant (unquestioned) beliefs and other normative beliefs, claims
about legitimacy, and the use of evidence. This method focuses on how
the arguments develop over long periods of time, in particular social
settings, including denition and redenition of the problem (meta-
arguments), and the evolution of the features in the argument that are
taken for granted or contested.
91
Terry Nardin, Ethical Traditions in International Affairs, in Nardin and Mapel, eds.,
Traditions of International Ethics, pp. 122: 19.
92
Ibid.
122
Ethical argument and argument analysis
What is central is the discourse(s) which construct a particular
reality . . . This approach suggests that what foreign policy is need
not be limited to the actual making of specic decisions nor the analy-
sis of temporally and spatially bounded events.
Similarly, foreign policy makers need not be limited to prominent
decision makers, but couldalso include those rather anonymous mem-
bers of the various bureaucracies who write the numerous memoran-
dums, intelligence reports, and research papers that circulate within
policycircles. The discourse(s) instantiatedinthese various documents
produce meanings andinsodoingactivelyconstruct the reality upon
which foreign policy is based.
93
Fifth, the results of informal argument analysis ought to be com-
pared with other plausible explanations for behaviors to see whether
the arguments are important causally. There are several tests for the
causal signicance of ethical argument. (1) temporal ordering norma-
tive beliefs and ethical arguments should be given as a justication for
the behavior before or simultaneous to a behavior change, not after;
(2) after an ethical argument succeeds, one would expect a (not nec-
essarily universal) congruence between the normative beliefs that un-
derpinned the ethical arguments and the behavior; (3) the relevant nor-
mative beliefs should be used in arguments about correct behavior and
those who use those arguments are not ignored or mocked; (4) when
the prescriptions for behavior implied by the ethical argument are not
adhered to, those who do not adhere to the standards of normative be-
lief attempt to justify their (non-normal) behavior on ethical or practical
grounds; (5) the normative belief is linked with other normative beliefs,
becoming part of the arguments used to advance these other norms.
For example, anti-slavery, human rights, and self-determination beliefs
shouldbe discussedwitheachnorms reasoningbeingusedtolegitimize
the other norms.
94
Two stronger tests of the role of normative belief andethical argument
are: (6) the presence and use of international sanctions by the majority
93
Roxanne Lynn Doty, Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A Post-Positivist Analysis
of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines, International Studies Quarterly 37
(September 1993), 297320: 303.
94
Even if normative beliefs and ethical arguments pass all of these tests, we still cannot
prove causality. However, passing all or several of these tests make it more likely that
normative belief and ethical argument had a causal role. If, after analysis of the type that
I propose, there is little reason to think that normative beliefs and ethical argument had
much inuence on behavior, then advocates of new behavioral norms should focus their
attentions on changing the interests and capabilities of actors not on winning arguments
and changing beliefs.
123
Argument and change in world politics
of the international community to change the behavior of those who
violate the normative prescriptions or those who support such norm
violators. Finally, (7) ethical arguments may be viewed as causally
important whether andtothe extent that actors withincentives toviolate
normative prescriptions act counter to their interests and follow the
new normative prescriptions, or to the extent that actors re-frame their
interests inlight of comingtoholdnewnormative beliefs. For the last test
to be valid three conditions should hold: states (or rather the inuential
elites that shape government policies) and other actors should know
their interests (or at least believe they do); actors should not have been
compelled by other (non-normative) circumstances, such as a change in
their ability to pursue their interests; and some more efcient solution
for achieving the same ends, while not technically violating the norma-
tive prescriptions that followed from ethical arguments, was not found.
This interest test should not be seen as creating a dichotomy between
the normative and the self-interested behavior or actors. Ethical argu-
ments may be used to change actors conceptions of their interests, and
successful ethical arguments may alter the political situationto the point
where it changes the material capabilities of actors. Rather, this test
focuses our attention on the crucial relation between the ideational and
material. Table 2.3 summarizes the steps of informal argument analysis.
Examining the role and causal signicance of ethical argument thus
entails operating at three levels. First, scholars using this method must
showthat argumentationor practical reasoningwas apart of theprocess.
Second, an informal argument analysis must determine if the ethical
arguments were used to deconstruct and reconstruct normative beliefs
and to change the political and institutional facts on the ground. Third,
scholars havetodeterminetherelevanceor explanatoryweight of ethical
arguments. Persuasive ethical arguments may be one of several reasons
or the sole reason for a change. If analysis suggests that there were other
reasons that beliefs and behavior changed, and ethical arguments were
not explicit or implicit, then an ethical explanation for change does not
hold.
Objections
Claims about the role of beliefs and argument must answer important
objections. First, how can any scholar talk about beliefs and claim a
relationship between beliefs and behavior? How can we be sure that
the beliefs and justications for action that are articulated by foreign
policy decisionmakers are the actual reasons for their behavior, rather
124
Ethical argument and argument analysis
Table 2.3 Informal argument analysis of ethical arguments
1. Identify the main arguments on the table over the course of the
debate.
2. Identify the immediate beliefs contained in the arguments that are
the topoi/starting point.
3. Identify the background (historical and cultural) beliefs.
4. Trace form and fate of the ethical arguments. Do ethical arguments
that seek to overturn a dominant practice
denormalize the dominant beliefs and practices?
delegitimize the dominant beliefs and practices?
change conceptions of possibility and interests?
change the political capabilities of actors as the balance of belief
changes?
become institutionalized?
5. Compare the plausibility of an ethical argument explanation with a
material interest explanation. Do ethical arguments pass the tests of
temporal ordering
congruence between normative beliefs and behavior
the relevant normative beliefs are taken seriously
those who do not adhere to the standards of normative belief
attempt to justify their (non-normal) behavior on ethical or
practical grounds
the normative belief is linked with other normative beliefs,
becoming part of the arguments used to advance these other norms
international sanctions are used by the majority of the international
community to change the behavior of those who violate the
normative prescriptions or those who support norm violators
actors with incentives to violate normative prescriptions act
counter to their interests and follow new normative prescriptions,
or re-frame their interests in light of new normative beliefs.
than public justications, private rationalizations, or perhaps the rant-
ing and ravings of the mad? No scholar can know for certain what
someone else believes. We can only show what someone claims to be
thinking, what they claim to believe, by examining their public utter-
ances. Some utterances are obviously more credible as a reection of
beliefs than other statements. For example, it is likely that statements
made toinsiders are more closelyrelatedtosharedbeliefs thanare public
statements. Rational actor theorists face the same problem of knowing
what someone thinks and what counted when they made decisions.
Does it matter whether people mean what they say and say what
they mean? Clearly people sometimes believe the ethical arguments
they make, and sometimes they do not believe them. Establishing
125
Argument and change in world politics
whether normative beliefs and ethical arguments are actually causes,
versus rationalizations or justications, must be dealt with by any ar-
gument about beliefs. Jack Snyder has warned against taking justica-
tions too seriously: many explanations are awed because they take
the justications of statesmen and strategists at face value. . . .
95
Rather,
Snyder argues, some arguments are just not to be believed because
the oblique justications . . . were largely debating points masking a
variety of economic, bureaucratic, and political interests.
96
It is clear that sometimes people lie and do things for reasons other
than the ones they claim to be the true motives for their actions. In in-
dividual instances, it is difcult to tell the real beliefs and reasoning
that underlie a particular action. And, as Snyder suggests, arguments
and beliefs can constrain or blowback: Even if the elite avoids inter-
nalizing its own myths, it may nonetheless become equally entrapped
in its own rhetoric.
97
Fortunately, decisionmaking in world politics is a
process of repeateddecision andactions. If decisionmakers are inconsis-
tent in areas and among cases where we would expect consistency, then
we may suspect their beliefs are being articulatedas justications. In ad-
dition, there are layers of reasons for any foreign policy decision and ac-
tion: if the publicly articulated beliefs do not seem to match the motives
for action, that does not necessarily mean that normative beliefs had
no inuence on the decision. The fact of the argument being sincere or
insincere may be irrelevant if the argument is what convinces others
to act in accordance with the conclusion of the ethical argument. And
even if the rst use of an ethical argument was disingenuous, it may
have force in future situations because it may be seen as having set a
precedent.
Second, it may be possible to establishthat decisionmakers made ethi-
cal arguments for action, but those arguments could be beside the point.
Unless actors honestly disclose their full reasoning, observers cannot
discount non-ethical reasons for their behavior. In other words, ethical
arguments may have some force, but a solely ethical explanation may be
insufcient. For example, a US policymaker could argue that the United
States ought not use nuclear weapons because such use is immoral. In
95
Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1991), p. 10.
96
Ibid., p. 10. Actually, in this book, Snyder talks about the role of argument, e.g. the
blurring of sincere belief and tactical argument has been common (pp. 4142) but he
does not offer a systematic treatment of argument.
97
Ibid., p. 42.
126
Ethical argument and argument analysis
fact, ethical arguments against nuclear use may have come up in every
instance when policymakers considered using nuclear weapons in war.
Nuclear weapons may not have been usedbecause such use was consid-
ered wrong. But an ethical explanation for non-use may be insufcient.
Non-use couldalso be explainedby practical considerations, such as the
inability of nuclear weapons to be used for military effect, or the fear of
nuclear retaliation and escalation. Still, to argue that nuclear weapons
were not used for political reasons, namely that their use would be
unpopular, is to fall back on an ethical explanation if the unpopularity
of their use is foundedonnormative beliefs suchas the viewthat nuclear
weapons violate principles of non-combatant immunity.
98
But there is an even more subtle problem of establishing whether eth-
ical explanations are appropriate. Specically, people may arrange their
social institutions because they believe that they are right in the sense
of being normatively good. But this can lead to two different outcomes.
On the one hand, an individual may seek to arrange their world so as
to do good; these individuals are motivated by a belief in fairness and
justice that others deserve the same rights as they do. On the other
hand, a system that some might consider unjust, for instance slavery
or colonialism, might be deemed acceptable to its practitioners. In this
instance, oppression and discrimination are considered warranted be-
cause the practitioners of the unjust systemdo not believe inthe equality
of the other; they may never have considered the rights of the other;
or they may have found the other undeserving of the same treatment
as themselves. In fact, they believe that the injustice is appropriate
and good. Here an ethical explanation applies. In both these instances
we can plausibly give ethical explanations.
But what about those instances where people do what we might con-
sider the good and right thing, but they are motivated not by a concern
for justice but rather driven by a desire to contain reform? They see that
if some concessions are not made, the unjust system may fall altogether
as the oppressed revolt. And according to Joshua Cohen, revolt is in-
evitable since unjust systems are not in the interest of the oppressed.
These individuals who make concessions to prevent revolt, lets call
them pragmatic reformers, act out of a concern that their unjust world
not fall apart under the pressure of those who want to create an ethi-
cally just system. Although pragmatic reformers do not hold the same
98
See Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Normative Basis
of Nuclear Non-Use, International Organization 53 (Summer 1999), 433468.
127
Argument and change in world politics
normative beliefs as those who are motivated by a concern for justice,
they are willing to reform the unjust system along lines that the person
motivatedbya concernwithjustice wouldapprove of, inorder tosave it.
Pragmatic reformers may even give ethical arguments for reformalong-
side their practical arguments. Does an ethical explanation t here, or
are we in the realm of the practical or pragmatic justice? On the face of
it, it seems that an ethical explanation cannot be applied to those who
make reforms in order to save the unjust system.
Yet even if arguments given by pragmatic reformers are merely jus-
tications, the fact that these actors feel they must make a justication in
the form of an ethical argument indicates the importance of these argu-
ments. Thecontent of thejusticationis not incidental. Theelaborateness
and vehemence of justications tells us as much about the character of
the culture as do the genuine utterances. The clearest evidence for
the stability of our values over time is the unchanging character of the
lies soldiers and statesmen tell. They lie in order to justify themselves,
and so they describe for us the lineaments of justice. Wherever we nd
hypocrisy, we also nd moral knowledge
99
So it is important to trace
the content of justications, even if we know they are not the real
or only reasons for action. If genuine or disingenuous arguments are
made, we know that argument is an important process in world pol-
itics. The content of the lies we tell ourselves is part of the architec-
ture of ethical world politics; lies indicate the bounds of the acceptable.
Those who are motivated by a belief in justice create the conditions
where pragmatic reforms or pragmatic justice is required. (And the un-
intended consequence of pragmatic reforms may be to catalyze greater
reform.)
I use an interpretive method of informal argument analysis, yet, there
are strong objections to interpretivism, especially the choice of inter-
pretation. But how does one know that this interpretation is correct?
Presumably because it makes sense of the original text: what is strange,
mystifying, puzzling, contradictory, is no longer so, is accounted for.
100
Interpretations canmake sense andstill be wrong. That is, there canbe
mis-understandings, that may not articulate what the actors intended or
believed either privately or intersubjectively. I dont think that there
is a way around this potential problem for positivist, rationalist, or
99
Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 19.
100
Charles Taylor, Interpretationandthe Sciences of Man, inPaul RabinowandWilliam
Sullivan, eds., Interpretive Social Science: AReader (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1979), pp. 2571: 27.
128
Ethical argument and argument analysis
interpretivist approaches. One can only try to get closer to the data
through thinking thoroughly historically and simultaneously by grant-
ing the role that ones own beliefs and context/culture are playing in
the interpretive process.
101
This argument raises the problem of falsiability. This theory of
foreign policy beliefs and arguments is so comprehensive, because it
rst of all supposes that argument is a ubiquitous and causally impor-
tant process how can we tell when and if it is wrong? At the most
fundamental level, I am not sure that any social science theory, espe-
cially rational actor theory, much less a theory of argument, belief, and
culture, is falsiable.
102
Rather, theories canbe more or less useful for un-
derstanding. This theory of arguments would not be useful if outcomes
were regularly explained by non-normative factors.
Establishing the causality of arguments and beliefs is not the only
aim. The other aim is to understand the content of world politics, which
may tell a great deal about howand why actors do what they do. On the
other hand, one should suspect a theory if it doesnt t the evidence
that is, if the theorys implicit and explicit predictions dont match the
record of the process and the content of foreign policy. A theory is also
uninteresting if it fails to tell us anything that we did not already know
using other theories. For example, neither rational actor theories, nor
the theories of bounded rationality most often used to correct rational
actor accounts, tell us about the sources of foreign policy goals, or how
those goals change. The theory of political argument will be interesting
and worthwhile if it can tell us something about the source of foreign
policy goals, illuminate the processes that decisionmakers engage in to
make their decisions, and help us see better than before the content of
world political action.
Can ethical explanations still have causal force if actors fail to make
explicit ethical arguments? Ethical arguments may not be made explic-
itly and still have causal force in a situation where everyone agrees with
the good. Consensual cultures do not need to justify or defend their
101
Discussion of interpretation and social science is vast and grounded in both anthro-
pological and philosophical literatures. For more on these issues with particular reference
to international relations theory see: Mark Neufeld, Interpretation and the science of
International Relations, Review of International Studies 19 (January 1993), 3961; Richard
Price, Interpretation and Disciplinary Orthodoxy in International Relations, Review of
International Studies 20 (April 1994), 201204.
102
Lakatos argues that at their hard core theories cannot be falsied. Imre Lakatos,
The Methodologyof Scientic ResearchProgrammes (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress,
1978). I thank Jack Snyder for helping me to clarify my argument here.
129
Argument and change in world politics
beliefs against a competing set of beliefs.
103
In other words, in cases
where there are no arguments specically about the practice in ques-
tion, one can assume that everyone agrees (silence means consent) and
takes the particular practice for granted to the extent that they dont feel
the need to justify it. Silence in the context of coercion however should
signal just the opposite.
103
Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine Between the Wars
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 141.
130
3 Colonial arguments
What we have to do is analyze specic rationalities rather than always
invoking the progress of rationalization in general.
1
The sense of humanity was narrowly limited by race and religion.
People of different blood and different faith were hardly considered
human beings at all, and the highest moral requirements were satised
by tendering them the blessings of Christianity and civilization.
2
Humanist values could be invoked and at the same time violated
through the hierarchical classication of human beings that implied
different standards of treatment for different kinds of subjects . . . the
ethical prescriptions impliedby Enlightenment values appliedto some
kinds of subjects but not to others.
3
For thousands of years, from ancient Persia, to Greece, Rome, China,
and Aztec and Inca America, to the enormous colonial empires of
Britain, Spain, and France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
colonialism was claimed by leaders of the metropole to be good
for both the imperial power and the colonial holding. Colonialism
the political control, physical occupation, and domination by one
group of people over another people and their land for purposes
of extraction and settlement to benet the occupiers was consid-
ered a normal practice until the early twentieth century. In most
cases, occupied land was distant from the center, or metropole, of
1
Michel Foucault, The Subject and Power, in Herbert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow,
eds., Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd edn (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 208226: 210.
2
Quincy Wright, Mandates Under the League of Nations (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1930), pp. 78.
3
Roxanne Lynn Doty, Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in NorthSouth
Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 42.
131
Argument and change in world politics
the people from the occupying state and control was against the ex-
press wishes of the occupied people. Until the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury, when the institution began to change in signicant ways with
the end of slavery, colonialism also entailed the control of peoples
bodies and minds, as well as their social and political organization.
4
Normative beliefs and ethical (as well as practical, identity, and scien-
tic) arguments were used by proponents of colonialism to uphold the
practice.
Yet, by the mid-twentieth century the behavioral norm and pre-
scriptive normative beliefs were just the opposite decolonization of
former colonies. Sovereignty, self-determination, and non-intervention
became dominant international normative beliefs applicable not only
to Europeans and North Americans, but to all. Why, after thou-
sands of years has colonial empire, as an accepted system of
political organization, ended? Or, why wasnt colonialism as a sys-
tem overturned much earlier? It is common to argue that decol-
onization is explained by the changing material interests and ca-
pabilities of colonizers and interveners, that Empire ceased to be
a paying proposition with the rise of capitalism.
5
Marxists argue
that imperialism was largely replaced by neo-colonial relations of
extraction and domination. The alternative explanation is that ethi-
cal convictions or norms were at work and virtually wiped out
colonialism.
6
In other words, the colonizers changedtheir minds about
the rightness of colonialism.
7
Why and how did they change their
minds?
8
4
Empire is the political control of the core country, the metropole, and these distant
colonies by leaders of the metropole.
5
Michael Mandelbaum, The Reluctance to Intervene, Foreign Policy 95 (Summer 1994),
318: 14.
6
Robert Axelrod, An Evolutionary Approach to Norms, American Political Science
Review 80 (December 1986), 10951111: 1096.
7
Robert H. Jackson, The Weight of Ideas in Decolonization: Normative Change in In-
ternational Relations, in Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, eds., Ideas and Foreign
Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993),
pp. 111138; Ethan Nadelmann, Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms
in International Society, International Organization 44 (Autumn 1990), 479526; James Lee
Ray, The Abolitionof Slaveryandthe Endof International War, International Organization
43 (Summer 1989), 405439; Gary Geortz and Paul F. Diehl, Toward a Theory of Interna-
tional Norms: Some Conceptual and Measurement Issues, Journal of Conict Resolution
36 (December 1992), 634666.
8
There are other explanations for the end of colonialism. One is that the colonizers over-
stretched, their reach exceeded their grasp, and they had to retreat. Another is that the
colonized overthrew the colonizer; guerrilla wars succeeded where wars of resistance
failed. See chapter 8.
132
Colonial arguments
Those who sought to change the dominant regime of colonialismused
ethical arguments to denormalize and delegitimize colonialism and
self-interested military interventions. They also used practical, identity,
and scientic arguments to bolster their ethical arguments against colo-
nial practices. Thus, over the course of several hundredyears, the charac-
teristic beliefs andconstitutive practices of colonialismwere challenged,
modied, and gradually abandoned in line with a growing belief in the
equality of others and increased respect for the rights of colonized
human bodies and politics. The process of these challenges was ethi-
cal argument; the content of the argument was more or less persuasive
given the preexisting beliefs and cultures of the societies in which the
arguments took place. In some cases, the preexisting beliefs that un-
derpinned colonialism were challenged. The agents who made these
arguments were a new set of humanitarians, distinct from the old-
fashioned humanitarians who thought colonialism was good for the
colonized because it brought them civilization and Christianity. Fur-
ther, ethical arguments changed the cultural and material context of
colonialism.
Colonialism did not end all at once. Rather, it was gradually disman-
tled, in part by actors who had little or no idea that their advocacy
and partial reforms would lead to the questioning and ultimately the
elimination of an entire political order. Colonialism was revised and
modied because of the inuence of ethical arguments about the very
practices that made colonialism what it was slavery, forced labor, tor-
ture, expropriation of land and resources, denial of the protections of
the rule of law, and denial of political representation. Colonialism was
rst signicantly modied when the slave trade and then slavery were
abolished (and abolition itself was a consequence of ethical arguments)
in the early and mid-nineteenth century. Colonialismwas further modi-
edwith the introduction of the League of Nations Mandate systemand
later the UnitedNations Trusteeshipsystemwhere, byinternational law,
certain colonies were to be administered in more humane ways and the
goal gradually (and to some degree unintentionally) became to increase
the prospect of self-determination for the inhabitants of these territories.
Ethical arguments against colonial practices were only successful be-
cause the beliefs about colonial subjects held by colonizers were widely
reassessed. Those who argued against colonialism, whether the colo-
nized or reformers based in the metropole, linked their preferred nor-
mative beliefs to established belief systems (legal, religious, ethical, and
political) that stressed human equality and the rule of law. The cluster
133
Argument and change in world politics
of principles and normative beliefs of equality, self-determination,
nationalism, democracy, human rights, non-intervention, and anti-
racism which all in various ways assert and argue for the equality of
former colonial subjects, gained broader persuasive power as they were
rst applied in the heart of the colonial powers, the mother countries,
and as these arguments were generalized to cover all human beings.
This chapter begins unraveling the causes for the end of colonialism
by describing the beliefs and practices of the institution of colonialism,
that is, bysketchingthe outlines andsome of the content of the European
colonial culture. I rehearse the arguments that supported and opposed
colonialism, and include thick descriptions of colonial practices for sev-
eral reasons. First, it is not possible to fully comprehend the signicance
of the end of colonialism without understanding exactly what colonial-
ism (an extremely complex political, social, and economic system) was
and how it was justied, and recalling the specic taken-for-granted
beliefs that supported colonial practices. Those who argue that there is
no difference between colonialism and neo-colonialism have perhaps
forgotten what colonialism entailed. If we re-focus our eyes on colonial-
ism as it was practiced when it was largely taken for granted, we will
better see the disjunctures (and continuities) in arguments, beliefs, and
practices between colonialism, decolonization, and humanitarian inter-
vention. For instance, the slavery, mutilation, massacre, and outright
theft of land that were common colonial practices are not characteris-
tic of the decolonized world, while the arrogance of the colonizer and
former colonizer may be similar.
Second, I review colonial beliefs and arguments to emphasize how
ethical arguments not only are used by advocates of social change in
attempts to overturn practices, but are deployed by those in dominant
positions to support and normalize dominant practices. European colo-
nialism was a cultural production; religious, scientic, economic, and
political beliefs and practices all worked to make colonialismwhat it be-
came in the Americas, Africa, and Asia and the colonizers made ethical
arguments to justify and support colonial practices. Though it seemed
natural, colonialism depended on practical, scientic, identity, and eth-
ical arguments. The ethical arguments of the colonizers rested on two
key sets of beliefs, neither of which was new: the identity belief in Euro-
pean superiority and the rm belief in expanding the scope, with force
if necessary, of the Christian religion.
Third, I begin with early colonial arguments regarding the conquest
of the Americas and the treatment of Indians in order to emphasize the
134
Colonial arguments
obvious but frequently overlooked historical fact that there were eth-
ical arguments about elements of colonial practice and belief if not
fundamental challenges to colonialism as an institution for hundreds
of years before colonialism was ultimately delegitimized. Even at the
two zeniths of modern European colonialism conquests of the New
World in the sixteenth century andof Africa in the nineteenth century
there were ethical debates about its justness. Ethical arguments for re-
formfrequently failed to spark signicant change in the short term. This
chapter recalls some of the early arguments about colonialism, most no-
tably the sixteenth-century debate between Bartolom e de Las Casas and
JuanGin es de Sep ulveda over the treatment of the Indians inthe Spanish
conquest of the new world.
Colonialism and decolonization dened
Though colonialism varied over time and place, its characteristic prac-
tices were political control, economic expropriation (including slavery,
forced labor, extraction of land and natural resources for little or no
compensation, the payment of tribute to the colonizer), and cultural
control, such as forced religious conversion and education in the lan-
guage of the metropole. A schematic outline of the colonial plot after
1492 would look like this: a new land populated by barbarians and
savages is discovered; missionaries and explorers chart the area, im-
parting the colonizers values and marking out what is worth taking.
Next, private and public companies backed by the might of govern-
ments stake claims (concessions), and begin settlements in order to
do business. Metropolitan governments move military forces into the
region to protect the missionaries, explorers, and settlers and also the
investments of these private corporations. The language, religion, po-
litical, and economic systems of the rst inhabitants of the area are
recognized only long enough to subdue the local people and cement
alliances with local collaborators that help smooth the way. Roads,
ports, and railways are constructed by the colonizer, usually with the
heavy input of colonized labor, to facilitate settlement and resource ex-
traction. A colonial government is developed to coordinate these ac-
tivities and signal to other potential colonizers that the area is already
taken. That government enforces language instruction, religious conver-
sion, and the economic system of the metropole, displacing or crushing
the preexisting backward language, religion, and economy. Colonial
economies are controlled for the colonizers benefit: manufacturing is
135
Argument and change in world politics
restricted so that often only those goods the colonizer deemed appro-
priate are manufactured in colonies while imports into colonies usually
come fromor through the ports of the colonial power. Colonial practices
were linkedtopolitical, religious, economic, andscientific belief systems
in the metropole, and colonialism would likely have looked quite dif-
ferent if they had not been so linked. Colonialism is the most intrusive,
comprehensive, and institutionalized form of intervention, or coercive
interference, in the affairs of others.
9
And, until recently, colonialism
conferred prestige on the colonizer.
What causes colonizers to make colonial systems? The theories are
well known. Most liberal and Marxist scholars favor economic expla-
nations, arguing that when the economies of metropolitan countries
need new markets, raw materials, less expensive labor, or a new place
to invest, economic interests push their states to expand.
10
Another ex-
planation stresses colonialism for strategic, balance-of-power, reasons:
great powers seek colonies to balance against rivals, or to protect the
geopolitical assets they already hold, such as trade routes.
11
A third
set of explanations stresses domestic sources: colonies are established
because of the interests of some dominant coalition which benets po-
litically or economically from colonies or the wars needed to get them;
or colonies are established to deal with a domestic political crisis, such
as overpopulation; or because of atavistic, militarist tendencies.
12
Decolonizationis commonlyunderstoodas theendof formal political,
economic, andmilitarycontrol of acolonizedterritorybyanother power.
With decolonization, formal independence is granted to the colony and
sovereignty(legal autonomy) is declaredbytheinhabitants of theformer
colony. The new state is then recognized by other states and admitted
to international society and international organizations as a member of
equal standing.
Yet the end of formal political domination by colonizers did not entail
an immediate and complete break in relations of control. Economic and
sometimes political interference by former colonizers and multinational
9
On defining intervention, see R.J. Vincent, Nonintervention and International Order
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 313.
10
For example, J.A. Hobson, Imperialism (New York: James Pott and Co., 1902); V.I.
Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism(NewYork: International, 1939); Anthony
Brewer, Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey, 2nd edn (New York: Routledge,
1990).
11
Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher with Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians:
The Ofcial Mind of Imperialism (London: Macmillan, 1961).
12
Joseph Schumpeter, Imperialism and Social Classes (New York: A. M. Kelly, 1951).
136
Colonial arguments
corporations in developing countries governance, finance, and trade
is not infrequent, and some would thus argue that decolonization is a
fiction or at least an unfinished program. Indeed, there is a strong case
to be made that colonizers replaced colonialism with neocolonialism, a
more subtle relationship of dependency and control informal political
inuence, unequal economic relations, and even occasional military in-
tervention. As Adebayo Adedeji argues: negative decolonization is like
emancipation from slavery freedom from being owned by others. But
real positive decolonization will only arrive when Africans are effective
participants in the world economy and have commensurate share in
global power.
13
Nonetheless, therearesignicant differences betweencolonialismand
neocolonialism. Under colonialism, the native inhabitants of colonies
had fewif any political rights vis- ` a-vis the colonizer. Land and resources
were often taken and occupied by settlers, corporations, and colonial
governments with little or no compensation by military force and no
end was in sight. Native people were forced to work, under pain of
corporal punishment or imprisonment, for the companies and govern-
ments of the colonizer for little or no wages. Brutality was common
and accountability for it was absent or quite distant. While there is still
inequality, with decolonization political freedom has been greater, and
financial compensation for resources and labor has generally improved.
With the greater political freedom following decolonization, there has
also beenincreasedscope, althoughnot complete freedom, for economic
self-determination. To suggest that little if anything has changed, that
neocolonialism is just as bad as colonialism, is to make an ethical ar-
gument by analogy, one that relies on the arguments that helped bring
about the end of colonialism.
14
I have chosen to focus on decoloniza-
tion, stressing the political and military aspects of the relations between
colonizers and colonized. Howand why decolonization did not include
signicantly rearranging the worldeconomy so that it is more equitable,
and that the inhabitants of former colonies had more economic control,
should become evident after an examination of the arguments, beliefs,
and culture that produced decolonization.
13
Adebayo Adedeji, Comparative Strategies of Economic Decolonization in Africa, in
Ali A. Mazrui, ed., UNESCO General History of Africa VIII: Africa Since 1935 (Oxford: James
Curry, 1999), pp. 393431: 431. Decolonization, as a blanket term, also ignores the different
political forms and arrangements that characterized the granting of formal independence
to states in the twentieth century.
14
The fact that neo-colonialismhas a pejorative connotationmaypresage more persuasive
and effective future arguments about international political economy.
137
Argument and change in world politics
Decolonization is a context-specific regime (which grew in opposi-
tion to the colonial regime) that included normative beliefs, adminis-
trative practices in colonies, international law, and other procedures to
eliminate colonialism and prevent its reimposition. Following Ethan
Nadelmann, decolonization might be called a global prohibition
regime where those who refuse or fail to conform are labeled as de-
viants and condemned not just by states but by most communities and
individuals as well.
15
In discussing decolonization as a cluster of be-
liefs (including the ideas of political self-determination, human rights,
non-intervention, and sovereignty) and practices, I am emphasizing the
normative element of the regime. The focus here is on how colonialism
became delegitimized and was replaced with new normative beliefs
namely, that states should not keep colonies because it is wrong to deny
nations and individuals political self-determination. Colonialism was
formally delegitimized as an acceptable international practice, and the
behavioral norm decisively shifted to decolonization in 1970, when the
United Nations called colonialism a crime and instituted sanctions
against remaining colonial powers, such as Portugal and South Africa.
The timing of the change depended on the ability of actors to change the
balance of political power within and among states. And that change
depended on the success of ethical arguments in changing the beliefs
and constitutive practices of colonialism.
Early Colonial arguments and beliefs
The rst stepinunderstanding the role of arguments inmaintaining and
later dismantling colonialism is to identify the main arguments on the
table, though the table itself can change, as it did in the case of European
colonialism. Inthefteenthandsixteenthcenturies, thetablewherecolo-
nial arguments were made was inhabited by important members of the
dominant religious culture. After the Reformation, secular and legal ac-
tors joined the debate, though religious arguments remained important
because of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century religious revival. In
the twentieth century colonial arguments took place among, and were
judged increasingly by, bureaucrats at international organizations and
the general public.
But before the colonial arguments of the sixteenth century, colo-
nialism had been debated for thousands of years. Even at the height
15
Nadelmann, Global Prohibition Regimes, p. 479.
138
Colonial arguments
of the ancient Athenian empire, colonizers found it necessary to jus-
tify colonialism. The Athenian leader Pericles reasoned that empire
was natural and benecial to the glory and economic strength of
the imperial state and argued that all states would desire empire if
they had the military might to acquire it. The Athenians told the
Spartans:
We have done nothing extraordinary, nothing contrary to human na-
ture in accepting an empire when it was offered to us and then refusing
to give it up. Three very powerful motives prevent us from doing so
security, honour, and self-interest. And we are not the rst to act in this
way. Far from it. It has always been the rule that the weak should be
subject to the strong; and besides, we consider that we are worthy of
our power.
16
Further, the Athenians argued, Our opinion of the gods and our
knowledge of men lead us to conclude that it is a general and necessary
law of nature to rule whatever one can.
17
Even while making ethical
arguments, advocates of colonial empire obviously felt that it was im-
portant to belittle their causal force; as Pericles asserted in the Melian
dialogue, toargue against imperialismonthe basis of justice ininterstate
relations was irrelevant, unless there was equal power to compel each
side in a dispute.
18
That the Athenians felt they had to make arguments
for their actions is a testament to the need for justication of the natu-
ral, whether on grounds of normative, philosophical, instrumental, or
identity beliefs.
Colonial arguments are rst of all meta-arguments that try to x the
representation of the other. The other is weak, inferior, and deserves
domination by the strong, the superior. Colonial policies follow from
the meta-argument: genocidal violence is acceptable. Yet the colonizers
beliefs about themselves clashed with colonial practices. Howcould the
benevolent and superior colonizer be so cruel? This question caused an
internal critique of colonial practice which emerged powerfully in the
early and mid-sixteenth century.
This emphasis on the narrative, arguments, and actions of the col-
onizer is not to suggest that there was a complete lack of resistance
to colonialism. Just as colonialism was a behavioral norm, so was
16
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Rex Warner (New York: Penguin
Books, 1986), p. 80.
17
Ibid., p. 404.
18
Ibid., p. 402.
139
Argument and change in world politics
resistance to it.
19
Further, colonialism as a system of practices that
embodied prescriptive normative beliefs (as well as philosophical, in-
strumental, and identity beliefs) was increasingly challenged within the
metropole itself by those who held other beliefs. Especially after 1492,
the legal and religious debates in Europe over colonialism were artic-
ulated with great and intensifying clarity. There were essentially three
positions.
20
In the positive law tradition, colonialism was justified and good
because the inhabitants of the colonized lands were less-than-human
savages who lacked the attributes Europeans believed were marks of
civilization, including government. Further, these savages were not us-
ing the land properly (in accordance with Western agricultural and
scientific practices). And since the international law that Europeans
practiced was developed among Christian European states, it did not
apply to uncivilized and non-Christian peoples. Moreover, such laws
as there were between states derived (echoes of Pericles) from superior
force. Since the non-Europeans lacked sufcient force to consistently re-
pel European colonizers, and were also non-Christian and uncivilized
in European ways, their land was fair game terra nullius. But even after
missionaries converted indigenous peoples, often with the use of force
or bribes, conquest obviously continued.
From the beginning, as Robert Jackson argues, the European colo-
nial enterprise was deeply normative.
21
And it was also as deeply re-
ligious as the Christian Crusades against Moslems and Jews that pre-
ceded the conquest of the Americas. Since political authority in the late
middle ages was basedonreligious authority, authorizationfor colonial-
ism by the Church was a necessary part of its legitimation. Columbus
conquests were legitimized by his charter from the Spanish monarchs
Ferdinand and Isabella, while their right to conquest was legitimized by
Pope Alexander VI in the 1493 papal bull Inter Caetera, which gave the
monarchs all the land they had already found and to be discovered.
19
For example, see: William B. Taylor and Franklin Pease, eds., Violence, Resistance, and
Survival in the Americas: Native Americans and the Legacy of Conquest (Washington, DC:
Smithsonian, 1994).
20
Concise summaries of these arguments are found in Lynn Berat, Walvis Bay: Decoloniza-
tion and International Law (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); Christos Theodor-
poulos, Colonialism and General International Law: The Contemporary Theory of National
Sovereignty and Self-Determination (New York: New Horizon Publishing House, 1988) and
Michael Donelan, Spain and the Indies, in Hedley Bull and Adam Watson, eds., The
Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 7585.
21
Jackson, The Weight of Ideas in Decolonization, p. 119.
140
Colonial arguments
Papal authorization for conquest in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
was conditional on converting infidels to Christianity. Among other
works well-pleasing to the Divine Majesty and other things desirable to
our heart, certainly the most outstanding is that the Catholic Faith and
the ChristianReligionespeciallyinour times is beingexaltedandspread
and extended everywhere and the salvation of souls procured and bar-
barian nations subdued and brought under that faith.
22
The Treaty of
Torsedillas in 1494 the foundation of which was papal authority
demarcated zones of conquest in the New World between Spain and
Portugal. The mark of discovery and possession in both the Americas
and Africa, upon whose southern shores the European explorers had
also begun to land, was typically the erection of a stone cross.
Sixteenth-century Spanish monarchs, though perhaps particularly
zealous, were not alone in articulating a religious rationale for explo-
ration and conquest. In 1541, the French kings commission to explorer
Jean de la Rocque said he should inhabit the aforesaid lands and coun-
tries and build there towns and fortresses, temples and churches, in
order to impart our Holy Catholic Faith and Catholic Doctrine, to con-
stitute and to establish law and peace, by officers of justice so that
they [the Native Americans] may live by reason and civility.
23
Sir
Humphrey Gilbert, who took possession of New Foundland for Britain,
was given authority to discover . . . such remote, barbarous, and hea-
then lands, countries, and territories not possessed by any Christian
prince or people nor inhabited by Christian people and the same to
have, holde, occupy and enjoy.
24
Table 3.1 articulates some of the core
beliefs that grounded the arguments in favor of European colonialism
in the Americas. These are the familiar topoi (starting point) for ar-
guments that were also used to justify later colonialism in Africa and
Asia.
22
Pope Alexander VI, Inter Caetera quoted in Donelan, Spain and the Indies, p. 79. This
was not the rst time a Pope had sanctioned war and slavery. In 1455, following Ottoman
seizure of Constantinople, Pope Nicholas VauthorizedSpanishandPortuguese conquests
against all enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, which was viewed as license for
expeditions not only against the Turks, but Africa as well. Nicholas V, Romanus Pontifex,
quoted in Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of
Conquest (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975), p. 4.
23
Quoted in Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain
and France, c. 15001800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 33.
24
Quoted in Patricia Seed, Taking Possession and Reading Texts: Establishing the Au-
thority of Overseas Empires, in Jerry M. Williams and Robert E. Lewis, Early Images
of the Americas: Transfer and Invention (Tu cson: The University of Arizona Press, 1993),
pp. 111147: 112113.
141
Argument and change in world politics
Table 3.1 Topoi for early arguments in favor of colonialism
Philosophical Colonialism and empire are natural.
Instrumental The colonizer will make better, more productive, use of
the land than natives because European agricultural
techniques are more advanced than those of the natives.
Normative It is good to spread the Christian faith, to convert pagans,
and to bring civilization to barbarians. There are, in an
Aristotelian sense, natural slaves, incapable of reason,
and masters must reason for them.
Identity The colonized (e.g. Aztecs and Incas) think that the
conquistadors are gods (e.g. Quetzacoatl and Viracocha
respectively). The colonizers are racially superior to the
colonized by virtue of and as evidenced by all their
accomplishments.
The core belief underpinning the arguments in favor of European
colonial practices from slavery to the expropriation of land and the
forced religious conversion of the inhabitants of colonies was the con-
viction that European colonizers were superior in every way to the colo-
nized. Aristotle, in a passage widely quoted and debated by NewWorld
colonizers, argued that From the hour of their birth, some are marked
out for subjection, others for rule.
25
Although in their early encounters
with Africans, Americans, and Asians, the Europeans tended to stress
religious differences between themselves and others, European mate-
rial, military, navigational, and technical competence were also taken
as evidence of European superiority.
26
The indigenous inhabitants of
newly conquered lands were viewed by the majority of the colonizers
as less civilized, less intelligent, and even less human than Christian
Europeans. The clearest evidence of the inferiority of the colonized was
the fact that even though indigenous populations resisted colonialism,
25
This is perhaps the most famous statement of Aristotle on slavery, quoted in David
Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1966), p. 70. In Politics, Aristotles remarks on slavery are embedded in a wider discussion
of natural order. There can be little question that Aristotle believed in slavery as a natural
institution. For he is by nature a slave who is capable of belonging to another (and that
is why he does so belong), and who participates in reason so far as to apprehend it but
not to possess it; for the animals other than man are subservient not to reason, but to feel-
ings. Aristotle, Politics, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1990), p. 23.
26
Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, andIdeologies of Western
Dominance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).
142
Colonial arguments
the imperialists generally won. Anthropology and evolutionary bio-
logy of the nineteenth century later gave scientific proof of European
superiority. In this view, colonialism, with all of its constitutive prac-
tices slavery, forced labor, the theft of land for cultivation and raw
materials for industries in Europe was just because the natives were
considered less deserving than Europeans. Thus, colonialism was not
only the international behavioral norm, it was a regime (rules, norms,
and procedures) that codied and reected the colonizers belief in the
inferior status of the conquered.
The dominant positive law position was challenged most forcefully
by those who adhered to a natural law tradition, who argued that colo-
nialism was illegitimate because it violated the natural rights of the
inhabitants of colonizedregions. Inthis view, savages hadsovereignty
and political institutions of their own and all humans, not just Chris-
tians, were subjects of international law. Advocates of the natural law
position argued, along the lines of Thomas Aquinas, that divine law
did not vitiate human law, and therefore the religious status of non-
Christians did not mean that they were necessarily without rights.
Though not always entirely consistent in their views, these publicists
thus held that any land inhabited by people who were linked by some
political organization, no matter how primitive or crude, was not terra
nullius.
27
A third position was that colonialism could be legitimate in some
circumstances but not in others. Specically, colonial acquisitions were
just if the landwas empty or if the natives made little productive use of
the land. For instance, in 1539 Francisco de Vitoria argued that native
populations had rights but that all humans had the right to commerce.
If the Spaniards were to use this right inoffensively and the Indians
were to prevent this maliciously, a situation might arise in which the
Spaniards might justifiably go to war against them. . . and take their
labor and their land.
28
Since the object in question was not without an
owner, Vitoria argued, Spain had no right to take the land, and Spains
claim to title gives no support to a seizure of the aborigines any more
than if it had been they who had discovered us.
29
Eighteenth-century
legal theorist Vattel argued, When the nations of Europe, which are too
confined at home, come upon lands which the savages have no special
27
Berat, Walvis Bay, p. 107.
28
Quoted in Donelan, Spain and the Indies, p. 84.
29
Quoted in Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 61.
143
Argument and change in world politics
need of and are making no present and continuous use of they may
lawfully take possession of them and establish colonies in them.
30
There were heated debates about colonial practices. The first of these
was over the nature of those who the conquistadors and religious evan-
gelists met in the New World. A second great debate, described in
chapter 4, was over slavery and forced labor. Few, if any, participants
in these debates challenged the legitimacy of colonialism per se. Rather,
even as reformers tried to make colonialism conform to certain nor-
mative beliefs while preserving the institution as a whole, the pillars of
colonial domination were made strange, undermined, destabilized, and
delegitimized.
The rst of the great debates: Are these Indians
not men?
The conquistadors and later Spanish settlers took possession of the land
and people in the Americas as quickly as they could. Those conquista-
dors and settlers who served the Spanish king well were given grants of
land and encomienda, a system that entitled them to the use of Indian la-
bor for two or three years, during which time the encomenderos were also
supposedto instruct the natives inChristiandoctrine. The Indians made
captive as slaves or personal servants worked in gold and silver mines,
built roads, dams, and residences for encomenderos, transported goods
as porters (tamemes), labored on the farms established by encomenderos,
and were even soldiers for the conquering army. In addition to direct
labor, Indians were forced to pay a tax tribute to the Spanish.
Immediately after their first encounters with the Indians, Europeans
began to argue about how to treat those they met, debating whether
the Indians were capable of understanding Christianity and becom-
ing Christians, whether intermarriage was allowable, and whether the
Indians were beasts and natural slaves. The answers were not immedi-
ately apparent. Christopher Columbus writing about the New World
shows both awe and abhorrence for those he met.
31
Cortez, who con-
quered the Aztecs just a few decades later, similarly articulated both
contempt and respect for the culture he found: these people live al-
most like those in Spain, and in as much harmony and order as there,
30
E. Vattel, from the Law of Nations, quoted in Berat, Walvis Bay, p. 107.
31
Lewis Hanke, All Mankind is One: A Study of the Disputation Between Bartolom e de Las
Casas and Juan Gin es de Sepulveda in 1550 on the Intellectual and Religious Capacity of the
American Indians (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974), p. 4.
144
Colonial arguments
and considering that they are barbarous and so far from the knowledge
of God and cut off from all civilized nations, it is truly remarkable to see
what they have achieved in all things.
32
The most intense debates were perhaps among members of the
Catholic Churchandsoone of the first challenges toSpanishcolonialism
in the New World came from members of the Dominican religious or-
der who charged that the Spanish had failed to convert the natives, the
crucial condition of Pope Alexanders 1493 right to conquest.
33
There
was widespread attention when, in 1511, Antonio de Montesinos, a
member of the Dominican order living on Hispaniola, preached a ser-
mon urging that Indians be Christianized, but questioned the violent
methods of the conquistadors. With what right and with what justice
do you keep these poor Indians in such cruel and horrible servitude?
By what authority have you made such detestable wars against these
people who lived peacefully and gently on their own lands?
34
And,
going to the core of the issue, Montesinos asked, Are these Indians not
men? Do they not have rational souls? Are you not bound to love them
as yourselves?
35
Another Dominican, Matias de Paz, argued around
the same time, that, It is not licit for Christian princes to make war on
the infidels for a whimof domination or for the desire to gain riches, but
only inspired by the zeal of faith. . . so that the name of our Redeemer be
exalted and praised throughout the entire world.
36
The Dominicans
criticisms reached Spain and sparked a wider debate and an ambiguous
period of conquest where the Spanish were alternately solicitous and
brutal, as if no one wantedto be as cruel as the Dominicans hadcharged.
Spanish laws of conquest exemplified and institutionalized the fea-
tures of the argument. The Laws of Burgos in 1512 were the first reg-
ulations on Spanish conquistadors use of Indians as servants, and the
conditions inwhichIndians couldbe kept (suchas providinghammocks
so that Indians did not have to sleep on the ground). Under these laws,
Indians would work nine months per year for the Spanish and three
months for themselves. After their fourth month of pregnancy, women
32
Quoted in ibid., p. 12.
33
Seed, Taking Possession and Reading Texts, pp. 124125.
34
Quoted in Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance
to Romanticism (New Haven: Yale, 1993), pp. 7071.
35
Quoted in Hanke, All Mankind is One, p. 4. Also see Hayward R. Alker, Rediscoveries and
Reformulations: Humanistic Methodologies for International Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), p. 168.
36
Quoted in Luis N. Rivera, A Violent Evangelism: The Political and Religious Conquest of the
Americas (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), p. 39.
145
Argument and change in world politics
were not to work in mines or fields, and the exemption continued until
their children were three. Law number 24 said, no one may beat or
whip or call an Indian dog (perro) or any other name unless it is his
proper name.
37
The Laws also ordered Spanish conquerors to educate
Indians in the Christian faith and baptize their children.
After further debate, the royal lawyer for Ferdinand and Isabella
drewup another document, the Requerimiento (Requirement), in 1513,
which the Spanish were supposed to read to the natives when they
came upon them. The Requirement obliged the natives to acknowledge
their submission to both the Church and the Spanish monarchy. Na-
tives usually did not understand the Spanish or Latin reading, or per-
haps did not hear the words at all because the Spaniards often did not
bother to read it to them within hearing distance. Even under these con-
ditions, failure to immediately submit was the authority for conquest
and the Requirement warns of severe punishment for the crime of not
submitting:
38
We shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make
slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their
Highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and
shall do all the harm and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not
obey, and refuse to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him;
and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this
are your fault, and not that of their Highnesses, or ours, nor of these
gentlemen who come with us. And that we have said this to you and
made this Requirement, we request the notary here present to give us
his testimony in writing, and we ask the rest who are present that they
should be witnesses of this Requirement.
39
The royal historian, Gonzalo Fern andez de Oviedo y Vald ez, not
known for his sympathy for Indians, described one reading of the Re-
quirement this way.
37
Laws of Burgos quoted in Hanke, All Mankind is One, pp. 89.
38
That potential subjects of New Spain might understand and still reject proselytizing, as
Montezuma did, was also ostensibly irrelevant. Montezumas response to Cortezs expla-
nation of his Christianizing mission, according to Bernal Daz, was I have understood
your words and arguments very well before now, fromwhat you have said to my servants
at the sand dunes, this is about three Gods and the Cross, and all those things that you
have preached in the towns through which you have come. We have not made any answer
to it because here throughout all time we have worshipped our own gods, and thought
they were good, as no doubt yours are, so do not trouble to speak to us any more about
them at present. Quoted in Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, p. 139.
39
Quoted in Hanke, All Mankind is One, p. 36.
146
Colonial arguments
It appears that they had been suddenly pounced upon and bound
before they had learnt or understood anything about Pope or Church,
or any one of the many things said in the Requirement; and that after
they had been put in chains someone read the Requirement without
knowing their language and without any interpreters, and without
either the reader or the Indians understanding their language, they
had no chance to reply, being immediately carried away prisoners, the
Spaniards not failing to use the stick on those who did not go fast
enough.
40
If this was howsuch occasions typically went, why bother writing the
Requirement andreading it to the natives? In whose eyes must conquest
be legitimate? Obviously the only relevant audiences were God and
other Europeans.
The Spanish conquerors were faithful to elements of the Requirement.
Indians were routinely enslaved. Technically, two categories of slaves
were allowed: those acquired in war, esclavos de guerra, and those who
were already slaves among the Indians, esclavos de rescate. In practice,
such distinctions were not widely observed. Slaves were branded on
their face, arms, and legs, to indicate their status, and if freed were
branded again on the face. As historian William Sherman recounts,
contemporary observers documented frequent slaving expeditions in
Central America with some Spaniards, such as Diego L opez de Salcedo,
widely known for their cruelty. One observer, named Pedraza, charged
that when the Indians were taken on the road in chains by L opez de Sal-
cedo and his men some of the carriers faltered under the strain and
could not continue. In order to avoid the delay caused by opening the
chains to release the stragglers, their heads were cut off and the vic-
tims were left on the road, the head on one side and the body on the
other; and they went on their way.
41
Brutality was the main feature of
conquest.
On their way from Honduras to Nicaragua, the Spaniards burned
towns and caused great destruction. Recently-delivered babies were
taken from their mothers breasts and tossed aside. Caciques [chiefs]
and principales were put in collars and chains in groups of ten. More
than four hundred Indians were taken from the valley of Guamira
loaded down with the merchandise of the governor and his compan-
ions. If an Indian fell his head was cut off.
40
Ibid., pp. 3637.
41
William L. Sherman, Forced Native Labor in Sixteenth-Century Central America (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1979), p. 45.
147
Argument and change in world politics
In Aguatega 200 Indians were punished: one-third of them were put in
a large hut and burned to death; another one-third were torn to pieces
by dogs; eyes were plucked out, arms were cut off, and other cruelties
were practiced on the remaining one-third of the Indians.
42
Debates about the treatment of Indians took place in both secular and
religious settings. In 1524, King Charles V established the Council of
the Indies which governed Spains colonies in the Americas until 1834.
Meeting in Madrid, the six to ten members of the council appointed by
the king were charged with issuing all legislation, and approving ex-
penditures and official acts by colonial officials. In 1526 King Charles
proclaimed Ordinances about the Good Treatment of the Indians re-
quiring that at least two religious men or ordained clerics accompany
all expeditions.
43
The Church hierarchy generally supported conquest
and encomienda. Still, some members of the Franciscan and Dominican
orders hotly debated the humanity of Indians and Charles V seems to
have been swayed by arguments on both sides.
For several decades, arguments about how to treat the Indians fo-
cused on the question of their humanity and suitability for indoc-
trination in Christian beliefs, with many arguing that Indians were
beasts. The Bishop of

Avila, Francisco Ruiz, said, Indians are malicious
people . . . but they are not capable of natural judgment or of receiving
the faith. . . and they need, just as a horse or a beast does, to be directed
and governed by Christians who treat them well and not cruelly.
44
About two years later, in 1519, in an audience before King Charles V,
the Franciscan Bishop Juan de Quevedo said Indians were siervos a
natura.
45
Quevedo said, If any people ever deserved to be treated
harshly, it is the Indians, who resemble ferocious beasts more than
rational creatures.
46
The Dominican friar Tom as Ortiz said in 1525 that
Indians were incapable of learning. . . God has never created a race
more full of vice . . . the Indians are more stupid than asses and refuse to
improve in anything.
47
Ortiz charged that Indians do not have
any human artistry or skills . . . they turn into brute animals.
48
The
Royal historian Oviedo said that Indian heads were different than
Europeanheads: Theywere not, infact, heads at all, but rather hardand
thick helmets, so that the most important piece of advice the Christians
42
Ibid., p. 46.
43
Rivera, A Violent Evangelism, p. 43.
44
Quoted in Hanke, All Mankind is One, p. 11.
45
Quoted in ibid.
46
Quoted in Sherman, Forced Native Labor, p. 154.
47
Quoted in Hanke, All Mankind is One, pp. 1112.
48
Quoted in Rivera, A Violent Evangelism, p. 137.
148
Colonial arguments
gave when fighting in hand to hand combat with them was not to strike
themonthe head, because that broke the swords. Andjust as their heads
were hard, so their understanding was bestial and evilly inclined.
49
In
about 1532 or 1533, Domingo de Betanzos charged that the Indians were
incapable of religious instruction, and later he argued that they were
beasts, destined for extinction.
50
Betanzos views, whose precise word-
ing has in many cases been lost, were widely discussed and provoked a
strong reaction among those who thought Indians were not beasts but
humans.
What was at stake in the question of whether Indians were human
was the legality of the conquest. As Francisco de Vitoria wrote in 1535
about the wars in Peru:
I do not understand the justice of this war . . . . In truth, if the Indians
are not men but monkeys, non sunt capaces iniuriae. But if they are men
and our fellow creatures, as well as vassals of the Emperor, I see no
way to excuse these conquistadores, nor do I know how they serve
your majesty in such an important way by destroying your vassals.
51
Pope Paul III, upon hearing arguments that Indians were beasts and
incapable of learning to be Catholics, and the counter-claim that those
who were making such arguments were doing the work of the devil,
issued the Bull, Sublimis Deus, in June 1537. In it he said, the Indians
truly are men and that they are not only capable of understanding the
Catholic faithbut, according to our information, they desire exceedingly
to receive it . . . they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their
liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any
way enslaved; should the contrary happen it should be null and of no
effect.
52
Charles V reacted to both Pope Pauls statements, and those of
Vitoria, whose 1539 lectures on De Indis questionedunfetteredconquest,
by trying to squash debate unless he had authorized it.
53
The king was
unsuccessful at muzzling the pope and other members of the Church.
At the same time the monarchy also triedto curb the colonizers worst
abuses. In 1542, Charles V proclaimed, New Laws of the Indies for the
Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians, restricting the en-
comenderos practices. The New Laws specifically prohibited enslaving
any more Indians and forbade using Indians as tamemes (porters) except
in extraordinary cases (which colonists were quick to proclaim), and
49
Quoted in Pagden, European Encounters, p. 57.
50
Hanke, All Mankind is One, pp. 13, 19, 27.
51
Quoted in ibid., p. 16.
52
Quoted in ibid., p. 21.
53
Rivera, A Violent Evangelism, pp. 8485.
149
Argument and change in world politics
certainly not without paying them.
54
Existing slaves were to be set
free unless encomenderos could prove just title to them. Further, the law
forbade the establishment of new encomiendas, and upon the death of
the owners of existing encomiendas their title was to revert to the king.
Spanish settlers protested against the New Laws, many officials of
New Spain delayed their implementation as much as possible and,
in Peru, settlers revolted. Resistance to reform was nothing new. En-
comenderos had long evaded the laws protecting the Indians, and it was
difficult for the crownto enforce its regulations, so rules were frequently
redrafted. In 1545, the Council of the Indies modified the New Laws,
allowing continuation of the encomienda land and forced labor system.
Slaverywas still prohibited, but onlywiththe appointment of a vigorous
judge in Central America, Alonso L opez de Cerrato, who served from
1548 to 1555, were laws protecting Indians more vigorously enforced
and large numbers of Indian slaves freed.
The debate in Spain and the Americas over treatment of the Indians
thus reached a peak at mid-century. In 1549 Betanzos made a deathbed
retraction of his views about the bestial nature of Indians.
55
Mean-
while, Judge Cerratos enforcement of the New Laws was opposed by
many Spanish colonizers although supported by some members of the
church based in the colonies. Some Spanish settlers traveled to Spain
fromthe NewWorldin order to push for making their encomienda grants
perpetual the Indians could be held forever (in perpetuity) as laborers
and this status would be inherited by their children. Encomenderos and
conquistadors arguedthat encomienda shouldbe perpetual since this was
the best way to reward them, as agents of the king, and to promote the
54
Spanish conquistadors and encomenderos used tamemes to carry their personal effects,
food, and the goods that owed to and from Spain, on their backs. Tamemes often traveled
hundreds of miles carrying loads of 75 to 100 pounds in all sorts of weather through
lowlands and mountains. They were given little to eat and though they were supposed to
be paid, were often enslaved. In one of the most catastrophic examples, one expedition
saw 4,000 tamemes loaded for a journey from which no more than 6 survived to return
to their homes. Sherman, Forced Native Labor, p. 114. The Spanish government gradually
regulated the use of tamemes, for instance, saying in 1530, that they should not carry loads
from coasts to highlands or the other way around, because such extremes in climate were
devastating. In 1533, Spain ordered that no one could carry more than 50 pounds, and that
distances ought to be limited. The NewLaws saidtamemes must be paidandsome Spanish
governors (notably Contreras of Nicaragua, after 1535) prohibited the use of tamemes and
encouraged instead cart-building and road construction. Crown money was allocated for
the purpose of road construction from the 1540s onward. Still, the laws were selectively
implemented and enforced, and tamemes were widely used until roads and draft animals
were more widely available. Ibid., pp. 222224.
55
Hanke, All Mankind is One, p. 30.
150
Colonial arguments
religious conversion of Indians. Further, they argued, the very natives
will benefit because if they are held in perpetuity they will be treated
well . . .
56
Inthe same period, JuanGin es de Sep ulveda was tryingto get his long
treatise on the inferiority of Indians and the justice of conquest in the
Americas, then circulating in manuscript form, published in Spain and
Rome.
57
Sep ulveda had earlier, in the 1520s and 1530s, made arguments
for the justice of Spains campaigns against heresy and its war against
the Turks.
58
Sep ulvedas argument against Indians rights was based on
Aristotles distinction between rulers and natural slaves, and bolstered
by evidence from Oviedo who regarded the Indians as incapable of be-
coming Christians and wrote, in any case, that God is going to destroy
them soon.
59
Further, Sep ulveda argued that Pope Alexanders 1493
Bulls were a right to conquer in order to civilize.
60
One of the most vocal supporters of Indians, and of the judge Cerrato,
was Bartolom e de Las Casas, who had for decades argued for Indian
rights. Before becoming a harsh critic of European treatment of the
Indians, Las Casas participated in and benefited from the cruelest as-
pects of the conquest, including holding encomienda until 1514 and par-
ticipating in the conquest of Cuba with Diego Velazques.
61
Although he
apparently heard Montesinos 1511 sermon, Las Casas said his revised
understanding of the situation of the Indians resulted from a personal
religious experience.
62
Actingonhis newbeliefs while Bishopof Chiapa,
Las Casas denied absolution to those Spaniards who practiced slavery
and urged others to do so.
Las Casas wrote an indictment of Spanish conquest, Brevsima relaci on
de la destruccon de las Indios (Most Brief Relation of the Destruction of
the Indies), published in 1542, that turned the religious mission on its
head. He argued that Spanish brutality was so awful that the more
56
Quoted in Rivera, A Violent Evangelism, p. 129.
57
Juan Gin es de Sep ulveda, Democrates Segundo o de las Justas Causas del la Guerra Contra
los Indios, ed., Angel Losada (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cienticas,
Instituto Francisco de Vitoria, 1951). The Council of the Indies refused to publish the
manuscript. The Royal Council of Castile, the University of Salamanca, the University of
Alcala, and the Council of Trent all either refused to consider the manuscript or refused
to publish it. Sep ulveda could not get the manuscript published in Spain or Rome, and a
summary of it, published in Rome in 1550, was banned in Spain, with Charles V ordering
conscation of any copies that made it to Spain. See Hanke, All Mankind is One, pp. 6263.
58
Hanke, All Mankind is One, pp. 6162; Pagden, Lords of All the World, p. 100.
59
Oviedo quoted in Hanke, All Mankind is One, p. 45.
60
Pagden, Lords of All the World, p. 100.
61
Hanke, All Mankind is One, pp. 67.
62
Pagden, European Encounters, pp. 7173.
151
Argument and change in world politics
they proceeded to discover, and destroy, and lose people and lands,
the more remarkable were the cruelties and iniquities against God and
his children that they perpetrated.
63
Las Casas argued that kindness
was more certain than cruelty to bring converts to Christianity and he
urged that all conversion should be through peaceful persuasion. Las
Casas criticized encomienda because it showed the contempt Spaniards
had for the unfortunate Indians, whom the Spaniards did not love and
adore as people but rather as use, work, and sweat, as one does with
wheat, bread or wine.
64
Las Casas was apparently one of the prime
movers behind the legislation of the New Laws in 1542.
65
In 1546,
Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians, including Las Casas, con-
vened a conference in Mexico to discuss slavery.
66
Las Casas railed
against the vehement, blind and disorderly greed from which all harm
and evil come and after his return to Spain furiously lobbied the Coun-
cil of the Indies and the king in 1549 against encomienda and forced
conversions.
67
Las Casas versus Sep ulveda
Critics of Spains colonial practices in the Americas were able to force a
formal debate. In July 1549, the Council of the Indies proposed to King
Charles V that all conquest be suspended until they decided how con-
quests may be conducted justly and with security of conscience.
68
In
April 1550 the king briey halted all conquests until a method for con-
ducting them could be found, and a disputation between Sep ulveda
and Las Casas began in August at Valladolid in front of the Council
of Fourteen to debate the question: Is it lawful for the King of Spain
to wage war on the Indians, before preaching a faith to them, in or-
der to subject them to his rule, so that afterward they may be more
easily instructed in the faith?
69
The king sent outstanding theolo-
gians and members of the Council of the Indies to judge the arguments
of Sep ulveda and Las Casas.
70
Las Casas and Sep ulveda agreed that
63
Quoted in Stephanie Merrim, The Counter-Discourse of Las Casas, in Williams and
Lewis, eds., Early Images of the Americas, pp. 149162: 152.
64
Quoted in Santa Arias, Empowerment Through the Writing of History: Bartolem e de
Las Casass Representation of the Other(s), in Williams and Lewis, eds., Early Images of
the Americas, pp. 163179: 171.
65
Sherman, Forced Native Labor, p. 273.
66
David Traboulay, Columbus and Las Casas: The Conquest and Christianization of America,
14921566 (New York: University Press of America, 1994), p. 177.
67
Las Casas quoted in Rivera, A Violent Evangelism, p. 139.
68
Council of the Indies quoted in Hanke, All Mankind is One, p. 66.
69
Ibid., p. 67.
70
Ibid., p. 67.
152
Colonial arguments
conversion of Indians to Christianity was the goal; they differed about
the Indians capacity for such conversion and the methods which could
be used legitimately to impose Spanish rule. Both men used a mix of
ethical, identity, practical, and philosophical arguments.
Sep ulveda, who spoke for three hours on the first day, summarized
his unpublished Democrates Segundo to the Council, making essentially
four points in his argument that war against Indians was just. First, he
said that Indians were barbarians and thus ought to be subjects of the
Spanish; second, Indians committed crimes against natural law, includ-
ing human sacrifice and idolatry; third, Indians oppressed and killed
innocent people; fourth, war may be waged against infidels in order to
prepare them for learning the Christian faith.
Sep ulvedas arguments clearly rested on the assertion of Indian in-
feriority. Sep ulveda relied on Oviedos claims that Indians had actu-
ally heard and accepted the gospel before but had forgotten it and later
fallenintoidolatry, andfurthermore, that Indians were unteachable, and
anyway, the land belonged to Spain and conquest was only recovery.
71
Sep ulveda argued that Indians were little men (homunculos) in whom
you will scarcely find traces of humanity. . .
72
Further, Sep ulveda be-
lieved: In prudence, talent, virtue and humanity they are as inferior
to the Spaniards as children to adults, women to men, as the wild and
cruel to the most meek, as the prodigiously intemperate to the continent
and temperate, that I have almost said, as monkeys to men.
73
He said:
But if youdeal withthe virtues, if youlookfor temperance or meekness,
what can you expect from men who were involved in every kind of
intemperance and wicked lust and who used to eat human esh? And
dont think that before the arrival of the Christians they were living in
quiet and the Saturnian peace of the poets. On the contrary they were
making war continuously andferociously against each other with such
rage that they considered their victory worthless if they did not satisfy
their monstrous hunger with the esh of their enemies, an inhumanity
whichinthemis somuchmore monstrous since theyare sodistant from
the unconquered and wild Scythians, who also fed on human esh,
for these Indians are so cowardly and timid, that they scarcely with-
standthe appearance of our soldiers andoftenmanythousands of them
have given ground, eeing like women before a very few Spaniards,
who did not even number a hundred.
74
71
Ibid., pp. 4041. Oviedo argued that North Americans were the descendants of a
Visigothic diaspora.
72
Quoted in ibid., p. 85.
73
Quoted in ibid., p. 84.
74
Quoted in ibid., p. 85.
153
Argument and change in world politics
In rebuttal, Las Casas reportedly read his entire manuscript In De-
fense of the Indians Against the Persecutors and Slanders of the Peoples of
the New World Discovered Across the Seas to the Council over the course
of ve days.
75
The Defense is scathing: I think Sep ulveda wrote that
little book hastily and without sufficiently weighing the materials and
circumstances.
76
Las Casas respondedtoSep ulveda onthe basis of both
law and fact and argued that Sep ulveda and Oviedo were wrong
about the incapacity of the Indians and that it was the Spaniards who
in the absolutely inhuman things they have done to those nations they
have surpassed all other barbarians.
77
Domingo de Soto, a member of
the Council of Fourteen recalled Las Casas arguments for his fellow
Council members this way:
The bishop [Las Casas] described at length the history of the Indians,
showing that though some of their customs were not particularly civil,
they were not however barbarians on this account but rather a settled
people with great cities, laws, arts, and government who punished
unnatural and other crimes with the death penalty. They denitely
had sufcient civilization that they should not be warred against as
barbarians.
78
Las Casas supportedhis Defense with earlier works andanother docu-
ment, what he called the second part.
79
The first part, 63 chapters,
summarized Sep ulvedas arguments, critically reviewed Sep ulvedas
and Oviedos histories, and finally asserted that Indians are our broth-
ers, and Christ has given his life for them, and therefore war against
them ought to end, since they are docile and clever, and in their dili-
gence andgifts of nature, theyexcel most peoples of the knownworld.
80
Las Casas also charged that the methods of conquest were counter-
productive and against natural law which requires humans to treat
others as they would like themselves to be treated:
What good can come from these military campaigns that would,
in the eyes of God, who evaluates all things with unutterable love,
75
Bartolom e de las Casas, In Defense of the Indians Against the Persecutors and Slanders of the
Peoples of the New World Discovered Across the Seas, trans. and ed. Stafford Poole (DeKalb,
IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974).
76
lbid., p. 297.
77
Ibid., p. 29.
78
Quoted in Hanke, All Mankind is One, p. 80.
79
Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, p. 362. For example, Las Casas wrote a plea for
peaceful evangelism, rather than forced conversion, in the late 1530s, De Unico Vocationis
Modo [The Only Way of Attracting all Peoples to the True Faith] and his Entre Los
Remedios proposed alternative methods of governing the Indies.
80
Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, p. 362.
154
Colonial arguments
compensate for so many evils, so many injuries, and so many unaccus-
tomed misfortunes? Furthermore, how will that nation love us, how
will they become our friends (which is necessary if they are to ac-
cept our religion), when children see themselves deprived of parents,
wives, husbands, and fathers of children and friends? When they see
those they love wounded, imprisoned, plundered, and reduced from
an immense number to a few?
81
After Las Casas had finished reading his manuscript, the Council ad-
journed the proceedings to consider the arguments. The Council recon-
venedfor a secondroundof debate at ValladolidinMay1551. According
to Sep ulveda, this round focused on the meaning of Pope Alexanders
Bulls of donation. Since the records of the Council have been lost, one
may assume that Las Casas repeated many of his earlier arguments.
82
The Council did not make any formal decision about the merits of
either mans position. But, politically, in the short run, Las Casas lost,
and perpetuity was granted in Peru by King Philip in 1556, who argued
that Indian labor was needed to run the colonies.
83
However, inthe long run, Las Casas views didhave some effect. First,
the king continued to support the reformer Cerrato in Central America
who persisted in his vigorous implementation of the New Laws. Sec-
ond, though Las Casas later publicly regretted his advocacy of African
slavery as a substitute for Indian bondage, the practice became
widespread in the Americas, replacing Indian slavery by the end of
the seventeenth century.
84
Third, religious conversion was made more
voluntary and treatment of the remaining Indians, by then the area had
been largely depopulated, was made less harsh. The Requirement was
replaced in 1573 with the Instrument of Obedience and Vassalage,
which was also to be read to the Indians.
85
With this document, and the
Ordinances Regarding New Discoveries and Towns, the word con-
quest was banned and pacification was substituted, signifying that
future conversion should be peaceful. Most important, Indian slavery
was ended and debt bondage or naboria was curbed. Tribute was also
reduced. Further, the encomienda system, where Indians were required
to do labor without pay for the Spanish, instead of or in addition to pay-
ing tribute, was eventually replaced by the repartimiento system. Under
81
Ibid., p. 29.
82
Hanke, All Mankind is One, pp. 6869.
83
Rivera, A Violent Evangelism, p. 130.
84
SpainexportedenslavedAfricans tothe Americas before Las Casas made his arguments
about AfricanslaveryreplacingIndianslavery. SeeArthur F. Corwin, Spainandthe Abolition
of Slavery in Cuba, 18171886 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967), p. 4.
85
Hanke, All Mankind is One, pp. 120121.
155
Argument and change in world politics
repartimiento Indian villages were required to send a certain number of
workers per week to a Spanish town for compulsory wage labor, either
for private or public works. Less brutal thanits predecessor, repartimiento
also existed side by side with various combinations of wage and forced
labor, such as Indian contract and free labor, and African slavery.
86
Summary
The behavioral normand dominant normative belief in the late fteenth
century was colonization and religious crusade. Yet, even in this back-
ground, those who paid for and conducted colonization in the New
World felt they had to justify their actions. The way they did so was
to try to extend their previous ethical arguments about conquest and
slavery from the European context to the New World by arguing that
Indians were inferior, and that conquest was a religious act of recla-
mation. Identity, practical, and philosophical arguments were also de-
ployed.
Las Casas and Vitorias comments on the treatment of Indians were
not intended to be, nor were they, deep criticisms of colonialism per se.
Rather, both Dominicans wanted Christianization to occur, and Vitoria
thought brute force was acceptable if the Indians continually refused
to take up Christianity. Even the judge Cerrato who enforced laws
against Indian slavery in Central America and argued against colonists
who saidIndian slavery was necessary (telling Spaniards to do the labor
themselves) saw himself as a faithful servant of imperial interests.
87
In line with these modest goals, early victories against the worst
abuses of colonialism in the New World were modest yet significant.
Even when Indian slavery ended, the encomienda and later repartimiento
systems of forced labor for Indians continued. Las Casas wrote in 1562:
For days upon days, years upon years we have overlooked the two
kinds of tyranny by which we have destroyed countless republics;
one called conquest when we first entered. . . The other was and is
tyrannical government . . . to which they gave the name repartimiento
or encomienda.
88
And even after the mid-sixteenth-century reforms,
Any sign of rebelliousness became the pretext for slave raids. For
86
Elinor G. K. Melville, LandLabour Relations in Sixteenth-Century Mexico: The For-
mationof Grazing Haciendas, inPaul E. Lovejoy andNicholas Rogers, eds., Unfree Labour
in the Development of the Atlantic World (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1994), pp. 2635.
87
See Sherman, Forced Native Labor.
88
Quoted in Trabouley, Columbus and Las Casas, p. 183.
156
Colonial arguments
example, in 1620 governor Alonso de Guzman of Costa Rica invented
a rebellion among the Aoyaque Indians in order to attack and enslave
them.
89
Brutality toward Indians continued in the Spanish controlled parts
of the New World, although it was less horrific and less commonly
lethal. As historian William Sherman notes: While in the second half
of the sixteenth century one does find examples of clearly abusive,
and sometimes cruel, treatment, the extreme cases are appreciably less
common.
90
Sherman argues that in part this was because the next gen-
eration of Spanish elites were born and raised in New Spain; they were
Creoles who socialized intimately from birth with mestizo and Indian
people. Certainly they mistreated Indians, but they were less likely to
kill them.
91
The difference is signicant and symbolizes, as Sherman
suggests, that there was greater empathy and that the first debate, over
the humanity of the Indians, was decided in favor of the Indians. Las
Casas position was ultimately successful because he was able to change
the identitybeliefs of the conquistadors andtheir emotional relationship
to the Indians.
Nonetheless, Las Casas and other reformers did not intend to over-
throw the system, only to curb its excesses on behalf of Indians. Thus,
it is true that some of the burden of abuse was shifted from Indians to
Africans.
92
Africans had already been brought to the Americas by the
English, Spanish, and Portuguese for slavery. Holding Africans in lower
regard than Indians, Las Casas for at least three decades had proposed
African slavery as a substitute for Indian enslavement.
93
While the de-
bates and reforms of the sixteenth century were part of the process of
reforming colonialism to make it less brutal, declining populations of
Indians, due toepidemic disease andharshtreatment, ironicallyboosted
the rationale for African slavery.
Finally, while the immediate effect of the debates was ambiguous
modest reforms in the treatment of Indians and greater reliance on
89
O. Nigel Bolland, Colonization and Slavery in Central America, in Lovejoy and
Rogers, eds., Unfree Labour, pp. 1125.
90
Sherman, Forced Native Labor, p. 331.
91
Ibid., p. 332.
92
In North America, Indians were also enslaved, though usually in smaller numbers than
Africans. Indians, too, often allied with or harbored escaped African slaves, and it was
more common to attempt to keep the two populations separate. The French governor
in Mississippi called for an end to Indian slavery in 1728. Indians were still enslaved
by English colonists and Americans well into the nineteenth century, though the policy
that prevailed was more characteristically war, extermination, and/or treaties and forced
resettlement.
93
Rivera, A Violent Evangelism, pp. 180, 183.
157
Argument and change in world politics
African slaves the arguments of the critics of colonialism gained
international attention. For example, Las Casas The Destruction of the
Indies was translated into Dutch (1578), English (1583), Latin (1598), and
German (1599).
94
Las Casas won the meta-argument, reframing the role
of slavery in conquest and, with Vitoria, he inadvertently planted the
seed of colonialisms denormalization. Many of the arguments used in
the sixteenthcenturytolimit the ill treatment of Indians were toreappear
200 years later in debates about modifying and ending African slavery.
Thus, the starting point for future arguments about colonialism, in par-
ticular the treatment of slaves and colonial subjects, was changed by the
sixteenth-century debates over the treatment of Indians.
94
Trabouley, Columbus and Las Casas, p. 187.
158
4 Decolonizing bodies: ending slavery
and denormalizing forced labor
Too much time has been lost in declamation and argument in peti-
tions and remonstrances against British slavery. The cause of emanci-
pation calls for something more decisive, more efcient than words.
1
Slavery and forced labor, two of humanitys oldest institutions, were
among the dening characteristics of colonial practice and understand-
ing their demise is vital for understanding decolonization.
2
Between
1500 and the mid-nineteenth century, What moved in the Atlantic in
these centuries was predominantly slaves, the output of slaves, the in-
puts to slave societies, and the goods and services purchased with the
earnings onslave products.
3
Forcedlabor was alsoimportant inthe eco-
nomic development of African colonies. Africans, forcefully recruited,
were often the mainstay of the troops of colonial conquest, and forced
laborers built the roads, bridges, and railways that took out the com-
modities produced by forced labor. Since colonizers were too few or
unwilling to do the work required to maintain and expand colonial
holdings, and the colonized often wanted little or nothing to do with
the colonizer, none of these colonies wouldhave enduredwithout unfree
1
Elizabeth Heyrick, Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition; Or, an Inquiry into the Shortest, Safest,
and Most Effectual Means of Getting Rid of West Indian Slavery (London pamphlet 1824),
quoted in Claire Midgley, Slave Sugar Boycotts, Female Activism and the Domestic Base
of British Anti-Slavery Culture, Slavery and Abolition 13 (December 1996), 137162: 153
emphasis in the original.
2
In addition to the well-known slave trading and slavery institutions of France, Britain,
Spain, and the United States that endured into the nineteenth century, Ancient Egyp-
tians, Greeks, Romans, Sub-Saharan Africans, Asians, Aztecs, and some nations of Native
North America practiced slavery (often getting slaves from conquest in war). But, as with
colonialism, slavery was not the same in practice in all places at all times.
3
Barbara L. Solow, Introduction, in Barbara L. Solow, ed., Slavery and the Rise of the
Atlantic System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 120: 1.
159
Argument and change in world politics
labor. That it was legitimate for the main part of the required labor to
be performed by slaves or forced laborers was the dominant belief and
assumption for most of the era of colonialism.
The abolition of slavery and amelioration of forced labor are rele-
vant for understanding the end of colonialism in several respects. First,
disagreements about the causes of abolition are both parallel to and a
precursor of debates about the end of colonialism.
4
Second, colonialism
consisted of more than one set of beliefs and practices, including, most
importantly, the belief that those whowere colonizeddeservedandeven
benetedfromtheir subjugation. Once these core beliefs andpractices of
colonialismcame under widespreadcriticism they were denormalized
and delegitimized colonialism itself was vulnerable to denormaliza-
tion and delegitimation. Third, the demise of slavery and forced labor
signicantly alteredthe institutionof colonialisminways that were gen-
erally unanticipated, even by the advocates of change. Though colonial-
ism remained in many instances protable for colonizers, protability
diminished with the end of slavery and forced labor, and some of the
economic incentive for having colonies was undermined. Further, the
political fortunes of colonial interests declined as their economic clout
waned. And, as long as colonialism included slavery and forced labor,
large police forces were required to make those systems work in the face
of slaves and forced laborers resistance and rebellion. With the end of
slavery and decline of forced labor, the institutions which required the
most police power, reasons for political domination and physical occu-
pation, were diminished. Thus, if the roots of decolonization are in the
demise of the practices of slavery and forced labor, and the cause of abo-
lition was changing normative beliefs through ethical argument, then
ethical arguments are a powerful underlying cause of decolonization.
After being practiced in the West for thousands of years, legal aboli-
tion of the slave trade andslavery was relatively quick, though abolition
did not come all at once and there were even setbacks. For example,
Britains policy on slavery took decades to resolve, even as Britain led
other European and American states in abolishing slavery. British Chief
Justice Lord Manseld ruled in 1772 that slaves brought to England
4
See, Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina, 1944); Thomas Bender, ed., The Anti-Slavery Debate: Capitalismand Abolitionismas
a Problem in Historical Interpretation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); David
Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); Orlando
Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1982); Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts, eds., The End of Slavery in
Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988).
160
Decolonizing bodies
couldnot be forciblydeportedbytheir masters toa slave colony. This ran
counter to a 1729 ruling by Judge Philip Yorke and Judge Charles Talbot
that a slave could be forcibly returned from England to the colonies.
Britain regulated the slave trade to make it more humane in 1788 with
Dolbens Act, reducing the number of slaves per ship to decrease mor-
tality during voyages.
5
Both the US and Britain made the trade in
slaves illegal in 1807. After British slave traders got out of the business,
Spanish, Portuguese and other slavers took up most of the slack of
the trade in the nineteenth century. It was only in 1833, with the
Emancipation Act, that Britain formally abolished slavery in its colonies
inthe West Indies, Mauritius, Cape of GoodHope, andCanada though
it introduced an apprentice system in its place and emancipation
followed four years later. But emancipation of British-held slaves in
India and Ceylon did not occur for another decade. And, though Spain
outlawed Indian slavery in the sixteenth century, it maintained African
slavery well into the nineteenth century. The French allowed Indian and
African slavery in their colonies in the Americas and when the Spanish
took control of French Louisiana in 1769, Spain allowed Indian slaves to
be kept in that territory. In 1792, Denmark, not then a signicant partic-
ipant, decided to gradually outlaw the slave trade, to be accomplished
over the course of ten years. Emancipation for Danish Caribbean slaves
was granted in 1848. French policy was perhaps most vacillating. While
the law did not initially allow African slaves in France, in 1716 the law
was amended so that slaves could be brought to France. Revolutionary
France, after proclaiming the Rights of Man, abolished slavery in 1794,
reinstated slavery in 1802, abolished it again for a short time under
Napoleon, and restored it in 1814. France outlawed the slave trade in
1821 and nally abolished slavery in 1848.
The late history of slavery was characterized by both the rise of indus-
trial capitalism and the increased articulation of the rights of slaves and
of the obligations of masters to treat slaves better. I begin with a brief
discussion of the economics of abolitionism and the economic argu-
ments on the table during the anti-slavery movement and argue against
a simple economic explanation for abolition. Economics generally
favored keeping the slave trade and slavery in place. Slaves and
forced laborers incrementally gained legal recognition and protections
5
Also in 1788, the House of Commons began an impeachment proceeding against the
British proconsul of India, Warren Hastings, for violating his trust by committing injus-
tices against the people of India.
161
Argument and change in world politics
that were gradually enforced before the abolition of both practices, and
well before industrialization took hold in the colonies.
Rather than economic forces, it was the movements to end the slave
trade and abolish slavery that worked to change beliefs, interests, and
even the capabilities of the pro-slave forces. The normative and consti-
tutive beliefs which supported slavery and forced labor were gradually
undermined and new, more egalitarian, beliefs supplanted previous be-
liefs. Identity and role beliefs also changed. Where once good social
entities kept slaves or used forced labor for the purpose of uplifting
the undeveloped, beliefs reversed: only bad social entities used slav-
ery and forced labor. The process that led to belief change was ethical
argument, which mobilized individuals to form and join social move-
ments to change the domestic political and international conditions that
supported slavery. After abolition, the anti-slavery movement turned
its attention to forced labor. Like slavery, forced labor was gradually
regulated in the nineteenth century, with abolition of forced labor fol-
lowing in the early and mid-twentieth century. The abolition of slavery
and forced labor were gradual processes that began with denormaliza-
tion and delegitimation, then regulation, and ultimately the abolition of
unfree labor.
Slavery
Economics of abolition
Were the slave trade and slavery protable? Did the institutions end
because they became less protable? These questions are still hotly de-
bated among economic historians and, to answer them, it is important
to understand the complex role of slavery in colonial economies.
Three modes of production were common in colonies and slave soci-
eties after 1500: simple extraction of raw materials such as animal pelts,
timber, and mineral wealth; plantation farming; and manufacturing.
All three required labor that was in extremely short supply if natives
avoided Europeans or were killed by disease and war, and if work-
ers from the metropole were reluctant to move to the colonies. Slavery
and forced labor do not work well for hunting and timber harvesting
when it is easy for workers to escape into forests where they can subsist.
Compulsory labor does work for mining, farming, manufacturing, and
for public works such as road building.
Land was abundant in the New World while labor for expansion
and development was scarce. At the same time that Native American
162
Decolonizing bodies
populations were diminished by Spanish conquest and literally deci-
mated by disease (including measles, plague, typhus, and small-pox),
the settlers demand for labor grew with their appetite for gold, silver,
wood, road-building and portage. There was little incentive for free
people to work for others if they could work for themselves, and
until the nineteenth century, Europeans did not ock in droves to the
Americas. Only in the 1840s did the net migration of free persons to
the New World nally exceed the forced migration of slaves.
6
The
Spanish, andthenother colonizers, enslavedtens of thousands of Native
Americans, a practice that began almost as soon as the rst explorers
arrived. As natives died in epidemics, more were captured from areas
where they still lived in large numbers and moved to meet the demand
for unfree labor. But as Native Americans died at too great a rate, or ran
off, the initially more expensive African slave labor became more attrac-
tive to colonizers and importation of African slaves began even before
Native Americanslaverywas outlawed. Later, East Indian, Chinese, and
Irish indentured laborers were imported, gradually at rst, to supple-
ment African slave and forced labor in the Americas. In many places in
the Americas, especially in the Caribbean, African andNative American
slaves often exceeded 50 percent of the population, and in some
colonies, slaves were more than 90 percent of colonial populations.
7
However, since the African slave population in the Americas
was usually not self-sustaining more male slaves were brought to the
Americas from Africa (men were worth more on the block), infant mor-
talitywas highamongslaves, andsuicide byslaves was not uncommon
slave economies depended on continuing to extract slaves from
Africa.
In 1713, provisions in the Treaty of Utrecht between England and
Spain granted England a monopoly on the African slave trade for thirty
years, with monarchs of both countries receiving a quarter of the prots
of the trade, and the British expected to pay a duty to Spain for each
imported slave. The monopoly ended in 1750, and the Royal African
Company, charged with carrying out the trade, went bankrupt.
8
There-
after, the British slave trade was privatized, though still subsidized by
the Crown. A new holding company, granted an annual sum of 10,000,
6
DavidEltis, Economic Growthandthe Endingof the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1987), p. 24. Also see Solow, Introduction.
7
See Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, Appendix C, pp. 353364.
8
See W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States
of America, 16381870 (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1896), p. 3.
163
Argument and change in world politics
maintained the forts necessary for African slavery. Any trader, as long
as they paid a small fee ( 2) to the government for the use of African
ports could legally engage in the trade.
9
By the mid-eighteenth century,
Britain dominated the slave trade.
Estimates vary, but from the 1500s to 1870, between 9 million and
10 million people were transported to North and South America by
the major British, Portuguese, French, US, Dutch, and Danish slave car-
riers. Not all are counted in this gure. No one knows for sure how
many died after capture, en route to slave ships, and in crossing from
Africa to the Americas in the middle passage. Records for mortality
rates on the ships that succeeded in crossing (and not all did, whole
ships went down) generally range from 4 percent to 55 percent, though
much higher mortality rates were not unusual. In 1773, one Dutch slave
ship, the Nooitgedacht, lost 89 percent of the 157 slaves aboardto a scurvy
epidemic, though the mortality rates for Dutch slave traders were an av-
erage of 17 percent.
10
French mortality rates in the eighteenth century
averaged about 14 percent.
11
One English slaver, Captain Collingwood
of the Zong threw his cargo of 132 diseased slaves overboard in order to
claimthe insurance whichwouldnot have beenpayable if they haddied
a natural death.
12
In the last century of the trade, however, mortality
aboard ship was declining for slaves (although not for the crews) and
in 1848 the British Foreign Ofce estimated mortality rates for slaves
aboard ship of about 25 percent.
13
One assumes that, despite these
risks, the slave trade must have been alluring to those Europeans and
Americans who proted from it.
The fortunes of Bristol and Liverpool were thus built upon the bodies
of tens of thousands of negroes. . . . The prots of the Round Trip, as it
came to be called, made it the most paying of all regular trade routes.
9
Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 14401870 (NewYork:
Simon and Schuster, 1997), p. 265.
10
Johannes Postma, Mortality in the Dutch Slave Trade, in Henry A. Gemery and
Jan S. Hogendorn, eds., The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic
Slave Trade (New York: Academic Press, 1979), pp. 239260: 252253.
11
Herbert S. Klein and Stanley L. Engerman, A Note on Mortality in the French
Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century, in Gemery and Hogendorn, eds., Uncommon
Market, pp. 261272.
12
Christopher Lloyd, The Navy and The Slave Trade: The Suppression of the African Slave
Trade in the Nineteenth Century (London: Frank Cass, (1949) 1968), p. 8.
13
Mortality rates for the white crews were generally higher than for slaves both before
and after reforms on the condition of slave transport. See Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic
Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), especially pp. 268,
276 and Postma, Mortality in the Dutch Slave Trade.
164
Decolonizing bodies
It was commonly divided into three passages. On the outward pas-
sage [from Britain] the cargo consisted of textiles, hardware, alcohol
and antiquated rearms. These were traded on the [African] coast for
slaves, who were shipped to America and the West Indies in the no-
torious Middle Passage. The principal cargoes taken on there for the
homeward passage were sugar, tobacco and rum.
14
Though protability of the slave trade varied with demand, trans-
portation, and insurance costs, mortality of slaves on ships, and the
costs of repressing slave resistance and rebellions on ships it was,
overall, extremely protable. While the gure of 30 percent prot is
often cited, Roger Anstey conservatively calculates that British slave
traders averaged closer to 10 percent prots for the period 1760 to 1810,
when the trade was at its peak.
15
Christopher Lloyd suggests that it
was possible for British slavers to net as much as 60,000 in a single
voyage.
16
Protability and demand for the slave trade may have been
higher in markets where slave populations were not self-sustaining and
hadtobe bolsteredbycontinuingimports fromAfrica. Bythe eighteenth
century, female slaves were reproducing at rates in the US that could
sustain and enlarge the slave population, thereby decreasing US de-
mand for imported slaves. But demand for imported slaves remained
high in the Caribbean and South America, where female slaves gen-
erally were far fewer in proportion to male slaves (e.g. in Cuba one-
third of slaves were female), and slave populations were generally not
self-sustaining.
17
British colonies in the West Indies depended heavily on slave labor
for production of exports in the eighteenth century. Eric Williams argues
that slavery and the other legs of the triangular trade of humans and
14
Lloyd, The Navy and The Slave Trade, p. 5.
15
Roger Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition 17601810 (London:
Macmillan, 1975) pp. 4647. E. Phillip LeVeen, The British Slave Trade Suppression Poli-
cies, 18211865 (New York: Arno Press, 1977), p. 22 calculates that slave trade prots were
8.8 percent in the Caribbean in 1800. But prot was never the sole justication given by
advocates. British admirals claimed that the slave trade was a valuable way of training
seamen who would be available at times of war. On the other hand, Wilberforce showed
that the Slave Trade was not so much a nursery as the graveyard of seamen, since the
mortality aboard slave ships was well beyond all comparison greater than that on board
vessels engaged on other trades, and the hardbitten seamen pressed fromthat type of ship
were more of a hindrance than a help on board a man-of-war. Lloyd, The Navy and The
Slave Trade, p. 10.
16
Lloyd, The Navy and The Slave Trade, p. 6.
17
Arthur F. Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 18171886 (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1967), p. 15.
165
Argument and change in world politics
goods among Africa, the West Indies, and Britain, made an enormous
contribution to Britains industrial development. The prots from this
trade fertilized the entire productive system of the country.
18
Thus,
Britishanti-slave policy inthe nineteenthcentury does not seemto make
sense economically because, as David Eltis argues,
In 1800, if one were to argue in terms of economic self-interest, the
British should have been actively encouraging the slave trade and
slave settlements throughout the world. Such a policy would have
been highly effective in achieving national goals as laid down by the
amalgam of London merchants and landed gentry who dominated
British government at this time. It would have best served the aims of
manufacturers and wage earners alike.
19
Furthermore, when its policy toward the slave trade changed, British
efforts to suppress the international slave trade were enormously
costly. Not only were slave economies doing better than non-slave
economies, the British government paid for suppression of the trade.
Three squadrons of naval patrols on the east and west coasts of Africa
and in Latin America were involved in slave trade suppression. Naval
patrols alone by the British Africa Squadron (based off the west coast of
Africa) cost hundreds of thousands of pounds annually, and although
the number of ships on station varied with Britains other uses for naval
power (for instance, the Crimean War) by the 1840s, when the Africa
Squadron was at its peak, Britain often devoted over 10 percent of its
naval manpower and between a sixth and a quarter of its warships
to suppressing slave trafc.
20
From 1811 to 1870, the Africa Squadron
alone cost 6.8 million in direct expenses and some 5,000 seamen and of-
cers died, mostly of malaria, in suppression duty.
21
The cost of main-
taining the Africa Squadron far exceeded the value of Britains annual
trade with Africa.
22
Britains total direct costs from 1810 to 1870 for
slave trade suppression, including bounties for naval crews, the special
court at Sierra Leone, compensationfor wrongful arrests, andthe money
18
Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, p. 105.
19
Eltis, Economic Growth, p. 6.
20
Ethan Nadelmann, Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in Interna-
tional Society, International Organization 44 (Autumn 1990), 479526: 492. Also see Eltis,
Economic Growth, pp. 9293.
21
LeVeen, British Slave Trade Suppression Policies, p. 78 and Lloyd, The Navy and The Slave
Trade, p. xi.
22
Howard Temperley, British Antislavery, 18331870 (London: Longman, 1972), p. 45;
Williams, Capitalism and Slavery, p. 171.
166
Decolonizing bodies
paid to other governments to obtain treaties to end the trade, were at
least 13.9 million.
23
Although the increased cost to slave traders of doing business cannot
be estimated with great condence, British suppression certainly made
the slave trade more difcult and costly. Eltis estimates that the costs of
acquiring slaves rose between 8 and 11 percent after the British set about
curbing the slave trafc to the Americas.
24
In fact, because slaves could
command such a high price, protability grew even under suppression,
until the Brazilian and Cuban slave imports halted at mid-century. If
a slaver could make it to Cuba in the period between 1856 and 1865,
prots averaged over 90 percent, though prots of around 20 and 30
percent were more common for slaves sold in Cuba or southern Brazil
between the 1820s and 1850.
25
Such high rates of prot are no surprise
to students of sanctions and trade embargoes: those who are caught can
lose all while those who succeed in busting embargoes can command
premium prices.
In sum, slave trading was, until very late, a lucrative venture for slave
traders. The slave trade even remained protable after Britain began
to suppress the trade, because though risks of capture increased, over
time, the price of slaves grew. The slave trade did not end because it
was no longer protable. Indeed, the price to Britain, which led the
effort to abolish the trade, was extremely high. Rather, the slave trade
ended because it was suppressed for normative reasons and because
after abolition demand for slaves ended.
But what about slave labor itself ? Did slavery become less protable?
Arguments stressing economic causes for the end of slavery claim that
slavery became too costly or was gradually outmoded with improve-
ments in agricultural production and early industrialization. Economic
arguments also suggest the ways that slave resistance, including slave
revolts, and the costs of supervision and work slow-downs by slaves,
increased the costs of slavery so that wage labor became relatively more
attractive.
23
LeVeen, British Slave Trade Suppression Policies, pp. 7880. Eltis, who does a more com-
prehensive accounting than LeVeen, argues that direct costs of suppression to the British
government were much higher. Eltis, Economic Growth, pp. 9194. Also see Suzanne Miers,
Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade (NewYork: Longman Group, 1975). Other countrys
navies patrolled the coast for slave ships, though they were not as effective as the British.
24
Eltis, Economic Growth, p. 140. Indeed, after 1807, because of the prots involved, British
merchants participated in the trade in other ways, for instance in outtting the ships for
slavers. Parliamentary laws after this point gradually constrained and criminalized this
activity.
25
Ibid., p. 161 and LeVeen, British Slave Trade Suppression Policies, p. 22.
167
Argument and change in world politics
As with the economic gains of the slave trade, the protability of slave
labor is disputed. Slavery could be more or less protable depending
on a number of factors, including the cost of acquiring slaves and the
productivity of slave labor versus the costs of feeding, housing, and
training slaves. The costs of fending off slave rebellions and revolts also
varied. Need for repression was constant, although the aggregate costs
of repression probably declined as slave revolts decreased. The success-
ful slave revolt inHaiti in1791, whichresultedinFrenchdecolonization,
was certainly frightening to slave holders throughout the New World,
but it was the exception. Large-scale slave revolts in English colonies,
such as the maroon rebellion in Jamaica in 1739, seemed to be declining
in the Americas prior to the establishment of abolition movements, and
only increased during the decades (17901832) when abolitionists were
already most active.
26
Again, the crucial case is probably Britain, which was at the forefront
of the industrial revolution and whose huge West Indian empire de-
pended on slave labor. Did Britain abolish slavery because it was no
longer protable as a means of production? If free labor were less ex-
pensive than slave labor in the British colonies, it should have been so
all along, and slave systems should never have taken hold on such a
large scale in the rst place. (And the price of obtaining slave labor for
other colonial powers did not grow until after Britain moved to abolish
its part in the trade.) Still, early on, British abolitionists stressed the eco-
nomic benets of free labor, and the laissez-faire policies championed by
Adam Smith and others stressed morality and used the rhetoric of free-
dom current in Europe after the French Revolution and the war against
Napoleon.
27
Lord Palmerston, in 1842, argued that anti-slavery activity
brought both economic and moral reward:
Let no man imagine that those treaties for the suppression of the
slave trade are valuable only as being calculated to promote the great
26
Seymour Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Per-
spective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 100103. Some of the largest revolts
were fueled by news of abolitionist activity: revolts in Barbados in 1816 involved some
20,000 slaves, Demerara in 1823 involved 30,000 slaves, and Jamaica 183132 involved
60,000 slaves. These revolts were ruthlessly squashed by colonists who killed 400, 250,
and 540 slaves respectively during or after these revolts. Michael Craton, Emancipa-
tion from Below? The Role of British West Indies Slaves in the Emancipation Movement,
181634, in Jack Hayward, ed., Out of Slavery: Abolition and After (London: Frank Cass,
1985), pp. 110131.
27
See James Walvin, Freedom and Slavery and the Shaping of Victorian Britain, in Paul
E. Lovejoy and Nicholas Rogers, eds., Unfree Labour in the Development of the Atlantic World
(Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1994), pp. 246259.
168
Decolonizing bodies
interests of humanity, and as tending to rid mankind of a foul and
detestable crime. Such was indeed their great object and their chief
merit. But in this case as in many others, virtue carries its own reward;
and if the nations of the world could extirpate this abominable trafc,
and if the vast population of Africa could by that means be left free to
betake themselves to peace and innocent trade, the greatest commer-
cial benet would accrue, not to England only, but to every civilized
nation which engages in maritime commerce. The slave trade treaties
therefore are indirectly treaties for the encouragement of commerce.
28
But most people didnt think abolition would bring growth. They
feared just the opposite, and those concerns proved correct. For Britain,
the toughest anti-slavery crusading state, slavery was quite protable
even at the time it was abolished by Parliament. The most lucrative
and fastest-growing segments of the colonial economy sugar, coffee,
and tobacco depended on slave labor. Dependence on slave labor for
British colonial production of cotton, which fed Britains textile mills,
and sugar, in fact grew over the course of the abolition movement. For
instance, slaves providedlabor for 70 percent of Britains cottonindustry
in 1787; by abolition in 1838, slaves/apprentices provided 90 percent of
the labor.
29
As Seymour Drescher notes, the world economy as a whole
seems to have been as optimal for expanding the Atlantic slave system
at the end of British slavery in the 1830s as it was at the beginning of
popular abolitionism in the 1780s.
30
And abolition was economically costly. Productivity in British West
Indian economies immediately declined following abolition, while
Cuba andBrazil, whichstill practicedslavery, hadrobust economies and
their demand for slaves grew. Only high duties on Cuban and Brazil-
ian sugar somewhat protected British West Indian planters, and those
were reduced after 1846. Declining competitiveness after abolition ex-
plains why British West Indian planters eventually joined international
abolitionist efforts.
31
For Drescher, British abolition is thus paradoxi-
cal. The real economic paradox of abolition is that in one major re-
gion after another the British colonies, the American South, Cuba, and
Brazil political power had to intervene to constrict or to abolish major
slave systems whose economic advantages remained intact well after
the transformation of British abolitionism into a world human rights
28
Quoted in ibid., pp. 252253.
29
Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery, p. 7.
30
Ibid., p. 4.
31
LeVeen, British Slave Trade Suppression Policies, p. 69; Corwin, Spain and Abolition of
Slavery in Cuba, pp. 53 and 60.
169
Argument and change in world politics
movement.
32
Similarly, David Eltis argues, since land was still abun-
dant andlabor inthe NewWorldremainedscarce at the time of abolition,
there was a profound incompatibility between economic self-interest
and anti-slavery policy.
33
The paradox of abolition for Britain is further heightened once one
factors in the costs of compensation to slave holders for abolition. The
British government paid colonial slave owners 16.7 million in 1836 and
4.1 millionin1837 incompensationfor emancipation. Spending oncom-
pensation in 1836, at 25.6 percent of total government expenditures, ex-
ceeded total spending for the army, ordnance, and the navy combined.
And though spending on compensation for slave owners in 1837 was
much less, 7.6 percent of total government expenditures, it was close to
total British spending on its navy for that year.
34
ManyinFrance whowere contemporaryobservers of Britishabolition
thought British policy in freeing almost 800,000 slaves was folly, and the
pro-slavery French emphasized the decline in British revenue and pro-
ductivity that followed emancipation in the West Indies. One French
pro-slavery advocate argued in 1844 that production in the English
West Indies had fallen by more than a third.
35
The president of the
Council of Ministers, Adolphe Thiers, told the Chamber of Deputies in
1840 that British emancipation has considerably diminished work and
production.
36
Although French abolitionists said these claims were ex-
aggerated, as Lawrence Jennings argues, pro-slavery forces in France
nevertheless used the British economic difculties following emanci-
pation to bolster their cause, hoping perhaps that practical arguments
would trump ethical ones.
37
Changes in modes of production could explain the demise of slavery
in such a relatively short period (if colonial economies had, in fact, been
subject to dramatic changes in production), but such changes do not
account for moral or religious arguments about the evil of slavery. If
slavery were no longer protable, there would have been little reason
to outlaw it. And, if slavery were uneconomical there would have been
little opposition to abolition; rational actors would simply have acted to
32
Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery, p. 5. Emphasis in the original.
33
Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, p. 15.
34
Spending in 1836 on the army, ordnance, and navy totaled 11.7 million; spending on
the navy for 1837 was 4.2 million. Calculations based on gures in B.R. Mitchell, British
Historical Statistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 587, 595.
35
Joseph Napol eon Ney, quoted in Lawrence C. Jennings, French Reaction to British Slave
Emancipation (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), p. 76.
36
Quoted in ibid., pp. 7889.
37
Ibid., p. 206.
170
Decolonizing bodies
use the more efcient forms of free labor. As Martin Klein argues: Most
slave systems were functioningwell whenslaverycame under attack.
38
Indeed, during the period in which Spain used slave labor and Britain
didnot, Spanishcolonial resistance inCuba to Britishabolitionismgrew,
with Cubans insisting that abolition would bring economic ruin.
39
As Martin Klein suggests, though slavery was used and abandoned,
and used again through history, something different occurred in the
eighteenth century.
There were times in many parts of the world when slavery declined,
often replaced or absorbed by other forms of exploitation. During the
late medieval period, slavery disappeared in northern Europe, and
in seventeenth-century Russia it was absorbed within a rather harsh
form of serfdom. The use of slaves was declining in South-East Asia
during the nineteenth century, most strikingly in Thailand. There is no
evidence, however that slavery was seriously attacked in any part of
the world before the eighteenth century.
40
Thus, declining prots cannot explain the end of slavery. Something
else was going on. Growing belief in the greater protability and moral
virtues of free labor, and the belief that slavery was wrong, explain the
outlawing of slavery. Abolitionists made persuasive ethical arguments.
Constructing and deconstructing slavery
The argument for slavery in Western culture was grounded in the an-
cient Aristotelian belief that some humans were natural slaves. Voltaire
said of black people, whom he called animals, that it was a seri-
ous question whether they are descended from monkeys or whether
the monkeys come from them.
41
French dictionaries in the eighteenth
century frequently dened negroes as slaves which are extracted from
the African coast.
42
In 1858, an American scholar of slave law, T. R. R.
Cobb, wrote:
this inquiry into the physical, mental, and moral development of the
negro race seems to point them clearly, as peculiarly tted for a labo-
rious class. The physical frame is capable of great and long-continued
38
Martin A. Klein, Slavery, the International Labour Market and the Emancipation of
Slaves inthe NineteenthCentury, inLovejoy andRogers, eds., Unfree Labour, pp. 197229:
212.
39
See Corwin, Spain and Abolition of Slavery in Cuba.
40
Klein, Slavery, p. 201.
41
QuotedinWilliamB. Cohen, The French Encounter with Africans: White Response to Blacks,
15301880 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), p. 88.
42
Quoted in ibid., p. 145.
171
Argument and change in world politics
exertion. Their mental capacity renders them incapable of successful
self-development, and yet adapts them for the direction of the wiser
race. Their moral character renders them happy, peaceful, contented
and cheerful in a status that would break the spirit and destroy the
energies of the Caucasian or the native American.
43
Advocates of slavery and the trade also argued that the practices ben-
eted the enslaved and the society from which slaves were taken. An
eighteenth-century pamphlet said, In certain vast regions of the Africa
[sic] Continent, where the Arts are almost as little known of rural as of
civil cultivation, inhabitants grow faster than the means of sustaining
them; and Humanity itself is obliged to transmit the supernumeraries,
as objects of trafc, to more enlightened, or less populous countries;
which, standing in constant needof their labour, receive theminto prop-
erty, protectionandemployment.
44
Later, the EnglishmanBoswell said:
To abolish [slavery] . . . would be extreme cruelty to the African savage,
a portionof whomit saves frommassacre or intolerable bondage intheir
own country, and introduced into a much happier life, especially now
when their passage to the West Indies, and their treatment there, is
humanely regulated.
45
Not all agreed with these views, even in the eighteenth century. The
American Quaker anti-slavery activist Anthony Benezet arguedthat the
slave trade hurt Africans and he disputed the arguments that slavery
was natural in Africa. The . . . natives were an inoffensive people, who,
when civilly used, tradedamicably with the Europeans . . . And. . . there
is no reason to think otherwise, but that they generally lived in peace
amongst themselves.
46
Some philosophers and political commentators portrayed slavery as
a corrupt and corrupting institution. In 1748 Montesquieu wrote, The
state of slavery is in its own nature bad. It is neither useful to the master
nor to the slave; not to the slave because he can do nothing through
a motive of virtue; nor to the master, because by having an unlimited
43
T.R.R. Cobb, An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States of America:
To Which is Prexed, An Historical Sketch of Slavery, 1858 quoted in Thomas D. Morris,
Southern Slavery and the Law, 16191860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1996), p. 18.
44
Stephen Fuller, Remarks on the Resolutions of the West India Planters and Merchants
(1789) quoted in Anstey, Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, p. 293.
45
Quoted in Lloyd, The Navy and The Slave Trade, pp. 67.
46
Anthony Benezet, Some Historical Account of Guinea, its Situation, Produce, and General
Disposition of its Inhabitants with an Inquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Slave Trade, its
Nature, and Lamentable Effects (London: (1771) 1788), pp. 5051, quoted in Anstey, Atlantic
Slave Trade and British Abolition, p. 216.
172
Decolonizing bodies
authority over his slaves he insensibly accustoms himself to the want
of all moral virtues, and thence becomes erce, hasty, severe, choleric,
voluptuous, and cruel.
47
Rousseau also argued vociferously against
slavery, turning Aristotle on his head in The Social Contract, by saying
that no matter howwe look at it, the right of enslavement is invalid, not
only because it is illegitimate, but also because it is absurd and mean-
ingless. The words enslavement andright are mutuallycontradictory;
they exclude each other.
48
And Tom Paine in 1775 noted that Ameri-
cans complain so loudly of attempts to enslave them while they hold
so many hundreds of thousands in slavery.
49
Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, made a strong
economic argument against slavery and in favor of free labor. The ex-
perience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates that the work
done byslaves, thoughit appears tocost onlytheir maintenance, is inthe
end the dearest of any. A person who can acquire no property, can have
no other interest but to eat as much, and to labour as little as possible.
And while Smith argued that free labor was generally superior to slave
labor, he nonetheless implied slavery was based on a natural human
impulse. The pride of man makes him love to domineer, and nothing
morties him so much as to be obliged to condescend to persuade his
inferiors. Wherever the law allows it, and the nature of the work can
afford it, therefore, he will generally prefer the service of slaves to that
of freemen.
50
Though Smith is generally understood to say that slavery
was never protable, he did argue that in some cases slavery could be
extremely protable. In our [British] sugar colonies . . . the whole work
is done by slaves, and in our tobacco colonies, a very great part of it.
In this instance: The prots of a sugar-plantation in any of our West
Indian colonies are generally much greater than those of any other cul-
tivation that is known either in Europe or America: And the prots of
a tobacco plantation, though inferior to sugar, are superior to those of
corn . . . Both can afford the expense of slave cultivation, but sugar can
afford it still better than tobacco.
51
47
Quoted in Anstey, Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, p. 103.
48
Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract or the Principles of Political Right in
Rousseau, The Essential Rousseau, trans. Lowell Bair (New York: Times Mirror, 1974),
book 1, ch. IV, p. 15.
49
Paine quoted in Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in
North America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 220.
50
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (New York:
Modern Library, 1994), book II, ch. II, p. 418.
51
Ibid., pp. 418419.
173
Argument and change in world politics
Economic arguments became increasingly important, but given the
culture of Europe inthis era, Christianitywas the primarytable onwhich
to represent slavery andjudge arguments about it. Building on the argu-
ments of those who advocated better treatment for slaves, abolitionists
tried to persuade the majority that slavery was not natural after all,
and that it ought to be abandoned because it was immoral, against the
plan of Gods Providence. The Quaker Benezet suggested that slavery
was inconsistent with Christian principles, arguing that slaves were
undoubtedly the children of the same Father . . . for whom Christ
died.
52
British and American Quakers and evangelical abolitionists of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as Granville Sharp, at-
tempted to sufciently prove that slavery was ever detestable in the
sight of God.
53
Sharp used the history of the Israelites as evidence
against slavery, saying that they
were reminded of their Bondage in Egypt: for so the almighty Deliverer
from Slavery warned his people to limit and moderate their bondage,
which the Law permitted, by the remembrance of their own former
bondage in a foreign land, andby a remembrance also of his great mercy
in delivering them from that bondage: and he expressly referred them to
their own feelings, as they themselves had experienced the intolerable
yoke of Egyptian Tyranny! Thou shalt not oppress a Stranger; for ye
know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of
Egypt (Exodus 23:9). And again: Thou shalt remember that thou wast
a Bond-man in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee
(Deuteronomy 15:15).
54
Evangelical British abolitionists warned that failure to abolish the
slave trade was against Gods order and could lead to divine retribu-
tion on both a personal and national level.
55
Abolitionists argued that
the American Revolution and the later war against France were divine
52
Benezet, Some Historical Account of Guinea, p. 79, quoted in Anstey, Atlantic Slave Trade
and British Abolition, p. 214.
53
Granville Sharp, The Law of Retribution (London: 1776), pp. 23 quoted in Anstey,
Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, p. 185.
54
Granville Sharp, The Just Limitation of Slavery in the Laws of God (London:
1776), pp. 67, quoted in Anstey, Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, p. 188.
55
In line with their views, evangelical abolitionists often favored other benevolent social
policies. For example, the prominent English abolitionist William Wilberforce, a mem-
ber of parliament, was also against hanging, in favor of penal reform, and argued for
a more generous welfare provision for the poor. In England, Antislavery was part of a
religious, philanthropic andreformcomplex whichembracedmissionary activity, temper-
ance, peace, free trade and limited political reform. David Turley, The Culture of English
Antislavery, 17801860 (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 6.
174
Decolonizing bodies
punishment against Britain.
56
In 1807, James Stephen, a leading aboli-
tionist, argued that the ravages of Napoleonic wars were divine wrath
for Englands failure to give up the slave trade despite their knowledge
that it was wrong.
Who are the people that have provoked God thus heinously, but the
same who are among all the nations of the earth, the most eminently
indebted to his bounty? He has given to us an unexamined portion of
civil liberty; and we in return drag his rational creatures into a most se-
vere andperpetual bondage. Social happiness has beenshoweredupon
us with singular profusion; and we tear fromoppressed millions every
social, nay almost every other comfort. In short, we cruelly reverse in
our treatment of these unhappy brethren, all the gracious dealings of
Godtowards ourselves. For our plentywe give themwant; for our ease,
intolerable toil; for our wealth, privation of the right of property; for
our equal laws, unbridledviolence andwrong. Science shines upon us,
with her meridian beams; yet we keepthese degradedfellow-creatures
in the deepest shades of ignorance and barbarity. Morals and manners
have happily distinguishedus fromthe other nations of Europe; yet we
create and cherish in two other quarters of the globe, an unexampled
depravity of both. A contrast still more opprobrious remains. God has
blessed us with the purest effulgence of the Gospel; and yet we dishon-
our by our slave trade the christian name; and perpetuate the darkness
of paganism among millions of our fellow creatures.
57
These arguments, which denormalized, delegitimized, and pro-
claimed the trade and slavery against Britains national interests and
identity were powerful precisely because of their religious ground-
ing. Not surprisingly, much of the argument occurred among theolo-
gians. Granville Sharp, for instance, met with twenty-two of twenty-six
bishops in 1779 in order to press his anti-slavery arguments and he was
apparently well received.
58
In response, pro-slavery forces mounted powerful arguments. For
example, some religious gures cited support for slavery in the Bible.
One such attempt, by the Reverend Raymond Harris in 1788 was titled:
Scriptural Researches on the Licitness of the Slave Trade. Shewing its Confor-
mity with the Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion. Delineated in the
Sacred Writing of the Word of God.
59
British advocates of slavery at the
56
See Anstey, Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, p. 193; Turley, Culture of English
Antislavery, pp. 2829; 205.
57
James Stephen, The Dangers of the Country (London: 1807), pp. 195, 212 quoted in
Anstey, Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, pp. 195196.
58
Anstey, Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, p. 246.
59
Turley, Culture of English Antislavery, p. 23.
175
Argument and change in world politics
turn of the nineteenth century also argued that abolition would give
trade and military advantages to Britains enemies, especially France.
60
Abolitionist movement strategy
Some abolitionists responded to the concern about British interests by
suggesting that emancipation itself could follow slowly after abolition
of the trade.
61
But the strategy and tactics of the movement were not
self-evident, and British abolitionists debated whether to go for total
abolition and risk losing all (immediatists), or to start with more mod-
est goals, namely rst curbing the trade and then seeking abolition
(gradualists). The ofcial name of one London group illustrates their
tactical and strategic vision: The London Society for the Mitigation and
Gradual Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Dominions. Their
tactics for rousing public ire and pressuring the government included
letters to prominent ofcials, petitions, direct appeals, pamphleteering,
and mass meetings.
A gradual approach to slave questions is evident even among those
who became the most ardent advocates of abolition. Quakers, while
at rst loathe to bring up an issue that might divide the community
of Friends, since some Quakers favored and practiced slavery, took pro-
gressively strong positions against the trade and slavery. For example,
at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1758, members decided to ex-
clude from the business of the church any Friends who bought or sold
slaves and urged members to free any slaves they had. In 1776, the
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting disowned anyone who still had slaves.
Other Yearly Meetings had also taken up the question of slavery, and
the American Quakers turned to lobbying their colonial governments
and, after Independence, the United States government, to end the slave
trade and slavery.
62
Further, in an early example of transnational acti-
vity by a non-governmental organization, Anthony Benezet and other
American Quakers, notably John Woolman, attempted to inuence
English Quakers against slavery, for instance in pamphlets such as
Benezets 1766 A Caution to Great Britain and her Colonies in a Short Rep-
resentation of the Calamitous State of the Enslaved Negroes in the British
Dominions, which was published in London.
63
The Pennsylvania Abo-
lition Society and other American Quakers corresponded with English
60
Ibid., p. 26.
61
Ibid., p. 28.
62
Anstey, Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, pp. 211212.
63
Ibid., p. 214.
176
Decolonizing bodies
abolitionists, feeding themnews of their tactics in both state legislatures
and the US Congress.
64
Benezet and Woolman made frequent business
trips to England in the 1760s and 1770s. English Quakers, following the
American lead, established an anti-slave trade committee in London
in 1783, writing articles for newspapers, distributing anti-slave trade
tracts, such as the Case of Our Fellow Creatures, The Oppressed Africans
(1783), andlobbiedagainst slavery, presenting their rst anti-slave trade
public petition to Parliament in 1783. In May 1787, the Committee for
the Abolitionof the Slave Trade (or the LondonCommittee) was formed,
with Quakers comprising nine of its twelve founders.
65
The movement
also included members of the legislature, notably William Wilberforce,
who put the question of abolishing the trade to Parliament for many
years before it nally succeeded in 1807.
Both American and British anti-slavery movements, dominated by
upper-class men, believed persuasion would succeed, as the minutes
of a meeting in July 1787 of the London Committee show. Our im-
mediate aim is, by diffusing knowledge of the subject, and particular
modes of procuring and treating slaves, to interest men of every de-
scription in the Abolition of the Trafc; but especially those from whom
any alteration must proceed the Members of our Legislature.
66
The
London Committee published and distributed thousands of copies of
such titles as Thomas Clarksons Summary View of The Slave Trade and
John Newtons Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade (both 1788). In ad-
dition, the London Committee printed and distributed copies of a slave
ship plan and sections (a dramatic image of slaves packed horizontally,
side by side and head to toe) to members of parliament and copies of
relevant parliamentary debates to the public.
67
In addition, parliamen-
tary petition campaigns were coordinated by the London Committee
and abolitionists in Manchester. In early 1788, 102 petitions with about
60,000 signatures were sent to Parliament by abolitionists. In 1792, 519
petitions with about 400,000 signatures were presented to the House of
Commons from all over England, more petitions than had been sent on
64
J. R. Oldeld, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: The Mobilization of Public
Opinion Against the Slave Trade, 17871807 (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1995), pp. 5153.
65
James Walvin, AnAfricans Life: The Life andTimes of OlaudahEquiano, 17451797(London:
Cassell, 1998), p. 155; Oldeld, Popular Politics, p. 42.
66
Quoted in Anstey, Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, p. 255.
67
The Committee nanced printing of 8,000 ship plans in 17881789 alone. Oldeld,
Popular Politics, p. 166.
177
Argument and change in world politics
any subject in a single session.
68
The petitions, rootedin Christian belief,
focused on the humanity of the slaves and the inhumanity of the trade,
often called Britains participation in the trade a national disgrace.
69
In 1788 British abolitionists sought to reassure the public that the
movements aim was only to end the trade, not slavery itself: how-
ever acceptable a temperate and gradual abolition of slavery might be
to the wishes of Individuals it never formed any part of the Plan of
this Society.
70
Yet advocates of immediate abolition, such as Elizabeth
Heyrick quoted at the opening of this chapter, argued that petition-
ing, declamation and argument were insufcient and other tactics
hopefully more efcient than words notably boycott, must be used.
British and American Quakers rst practiced personal abstention from
slave produced products in the 1760s. Later, abstention grew into a
movement tactic that not only well-educated upper-class males could
participate in, but that encompassed women and members of other
classes. In 17911792, and again from 1825 to 1829 British abolition-
ists organized boycotts of sugar grown with slave labor.
71
Slave-grown
produce was an important part of the English economy and, by 1800,
tropical groceries, including sugar, comprised about 35 percent of the
total value of imports to Britain and sugar was Britains largest im-
port by value in the eighteenth century.
72
When British abolitionists
set out to halt West Indian grown sugar consumption in 1791, within
six months an estimated 100,000 people had stopped using sugar.
73
Later, Thomas Clarkson estimated that 300,000 people had stopped in
17911792. As Claire Midgleynotes, [t]his compares withthe estimated
390,000 (adult male) signatories to anti-slavery petitions in 1792.
74
In
both the slave-grown sugar boycotts of 17911792 and 18251829, abo-
litionists promoted the sugar grown in the East Indies by free labor,
arguing that it wasnt tainted. If West Indian farmers were weakened
at all economically by the boycotts, their inuence in Parliament may
have suffered, though in 1823, the Anti-Slavery Society counted ve
Lords and fourteen members of the House of Commons, while at least
fty-six members had a personal interest in slavery.
75
68
See Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery, p. 76 and Oldeld, Popular Politics, pp. 49
and 61.
69
See Oldeld, Popular Politics, pp. 115119.
70
Quoted in Temperley, British Anti-Slavery, p. 7.
71
Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery, p. 79.
72
Midgley, Slave Sugar Boycotts.
73
Ibid., p. 146.
74
Ibid., p. 146.
75
WilliamA. Green, British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment,
18301865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 100.
178
Decolonizing bodies
The transnational abolition movement also included slaves and free
blacks, who in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries described the
conditions of slavery and articulated the reasons for abolition. By 1750
there were about 20,000 black people in England, and by the late eigh-
teenth century, some were quite visible in the abolitionist movement.
Eighteenth and nineteenth-century anti-slavery movements used pub-
lished slave narratives, organized public forums for the live testimony
of freedmen and escaped slaves, and circulated reports by journalists
and abolitionists of the conditions of slaves as evidence that slavery was
evil and that slaves deserved better treatment. In written and live testi-
monies, both former slaves andwhite abolitionists portrayedthe brutal-
ity of slavery in vivid language and with clear physical evidence. In the
late eighteenth century, about twenty black abolitionists were active in
England and the best known of this group included Ottobah Cugoano
and Olaudah Equiano. Equiano, for example, authored a 520 page book,
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustava Vassa,
the African (1789), toured Britain widely, and wrote for English papers.
76
In March 1788, Equiano petitioned Queen Charlotte, the wife of George
III, on behalf of my African brethren for an end to the slave trade and
for giving slaves the rights and situation of men.
77
Among the most
famous former slave activists in the US during the nineteenth century
were Nat Turner, Soujourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass, though
narratives by many others were widely read and the live testimony of
former slaves was often part of anti-slavery meetings.
78
Never before
had slaves found a voice that slave holders and non-slave holders heard
in relatively large numbers. The fact that slaves were participants in the
discourse was doubly important because it facilitated the development
of empathy between slave and non-slave and helped to break down
the core belief held by many Europeans of the African as savage. Freed
slaves and their descendents also began to criticize the larger institution
of colonialism.
79
Eighteenth and early nineteenth-century advocates of abolition, whe-
ther gradualists or immediatists, were really arguing two cases. First,
76
See Oldeld, Popular Politics, pp. 125 and 126.
77
Quoted in Walvin, An Africans Life, p. 156.
78
A selection of slave narratives is found in William L. Andrews and Henry Louis Gates,
eds., Slave Narratives (New York: Library of America, 2000).
79
For example, the booklet by the Reverend James Theodore Holley, A Vindication of the
Capacity of the Negro Race for Self-Government and Civilized Progress, as Demonstrated by the
Historical Events of the Haytian Revolution and the Subsequent Acts of that People Since their
National Independence (New Haven, CN: 1856).
179
Argument and change in world politics
they argued for ending the slave trade on ethical grounds: it corrupted
Africa and Africans and was evil, a sin, a wicked, cruel, and unnatural
trade.
80
This was their most powerful argument a meta-argument on
the nature of the good, about the virtues of slavery in the eyes of God
and they succeeded in reframing the practice as being against Gods
providence to the point that in 1806 Wilberforce was able to argue in
Parliament that he found it unnecessary to refute the religious argu-
ments given in favor of the slave trade since he could take it for granted
that the scriptural basis for slavery hadbeendisproved. Indeed, among
the various nal proofs of the purity and excellence of the religion we
possess, it is not the least remarkable that not only is the practice of the
Slave Trade forbidden, and the principle on which it proceeds held out
for our abhorrence; but it is specically denounced as the worst of rob-
bery, those concerned in it being branded as the stealers of men.
81
The
abolitionists second argument, in response to pro-slave trade interests,
was that it was practical to end the slave trade.
Having essentially lost the meta-argument about the religious sanc-
tion for slavery in the scriptures, advocates of the slave trade began
to emphasize practical arguments. For example, in the 1806 Parliamen-
tary debate, General Tarleton argued against outlawing the slave trade
on several practical grounds. First, he claimed that the prosperity of
Liverpool is intimately connected with the African Slave Trade and the
amount that taxes fromLiverpool alone contributes to the public purse,
is near 3 millions annually.
82
If Liverpool suffered, he argued, all ship-
ping would be impaired, leading to serious negative consequences for
the entire colonial empire. Tarleton also claimed that if the slave trade
were ended the war with France would be hurt because government
revenue would fall.
Nor is this all: those who suffer will come to Parliament for compensa-
tion for their losses. There will be no pretense for refusing such com-
pensation, because, whatever may be said about the injustice or the
inhumanity of this trade, it is not to be denied that it is a trade which
has been carried on under the auspices of this House, and agreeably
80
Quoted in Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade, p. 43.
81
Wilberforce quotedin Substance of the Debates on a Resolution for Abolishing the Slave Trade
which was moved in the House of Commons 10th June 1806 and in the House of Lords 24th June
1806 (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1968), pp. 2930. (Spelling has been made consistent
with modern English).
82
Quoted in ibid., p. 11.
180
Decolonizing bodies
to law; and if it is now to be abolished, all those who have carried it on
must have their losses made up . . . and this compensation, I can assure
his Majestys Ministers, will be very considerable in its amount.
83
Similarly, LordCastlereagh, while grantingthe desirabilityof abolishing
the trade on moral grounds, questioned whether it was possible to do
so. Indeed, he argued that the whole movement was counterproductive
because without Britain the slave trafc will be conducted by others
[France, Spain, and Portugal] under their ags, so that the trade will be
carried on in a more inhuman manner hereafter than it is at present.
84
Castlereagh argued instead for using a gradually rising systemof duties
to discourage the slave trade.
Inresponse, abolitionists also deployedpractical arguments about the
timing and economic risks of abolishing the slave trade. Wilberforce,
for example, argued that Castlereaghs proposed duty on slave imports
would not work. He asked, does not my noble friend recollect, that
although during the time we have been discussing this subject, the price
of slaves has increased 100 percent, that is to say from thirty to seventy
pounds a head, a much larger increase than any duty which he would
thinkimposing, yet that the number of slaves importedintothe Colonies
has not diminished?
85
Many advocates of abolishing the trade, as part of their long-term
strategy for abolition, were willing to put up with slavery for a time,
thereby hoping to diffuse the arguments of those who said abolition
wouldruinthecolonial economy. AbolishingtheBritishslavetrade, they
claimed, would still be a signicant feat given the fact that at the peak
of their involvement in the fty years prior to ending the slave trade,
British slavers controlled50 percent of the slave trade. As Anstey writes,
advocates of the gradual approach also claimedthat any economic dam-
age caused by abolishing the trade could be minimized: With proper
encouragement a slave population could reproduce itself, there would
be no need for slave imports, and there was no threat to the plantation
owner and to the West Indian plantation economy.
86
Abolitionists turned to the project of ending slavery after Parliament
voted to end British participation in the slave trade.
87
In the years of
the abolition movement, petitions organized by anti-slavery societies to
83
Quoted in ibid., p. 12.
84
Quoted in ibid., p. 17.
85
Quoted in ibid., pp. 3132.
86
Anstey, Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, pp. 312313.
87
On the links and continuity between British and American anti-slavery organizing
see Betty Fladeland, Men and Brothers: Anglo-American Anti-Slavery Cooperation (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1972).
181
Argument and change in world politics
the British parliament often outnumbered petitions for all other causes
until slavery was abolished.
88
In 1823 the London Anti-Slavery Soci-
ety pressed Parliament into urging West Indian colonial governments
to reform slave practices, but planters resisted the efforts.
89
In 1825 the
anti-slaverysocieties beganpublishingthe Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter
(London) which included such articles as On the Demoralizing Inu-
ence of Slavery (men accustomedto govern slaves are unt to manage
free labourers).
90
Another article was The Question Calmly Consid-
ered What will be the probable consequences, as affecting the pub-
lic peace of the Colonies and the well-being of the Slaves themselves,
of the early and entire extinction of Colonial Slavery, by an act of the
British Parliament?
91
In the latter, abolitionists responded directly to
pro-slavery arguments that emancipation would bring chaos.
The evils which the colonists affect to dread, from such an emanci-
pation of their slaves, are of two kinds rst civil insubordination,
tumult, and disorder issuing in pillage, conagration, and massacre;
and secondly, the deterioration of the slaves condition, and his return
to all the miseries and privations of the savage state. In argument, it
has been hitherto assumed by the colonists as indisputable, that such
would necessarily be the consequence of an immediate or even very
early emancipation of the slaves; and we must admit that not a few of
those who are decided enemies of colonial slavery, both in its principle
and practice, have far too readily yielded their assent to this unwar-
ranted assumption. We call it unwarranted, because we are not aware
of any attempt ever having been made to prove its truth. . . We are ac-
quainted with no such evidence. We know even of no single case in
which emancipation of slaves proceeding from the legal authorities of
the state, and unresisted by violence on the part of the masters has
led either to public disorder, or to the unhappiness and discomfort of
the slave, or to the deterioration of his moral, intellectual, and political
condition. If there be such a case, let it be stated and proved.
92
In the 1830s alone, several new organizations formed in Britain to
work for abolition and emancipation and over 5,000 anti-slavery peti-
tions were sent to Parliament in early 1833.
93
When Parliament passed
the Emancipation Act in 1833, freeing 800,000 slaves in Mauritius, the
88
Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery, pp. 59 and 9192.
89
Temperley, British Antislavery, p. 12.
90
Appearing in Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter 2 (January 1828), 161174: 164.
91
The Question Calmly Considered, Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter 3 (10 November
1830), 453475.
92
The Question Calmly Considered, pp. 454455, emphasis in the original.
93
Roger Anstey, Religion and British Slave Emancipation, in David Eltis and James
182
Decolonizing bodies
West Indies, Canada, and the Cape of Good Hope, abolitionists were
disappointed in its provisions for an apprenticeship system of four and
six years andfor compensationto slave owners, so they kept organizing,
ultimately securing an early end to the apprenticeship system in 1838.
The BritishandForeignSocietyfor Universal Abolitionof NegroSlavery
and the Slave Trade was founded in 1834; the Central Negro Eman-
cipation Committee founded in 1837 became the British and Foreign
Anti-Slavery Society in 1839. Also founded in 1839 were the Aborigines
Protection Society and the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade
and the Civilization of Africa. There were about 100 local chapters of
national anti-slavery organizations in Britain between 1839 and 1869.
94
Anti-slavery activists formed the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery
Society in London in 1839 for the universal extinction of slavery and
the slave trade. A descendent of previous anti-slavery organizations,
the groups constitution stated that the extinction of Slavery and the
Slave-trade will be attained most effectively by employment of those
means which are of a moral, religious, and pacic character. The means
to be employed were to be ethical andpractical argument and economic
leverage:
1. To circulate, both at home and abroad, accurate information on the
enormities of the Slave-trade andSlavery; to furnish evidence to the in-
habitants of Slave-holding countries, not only of the practicability, but
of the pecuniary advantage of free labour; to diffuse authentic intelli-
gence respecting the results of emancipation in Hayti [sic], the British
Colonies and elsewhere; to open a correspondence with Abolitionists
in America, France, and other countries; and to encourage them in the
prosecution of these objects by all methods consistent with the princi-
ples of this Society.
2. To recommend the use of free-grown produce (as far as practicable)
in preference to Slave-grown; and to promote the adoption of scal
regulations in favour of free labour.
Walvin, eds., The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Origins and Effects in Europe, Africa, and
the Americas (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981), pp. 3761: 48. Although most
abolitionist activity focused on slavery, some abolitionists advocated the establishment
of colonies of former slaves. British abolitionist Granville Sharpe, in 1787, helped freed
slaves establish a colony in Sierra Leone. The American Colonization Society formed in
December 1816 to support former slave colonies in West Africa took what would become
Liberia at gunpoint and established a colony for freed slaves. Though many in the US and
Britain had enthusiastically supported colonization of West Africa by former slaves, pub-
lic opinion was more divided by the 1830s. Fladeland, Men and Brothers, pp. 80105.
94
Christine Bolt, The Anti-Slavery Movement and Reconstruction: AStudy in Anglo-American
Co-operation, 183377 (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 4.
183
Argument and change in world politics
3. To obtain the unequivocal recognition of the principle that the Slave,
of whatever clime or colour, entering any portion of the British Domin-
ions, shall be free . . .
4. To recommend that every suitable opportunity be embraced for
evincing in our intercourse with Slave-holders and their apologists,
our abhorrence of the system which they uphold, and our sense of its
utter incompatibility with the spirit of the Christian religion.
95
Institutionalization: suppressing the slave trade
When the British Parliament abolished the slave trade in March 1807 it
set stiff penalties for violators: slave trade vessels wouldbe forfeitedand
a ne of 100 would be imposed for each slave found on board. In 1811,
slave trading was made a felony and in 1824 a capital offense. Making
the trade illegal and eventually punishable as a felony was a great step
in institutionalizing the now dominant normative belief in Britain that
the trade in slaves was wrong. The next step, a decades-long effort by
Britain to suppress the entire international slave trade, was itself the
occasion of another long domestic and international argument.
The scope of the British effort to suppress the slave trade, initially
small, grew to be enormous. The British Royal Navy stationed ships off
the coast of, rst, West Africa, andlater, East Africa andAmericanwaters
to intercept slave ships.
96
The British Africa Squadron between 1816 and
1865 ranged from three to a peak of thirty-six ships (in 1845) patrolling
the coasts at any one time to interdict slave ships, while other cruisers
were also empowered to search suspicious ships.
97
The British govern-
ment also established a Slave Trade Department in 1819 to monitor the
trafc.
98
The slave trade was regularly on Britains nineteenth-century diplo-
matic agenda. Abolitionists sent 800 petitions toParliament in1814, with
about 1 million signatures, urging the government to push the French to
end the trade.
99
In 1815, the Congress of Vienna passed a resolution on
suppressing the slave trade as repugnant to the principles of humanity
95
Constitution of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, conrmed at a public meeting
at Exeter Hall, 17 April 1839 (emphasis in original).
96
The US intermittently made a commitment to patrols between 1820 and 1864, as did
France from 1811 to 1870.
97
Curtin, Atlantic Slave Trade, pp. 249250.
98
See D. Eltis, The Direction and Fluctuation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 18211943:
ARevision of the 1845 Parliamentary Paper, in Gemery and Hogendorn, eds., Uncommon
Market, pp. 273301: 276.
99
Temperley, British Antislavery, p. 8.
184
Decolonizing bodies
and universal morality.
100
The slave trade was also raised at the Aix-la-
Chapelle meeting in 1818, and at the Congress of Verona in 1822 it was
called a pest which has too long desolated Africa, degraded Europe,
and aficted humanity.
101
By 1839, Britain had treaties with all ma-
jor maritime powers except the United States providing for the right to
search each others merchant vessels.
102
According to historian Arthur
Corwin, standard British procedure was to withhold diplomatic recog-
nitionor raticationof a treatyof commerce, amityandpeace or torefuse
to facilitate a loan in the London money market until the lesser power
agreed to cooperate with British cruisers in closing the trafc.
103
The
treaties were expensive; in 1817 Britain paid Spain 700,000 for the right
to search ships under the Spanish ag and for agreements to prohibit
slave trafc north, and then 3 years later, south of the equator.
104
Since
Spain did not found an Abolitionist Society until 1864, external pressure
for abolition was practically all there was apart from the efforts of a few,
isolated, individuals.
105
Britainalso paidPortugal 300,000 to endits part
in the slave trade north of the equator after 1820.
106
Thus, suppression
was associated with high moral purpose: many British righteously con-
demned other states who participated in the slave trade. In 1864 Prime
Minister Palmerston wrote: The Portuguese are . . . the lowest in the
moral scale and the Brazilians are degenerate Portuguese, demoralized
by slavery and slave trade, and all the degrading and corrupting inu-
ences connected with both.
107
The British signed several bilateral treaties and coordinated their
naval patrol efforts off the coast of Africa with a number of countries
after 1816. Britain even established international courts, joint courts of
100
Text of Declaration of the Eight Powers, relative to the Universal Abolition of the
Slave Trade, quoted in Suzanne Miers, Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade (New York:
Longman Group, 1975), p. 11. James Walvin, The Public Campaign in England Against
Slavery, 17871843, in Eltis and Walvin, The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade, pp. 6379:
6768.
101
Text of the resolution quoted by Sir Edward Mallet at the Berlin Conference in R. J.
Gavin andJ. A. Betley, The Scramble for Africa: Documents on the Berlin West Africa Conference
and Related Subjects 1884/1885 (Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press, 1973), p. 187.
Notably, the members of the Congress could not agree on Britains recommendation to
denounce the trade as piracy and a refusal to admit to their domains the produce
of the colonies of States allowing the trade. Du Bois, Suppression of the African Slave
Trade, p. 138.
102
Klein, Slavery, p. 202.
103
Corwin, Spain and Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, pp. 3132.
104
Miers, Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade, p. 14.
105
Corwin, Spain and Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, pp. 20 and 2225.
106
Ibid., p. 30.
107
Quoted in Eltis, Economic Growth, p. 85.
185
Argument and change in world politics
mixed commission, through bilateral treaties with Spain, Portugal,
the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and later Brazil. The courts sat in
several locations, including Sierra Leone, Cape Town, Havana, Rio de
Janeiro, and New York to try slave traders. International cooperation of
this sort was unprecedented, though not without controversy. For in-
stance, Britain claimed that the captured slaves freed by the mixed court
in Havana were nevertheless being sold in Cuba.
108
Yet international diplomatic arguments and insults were mild com-
pared to Britains domestic debate over the suppression policy. Both
Houses of Parliament issued separate reports on British efforts to end
the trade after hearings in 1848 and 1849 in the House of Commons, and
hearings in 1849 and 1850 in the House of Lords. Members heard evi-
dence and arguments at the hearings that came to opposite conclusions.
Opponents of suppression suggested the effort was a huge expense for
little result. And the nancial costs of suppression were staggering. On
the other hand, supporters of suppression argued that Britain had al-
ready succeeded in greatly diminishing the slave trade and said that
without interdiction, the trade would grow in Africa and in the colonies
inCentral andSouthAmerica.
109
Some abolitionists estimatedthat slave
trafc actually grew in the 1830s and 1840s but that suppression should
continue nevertheless.
110
Was suppression a success? More than 1,635 ships were captured be-
tween 1808 and 1867 and over 160,000 Africans were freed, mostly by
the British (over 85 percent).
111
But the overall success of the British
interdiction effort is difcult to know given the efforts slave traders
went to to conceal the trafc. Christopher Lloyd argues that the success
of interdiction efforts uctuated violently, and it is doubtful if the
preventive cruises ever captured more than 10 percent of the shipping
involved until they were given more latitude in the treatment of foreign
vessels and the demand for slaves was stopped by the importing coun-
tries themselves.
112
Philip Curtin estimated that despite Britains effort
108
See ibid., p. 86; Corwin, Spain and Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, pp. 3942.
109
Extracts from the Evidence Taken Before Committees of the Two Houses of Parliament Relative
to the Slave Trade, with Illustrations from Collateral Sources of Information (London: Davidson,
1851); reprinted (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969).
110
Thomas Fowell Buxton, a prominent English abolitionist, claimed in the late 1830s that
the trade might have doubled. Lloyd, The Navy and the Slave Trade, p. 105.
111
Eltis, Economic Growth, p. 9798. Lloyd estimates that 149,843 slaves in the Atlantic
slave trade were liberated by the Royal Navy between 1810 and 1864. Lloyd, The Navy and
the Slave Trade, pp. 275276.
112
Lloyd, The Navy and the Slave Trade, p. xii.
186
Decolonizing bodies
at interdiction, except for periods of war, trade nevertheless continued,
at a level about a thirdless thanits eighteenthcentury peak.
113
Since the
revolutionary leaders San Martn, Bolvar, and Hidalgo of the Spanish
colonies abolishedslaveryinArgentina (1816) GranColumbia andChile
(1821), Peru, Guatemala, and Uruguay (1828) and Mexico (1829), the
major trafc in slaves from Africa to the New World went to Cuba and
Brazil. LeVeen credits the British with rates for interdicting slave trafc
to Cuba and Brazil as 15.3 percent from 1821 to 1830, 46.5 percent from
1831 to 1840, 35.6 percent from 1851 to 1860.
114
The evolution of slavery as practiced in the United States
All thirteen American colonies had slaves. The changing status of
slavery from accepted institution to increasingly suspect practice
is illustrated by the ambiguous and contradictory slave law of the
colonial and pre-civil war United States. Slave law varied by state
because the United States was much more a collection of states in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, under the philosophy of
states rights, rather than one uniform nation.
115
After the Declaration
of Independence, Northern states under pressure from abolitionists
moved to abolish slavery. Vermont was rst to make slavery illegal in
1777, and Massachusetts did the same in 1781. The slave trade resumed
after the war and slavery, of course, remained legal in the South, with
slave states dominating the government through much of the pre-civil
war era: the Electoral College andthe House of Representatives, because
of the constitutional provision that counted a slave as three-fths a per-
son for purposes of apportioning seats, was overrepresented by slave
states.
As slavery was denormalized and delegitimized in the colonies and
later the United States, new practices to protect the slave were insti-
tutionalized in slave law, even in the southern United States. In the
seventeenth century, for instance, the homicide of a slave was allowed
in South Carolina if it was done as a correction but not if it was
done maliciously. By the 1740s, there were nes for killing a slave in
South Carolina. In 1791, North Carolina said the killing of a slave who
was not resisting his/her master, was murder. In 1798, Georgias new
constitution said, Any person who shall maliciously dismember or
113
Curtin, Atlantic Slave Trade, p. 269.
114
LeVeen, British Slave Trade Suppression Policies, p. 30.
115
See Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade.
187
Argument and change in world politics
deprive a slave of life shall suffer such punishment as would be in-
icted in case the like offence had been committed on a free white per-
son, and on the like proof, except in case of insurrection by such slave,
and unless such death should happen by accident in giving such slave
moderate correction.
116
Later, Alabama, Missouri, and Texas adopted
similar laws.
Even before the American abolitionist movement led by Quakers, for-
mer slaves, and other human rights advocates gathered political force
in the nineteenth century, cruelty toward slaves was also gradually
regulated.
117
In colonial South Carolina, while whipping was legal, a
1740 law imposed a ne of up to 100 for cutting out the tongue, eye,
or testicles of a slave. A slave would become free according to an 1860
Maryland law if their master was convicted of abuse three times.
118
There were also laws requiring that masters provide food and clothing
for slaves, and in 1852, a law in Alabama requiring a master to treat his
slave with humanity.
119
The US Congress debated slavery many times from its rst session in
1789 to abolition.
120
And, as in England, Congress was subjected to pop-
ular petitions on the slave trade and slavery from abolition societies in
Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, and
Virginia. Congress acted in 1794 to prohibit US citizens from supply-
ing slaves to foreigners. The later Act to Prohibit the Importation of
Slaves into the US after 1 January 1808, was passed by Congress and
signedby President JeffersoninMarch 1807. Thoughthe slave trade was
prohibited by law, it continued to be conducted clandestinely, and the
several Congressional acts to suppress the trade were not consistently
or vigorously enforced.
In1818the USpassedthe AntislavingAct and, in1820, the USdeclared
the slave trade piracy and sent a few ships to the West African coast to
conduct interdiction. Between1818and1821USnaval ships stationedoff
the African coast caught eleven slave ships with 573 Africans on board.
But after this initial burst of activity, US interdiction efforts essentially
halted. The idea of letting ships with US ags be searched by the British
116
Quoted in Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, p. 172.
117
There are dozens of excellent books on anti-slavery activism in the US. Because it
is well known, and parallels British anti-slavery movements, I will not recapitulate that
history here.
118
Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, p. 183.
119
Quoted in ibid., p. 184.
120
See William Lee Miller, Arguing About Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States
Congress (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), and Du Bois, The Suppression of the African
Slave Trade.
188
Decolonizing bodies
had been raised several times in the US Congress in the 1820s, and
also by the British, but never approved by the US administration. Many
slavers took to ying under American ags, making them immune to
British searches. With the 1842 WebsterAshburton Treaty, the US and
Britain promised to maintain more substantial anti-slavery patrols on
the coast of West Africa. Despite the WebsterAshburton Treaty, the
small US squadron sent to patrol the African coast for slave trafc was
ineffective and unable to interdict many slavers. Only in 1862 when
the US and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Washington, granting
the mutual right of search at sea and establishing mixed courts in
NewYork, Cape Town, andSierraLeone totryslave traders, was suppre-
ssion of slavers ying the US ag successful.
121
In sum, much as Indian slavery had been regulated in South America
by Spain before it was abolished in the colonies, and well before the
Civil War, slavery in the United States was gradually regulated by legis-
lation and the courts, protecting slaves from the worst behavior of their
masters. Were reforms primarily motivatedby pragmatism(in the belief
that better treated slaves would perhaps produce more offspring and be
less likely to revolt or attempt escape), or was there a genuine change
in how slaves were regarded? Some reforms were undoubtedly moti-
vated and supported for pragmatic reasons. Adam Smith argued that,
The protection of the magistrate renders the slave less contemptible in
the eyes of his master, who is therebyinducedto consider himwithmore
regard, and to treat him with more gentleness. Gentle usage renders
the slave not only more faithful, but more intelligent and, therefore,
upon a double account, more useful.
122
But there are reasons to believe that pragmatism was not at the main
root of the reforms.
123
First, though convictions for offenses against
slaves were not frequent, by the early nineteenth century, as Thomas
Morris notes, There was truth in the remark of William Gaston of the
North Carolina Supreme Court: A cruel Master is a term of oppro-
brium which would be as bitterly resented and is as carefully avoided
as that of a dishonest tradesman or of a drunken mechanic.
124
The
occasions when masters were brought to court to be held to account for
121
Lloyd, The Navyandthe Slave Trade, pp. 5559; 175181; Thomas, The Slave Trade, pp. 616
620: 775.
122
Smith, Wealth of Nations, book IV, chapter VII, p. 634.
123
And though morally motivated reformers probably would have balked at the
notion, pragmatic reformers inadvertently made the process of moral reform easier.
124
Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, p. 185.
189
Argument and change in world politics
their actions were instances where the justice of slavery itself was ar-
gued. Second, the regulation of slavery was generally opposed by slave
masters and the governments in slave states on the grounds that slaves
had to fear their masters or the institution would fall apart. As North
Carolinas Judge Rufn said in 1829, in overturning the conviction of a
master in the murder of his slave, The power of the master must be
absolute to render the submission of the slave perfect.
125
Thus, while
most masters were probably little moved by anti-slavery arguments,
anti-slavery arguments changed the beliefs of the rest of US culture,
gradually changing the balance of political forces in the US so that re-
form was gradually institutionalized.
Forced labor
Several humanitarian ironies were occasioned by the end of the slave
trade and slavery. First, as it had in Latin America when Indian slavery
ended, abolition gave impetus to forced labor practices (which allowed
corporal punishment) that continued well after slaverys demise in both
Latin America and Africa. Second, ending slavery became an argument
in the mid and late 1800s for the imposition of colonies in parts of Africa
that were not yet subject to European rule.
126
As Joseph Chamberlain,
then British colonial secretary, said in 1900 about Nigeria: sooner or
later we shall have to ght some of the slave dealing tribes and we can-
not have a better casus belli . . . public opinion here requires that we shall
justify imperial control of these savage countries by some serious effort
to put down slave dealing.
127
Humanitarians wouldlater take upargu-
ments against both those practices. Andthird, processes of international
cooperation developed to halt the trafc in slaves facilitated smoother
colonization.
125
Rufns opinion in State v. Mann, quoted in Mark V. Tushnet, The American Law of
Slavery, 18101860: Considerations of Humanity and Interest (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1981) p. 60. Also see Alan Watson, Slave Lawin the Americas (Athens, GA: University
of Georgia Press, 1989).
126
Lloyd, The Navy and the Slave Trade, p. 105.
127
Quoted in Miers, Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade, p. 294. Miers writes, when
the Imperial East Africa Company said in 1892 that it had to leave Uganda for nancial
reasons, The Liberal government of the day was prepared to let the territory go but the
issue was carriedto the electorate in a widespreadpress andpropaganda campaign which
resulted in a spate of petitions urging its retention largely on the grounds that the slavery
and slave trade would be abolished. Other reasons such as economic advantages and the
need to save the Christian missions were also cited but the biggest single consideration
was the suppression of slave trafc. Ibid., p. 294.
190
Decolonizing bodies
Forced labor in many forms, for example, indentured servitude,
encomienda (until 1550) and repartimiento for private or public work
(after 1550), had long coexisted with slavery and free labor. Similarly, by
a Frenchlawof 1686 the number of engag es or indenturedservants was to
be equal to the number of slaves in Saint Domingue. In some cases, slave
emancipation led directly to forced labor, as when Great Britain ended
slaverybylawin1833 (not coveringcolonies controlledbythe East India
Company, including India), but allowed six years of apprenticeship
(labor without pay for 45 hours a week) in the West Indies and Africa.
As soon as Britain halted apprenticeship in 1838, plantation farmers
faced a labor shortage, since, if they could, apprentices left plantations.
In response, colonial assemblies enacted laws, such as the Contract Act
in Antigua, to force workers back to the farm while others were com-
pelledto work for fear of arrest under the vagrancy laws passedinmany
colonies.
128
Further, as in Jamaica, farm wages were purposefully kept
lower than rents so many former slaves went into debt and were forced
to work for former masters. Where former slaves were not enough,
East Indians and Chinese laborers were imported. Indentured workers
often had no idea of the terrible conditions they would face in Asia,
the Americas, or Africa.
129
Some 28 million Indians left India between
1846 and 1932, mostly to work in some form of forced labor.
130
Seymour
Drescher notes that of the total intercontinental ow of indentured
labourers toex-slave colonies after 1838, two-thirds, went toBritishfron-
tier colonies deprived of African labour during the previous 30 years.
For a generation after apprenticeship more than 95 percent of inden-
tured labourers from Africa and India went to ex-slave colonies as a
whole.
131
Forcedlabor byAfricans for Europeans was alsowidespreadinAfrica.
Even as Europeans crusaded to end slavery, Africans were not only re-
quired to volunteer their labor, but the punishment for not volun-
teering, and for other crimes such as vagrancy and failure to pay
hut and head taxes, was forced labor.
132
It was the colonial custom
128
Vagrancy laws had been similarly used in the 1500s by Spain in Central and
South America against both Spanish and Indians. See William L. Sherman, Forced Na-
tive Labor in Sixteenth-Century Central America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1979), pp. 194196.
129
W. Kloosterboer, Involuntary Labour Since the Abolition of Slavery: A Survey of Compul-
sory Labour Throughout the World (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960).
130
Klein, Slavery, p. 207.
131
Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery, p. 10.
132
Elizabeth Elbourne, Freedom at Issue: Vagrancy Legislation and the Meaning of
Freedom in Britain and the Cape Colony, 17991842, in Lovejoy and Rogers, eds., Unfree
191
Argument and change in world politics
to indenture the African free children born on white farms in Dutch
South Africa until the age of eighteen or twenty-ve.
133
While the
Portuguese ended slavery in their African colonies in 1878, according
to Gann and Duignan, until the system of indigenato was ended in 1961,
Portuguese Africans were under obligation to work in a manner ap-
provedof by the administrationfor at least six months of the year, or else
be contracted by the government.
134
British and French colonies also
used forced labor in their colonies, especially during the world wars, to
build and maintain roads, work on farms, and serve in the military.
135
Forced labor in French West Africa grew after slavery was abolished
there in 1905.
Forced labor arguments
Some of the most ardent advocates of forced labor were evangelical
Christians, who claimed forced labor would bring moral uplift. Advo-
cates believed forced labor was good since it transformed people living
in a pre-civilized condition, where they were supposedly idle and
lazy, and put them to useful work. Elizabeth Elbourne argues that this
system reects the evangelical and philosophical world view dominant
in England at the time which saw nomadic cultures as backward and
empty and in need of assistance in rising out of a state of nature.
136
One colonial ofcer, Colonel Collins, in a report on the Khoikhoi and
San of Southern Africa to the British governor of the Cape in 1808, said
native South Africans were multitudes of savages, of the ercest dispo-
sition, dispersed throughout such a vast extent of country, in no part of
which they have a settled residence, and from which they plunder their
neighbours in every direction; without the idea of any law, divine or
human; connexionamongthemselves, except suchas arises fromthe ties
of parental, or conjugal affection; and even without the least knowledge
of the manner of cultivating corn or rearing cattle.
137
French advocates
of forced labor made similar arguments in the early 1900s.
138
Labour, pp. 114150; Commission on International Justice and Goodwill, The System of
Forced Labor in Africa (New York: Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America,
1926).
133
Elbourne, Freedom at Issue, p. 117.
134
L.H. Gann and Peter Duignan, Burden of Empire: An Appraisal of Western Colonialism
in Africa South of the Sahara (New York: Praeger, 1967), p. 379.
135
Ibid., p. 256.
136
Elbourne, Freedom at Issue, pp. 118120.
137
Quoted in ibid., p. 118.
138
Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and
West Africa, 18951930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).
192
Decolonizing bodies
Colonial law articulated and reected these beliefs. The Caledon
Proclamation, or Code, as it was also known, issued by the British
governor of the Cape Colony in 1809 made it possible to impress any
Hottentot (non-European) considered vagrant who could not pro-
vide evidence of work and a xed residence. Since Hottentots were
not allowed to own land, xed residence implied living in a colonial
institution. According to the Code, this was supposed to be good for all
parties. [I]t is necessary that not only the inhabitants of the Hottentot
nation, in the same manner as the other inhabitants, should be subject to
proper regularity in regard to their place of abode and occupations, but
also that they should nd an encouragement for preferring entering the
service of inhabitants to leading an indolent life, by which they are ren-
dereduseless bothfor themselves andthe communityat large.
139
These
ideas were persistent. As the famous British explorer Sir Richard Burton
wrote in 1864: I see no objection to render liberatedlabour forcible until
the African race is educated for wages, and such habits are not learned
in a day.
140
Reforming forced labor
As with slavery, many religious communities eventually switched po-
sitions on the desirability of forced labor, leading campaigns to end
various forms of coercion. For example, coinciding with the abolition-
ist movement, British humanitarians and Christians in the London
Missionary Society campaigned to end forced labor in Southern Africa
in the early nineteenth century. The Hottentots or rather Khoi, them-
selves also argued for free labor, mobility, and the return of their land.
141
Reformers eventually succeeded in ameliorating labor conditions in
Southern Africa. Forced labor by Hottentots was halted in 1828 in
Ordinance 50, which endedthe Caledon Code, although forcedlabor for
up to a year by black Africans found without passes was still allowed
in Ordinance 49.
142
British protection of Hottentots became one of the
main reasons Boers moved from the coast to the interior in their Great
Trek to escape British interference.
The campaign to completely end forced labor used ethical arguments
that denormalized the practice. In 1835, some anti-slavery activists
formed the British and Foreign Aborigines Protection Society, which
139
Proclamation quoted in Elbourne, Freedom at Issue, p. 122.
140
Burton quoted in Eltis, Economic Growth, p. 28.
141
Elbourne, Freedom at Issue, pp. 139142.
142
Ibid., pp. 128129.
193
Argument and change in world politics
publicized forced labor and other conditions that were against the inter-
ests of the people the British were nowcalling aborigines and natives.
143
Forced labor was documented in journals such as the Anti-Slavery
Reporter and Aborigines Friend (London) and by journalists in main-
stream papers. Reformers stressed the humanity of the laborers, and
the inhumanity of the practice, arguing that forced labor was corrupt-
ing, not elevating. Christian groups distributed pamphlets containing
testimony such as: I could not get my mind away from the compari-
son between the life which these people led in the old days, and that
which they are living now. That was called heathenism; the present is
hell. That was primitive liberty and comfort; this is the backwash of
civilization grinding servitude and moral degradation.
144
This
was implicitly an argument stressing the hypocrisy of Western
practices.
But, as with the anti-slavery campaigns, reformers did not only de-
ploy a moral discourse. Reformers identity arguments attempted to
demonstrate the humanity of the African laborer.
I foundthemto be a moral people. Not withthe morality of civilization,
with its niceties and hypocrisies, but they had a morality of their own
which they scrupulously observed . . .
They were an honest people. In my ve years of dealing with them I
lost nothing by theft, when there was unlimited opportunity for them
to steal. They kept their bargains when their word was passed to one
whom they respected and trusted . . .
They were a hospitable people. No stranger, especially a white man,
who came to their kraals was refused a place to sleep and food to
eat, such as they had to give. They did not charge a price for their
hospitality, they regarded it good manners on the part of the guest to
be as generous as they had been.
They were a courteous people. There was a strict system of etiquette
among themselves and towards strangers . . .
145
The identity argument aimed specically to humanize and in some
cases esteem African culture as compared with the culture of the
colonizers.
143
For a discussion of their activity see Alpheus Henry Snow, The Question of Aborigines
in the Law and Practice of Nations (New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1921), pp. 811.
144
Commission on International Justice and Goodwill, System of Forced Labor, p. 8.
145
Ibid., p. 8.
194
Decolonizing bodies
Their clothing was sometimes nearly as brief as that which can be seen
nowadays at Coney Island; their house-keeping was about as crude as
may be found in more civilized communities; their superstitions were
much the same as other peoples who have passed through in their
racial infancy; but my experience among them led me to believe that
theywere about as decent, andmuchmore kindly, thananypersonwho
would call them heathen. I would have trusted myself or my family to
their tender mercies more readily than to those of some persons who
would call them savages.
146
Practical arguments that forced labor had terrible consequences for
the social order of African society echo Benezets late eighteenth-
century arguments about the corrupting inuence of the slave trade.
But now this [morality, honesty, hospitality, and courtesy] has largely
changed. The customs and laws which governed themin the past under
their chiefs have been almost entirely displaced by the regulations of a
commercial company, administered very largely by hostile black po-
licemen. They have in the change lost not only their liberties, but their
decencies as well.
147
Forced labor, it was argued, fostered disruption
of families, drunkenness, and prostitution. Further, to elicit empathy,
the advocates of reform quoted data from reports of Western scho-
lars documenting abuse. They also noted the practical costs of policing
forced labor.
A Chief told Professor Ross the following: A man who was the best
carpenter in the district furnished his own tools and food and got
nothing, not even a tax receipt. Informed that his wife was sick he
obtained a days leave to go home. Finding her in child-birth and
with no one but a little girl to help her he outstayed his leave one
day. A ciapaio came, tied him up, and brought him to the Post where
the Administrator had him given a severe beating with the palmatorio
[a hammer like instrument for beating the palms of the hand of a pris-
oner] and thrown into prison. Next morning early the Chief saw them
bring this man out of prison with his hands too swollen to close, give
him a hoe and set him to work on the road. An armed ciapaio stood
over him and kept him steady at work. He was weak from lack of food
and could not hold the hoe handle between thumb and palm.
148
The turn against forced labor was linked to both humanization of the
laborer and changing religious beliefs, as Christian theology became
thoroughlyimbuedwithfree market ideology. Free labour was a means
146
Ibid., pp. 89.
147
Ibid., p. 9.
148
Ibid., p. 20.
195
Argument and change in world politics
by which the individual expiated guilt and constructed his own salva-
tion: slavery and bonded labour were morally damaging to the slave-
owner as well as preventing the slave or labourer from having an equal
opportunity to rise in civilization through economic advancement.
149
Perhaps not coincidentally, while the freedom of free labor varied
in Europe, increasingly greater protection was given to free labor as
masterservant relations and wage labor were rst criticized and then
better regulated to protect workers in Europe and North America from
the mid-1500s onward.
150
But as with slavery, pragmatic reformers inadvertently bolstered the
cause of normatively motivated reformers. For example, forced labor in
French West Africa was gradually reformed in the 1920s even as its use
was approved by the colonial government as a form of both civilizing
Africans and, obviously, as a way to get the fruits of their labor. This
contradiction was possible because the main impetus for reform was
pragmatic. African labor was scarce and better treatment, including the
provision of basic health care, could, reformers argued, both increase
the population and increase its productivity.
151
Thus, the existence of forced labor and efforts to reform and end the
practice are important in two senses. First, it shows how colonizers
saw free versus unfree labor. As Martin Klein argues, the continued
importance of labour coercion suggests that capital could not get the
labour it wanted in other ways, at least in some areas.
152
Many still
saw an economic reason for coercion. Second, the debate over ending
forced labor illustrates how anti-slavery principles were generalized,
using analogies, by those who fought against forced labor. Evangelical
Christians, already having decided that slavery was evil, eventually
reframed the practice of forced labor as slavery, and recycled their cri-
tiques of slavery to undermine the institutions of forcedlabor. ACouncil
of Churches pamphlet argues that forced labor was slavery or worse
than slavery.
153
The League of Nations appointed a Temporary Slavery
Commission in 1924 which discussed both forced labor and slavery.
One British ofcial argued, for example, that concubinage in this sense
149
Elbourne, Freedom at Issue, p. 131.
150
Paul Craven and Douglas Hay, The Criminalization of Free Labour: Master and Ser-
vant in Comparative Perspective, in Lovejoy and Rogers, eds., Unfree Labour, pp. 71101;
Nicholas Rogers, Vagrancy, Impressment and the Regulation of Labour in Eighteenth-
Century Britain, in Lovejoy and Rogers, eds., Unfree Labour, pp. 102113.
151
See Conklin, Mission to Civilize, pp. 213245.
152
Klein, Slavery, p. 207.
153
Commission on International Justice and Goodwill, System of Forced Labor, p. 19.
196
Decolonizing bodies
means slavery (slave status) . . .
154
Long after most colonial powers
hadlimitedor haltedforcedlabor, Portugal continuedthe practice. Ase-
nior administrator in Portuguese Angola argued, Under slavery, after
all, the native is bought as an animal: his owner prefers him to remain
as t as a horse or ox. Yet here [in Angola] the native is not bought he
is hired from the State, although called a free man. And his employer
cares little if he sickens or dies, once he is working, because when he
sickens or dies his employer will simply ask for another.
155
This was
associative reasoning: since most agreed that slavery is bad, if forced
labor is the same as slavery or worse, then surely it too must be
abolished.
156
An ethical argument explanation for decolonizing
bodies
To show that ethical arguments explain the end of slavery and forced
labor, I must rst demonstrate that ethical arguments were made in fa-
vor of ending these practices and that other forces, namely declining
protability, were not the underlying cause of their demise.
157
The slave
trade, slavery, and forced labor remained protable during most of this
period. Or, at least, they were widely thought to be protable by those
who used those institutions and fought against their abolition. Slavery
was still protable in the colonies when it was ended, while ending slav-
ery hurt economically. But the actual protability of slavery and forced
labor rose and fell depending on the context. In any case, either free
labor or slavery could have worked well to promote economic growth,
and indeed, both did. Both free labor and slavery proved protable
and the institutions existed side by side for centuries. What matters in
154
Quoted in Paul E. Lovejoy and Jan S. Hogendorn, Slow Death for Slavery: The Course
of Abolition in Northern Nigeria, 18971936 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993), p. 241.
155
H. Galv ao quoted in Davidson, Let Freedom Come, p. 109.
156
Forced labor was only abandoned in African colonies by France in 1946 and it was
used by Portugal into the 1970s. The dop systemin South Africa, where winery workers
were paid in wine rather than cash, only ended in the mid 1990s. More will be said below
about how forced labor was regulated in colonies during the inter-war period by the
International Labor Organization and the Mandate system.
157
James Lee Ray and Ethan Nadelmann also suggest that slavery was ended because of
changed ethical convictions and the persuasive efforts of those in the secular and religious
communities that advocated emancipation. James Lee Ray, The Abolition of Slavery
and the End of International War, International Organization 43 (Summer 1989), 405439;
Nadelmann, Global Prohibition Regimes.
197
Argument and change in world politics
terms of explaining the end of slavery and forced labor is what people
thought about protability. Or rather whether they thought protabil-
ity (or morality) was the right frame from which to understand and
represent the questions of slavery and forced labor.
And clearly, though economic arguments were made both for and
against slavery and forced labor, what seems to have mattered more
were religious and philosophical arguments. This is no surprise, since
during the eighteenth, nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries, the life-
worldof Europeans, thebasis onwhichtheyheldandjudgedarguments,
was dominated by religion. When the dominant religious-political com-
munityviewedslaveryas just andgood, andas contributingtothe uplift
of the enslaved, slavery was allowed and even admired. When the reli-
gious community thought that idleness was evil, and forced labor good,
then forced labor was likewise admired. When some Christian theolo-
gians no longer held such views, they attempted to persuade others
with their ethical-religious (and practical) arguments against slavery
and forced labor, which eventually denormalized and delegitimized
these practices. Opponents of slavery argued that the Bible did not en-
courage slavery, and that slavery was wrong. Religious arguments were
persuasive because the dominant culture was Christian.
But secular arguments also became important and help explain why,
after failingfor thousands of years, anti-slaveryarguments were increas-
ingly persuasive. When by the 1780s the secular culture began to stress
the rights of man, free labor, and a belief in progress, anti-slave argu-
ments could gain a foothold. As the Earl of Abingdon said in parliament
in 1793: the idea of abolishing the slave trade is connected with the lev-
elling system and the rights of man. . . what does the abolition of the
slave trade mean more or less, than liberty and equality? What more or
less thanthe rights of man?
158
Inother words, without greater empathy
for slaves, whichwas activelyfosteredbythe abolitionists, andwithout a
way to frame anti-slavery arguments as consistent with the background
of dominant religious/cultural beliefs andthe risingrights of man dis-
course, anti-slave trade and emancipation arguments would likely have
been as unsuccessful as they had been in the past. Similarly, with the
slave trade and slavery abolished, the starting point for other ethical ar-
guments had moved. Ethical arguments that questioned and opposed
forced labor, equating forced labor with slavery, delegitimized forced
labor by analogy and thus depended on the success of anti-slavery
158
Quoted in Walvin, An Africans Life, p. 183.
198
Decolonizing bodies
arguments for their persuasive force. Further, with the rise of free la-
bor beliefs, an alternative practice was not only imagined, but said to be
better for economic and spiritual reasons. As Martin Klein argues:
In the context of European history, it is impossible to argue that society
became more humane, but people certainly began to regard certain
kinds of exploitation as immoral. Slavery eventually became redun-
dant, an inefcient way of getting labour, but emancipation took place
long before that happened. Abolition was often forced on the peri-
phery by a centre committed to a free labour ideology and convinced
that free labour was essential to dramatic growth and transformation
of the capitalist world. This ideology was given its loftiest expres-
sion by the abolition movement spawned by and consistently sup-
ported by Christian Churches. It was also powerful enough that those
non-Western elites who sought to understand Europes ascendancy
invariably saw free labour as a crucial part of that ascendancy. It is
only these ideological agendas that can explain why Europe turned
against slavery when it was still protable . . . Dependent on democrat-
ically elected European parliaments for their budgets, colonial admin-
istrations were vulnerable to the pressures of abolitionist groups and
increasingly had difculty controlling the ow of information about
their policies.
159
At a deep level, the cultural background within which arguments
about slavery and forced labor occurred, changed, allowing arguments
against slavery which had been available for centuries to be heard anew
by a wider audience. Yet to emphasize the role of ethical arguments,
articulated primarily in religious terms during the period of contesta-
tion over slavery and forced labor, does not mean that practical argu-
ments about the economics of slavery and forced labor, or scientic,
and identity arguments were not at work. All sorts of arguments were
used by both the advocates of slavery and forced labor and by those
who fought for abolition. Ethical-religious arguments were especially
salient when the table was dominated by those with strongly held reli-
gious beliefs. Economic (practical) arguments became more salient with
growing secularization and the rise of capitalist economic beliefs. Slav-
ery and forced labor ended because those who made ethical arguments
against those practices were able to convince enough people to support
abolition. They did so by rst denormalizing and delegitimizing slav-
ery and then by humanizing the slave. If domestic politics was crucial
159
Klein, Slavery, p. 213.
199
Argument and change in world politics
in ending British or American slavery, the domestic balance of forces
changed because of ethical argument.
Regulatingandendingslaveryandforcedlabor hadimportant andof-
ten unanticipated consequences for the institution of colonialism. With
the end of slavery and the increasing freedom of colonial labor, some
of the protability of empire decreased. More importantly, however, by
the time the United States, in 1865, and Brazil in 1888, nally ended
slavery, several generations had debated the issue and thousands had
died over the question.
160
Core beliefs had been challenged and altered,
while core practices of colonialism were no longer considered normal
and legitimate. Not only was involuntary labor at issue: European and
American abolitionists directly challenged the notion of the less-than-
humanandinferior status of the dark races.
161
Not only was the material
world different, the starting point, or topoi, of colonial arguments al-
tered once slavery had been abolished and forced labor was challenged.
Which arguments were successful depended on changed identity be-
liefs about others and greater empathy. Abolitionist and free labor argu-
ments helped humanize the inhabitants of the colonies in the minds of
the colonizers. In both cases, reformers institutionalized newnormative
beliefs which had ripple effects throughout the entire colonial system.
For example, forced labor was only abolished in French colonies in 1946
while forced labor continued in Portuguese colonies much longer. The
end of widespread belief in natural slaves, the Aristotelian ideal, was
the end of slavery, while the abolition of colonialism began with the
decolonization of slave and forced laborers bodies.
160
Of course, unfree labor continued well into the twentieth century. Stalin and Hitler
used slave labor during World War II, and only in 1963 did Saudi Arabia formally abolish
slavery. What is signicant beyond the continued existence of unfree labor is that those
who practice slavery and forced labor seek to conceal it, whereas in previous eras, con-
cealment was not considered necessary. See Roger Sawyer, Slavery in the Twentieth Century
(Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, 1986).
161
Gann andDuignan, Burden of Empire, p. 10, argue that slavery was the rst of the great
social issues of the colonies.
200
5 Faces of humanitarianism, rivers
of blood
I made war against them. One example was enough: a hundred heads
cut off, there have been plenty of supplies at the station ever since. My
goal is ultimately humanitarian. I killed a hundred people . . . but that
allowed ve hundred others to live.
1
I cannot forget that the natives are not represented among us, and that
the discussions of the Conference will, nevertheless, have an extreme
importance for them.
2
The fundamental principle of our colonial policy must be scrupulous
respect for the beliefs, habits and traditions of the conquered or pro-
tected peoples.
3
Colonialism wore two humanitarian faces in the late nineteenth and
earlytwentiethcenturies, aggressive andreformist. Aggressive humani-
tarianism a modied, benevolent, colonialism was the famous
white mans burden which European powers took up in Africa, and
theUSshoulderedinthePhilippines. Withthegradual turntoaggressive
humanitarianism, Western colonialism in Africa thus began an uneven
transformation from brute force to what Foucault called disciplinary
power or the panopticon. In the former, power is exercised through
1
LeonFi evez, aBelgianCongoofcial, in1894, quotedinAdamHochschild, KingLeopolds
Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Boston: Houghton Mifin
Company, 1998), p. 166.
2
Sir Edward Malet at the Berlin West Africa Conference quoted in R. J. Gavin and J. A.
Betley, The Scramble for Africa: Documents on the Berlin West Africa Conference and Related
Subjects 1884/1885 (Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press, 1973), p. 131. Spelling as it
was in the original.
3
French Minister of Colonies, Georges L eygu es, in 1906, quoted in R.F. Betts, Methods
and Institutions of European Domination, in A. Adu Boahen, ed., Africa Under Colonial
Domination, UNESCO General History of Africa, VII (Paris: UNESCO, 1985), pp. 313331:
315.
201
Argument and change in world politics
terror anddestruction; inthe latter, while nakedforce is still used, power
is increasingly exercisedthrough discipline, socialization (eliciting com-
pliance by instilling in the other a coincidence of interests and beliefs),
and surveillance.
4
Aggressive humanitarianism became dominant as colonial powers
used anti-slavery arguments to justify greater intervention and colonial
settlement in Africa. In 1883, Lord Granville, Britains minister of for-
eign affairs, would insist to the Portuguese that ending slavery justied
colonial conquest: Her Majestys Government . . . stated their chief ob-
jects to be the abolition of slavery and the civilization of Africa by the
extension of legitimate commerce.
5
Further, the habits and techniques
of international cooperation that grew out of the Concert of Europe and
the anti-slavery patrols fostered more orderly colonization of Africa, at
least among colonial rivals, than had been the case in the Americas.
The aggressive face of humanitarianism and international cooperation
in colonization were exemplied in arguments and beliefs expressed at
the Berlin West Africa Conference in 1884 and in the reality of colonial-
ism in Africa.
Humanitarianisms second face was modestly reformist, though re-
formers ultimately and unwittingly articulated increasingly powerful
anti-colonial arguments and sparked reforms they had little idea would
ultimately mortally weaken colonialism itself. Emerging from the anti-
slavery movement, and fueled by vivid journalistic accounts of colonial
excess, primarily in Africa, organizations like the Aborigines Protec-
tion Society, the African Association, and the Congo Reform Associ-
ations, called for reform, gradually denormalizing and delegitimizing
both naked colonialism and the practices of the aggressive humanitar-
ians. Even as armed resistance to European expansion and revolts in
already colonized areas led by traditional leaders continued, Africans
educatedin European schools also took upthe call for reform. Just as the
anti-slavery movement succeeded in shifting the grounds of argument
from assuming that the brutal exploitation of slavery was an acceptable
means and outcome of European interaction with natives, the colo-
nial reform movement (inadvertently) denormalized colonialism itself
by placing reform on the agenda of colonial governments and into the
practical administration of colonies.
4
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books,
1979).
5
Letter from Granville to DAntas, 15 March 1883, in Gavin and Betley, The Scramble for
Africa, pp. 25: 2.
202
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
The turn of the century was a period of complexity and contradiction
for colonizers. Slavery was no longer a legitimate practice, andtherefore
it was to be fought against, yet for the Victorians, as Ronald Robinson
and John Gallagher argue, Expansion in all its modes seemed not
only natural and necessary but inevitable; it was preordained and ir-
reproachably right.
6
So it was entirely consistent with the dominant
beliefs of the 1880s for British Prime Minister Gladstone to argue for
principled expansion: Remember the rights of the savage, as we call
him. Remember the happiness of his humble home, remember that the
sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter
snows, is as inviolable in the eye of almighty God as can be your own.
7
Gladstones contradictory arguments did not seem contradictory at the
time.
The transition from naked aggression to aggressive humanitarian-
ism is perhaps not so difcult to understand. Aggressive humanitarian
views (we dominate you for your own good, and to show you how
well you are being treated, we will feed you better and give you reli-
gion) were usually articulated by aggressors and it made sense from a
practical standpoint if only to leave some labor to utilize to become
less brutal. The more difcult question is: why and how did aggressive
humanitarianismyieldtoreformism? That colonial expansionwouldul-
timately be seen as conicting with remembering the rights of the
savage resulted from several factors: changing normative and iden-
tity beliefs; a reframing of colonial practices; and greater opportunity
for reformists, including the colonized themselves, to inuence colonial
practices.
First, as discussed at length above, the victory of the anti-slavery
movement challenged or changed core normative beliefs about colo-
nialism and the colonizers relationship to the colonized. The savage
had economic and political rights and deserved progress in both those
realms. Further, while indigenous diplomatic and military resistance to
the colonial effort was erce, it was joined in Europe and the Americas
when the descendants of North American and Caribbean slaves artic-
ulated a Pan-African challenge to colonial oppression and argued for
self-determination. The fact that Western-educated Africans, Indians,
and former slaves in the Americas were able to articulate their criticisms
of colonialism helped decrease, and in some cases bridge, the cultural
6
Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher with Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians:
The Ofcial Mind of Imperialism (London: Macmillan, 1961), p. 3.
7
Quoted in Michael W. Doyle, Empires (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 289.
203
Argument and change in world politics
distance between colonizer and colonized, and evoked empathy for the
colonized. While a colonial discourse of expansion and conquest was
still hegemonic in European capitals, it was increasingly challenged by
humanitarian reformers and by the internal logic of normative beliefs
held among the colonizers. White Europeans who were increasingly
supportive of and allied with Pan-Africans slowly realized that their ar-
guments were compelling in ways they had not anticipated; arguments
for self-determination could not, logically, be limited.
8
Second, the colonial project was reframed when Europeans, who held
these new beliefs about the rights of the natives, learned more about
conditions in colonies, especially those in Congo and Southern Africa.
Prior generations had, of course, learned about and participated in colo-
nial massacres and other atrocities, but they did not do so while hold-
ing new background beliefs about the rights of natives. Earlier gen-
erations had, as a consequence, generally not seen these practices as
massacre and atrocity; their new belief in the humanity of the sav-
ages helped them to understand colonialism in a different way. In
other words, there was greater press coverage of the realities of colo-
nial conquest and administration, in part occasioned by the new beliefs
mentioned above, but knowledge of atrocities alone would not have led
to critique and oversight. New normative beliefs reframed the practices
recharacterizing colonialism from benevolent and legitimate, to at least
suspect.
Third, nineteenth-century Europeans and Americans were more po-
litically active and democratic than ever before. Liberal democratic and
socialist ideas were in full bloom, trade unionism was on the rise, and
suffrage and literacy were expanding. Political organizations dedicated
toward educating the public and persuading them to take action about
conditions in the colonies used the media and democratic institutions
to pressure their governments to reform. Though they used roughly the
same techniques as the abolitionists, greater democracy at home meant
their efforts saw fruition much more quickly in the realm of colonial
policy, because as social movement theory suggests, they had greater
political opportunity. This was a crucial part of changing the balance of
capabilities and power that supported colonial practice.
8
Neta C. Crawford, Decolonization as an International Norm: The Evolution of Prac-
tices, Arguments, and Beliefs, in Laura Reed and Carl Kaysen, eds., Emerging Norms
of Justied Intervention (Cambridge: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1983),
pp. 3761: 53.
204
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
The peak of colonial expansion was initially characterized by great
condence in colonialism, but became increasingly marked by criticism
of colonial practice. At the outset of this period, inaugurated by the
Berlin West Africa Conference of 18841885, colonialism was still un-
derstood as normal by the majority of the colonizers, and enthusiasts
of colonialism formed pro-colonial lobbies. With the exception of the
abolition of slavery, European colonial practices in Africa were about
as brutal as colonialism had been in the Americas. This is most obvious
in the case of the German conquest of South West Africa and Belgian
conduct inthe Congo, so that it is possible to say that inmany ways colo-
nialism reached its peak in Africa, especially in terms of intensity. But
late nineteenth-century European colonialismin Africa was also the his-
torical moment and location of some of colonialisms greatest tensions.
Over the next thirtyyears, colonialismwas denormalizedbythe human-
itarians so that even these horrible practices did not pass unnoticed.
Africa
Making rules of legitimate conquest
Europeans began their voyages to Sub-Saharan Africa in the late 1400s.
For example, Portuguese explorers Jacob Canus and Bartholemew Diaz
landed on the coasts of South West Africa and South Africa, respec-
tively, in the 1480s, setting up crosses to mark their landfall. Missionar-
ies and small commercial companies followed over the next centuries
but Europeans did not enter Africas interior or remain on the coast in
large numbers, inpart because they fearedunknown, andas yet untreat-
able, disease and saw little loot, besides humans, to acquire. With some
help from philanthropists and churches, freed slaves set up colonies
in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, and like their white European counterparts, they largely be-
lieved in the virtues of imperialism and the civilizing mission. In the
mid-1800s, Africans were still represented as savages and Africa was
generallyconsidereddangerous andwithout economic signicance. The
greatest EuropeanAfrican interaction had focused on the slave trade
rst enlarging it and then curbing it. Except for the Dutch trading set-
tlement in South Africa pushed further into the interior by the British,
Europeans were ostensibly content to stay close to the coasts, in trad-
ing posts and small settlements. As late as 1880, some 90 percent of the
continent was stilled ruled by Africans.
205
Argument and change in world politics
Ceuta
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2. Europeans in Africa in 1880
206
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
But European interest in Africa grew, generated by an ambitious
Belgian king, white explorers, commercial interests, and missionaries.
At mid-century, King Leopold of Belgium had great ambitions to set up
a colony somewhere in the world and in 1862 he went to Seville, Spain,
to study records of Spanish colonialism: I am very busy here going
through the Indies archives andcalculating the prot which Spain made
then and makes now out of her colonies.
9
In 1876, Leopold, who was
by then set on acquiring a colony in Africa, convened a Geographical
Conference in Brussels of experts on Africa and famous humanitarians.
He used the meeting to set up an International African Association, os-
tensiblyfor humanitarianpurposes, of whichhe was president. Through
various guises, such as the Committee for Studies of the Upper Congo
and the International Association of the Congo, Leopold established
his interest in the Congo region. Leopold also nanced exploration
by Henry Morton Stanley, who made treaties of free trade for Leopold
along the Congo river. In April 1884, a representative for Leopold got
the US Congress to recognize his claims to the International Association
of the Congo and the International African Association.
Also during the mid and late 1800s, German missionaries and mer-
chants began to buy land in South-West Africa. Bismarck early on had
been opposed to colonial expansion but there was mounting public and
political pressure for colonization. Germany was drawn into Africa af-
ter the missionaries andmerchants appealedfor protection fromnatives
and other European interests, and, in April 1884, Germany declared the
commercial venture of Adolf L uderitz in South-West Africa a protec-
torate. In November 1884, Bismarck called an international conference
todeal withthe international rivalryover the areaknownas the Congo.
10
Although widely thought to be the place where the map of Africa was
redrawn, few borders were actually decided at the Berlin West Africa
Conference of 18841885, though Leopolds new Congo state was rec-
ognized by the conference attendees.
11
Diplomatic recognition of the
Congo would have enormous signicance for people who lived under
Leopolds rule, but the most important issues discussedin Berlin, andin
the diplomatic exchanges that preceded and followed it, were the basic
rules for the partition of Africa by European states. Because the confer-
ence set the terms for conquest by dening the condition of legitimate
9
Leopold quoted in Hochschild, King Leopolds Ghost, p. 37.
10
An overviewis S.E. Crowe, The Berlin West Africa Conference, 18841885 (London: Long-
mans, Green and Co., 1942).
11
Leopold was not at the meeting.
207
Argument and change in world politics
colonial territory as effective occupation, and developed provisions
for notifying other powers of the acquisition of new territory, the Berlin
meeting ensured that European governments partition and occupation
of Africa would proceed without undue risk of war between the great
European powers.
European interest in Africa was propelled by humanitarian, eco-
nomic, and power political reasons. Like the famous African explorer
David Livingston whose African travels, along with those of Stanley
and the French explorer de Brazza had fascinated the European and
American world the Europeans present at the Berlin meeting believed
commerce, Christianity, and civilization were inextricably intertwined.
Colonizers desiredthe glory of empire, anendtoslavery, the resources
and trade of Africa, and they wanted to hold territory that would help
them protect their other colonial interests in the Middle East and across
the Indian Ocean. There was a general acceptance, indeed a positive
glorication, of colonialism among the Great Powers.
Yet tensions that would become contradictions over the next thirty
years were already evident at Berlin. In the face of serious anti-colonial
critiques, diplomats felt compelled to make complex arguments,
grounded in liberal beliefs, to support colonial expansion. Berlin Con-
ference participants frequently mentioned the political rights of native
occupants and discussed efforts to curb the internal African slave trade,
all of which would be ensured through the benets of conquest and free
trade.
12
At the opening of the conference, for instance, Otto von Bis-
marck noted that the purposes of meeting were to end the slave trade
and promote free trade, saying that the meeting should facilitate the
access of all commercial nations to the interior of Africa.
13
Britains
representative, Sir Edward Malet, speaking just after Bismarck, agreed
that the point of the meeting was to ensure freedom of commerce but
he then immediately stated, I must not, however, lose sight of the fact
that, in the opinion of Her Majestys Government, commercial interests
should not be looked upon as the exclusive subject of the deliberations
of the Conference. Malet said, While the opening of the Congo mar-
kets is to be desired, the welfare of the natives should not be neglected;
to them it would be no benet, but the reverse, if freedom of commerce,
12
This is in marked contrast to previous legal treatment of natives: for example, neither
the treaty between Britain and France ending their war in North America in 1763, nor the
treaty between the US and Britain, ending the Revolutionary War, mentioned the natives
whose land was occupied, although natives had fought for both sides in each case.
13
Gavin and Betley, The Scramble for Africa, p. 129.
208
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
unchecked by reasonable control, should degenerate into licence. The
link between humanitarian ideas and commerce are evident.
I venture to hope that this will be borne in mind, and that such precau-
tions will be adopted for the regulation of legitimate commerce as may
tend to insure, as far as possible, that its introduction will confer the
advantages of civilization on the natives, and extinguish such evils as
the internal Slave Trade, by which their progress is at present retarded.
I cannot forget that the natives are not represented among us, and that
the discussions of the Conference will, nevertheless, have an extreme
importance for them. The principle which will command the sym-
pathy and support of Her Majestys Government will be that of the
advancement of legitimate commerce, with security for the equality of
treatment of all nations, and for the well being of the native races.
14
There were other prominent discussions of native rights at the Berlin
conference. For example, the US delegate, Mr. Kasson, attempted to
insert into the nal act, without success, the idea that Modern interna-
tional lawsteadily follows the road which leads to the recognition of the
right of native races to dispose freely of themselves and of their hered-
itary soil. In conformity with this principle, my Government would
gladly adhere to a more extended rule to be based on a principle which
should aim at the voluntary consent of the natives whose country is
taken possession of in all cases where they may not have provoked
the aggression.
15
Declaring that the US had a special interest in slav-
ery given its recent civil war, Kasson proposed that anyone engaged in
slave trafcking ought to be refused the right of residence and that slave
traders should be treated as an enemy of the whole world, just like a
pirate.
16
Humanitarianism and commerce were thus deeply entwined in the
resulting General Act, with the consequence that its second paragraph
stated twin purposes for colonial powers coming to agreement: manag-
ing the process of conquest and rule, and promoting civilization.
Wishing, in the spirit of good and mutual accord, to regulate the con-
ditions most favourable to the development of trade and civilization
in certain regions of Africa, and to assure to all nations the advan-
tages of free navigation on the two chief rivers of Africa owing into
14
Ibid., p. 131.
15
Quoted in Quincy Wright, Mandates Under the League of Nations (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1930), p. 15. A slightly different version is quoted in Malcolm Shaw, Title
to Territory in Africa: International Legal Issues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 42.
16
Gavin and Betley, The Scramble for Africa, p. 228.
209
Argument and change in world politics
the Atlantic Ocean; being desirous, on the other hand, to obviate the
misunderstanding and disputes which might in future arise from new
acts of occupation (prises de possession) on the coast of Africa; and
concerned, at the same time, as to the means of furthering the moral
and material well-being of the native populations . . .
17
Chapter I spelled out the guarantees for free trade, and Chapter II
articulated opposition to slavery, declaring an agreement to employ
all the means at its disposal for putting an end to this trade and for
punishing those who engage in it.
18
That this was a transition moment
is clear in Chapter I, Article 6, which states in part:
All the Powers exercising sovereign rights or inuence in the aforesaid
territories bind themselves to watch over the preservation of the na-
tive tribes, and to care for the improvement of the conditions of their
moral and material well-being, and to help in suppressing slavery, and
especially the Slave Trade. They shall, without distinction of creed or
nation, protect and favour all religious, scientic or charitable institu-
tions, and undertakings created and organized for the above ends, or
which aim at instructing the natives and bringing home to them the
blessings of civilization.
19
The terms for effective occupation were articulated in the General Act
and by the Institute of International Law at its session in Lausanne in
1888 andpublishedin volume 10 of the Institutes Annuaire (18881889).
Occupation was deemed effective when the act of taking possession
was done in the name of a government, other European governments
were notied diplomatically, and order was maintained by a local gov-
ernment. Any disagreements among Europeans about the status of a
territory would be worked out diplomatically, and if this was unsuc-
cessful, the parties will appeal to the good ofces, the mediation, or the
arbitration of one or several third powers. With these rules in place, it
was less likely that the Europeans scramble for Africa would lead to
the kinds of wars that characterized the British and French race for ter-
ritory in North America. And although there were no power political or
economic reasons for this to be part of an international understanding
of European cooperation for conquest, Europeans were obliged to treat
the natives, or aboriginals, with respect.
Art. IV. All wars of extermination of aboriginal tribes, all useless se-
verities, and all tortures are forbidden, even by way of reprisals.
17
Ibid., p. 288.
18
Ibid., p. 292.
19
Ibid., p. 291.
210
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
Art. V. . . . local authority will respect or will cause to be respected
all rights, especially of private property, as well of the aborigines as of
foreigners, including individual and collective rights.
Art. VI. The local authority has the duty of watching over the con-
servation of the aboriginal populations, their education, and the ame-
lioration of their moral and material condition.
20
Cooperation among European governments and aggressive humani-
tarianism became increasingly institutionalized in 18891890 when the
Conference of Brussels, attended by more than a dozen states, agreed to
suppress the Arab slave trade and slavery in Africa, as well as limit the
trade in liquor to Africa.
21
Article I of the Brussels General Act enunci-
ated how the slave trade would be combated through the progressive
organization of the administrative, judicial, religious, and military ser-
vices under the sovereignty or protectorate of civilized nations, the
establishment of strongly occupied stations in the interior, the con-
struction of roads and railways connecting the coast to the interior, and
other means, including the restriction of the importation of rearms, at
least those of a modern pattern, and of ammunition in the areas where
slave trading was being conducted which, according to the treaty, was
most of Sub-Saharan Africa.
22
The colonizers were also to diminish
intestine [sic] wars between tribes by means of arbitration; to initiate
them in agricultural labor and the industrial arts so as to increase their
welfare; to raise them to civilization and bring about the extinction of
barbarous customs . . .
23
Further, the Brussels Act proposed creating
institutional mechanisms to promote abolition, namely international of-
ces in Brussels and Zanzibar and the regular exchange of information
between governments about the slave trade. Although the Brussels of-
ce apparently never opened, other aspects of the act were adhered to;
specically, from the perspective of conquest, the attendees agreed to
restrict the ow of weapons to Africa and they did so with increasing
effectiveness.
20
Lausanne Institute of International Law quoted in Alpheus Henry Snow, The Ques-
tion of Aborigines in the Law and Practice of Nations (New York: G.P. Putnams Sons,
1921), pp. 289291: 290.
21
The participants included representatives from: Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Britain,
Congo, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Norway, Persia, Portugal, Russia,
Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United States, and Zanzibar. See Suzanne Miers, Britain and
the Ending of the Slave Trade (New York: Longman Group, 1975), pp. 236291.
22
Snow, Aborigines in the Law and Practice of Nations, pp. 294306, General Act quotes
from p. 296.
23
Quoted in ibid., p. 297.
211
Argument and change in world politics
Insum, at Berlin, Lausanne, andBrussels the aggressive humanitarian
tone was deeply intertwined with the concerns of free trade and effec-
tive occupation. Diplomats at Berlin felt convinced that both missions
commerce and civilizing were necessarily accomplished with occupa-
tion, and that civilizing would come about through commercial activity.
At Lausanne and Brussels they spelled out how colonial expansion
would be conducted so as to be both safe for Europeans and legitimate.
Thus, while Europeans and North Americans were self-conscious about
the potential illegitimacy of colonialism, late nineteenth-century colo-
nialism was still imbued with high moral fervor, bolstered by theories
of Social Darwinism and white racial superiority.
The civilizing mission and colonial lobbies
By the late nineteenth century, the idea in Europe of a civilizing mission
was already several centuries old. Indeed, for all his concern about Indi-
ans, even Bartolom e de Las Casas wantedto bring religion to the natives
of Central and South America. The Final Act of the Berlin West Africa
Conference provided for the protection of missionaries and others who
would bring Christianity and other benets of civilization to Africa. In-
deed, Christian missionaries often preceded commercial ventures and
settlers in Africa.
Thewider cultural support andcontent for theideas of aEuropeanciv-
ilizing mission were deep in Western European beliefs in the superiority
of their culture and were articulated in new beliefs about European bio-
logical/racial superiority. While earlier in the nineteenth century strong
arguments for monogenism (a single origin for human beings) were
made by the British physician James Pritchard and others, polygenism
hadfoundwider support in anthropology andthe biological sciences by
the middle of the century. Polygenists argued that the different races
of man were so different from each other in their physical, mental and
moral attributes as to form not mere varieties of one single species,
but instead several different biological species of their own.
24
Physi-
cal anthropologists continued to measure humans and to classify them
24
Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain 18001860 (London: Macmillan,
1982), p. 29. Also see Michael Banton, Racial Theories, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998); Pat Shipman, The Evolution of Racism: Human Differences and the
Use and Abuse of Science (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994); Robert Bannister, So-
cial Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1979); Greta Jones, Social Darwinism and English Thought: The Interaction
Between Biological and Social Theory (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1980).
212
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
according to their physical differences while phrenologists argued that
differences inthe humanskull correspondedtodifferences inthe human
brain and mental capacities. Charles Darwins Descent of Man (1871) and
his The Origin of the Species (1859), took for granted a hierarchy of lower
and higher races and were also widely understood to support ideas of
racial hierarchy.
It is well known that these beliefs spread beyond the scientic com-
munity into popular culture and political discourse. In simple terms,
if social life was like the natural order, imperial expansion was natu-
ral. Or as Theodore Roosevelt said at the turn of the century, In this
world the nation that has trained itself to a career of unwarlike and
isolated ease is bound, in the end, to go down before other nations
which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities.
25
Conquest
proved the manliness and superiority of the conqueror, while to be con-
quered demonstrated inferiority, childlikeness, and femininity. Many
Europeans were convinced, as well, of their scientic and technical
superiority.
26
Popular European and American enthusiasm for colonialism proba-
bly peaked between 1880 and 1900, and it was during this period that
the pro-colonial lobbies, who found their support in the widespread
belief in the civilizing mission, had perhaps their greatest visibility
and success at inuencing colonial policy. German public interest and
pressure for colonialism at the time of the Berlin West Africa Confer-
ence was high. In Germany, the Central Society for Colonial Geogra-
phy, was founded in 1878 and the German Colonial Union, founded
in 1882, had some 121 branches and 12,500 members by 1886. The So-
ciety for German Colonization, founded in March 1884, merged with
the German Colonial Union in 1887, forming the Deutsche Kolonial
Gesellschaft with about 16,000 members.
27
Some members of these soci-
eties personally participated in German colonization in East and South
West Africa and the societies pushed for government support of the
colonies.
25
Quoted in Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, Revd edn
(New York: George Braziller, Inc.: 1955), p. 170.
26
See Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of
Western Dominance (Ithaca: Cornell, 1989).
27
W. O. Henderson, The German Colonial Empire, 18841919 (London: Frank Cass, 1993),
pp. 3132; Wolfe W. Schmokel, Dream of Empire: German Colonialism, 19191945 (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1964); Richard A. Voeltz, German Colonialism and the South
West Africa Company, 18841914 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for International
Studies, 1988).
213
Argument and change in world politics
In France, two congresses convened on colonialism in 1889 and 1889
1890. The latter, the National Colonial Congress, specically aimed to
coordinate the activities of the many smaller pro-colonial organiza-
tions and included four dozen members of parliament. The Comit e de
lAfrique fran caise, founded in 1890, sponsored exploration of Africa,
publisheda monthly newspaper to persuade the public of the benets of
colonization, and lobbied the French government in favor of expansion
in Africa. The Union Coloniale Fran caise founded in 1893 was explicitly
concerned with promoting economic development of the colonies for
French commercial interests. Both societies included members of par-
liament as did later organizations, such as the Parti Colonial, formed in
1892, andthe Comit e du Maroc, formedin 1904, to promote French colo-
nialism in Morocco. The French colonial lobby stressed both nationalist
reasons for expansion and the potential economic benets of empire.
28
As Jules Ferry, an ardent advocate of empire argued: Colonies are for
rich countries one of the most lucrative methods of investing capital . . .
I say that France, which is glutted with capital and which has exported
considerable quantities, has an interest in looking at this side of the
question . . . It is the same as that of outlets for our manufactures.
29
Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher argue that British advocates
of expansion were driven similarly by economic, spiritual, and moral
fervor. Since the Evangelical revival and the rise of secular liberalism,
the issues presented by tropical Africa to the British nation had been
derived from the ethical constructs of these movements. They suggest
that Concern for Africa owed from some of the most vivid experi-
ences of Victorian religious and political life. And for this reason the
chief African questions for the Victorians were ones of atonement and
duty. The chains had to be struck from the Africans neck. He must be
converted. He would be civilized. He should be traded with. But for all
their enthusiasm, the earlier Victorians refusedto rule him.
30
However,
late Victorians did rush to rule Africa.
28
Stuart Michael Persell, The French Colonial Lobby, 18891938 (Stanford, CA: Hoover
Institution Press, 1983).
29
Quoted in A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 31.
30
Robinson and Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians, p. 27. They also argue that aside
from those with nancial and trading interests, the impetus for actual formal colonial rule
in Africa, when it came, was ofcial concern for larger strategic goals British rivalry with
France and protection of routes to their lucrative colonial assets in India. Ibid., pp. 191,
463464. But this ignores BritishcolonialisminAfrica that couldnot be clearly or indirectly
linked to strategic assets.
214
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
Conquest, resistance, revolt
The rush to establish effective occupation of Africas interior after the
Berlin West Africa Conference was called the Scramble for Africa and
Europeanstates didjust that, conquering andswindling Africannations
out of their land and political independence, and establishing European
colonies that covered almost the entire continent.
31
Conquest often fol-
lowedthe same script. Africanleaders were offeredtreaties of protection
and free trade by the representatives of a European government inter-
estedin the region. The protection was against war by other European
or African nations and in some cases quite welcome. The free trade
was a monopoly granting exclusive trading rights to the European state.
An African leaders refusal to accede to treaties generally led to war.
Declarations and treaties on free trade and ending slavery were thus
not only rules for Europeans conduct in Africa with other Europeans,
but also legal rationalizations for dispossessing African rulers of their
land if they refused to conduct commerce on European terms or if they
practicedslaveryor allowedslave trading. Some Africanrulers who re-
fused to succumb to the exigencies of British imperialism were arrested
or treacherously trapped and deported fromtheir own countries.
32
For
example, King Jaja of Opobo and others, resisted offers of protection
by the British.
It was only after painstaking explanations and assurances by Consul
Hewett that they consented to sign the treaty less the clauses dealing
with freedom of trade. This consul invited him to dinner on board a
British boat in 1887 and ordered the boat to sail away after King Jaja
and his party had settled down to their dinner. King Jaja was taken to
Accra, and tried and convicted on phony charges of trade monopoly.
He was then deported to the West Indies where he died in 1891. Other
famous African rulers who were deported to the Seychelles included
King Prempeh I of Asante, Bai Bureh of Sierra Leone, and Mukama
Kabarega of Bunyoro. King Prempeh, who was deported in 1896, was
allowed to return to Kumasi in 1924, when the British adjudged him
to be an old and broken man.
33
Because most African leaders thus arrested were exiled for many
years, Boniface Obichere argues that banishment by the British was a
31
See Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa, 18761912 (London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1991).
32
Boniface I. Obichere, African Critics of Victorian Imperialism: An Analysis, Journal
of African Studies 4 (1977), 120: 3.
33
Ibid., p. 3.
215
Argument and change in world politics
very effective method of implanting their own authority in the politi-
cal vacuum which they created.
34
African leaders who werent killed
or kidnapped and banished wrote letters, negotiated with British colo-
nial ofcials on the frontier, and many took up arms to halt colonial
expansion.
Of course, because Africans resisted the Europeans, colonizers also
used brute force, as these lines from a widely quoted poem by Hilaire
Belloc suggest: Whatever happens, we have got/The Maxim Gun, and
they have not.
35
Because Europeans usually had fewer soldiers on the
battleeld, they recruited or coerced Africans to join their militaries. But
the most important factor weighing against the Africans was that the
European militaries deployed superior weapons, and this was ensured
after they agreed at the Brussels meeting in 18891890 to prohibit export
of rearms toAfrica. Thoughsomearms merchants evadedtheembargo,
it was effective at preventing even wealthy African nations fromgetting
the most advanced weapons in sufcient numbers to halt the European
advance.
Despite their military disadvantage, African resistance to occupation
was often intense and sustained. In many cases, African militaries man-
agedto postpone for years the advance of European forces. For instance,
the Ashanti and the Zulu beat the British several times. The Ethiopians,
with an army numbering over 100,000, held off the Italians until 1935
by defeating them in 1896. Even with the embargo, some Africans were
able to acquire modern arms and mobilize large military forces. Samori
Tour e of West Africa built a force of well over 30,000 in 1887 armed
with modern European guns a combination of domestic manufac-
tures and imports paid for partly by trading slaves. Though lacking
artillery, Samori forestalledFrenchconquest for years.
36
The Barue of the
Zambesi similarly opposed Portuguese colonial expansion for several
decades in the late nineteenth century, in part with homemade modern
arms.
37
Still, even with these and other exceptions, prolonged African
military resistance was generally unsuccessful.
34
Ibid., p. 4.
35
Quoted in Hochschild, King Leopolds Ghost, p. 90.
36
See MBaye Gueye and A. Adu Boahen, African Initiatives and Resistance in
West Africa, 18801914, in Boahen, ed., Africa Under Colonial Domination, pp. 114148:
123127.
37
See Alan F. Isaacman, The Tradition of Resistance in Mozambique: Anti-Colonial Activ-
ity in the Zambesi Valley, 18501921 (London: Heinemann, 1976). For summaries of the
armed resistance and revolts, see Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism, pp. 6466
and Bruce Vandervort, Wars of Imperial Conquest in Africa, 18301914 (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1998).
216
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
Once occupied, some Africans collaborated, trying to make the best
of colonial rule, while others attempted to modify and resist it by what-
ever means necessary. As Terrence Ranger argues, virtually every sort
of African society resisted, and there was resistance in virtually every
region of European advance.
38
Some used work stoppages and strikes
to modify colonial governance, and to obtain better working conditions
and wages. Major armed revolts included the Hut Tax Rebellion of 1898
in Sierra Leone, the Asante Rebellion of 1900 in the Gold Coast, the long
Ekumeku Rebellion of 18931906 in Nigeria, and the Ndebele-Shona
Rebellion of 18961897 in Southern Africa. The 19051906 Maji Maji
rebellion in Tanganyika against the Germans was perhaps the largest,
engaging over twenty African ethnic groups spread over 10,000 square
miles. It was also the most brutally repressed uprising in East Africa,
with 75,000 Africans killed, and the German starvation strategy leading
to a famine causing 250,000300,000 more deaths.
Some anti-colonial forces used the pen and formed political institu-
tions to lobby for the maintenance of their own legal institutions and
autonomy. African organizations, such as the Fantsi Amanbuhu Fekuw
of Gold Coast, often combined political and cultural resistance to the
colonizer, and there were a number of Aborigines Rights Protection So-
cieties and similar organizations in the continent. One early reformer,
Reverend Alexander Crummell, born in New York in the early nine-
teenth century and educated in Cambridge, England, was part of the
African-American movement that founded Liberia. Crummell believed
in the virtues of commerce and the progressive force of Western civiliza-
tion in Africa, but he also questioned aspects of the colonial situation.
I am not satised that the wealth of this, our Africa, should make
other men wealthy and not ourselves. It troubles me in the night, and
in the day it vexes me, that of all the moneys poured out here, so little
stays at our own water-side.
39
The intellectuals John Africanus Horton,
Edward Blyden, and James Johnson, were less enamored with Western
civilization. The British-educated West African Horton rejected the idea
that Africans were inferior to any others and he devoted several of his
books to refuting the scientic and anthropological arguments of the
mid-nineteenth century that proclaimed African inferiority. Horton was
38
T.O. Ranger, African Initiatives and Resistance in the Face of Partition and Conquest,
in Boahen, ed., Africa Under Colonial Domination, pp. 4562: 47.
39
Quoted in J. Ayo Langley, Ideologies of Liberation in Black Africa, 18561970: Documents
on Modern African Political Thought fromColonial Times to the Present (London: Rex Collings,
1979), p. 26.
217
Argument and change in world politics
also an early advocate of Pan-Africanism. Blyden, a West Indian who
moved to Liberia in 1851, and a professor of Greek and Latin at Liberia
College, wrote admiringly in several books of traditional African so-
cial, economic, and political systems and was also an early advocate
of Pan-African solidarity. Johnson, a Yoruba who argued for Nigerian
nationalism, believed in Africa for the Africans.
40
Though the European scramble and partition were often effected
by force, argument was still important. The fact that Europeans gave
African leaders opposition to free trade and protection as a ratio-
nale for conquest, rather than proclaiming a natural right to conquest,
signies a shift toward the legalist viewof conquest espoused by Vitoria
and Vattel in opposition to the anything goes positive law view dom-
inant in the past.
Indirect rule
Like its incarnation in the Americas, European colonialism in Africa
consisted of political control, economic expropriation, forced labor, ex-
traction of land and natural resources for little or no compensation, the
payment of tribute to the colonizer, and cultural control, such as forced
religious conversion and education in the language of the metropole.
Colonization in Africa followed a familiar plot: a new land populated
by barbarians and savages was discovered or, in the case of Africa,
explored by missionaries and individual charismatic explorers who
chartedthe area. Next, as in the Americas, private andpublic companies
backed by the might of governments staked claims (concessions), and
began settlements in order to do business. European governments de-
ployed militaries to protect settlers and investments. Colonizers made
treaties of European protection with Africans, while preexisting dis-
agreements and differences between native populations were exploited
so that a divide and rule strategy would succeed. The language, re-
ligion, political, and economic systems of the rst inhabitants of the
area were recognized only as long as it took to subdue the local peo-
ple. Colonizers constructed roads, ports, and railways, with colonial
labor, to facilitate the extraction of resources and settlement of the land
and developed local government in order to coordinate these activi-
ties and signal to other potential colonizers that the area was already
taken.
40
Boahen, AfricanPerspectives onColonialism, pp. 2022andLangley, Ideologies of Liberation,
pp. 3238.
218
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
UNION OF
SOUTH
AFRICA
WALVIS BAY
(British)
S.W.
AFRICA
BASUTOLAND
SWAZILAND
M
A
D
A
G
A
S
C
A
R
Comoro
Is.
(French)
Zanzibar
(British)
Madeira
(Portuguese)
Canary Is.
(Spanish)
IFNI
(Spanish)
SPANISH
MOROCCO
ALGERIA
FRENCH WEST AFRICA
LIBYA
(British-Occupied)
EGYPT
TUNISIA
ANGLO-
EGYPTIAN
SUDAN
EMPIRE OF
ETHIOPIA
(Condominium)
ERITREA
SOMALILAND
(Fr.)(Br.)
S
O
M
A
L
I
L
A
N
D
(
I
t
a
l
i
a
n
)
BRITISH
E. AFRICA
GERMAN
E. AFRICA
BELGIAN
CONGO
KAMERUN
NIGERIA
GAMBIA
PORTUGUESE
GUINEA
SIERRA
LEONE
LIBERIA
GOLD
COAST
T
O
G
O
L
A
N
D
Fernando Po
(Spanish)
So Tom
(Portuguese)
E
Q
U
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R
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F
R
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C
H
A
F
R
I
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NORTHERN
NORTHERN
RHODESIA
BECHUANA-
LAND
SOUTHERN
RHODESIA
NYASALAND
CABINDA
ANGOLA
SPANISH
GUINEA
M
O
R
O
C
C
O
R
I
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D
E
O
R
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UGANDA
DARFUR
(Br. Prot.)
(Br. Prot.)
ot.)
M
O
Z
A
M
B
I
Q
U
E
S
O
U
T
H
E
R
N
Pemba
(Portuguese)
Portuguese
British
British-occupied
French
Belgian
German
Spanish
Italian
0
0
1000
500 1000 miles
2000 km
20E 40E 60E 0 20W
40S
40S
20S 20S
0 0
20N
40N
20W 0 20E 40E 60E
20N
40N
Independent states
Areas ceded by France
to Germany in 1911
DARFUR (was an
independent state not
effectively incorporated
into the Anglo-Egyptian
Sudan at this stage)
3. Europeans in Africa in 1914
219
Argument and change in world politics
In this way, Africa was completely colonized, with the exceptions of
the independent states of South Africa and Ethiopia, by 1914, only a
few decades after colonization began. Italy held Somaliland; Germany
controlled South West Africa, Kamerun, and a portion of East Africa
(Tanzania); Portugal had Guinea, Angola, and Mozambique; Spain had
Rio De Oro (now Western Sahara). Most of the rest of the continent was
run by either Britain or France.
Of course, one major difference between colonialism in the Americas
and Africa was that, after the late nineteenth century, slavery was not
legal in most European colonies in Africa, and all the colonizing na-
tions that met at Berlin had pledged to combat it. However, since most
Africans were little interested in working on the roads, railroads, mines,
and farms of white settlers, and slavery was outlawed, forced labor was
widely used. A second important difference was due to demographics.
While, in the Americas, native populations declined at an astounding
rate, and Europeans found the climate hospitable for colonization and
settlement, Africans did not die in great numbers upon contact with
colonizers, andEuropeans were not immediatelycomfortable inAfrican
climates. Thus, Europeans were well outnumbered by Africans, and in
order to govern Africa without the constant use of force, some sort of
cooperation had to be devised. This meant that in the era of conquest
European armies made use of African troops, usually mercenaries or
conscripts drawn from a different region. It also meant that when it
came time to rule, European governments relied on local African rulers
and collaborators more than they had in the Americas, which meant
keeping some aspects of African political systems in place and using
them in a system of indirect rule.
41
As a French colonial administra-
tor explained, There is no colonization without native policy; no native
policy without a territorial command; and no territorial command with-
out native chiefs who serve as links between the colonial authority and
the population.
42
In terms of concrete everyday practice, indirect rule meant that after
Europeans established military authority, they ruled natives through
41
Muchis oftenmade of differences among styles of French, British, German, Portuguese,
and Belgian administration in Africa. The sharpest contrast is usually described as be-
tween French (direct) and British (indirect) rule. The French tended to crush traditional
authority systems and insert their own method of governance while the British tended
to rule through traditional leaders and leadership structures. While there were important
differences, colonial administration generally embodied varying degrees of indirect rule.
42
Robert Delavignette in 1946, quoted in Betts, Methods and Institutions of European
Domination, p. 317.
220
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
settler administrations which in turn governed through African lead-
ers whose authority Europeans both borrowed and enhanced. Local
chiefs collected taxes, organized the labor pools necessary to satisfy the
demands of the colonizers, and handled disputes among natives. The
police forces were primarily staffed by Africans under the directions of
Europeans. European administrations governed the European settlers
directly through settler administrations.
European governments paid for colonial administration and infra-
structure primarily with taxes on huts or persons, or on protable
European-runconcessions. Taxes alsoforcedAfricans out of their subsis-
tence economies and into the wage economy. As Kenyas governor said
in 1913, We consider that taxation is the only possible method of com-
pelling the native to leave his reserve for the purpose of seeking work.
Only in this way can the cost of living be increased for the native . . . it
is on this that the supply of labour and the price of labour depend. To
raise the rate of wages would not increase, but would diminish the sup-
ply of labour.
43
Colonial governments typically required free Africans,
prisoners, andvagrants to provide periods of labor to the government
for the construction of roads and other infrastructures. Forced labor for
public works and taxes thus subsidized administrative costs.
German South-West Africa
WhenGermanytriedto establishcolonies inEast andSouthWest Africa,
it met with determined African resistance. The Germans crushed this
resistance with enormous brutality, and on the face of it, there seems no
room in this history for the play of argument, much less ethical argu-
ment. As Bismarck said, The great questions of the age are not settled
by speeches and majority votes . . . but by iron and blood.
44
Ultimately,
the Germans killed tens of thousands of Africans in South-West Africa,
subjected most of the rest to forced labor, and took the land and cattle.
After they found diamonds, they took those and made enormous pro-
ts. Nevertheless, arguments identity, practical, scientic, andethical
were an important part of the process, though more often than not native
South-West Africans lost their arguments.
43
Quoted in M.H.Y. Kaniki, The Colonial Economy: The Former British Zones, in Boa-
hen, ed., Africa Under Colonial Domination, pp. 382419: 397.
44
Quoted in Hagan Schulze, Germany: A New History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1998), p. 140.
221
Argument and change in world politics
As they had elsewhere in Africa, religion and commerce preceded
colonial government in South-West Africa. The Portuguese, English and
Dutch hadall set foot on what was to become South-West Africa starting
in the fteenth century, but only German missionaries made an effort
to stake out a settlement. The missionaries were followed decades later,
in 1882, by the entrepreneur Adolf L uderitz, who sought German pro-
tection. Assured of at least qualied protection in 1884, L uderitz suc-
cessfully acquired a great deal of land, mainly on the coast, and thus
German interest in the area grew. As Bismarcks agent Count M unster
wrote to Britains Lord Granville to forestall British interest in the area,
The Imperial Government regards itself bound to afford protection
and encouragement to German subjects carrying on trade in districts
where sufcient protection is not guaranteed by a recognized Civil
organization.
45
Later, when L uderitz was failing nancially, he sold
his assets to the Deutsche Colonial Gesellschaft f ur S udwest Afrika, a
private German corporation which expanded its assets by purchasing
other land from the natives.
Like other colonial powers, German policy was rst to take land from
natives by treaty if possible, and to exploit preexisting disagreements
andconict betweennative leaders, especiallythe long-standingconict
between the two largest groups in the area, the Herero and the Nama.
Those natives who resisted incorporation were to be made to submit. In
1885 Bismarck sent Dr. Heinrich Goering (Hermann Goerings father) to
negotiate treaties of protection with the South West African natives, and
thus the ofcial Germanpresence was extended. The Germans gave their
newly acquired land to other commercial companies, to concessions,
and to settlers, taking the rest as crown land. Some African leaders took
German protection from Goering or later emissaries as part of their
strategy against other groups. For example, in part to help them in their
war with the Nama, the Herero submitted to German protection in
1890. Questioning the wisdom of the alliance, Hendrik Witboi, a Nama
chief, wrote to the head of the Herero after he learned of the treaty:
But dear captain, you have now accepted another Government; you
have surrendered to that Government in order to be protected by an-
other human Government from all dangers, chiey and foremost to be
protected from me in this war . . . You are to be protected and helped
by the German Government, but dear captain do you appreciate what
45
Letter quoted in I. Goldblatt, History of South West Africa from the Beginning of the Nine-
teenth Century (Cape Town: Jutta & Company Limited, 1971), p. 86.
222
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
you have done? . . . but it appears to me that you have not sufciently
considered the matter, having in view your land and people, your de-
scendants who will come after you and your Chieftains rights. Do you
imaginethat youwill retainall therights of your independent chieftain-
ship after you shall have destroyed me (if you succeed)? That is your
idea, but dear Captain in the end you will have bitter remorse, you will
have eternal remorse, for this handing of your land and sovereignty
over to the hands of white people . . . But this thing which you have
done, this giving of yourself into the hands of white people for gov-
ernment, thinking that you have acted wisely, that will become to you
a burden as if you were carrying the sun on your back.
46
The Germans tried to force a treaty with the Nama in 1892 but some,
under Witboi, repeatedly declined and instead made a peace treaty with
the Herero in November. In 1892 Witboi wrote to the British magistrate
in Walvis Bay seeking information:
Germans are encroaching on my land and now even my life is threat-
ened they come to destroy me by War without my knowing what my
guilt is . . . I have been told that it is their intention to shoot me and I ask
Your Honour. Perhaps you can tell me why? Perhaps you will know
because you are parties to a treaty and of you English and Germans
the other nation can do nothing without the knowledge of the other;
because as I have heard (and I ask Your Honour) that the English
Government and the German Government held a big meeting and dis-
cussed to whom this land Africa should be assigned for the purpose
of concluding Protection Agreements with the Chiefs of the land; and
thereupon you English surrendered the land to the Germans. But you
also said at the meeting that no Chief should be compelled by force.
47
Witboi appealed to Britain to curb the Germans. His appeal framed
German behavior as profoundly unjust:
So also has it come to pass that some Chiefs have accepted German
protection. . . . The Germans told those Chiefs that they wished to pro-
tect them from other strong nations, which intended to come into the
land with armies and deprive the Chiefs, by force, of their lands and
farms; and that therefore it was their (the Germans) desire to protect
the Chiefs from such stupid and unjust people . . . but so far as I have
seen and heard, it appears to me wholly and entirely the reverse. The
German himself is that person of whom he spoke, he is just what
he describedthose other nations as. He is doingthose things because he
46
Quoted in Union of South Africa, Report on the Natives of South-West Africa and their
Treatment by Germany (London: His Majestys Stationery Ofce, 1918), p. 20.
47
Quoted in ibid., p. 25.
223
Argument and change in world politics
rules and is now independent, with his Governments laws; he makes
no requests according to truth and justice and asks no permission of
a chief . . . He personally punishes our people at Windhuk and has al-
ready beaten people to death for debt . . . It is not just and worthy to
beat people to death for that . . . He ogs people in a scandalous and
cruel manner. We stupid and unintelligent people, for so he regards
us, we have never yet punished a human being in such a cruel and
improper way. He stretches persons on their backs and ogs them on
the stomach and even between the legs, be they male or female . . .
48
Seeking to crush them if they would not sign up for protection, Ger-
mans under Commander Curt von Fran cois attacked the Nama by sur-
prise in April 1893 at Hornkranz, killing at least eighty people, mostly
women and children. Witboi escaped and decided to go on the offen-
sive. After some ghting during whichneither side couldgainthe upper
hand, the new German ofcer in charge of South West Africa, Theodore
Leutwein, wrote Witboi a letter, and in May the Nama and Germans
came to a truce that would last until 1 August 1894.
49
During the
truce, Leutwein proposed an unconditional surrender, submission,
and charged the Nama with making war against his African neighbors,
which he said was an affront to the German emperor.
50
Witboi refused
to submit and asked instead for a peace that respected both sides.
Witboi and Leutweins arguments
On 18 August 1894, Witboi wrote to Leutwein in an attempt to keep his
autonomy and avoid battle with the Germans. Witbois letter was an
argument for the extension of the principle of self-determination to his
territory, and he again used arguments he thought the colonizer would
recognize and must logically extend to apply to the Nama people. My
dear highly honoured Mr. Leutwein, Major, God has created different
states, and therefore I know and believe that it is no sin or crime that I
should remain Kaptain of my land and my people. If you wish to kill
me on account of my independent rule over my country, and without
any cause on my part, that cannot do me any harm or occasion me any
disgrace, for then I shall die in honour, in defence of my rights.
Witbois letter demonstrates his recognition of the importance of legal
justication for the Germans before the world. He says I bear no
48
Quoted in ibid. The Report notes that Witbois letter was received and transmitted to
the British government.
49
Horst Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting: The Struggle of the Herero and Nama against German
Imperialism (18841915) (London: Zed Press, 1980), pp. 7071.
50
Leutwein to Witboi, quoted in Report on the Natives, p. 84.
224
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
guilt in respect of the things you impute to me as crimes, and which you
employ as grounds for condemning me to death. These are things which
you have conjured up in order to appear before the world as a man who
has honour, right andtruthonhis side. But dear friend, I tell youthat I am
truly free and at ease in my mind, because I know myself to be innocent
of any guilt. Witboi also acknowledged that the German military was
superior to his forces, but, consistent with his strong religious beliefs,
he presumed that the Lord would help him. But you say that might is
right, and in accordance with that, you act towards me because you are
mighty in that you possess arms and all the other weapons. I agree that
you are powerful, and I cannot hold a candle to you. But dear friend,
you come to me with an armed force, and you say you are going to
shoot at me. Well then, I shall return the re; but not in my name, or in
relying on my strength; rather in the name of the Lord and relying on
His strength, and I defend myself with His aid. Finally, Witboi implied
that the Germans would lose the ethical argument in the eyes of the
world and made a last plea for peace: You wish to lay on me the blame
for the shedding of blood, but that is out of the question. I have offered
you peace, and still do so a genuine peace and I ask you to leave me
in peace.
51
Witbois letter was probably written too late, since Major Leutwein
had already called for reinforcements and planned to attack again once
those forces arrived. In any case, Leutwein replied a few days later:
all further letters in which you do not offer me your submission are
useless . . . .
52
Witboi said nothing and German troops, reinforced, went
to war against the Nama. Witboi and the Nama lost when their ammu-
nition and food ran out, and they were forced to sign a treaty with the
Germans in mid-September.
Leutweins treaty was, after all, not premised on a total surrender for
the Nama they were allowed to keep their weapons and many in
Germany, and a number of settlers in South-West Africa, thought the
treaty should not be approved by the chancellor. The settlers, and the
ofcer Leutwein had replaced, argued that Leutweins terms were too
lenient. Fran cois said: Comparedwith the damage Witbooi has caused,
I regard the . . . peace as far too mild. The war against Witbooi has cost
the German Empire approximately four million Marks. The damage it
51
Witboi letter to Leutwein quoted in Goldblatt, History of South West Africa, pp. 122123.
This is similar to statements the Melians made to the Athenians during the Peloponnesian
War.
52
Quoted in Report on the Natives, p. 85.
225
Argument and change in world politics
has caused in the colony is at least as great. But he appears to have lost
only areas that are at great distance from Gibeon [Witbois home]; his
tribe remains united; he retains his weapons and, it seems, the captured
ries as well; and he receives a salary of 2,000 Marks.
53
Leutwein was compelled by the criticism to explain his conduct in
the war and make a practical argument for the German governments
recognitionof his treatywithWitboi. Ina letter tothe Germanchancellor,
Leutwein humbly said he thought his negotiated settlement was the
wisest move given the possibility of a prolonged war if total surrender
was the object. He wrote:
All my detractors operate onthe premise that I was free to treat Witbooi
as I wished and that I acted in the way I did for reasons that are im-
possible to understand. I must submit, Your Grace, that this was not
so. In all colonial wars in which one faces a really formidable enemy, it
is a question of either destroying him or coming to an understanding
with him. As we have seen on more than one occasion, victory alone
is of no avail and severe punishment will only produce a secret enemy
intent on casting off his shackles. This is a lesson I have drawn fromthe
study of English colonial history from which we Germans can learn
much more than that.
54
Rather than trying to totally defeat the Nama, a negotiated settlement
was the wisest thing for Germany since Witboi was still strong and
defeating his forces would have required 3,000 instead of 300 ries.
Leutwein was, of course, making an economic argument as well as a
diplomatic one Germany could ill afford the expense of a long war
and he implored the chancellor to make the case to the emperor. But, he
said, If Your Grace does not subscribe to my view, nothing has been lost
either, since he could easily resume war against the Nama: I should
have no difculty in nding a pretext that would put Kaptein Witbooi
in the wrong.
55
The emperor did agree to Leutweins treaty, and this inaugurated
an almost eleven-year period of coexistence between the Germans and
Nama where Witbois forces even assistedthe Germans divide andcon-
quer strategy, helping to suppress other Africans. Leutwein successfully
fed the friction between Nama and Herero. Leutwein said:
The war with Witboi had, at the very beginning of my colonial activ-
ity, opened my eyes to the difculty of suppressing native risings in
53
Quoted in Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, p. 78.
54
Quoted in ibid., pp. 7879.
55
Quoted in ibid., p. 79.
226
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
South-West Africa. Since that time I have used my best endeavor to
make the native tribes serve our cause and play them off one against
the other. Even an adversary of this policy must concede to me that it
was more difcult, but also more serviceable, to inuence the natives
to kill each other for us than to expect streams of blood and streams of
money from the Old Fatherland for their suppression. . . .
56
Despite their great numerical superiority, the Nama, Herero, and
other peoples of South-West Africa were unable tokeepGermansettlers,
of whomthere were about 3,700 in1903, at bay.
57
Only the Ovambo, who
lived farthest from the majority of German settlers and their military,
were left relatively alone. The Africans weakness was due in part to
the Germans military superiority, but was also because they were dev-
astated by epidemics. A rinderpest epidemic in 1897 wiped out much
of the cattle on which they depended for subsistence; an epidemic of
typhoid fever the following year further weakened the Africans. The
German expropriation of land continued, and a system of Native Re-
serves was established in 1898. Thus, the German colonial government
reduced the Africans to the state of rightlessness. And, Displaying
a blatantly racist attitude, the Germans described Africans as baboons
and treated them accordingly.
58
German behavior in South-West Africa was not natural; it had to be
argued before it could be implemented. The colonists arguments de-
pended on social Darwinist identity and normative beliefs, namely the
belief in German superiority, and the ability to dominate militarily jus-
tied such domination. As one high-ranking German colonial ofcial,
Paul Rohrbach, wrote:
The decision to colonise in South-West Africa could after all mean
nothing else but this, namely that the native tribes would have to give
uptheir lands onwhichthey hadpreviously grazedtheir stock inorder
that the white man might have the land for grazing his stock.
When this attitude is questioned from the moral law standpoint,
the answer is that for the nations of the Kulture-position of the
56
Leutwein, quoted in Report on the Natives, p. 10.
57
Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, p. 244.
58
Ibid., p. 132. As one missionary observed The real cause of the bitterness among the
Hereros toward the Germans is without question the fact that the average German looks
down upon the natives as being about on the same level as the higher primates (baboon
being their favorite term for the natives) and treats them like animals. The settler holds
that the native has a right to exist only in so far as he is useful to the white man. It follows
that the whites value their horses and even their oxen more than they value the natives.
Quoted in Jon M. Bridgman, The Revolt of the Hereros (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1981), p. 62.
227
Argument and change in world politics
South African natives, the loss of their free national barbarism and
their development into the class of labourers in service of land and
dependent on the white people is primarily a law of existence in the
highest degree.
It is applicable to a nation in the same way as to the individual, that the
right of existence is justied primarily in the degree that such existence
is useful for progress and general development.
By no arguments whatsoever can it be shown that the preservation of
any degree of national independence, national property, and political
organizationby the races of South-West Africa, wouldbe of a greater or
even of an equal advantage for the development of mankindin general
or of the German people in particular, than the making of such races
serviceable in the enjoyment of their former possessions by the white
races.
59
Consistent with these beliefs and arguments, German colonial rule
over Africans was harsh. German settlers who took land and cattle from
the Africans and coerced them into labor were ignored or assisted by
the German police. The fewGerman settlers who were tried for murder-
ing or ogging Africans were often given light sentences or acquitted,
while the rule of thumb in cases where Africans killed Germans was a
death sentence. As German director of land settlement, Karl Dove, said:
leniency towards the natives is cruelty to the whites.
60
The large-
scale theft of thousands of head of cattle under the pretext that the
grazing cattle were trespassing on German land, or later through swin-
dling, was particularly enraging to Africans though they could do little
about it.
61
One African, Daniel Kariko, described the cattle swindle this
way:
Our people were being robbed and deceived right and left by German
traders, their cattle were taken by force; they were ogged and ill-
treatedandgot noredress. Infact the Germanpolice assistedthe traders
instead of protecting us. Traders would come along and offer goods.
When we said we had no cattle to spare, as the rinderpest had killed so
many, they said they would give us credit. Often. . . the trader would
simply off-load goods and leave them saying that we could pay when
we liked, but in a few weeks he would come back and demand his
money or cattle in lieu thereof. He would then go and pick out our
very best cows he could nd. Very often one mans cattle were taken
to pay other peoples debts. If we objected and tried to resist the police
59
Rohrbach, quoted in Report on the Natives, p. 19.
60
Quoted in ibid., p. 49.
61
Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, pp. 117119.
228
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
would be sent for and, what with the oggings and the threats of
shooting, it was useless for our poor people to resist. . . . They xed
their own prices for the goods, but would never let us place our own
valuation on the cattle. They said a cow was worth 20 marks only. For
a bag of meal they took eight cows . . . Some debts they claimed had
never existed . . .
62
Rebellion and rivers of blood
In late 1903 the Bondelswartz of the southern region of South-West
Africa rebelled after the Germans promulgated regulations compelling
them to regard a white man as a superior being, and proclaimed that
the evidence of a white man can only be outweighed by the state-
ments of seven coloured persons in court.
63
German authorities had
also interfered in an internal dispute, despite treaty provisions grant-
ing autonomy to the Bondelswartz in such matters, and in the process
they killed a Bondelswartz leader. When German troops moved south
to crush the Bondelswartz uprising, the Herero people, led by Samuel
Mahero, began a revolt that shocked the Germans with its intensity
and initial success. The Herero only targeted German men and would
spare the Boers, British, and other African groups: We decided that we
would wage war in a humane manner and would kill only the German
men who were soldiers, or would become soldiers.
64
Even with these
limitations, in a few weeks in January 1904, the Herero mounted a seri-
ous challenge to the German presence, and despite a shortage of arms
and ammunition, they again took the initiative in April and May. Only
when Governor Leutwein was reinforced by troops from Germany did
German forces take the initiative. By August, the Herero were in retreat.
The chief of the Army General Staff, Graff Schlieffen, was put in charge
of the operation, which he ran from Germany.
Because he was considered too lenient, inadvertently encouraging
the uprising, Leutwein was replaced in July as military commander by
General Lothar von Trotha, already well known for his ruthlessness in
colonial wars in China and East Africa. Trotha told Leutwein in 1904:
I know enough tribes in Africa. They all have the same mentality in-
sofar as they yield only to force. It was and remains my policy to apply
this force by unmitigated terrorism and even cruelty. I shall destroy the
rebellious tribes by shedding rivers of blood and money.
65
Von Trotha
62
Quoted in Report on the Natives, pp. 4748.
63
Leutwein quoted in ibid., p. 33.
64
Quoted in ibid., p. 57.
65
Trotha quoted in Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, p. 154.
229
Argument and change in world politics
gave orders on 2 October 1904 to shoot every Herero: I believe that the
Herero must be destroyed as a nation.
66
Cash bounties for rebellion
leaders, dead or alive, were offered by the general. On 29 October, the
general asked Herero leaders to come in to arrange a peace treaty and
when they arrived, he had them shot.
67
Von Trotha then issued orders that every Herero within German
boundaries was to be shot regardless of whether or not they were
armed. Although the orders were later revised to be less harsh, von
Trotha nevertheless continued the policy with the support of General
Schlieffen, whowrote on23 November: One mayagree withTrotha that
the whole nation must be destroyed or driven out of the country. After
what has happened the co-existence of whites and blacks will be very
difcult, unless the blacks are kept in a state of forced labour, indeed a
kind of slavery. Racial war, once it has broken out, can only be ended by
the destruction of one of the parties.
68
To escape the German troops,
the Herero went east into the desert and the General Staff decided that
driving them into the desert would be their policy: The arid Omaheke
was to complete what the German Army had begun: the extermination
of the Herero nation.
69
Under Trothas orders, and with the knowledge
of the General Staff, the militarythenblockedoff other routes, andforced
the Herero into the desert where many died of thirst.
Many Germans objected to the policy of exterminating the Herero.
70
Those who opposed German policy, and especially von Trothas ex-
termination order, included the chancellor, Prince von B ulow, who ar-
gued to the kaiser that the order was contradictory to all Christian
and humane principles.
71
Notably, B ulow did not oppose concentra-
tion camps where the rest of the Herero people would be placed and
kept for the time being.
72
Rather, von B ulowargued pragmatically that
extermination was unwise since the native population was essential
both for farming and stock-breeding and for mining and was detri-
mental to Germanys place among the civilized nations and would add
66
Quoted in Peter Katjavivi, A History of Resistance in Namibia (Trenton, NJ: Africa World
Press, 1988), p. 10. Also see Goldblatt, History of South West Africa, pp. 132133 and Helmut
Bley, Namibia Under German Rule (Hamburg: Lit Verlag, 1996), p. 164.
67
Report on the Natives, pp. 5960.
68
Quoted in Bley, Namibia Under German Rule, p. 165.
69
General Staff, Die K ampfe der deutschen Truppen in S udwestafrica, auf Grund amtichen
Materials bearbeitet von der Kriegsgeschichtlichen Abteilung I des Grossen Generalstabes (Berlin:
1906), vol. I, p. 207, quoted in Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, pp. 155156.
70
Henderson, German Colonial Empire, p. 86.
71
Quoted in Bley, Namibia Under German Rule, p. 163.
72
Quoted in Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, p. 165.
230
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
fuel to the violent campaign already being waged against Germany.
73
The head of the German Colonial Department, St ubel, argued that the
extermination program was damaging to the Germany army.
74
On the
other hand, Schlieffen thought von Trotha was correct: The intention
of General von Trotha can therefore be approved. The only problem is
that he does not have the power to carry it out.
75
The General Staff felt
constrained by public opinion which Schlieffen noted was against ex-
termination, and therefore, he said, Trothas plan could not be carried
through successfully in the face of present opinion.
76
On 8 December
1904, though much of the damage had already been done, Trothas ex-
termination order was countermanded. A few thousand Herero were
able to cross the desert into other territory, while others were able to slip
across German lines and nd shelter elsewhere in South-West Africa.
The remaining Herero were put in concentration camps.
The Herero, whohadaskedthe Nama tojointhemat the outset of their
rebellion, fought alone and were essentially defeated when the Nama,
again led by Hendrik Witboi, nally took up arms against the Germans
in October 1904. Since the settlers were calling on the German army to
exterminate the Nama as well as the Herero, they feared attack after
von Trotha nished with the Herero. About 1,2001,400 Nama fought a
German force in South-West Africa of about 10,000. Even with far supe-
rior repower, due to their limited mobility, the Germans were unable
to quickly defeat the Nama.
77
Thus, the war dragged on and General
von Trotha was withdrawn from South-West Africa in November 1905
before he was able to defeat the Nama.
78
The Nama were able to ght
for several years, but like the Herero, they faced a de facto policy of ex-
termination and were slowly crushed, with the last Nama rebels nally
being put down in March 1908.
The 1911 census reveals howefcient German strategy and the subse-
quent camps were: about 50 percent of Nama people (whose population
had been estimated at about 20,000 in 1904) and 75 to 80 percent of the
Herero population (estimated at about 80,000 in 1904) had been killed
by German forces by the end of 1905.
79
On the other hand, a total of 676
73
Quoted in Bley, Namibia Under German Rule, p. 166.
74
Bley, Namibia Under German Rule, pp. 166167.
75
Quoted in Bridgman, Revolt of the Hereros, p. 130.
76
Quoted in Bley, Namibia Under German Rule, p. 165.
77
See Bridgman, Revolt of the Hereros, pp. 140 and 169.
78
Still, General von Trotha was given the Order of Merit by the Kaiser in 1905. Pakenham,
The Scramble for Africa, p. 615.
79
Report on the Natives, p. 35. Bley, Namibia Under German Rule, p. 150.
231
Argument and change in world politics
Germans were killedinaction, 689 diedfromillness, 907 were wounded,
and 76 were missing; the cost of putting down the rebellion, up to 1906,
was estimated at 182 million Marks.
80
By its end in 1908, the war was
estimated to have cost Germany nearly 500 million Marks.
81
Conditions were brutal for Africans followingGermanvictory. Herero
andNama survivors were sent to camps where about 45 percent of them
died.
82
Hosea Mungunda, described by the British as a Herero headman
at Windhuk, testied about conditions for survivors:
Those who were left after the rebellion were put into compounds and
made to work for their food only. They were sent to farms, and also
to the railways and elsewhere. Many were sent to Luderitzbucht and
Swakopumund. Many died in captivity; and many were hanged and
oggednearly to death anddiedas a result of ill-treatment. Many were
mere skeletons when they came in and surrendered, and they could
not stand bad food and ill-treatment.
. . . The young girls were selected and taken as concubines for the sol-
diers; but even the married women were assaulted and interfered
with. . . When the railways were completed and the harbour works,
we were sent out to towns and to farms to work. We were distributed
and allocated to farmers whether we liked them or not.
83
A 1907 law obliged all natives over the age of seven to carry passes.
Other ordinances prohibited natives from owning land, riding animals
or cattle, and decreed that natives without visible means of subsis-
tence would be treated as vagrants.
84
Punishment for vagrancy, de-
sertion, negligence, disobedience and insolence included lashes and/or
imprisonment. One European, Johann Noothout, who visited South-
West Africa after the rebellion noted, If a prisoner were found outside
the Herero prisoners camp, he would be brought before the Lieutenant
and ogged with a sjambok. Fifty lashes were generally imposed. The
manner in which the ogging was carried out was the most cruel imag-
inable . . . pieces of esh would y from the victims body into the air.
85
German farmers were also widely known to abuse the Africans who
worked for them.
80
Bridgman, Revolt of the Herero, pp. 164; Henderson, German Colonial Empire, p. 81.
81
John H. Wellington, South West Africa and its Human Issues (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1967), p. 212.
82
Bley, Namibia Under German Rule, p. 151.
83
Quoted in Report on the Natives p. 101.
84
German colonial law quoted in ibid., p. 111.
85
Noothout quoted in ibid., p. 100.
232
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
Role of argument
German colonizers certainly used arguments as well as the whip and
rie. But Witbois arguments, their futility, and the history of German
slaughter of Nama and Herero people in South-West Africa appear to
be powerful evidence against my claim that ethical arguments are im-
portant in world politics. Indeed, this history illustrates the obvious: not
all ethical arguments are successful.
Witbois arguments failed for at least three reasons. First, and most
important, the prevailing beliefs among the Germans did not allow
the majority of German settlers to see the humanity of the Nama and
other people of South-West Africa. Witbois arguments simply did not
make sense. Second, the most important argument was not between
Witboi and Leutwein or between any South-West African and German.
What determined German behavior were arguments within Germany
and among Germans and other civilized countries. Witbois argu-
ments might have been more effective had the audience that the Ger-
mans themselves had to address been less convinced of the rightness of
colonial conquest. As it was, Reichstag debates over German South
West Africa policy showed that many members were convinced of
the less than fully human status of the South-West Africans, and a
policy of extermination was therefore acceptable, at least for a time.
As Graf Ludwig zu Reventlow said in 1904 during the Reichstag
debate: Of course we are for humanity with respect to human be-
ings of all kinds; but in contradiction to some of the orators preced-
ing me, I would conclude by abjuring the interested authorities: Do
not apply too much humanity to bloodthirsty beasts in the form of
humans. German colonial theorist Paul Rohrbach argued that the
Herero lacked the capacity to be educated to moral independence.
86
Yet ethical arguments were also made against German policy. Dur-
ing one debate in the Reichstag, Social Democrat August Bebel called
the German actions, not just barbaric, but bestial.
87
The extermi-
nation order was ultimately countermanded by the civilian govern-
ment, although it was too late for the majority of the Herero and
Nama.
86
Quoted in Helmut Walser Smith, The Talk of Genocide, the Rhetoric of Miscegena-
tion: Notes on Debates in the German Reichstag Concerning South West Africa, 190414,
in Sara Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox, and Susanne Zantop, eds., The Imperialist Imagi-
nation: German Colonialism and its Legacy (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press,
1998), pp. 107123: 107, 114.
87
Quoted in ibid., p. 111.
233
Argument and change in world politics
Third, the dominant European culture (the table on which German
arguments were made) was consistent with German beliefs and behav-
ior. German behavior was not unusual for conquerors, though the scale
of killing in 1904 might have been unusual for colonial policy in the
early twentieth century. Indeed, it was only during and after World
War I, when Europeans argued that captured German colonies should
not be returned to Germany, that Europeans paid much attention to
the German slaughter and their subsequent treatment of the natives in
South-West Africa.
88
For instance, Britain published the famous Blue
Book, the Report on the Natives of South-West Africa and their Treatment by
Germany, in 1918, with testimony of South-West Africans and other evi-
dence of Germanatrocities inSouth-West Africa, includingphotographs
of manacles, hangings, and the shredded backs of natives who had been
lashed.
89
Reform
Germanpolicytowardthe Africans inSouth-West Africachangedinsev-
eral important respects after 1908. TheCenter andSocial Democratic Par-
ties in Germany advocated reforming colonial policy toward Africans.
The Reichstag and the Colonial Ofce, under its new secretary, Bern-
hard Dernburg, passed laws for reforming the treatment of Africans in
South West Africa. The L uderitz Bay Chamber of Mines and the railway
construction concerns made native welfare an explicit preoccupation.
90
Why? First, the extermination program turned stomachs in Germany
and South-West Africa and some farmers and missionaries advocated
more humane policies.
91
Second, there was an inadequate supply of la-
bor. After the natives lost the right to own cattle and land, most of the
remaining African labor worked on white farms or in copper mining.
Though there had been an extensive search for diamonds and gold,
diamonds were not discovered in South-West Africa until April 1908.
88
D. Chanaiwa, African Initiatives and Resistance in Southern Africa, in Boahen,
ed., Africa Under Colonial Domination, pp. 194220. Wm. Roger Louis, Great Britain and
Germanys Lost Colonies, 19141919 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), p. 16; Wright, Man-
dates Under the League, p. 28.
89
The Germans replied in 1919 with a White Book that argued that German treatment
of natives in the colonies was no worse than what the British did against the Boers and
elsewhere andsuggestedthat some ofcers inSouthWest Africa hadrefusedto followvon
Trothas exterminationorder. Die Behandlung der einheimischen Bevolkerung in den Kolonialen
BesitzungenDeutschlands und Englands (Berlin, 1919). Alsosee Wellington, South West Africa
and its Human Issues, pp. 236237.
90
Henderson, German Colonial Empire, p. 114.
91
Bley, Namibia Under German Rule, p. 226.
234
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
After their discovery, South-West Africa, whichhadnot beena protable
colony, became protable, at least for the shareholders of the German
South-West Africa Companyonwhose landthe diamonds were found.
92
By 1913, whites in South-West Africa, who numbered 14,840 in 1913, de-
pended even more on African labor, of which 12,523 were employed on
farms and 9,541 were employed in industry such as railroad construc-
tion and mining for copper and diamonds.
93
While on a visit to South-West Africa in August 1908, Secretary
Dernburg framed the reasons for reform in practical terms.
At the moment, 2 percent of the country has been colonized and yet
already there is a notable shortage of labour. We therefore are forced
to improve living conditions for the natives, in order to preserve them
as a labour force both for present needs and as a healthy new gener-
ation in the future. Appropriate measures include medical attention,
the provision of the natives former foodstuffs particularly milk for
the Herero and permission for the Herero to buy cattle.
94
In March 1909 Dernburg also gave an ethical argument for aggressive
humanitarian reforms:
It has often been said. . . that everywhere in Africa where Europeans
can work. . . the destruction of the blacks is a law of nature which will
be fullled in native wars. This is a very questionable assumption.
It is out of keeping with our position as a civilizing and protecting
power. It makes colonization a process of deliberate exploitation and
as the history of South-West Africa shows it causes Germany endless
sacrices. It also offends the moral sensitivity of the greater part of our
nation, on which our colonial policies are based. In Germany we do not
attempt to live according to Darwinist principles: on the contrary, civi-
lization has the task of offering assistance and protection to the weak
and helpless, to the morally and economically underprivileged. This
must remain our policy towards our fellows in SWA, at least towards
those who remain loyal to us.
95
This statement articulates the rift between the majority of German set-
tlers andthecolonial administrationandsuggests hownakedaggression
slid toward aggressive humanitarianism and made room for reformist
arguments andaction. Colonial administrators andcivil servants, taking
92
Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, p. 244. Drechsler argues that, with the exception of
Togo, none of the German colonies were protable, p. 247.
93
Ibid., p. 244; Bley, Namibia Under German Rule, p. 198.
94
Quoted in Bley, Namibia Under German Rule, p. 230.
95
Quoted in ibid., p. 231.
235
Argument and change in world politics
their lead fromthe Colonial Ofce, began to defend Africans against the
excesses of colonial settlers for both pragmatic and normative reasons.
Local newspapers also talked of colonial excesses committed by so-
called dubious elements in the settler community, the black sheep
and scoundrels, and there was an admission by some of the settlers
that, in at least a few cases, a settler disciplining his African workers
went too far.
96
Though sentences were light, some whites were prose-
cuted for ill-treating their African workers and the practice of ogging
withsjamboks, althoughit continued, met withgreater scrutinyandwas
more often prosecuted when it went to what the settler administration
thought was extremes.
97
German administration of South-West Africa
came to an end in 1915 when the colony was invaded by South African
troops in World War I, so it is not possible to say how far the Germans
would have gone with these modest reforms.
The United States and the Philippines
In response to an anti-colonial revolt in Cuba, Spain imprisoned Cuban
civilians in reconcentration camps where terrible conditions killed
more than 200,000 people. Citing Spanish abuses, the US government
framedtheir war against Spainin1898 as ananti-colonial exercise, while
others represented the war and other elements of US turn of the century
foreign policy as part of a struggle of the ttest. In an 1899 speech,
The Strenuous Life, Theodore Roosevelt said: We cannot avoid the
responsibilities that confront us in Hawaii, Cuba, Porto [sic] Rico, and
the Philippines. All we can decide is whether we shall meet them in a
way that will redound to the national credit, or whether we shall make
of our dealings with these new problems a dark and shameful page in
our history. It was an identity argument: real men are imperialists:
The timid man, the lazy man, the man who distrusts his country, the
over-civilized man who has lost the great ghting, masterful virtues,
the ignorant man, and the man of dull mind, whose soul is incapable
of feeling the mighty lift that thrills stern men with empires in their
brains all these, of course shrink from seeing the nation undertake
its new duties . . .
I preach to you then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for
the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth
96
Ibid., pp. 254255, 264265.
97
Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting, p. 235; Bley, Namibia Under German Rule, pp. 263267.
236
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand
idlyby, if we seekmerelyswollen, slothful ease andignoble peace, if we
shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their
lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger
peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of
the world.
98
The US took Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines in the war
and set up the administrations in these islands despite intense domes-
tic opposition to the policy. The argument for the US occupation of the
Philippines was aggressive humanitarianism. The US Philippine Com-
mission, set up to govern the archipelago islands, issued a proclamation
on 4 April 1899 stating that the aim. . . is the well-being, the prosperity,
and the happiness of the Philippine people, and their elevation and ad-
vancement to a position among the most civilized people in the world.
Further, the commission emphatically asserts that the United States is
not only willing, but anxious, to establish in the Philippine Islands an
enlightened system of government under which the Philippine people
may enjoy the largest measure of home rule and the amplest liberty
consonant with the supreme ends of government. The proclamation
promised that the US would enforce its sovereignty: those who re-
sist it can accomplish no other end than their own ruin. The procla-
mation then articulated the rights of the Philippine people and the obli-
gations of the US government to provide the most ample liberty of
self-government . . . which is reconcilable with the maintenance of US
administration as well as roads, railroads, and schools.
99
On 3 December 1900, President McKinley said to the American peo-
ple that US possession of the Philippines was an unsought trust
which should be unselshly discharged.
100
Politicians and academics
at the turn of the century described Filipinos as semi-civilized, good
imitators, imprudent, with characteristics of a faithful dog or
monkey.
101
Consequently, Filipinos must be led to civilization, or as
President McKinley said, they were wards of the US. Our obliga-
tion was not lightly assumed; it must not be otherwise than honestly
fullled, aiming rst of all to benet those who have come under our
98
Quoted in Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, p. 180.
99
Quoted in Snow, Aborigines in the Law and Practice of Nations, pp. 329331.
100
Quoted in League of Nations, The Mandates System: Origin, Principles, Application
(Geneva: League of Nations, 1945), p. 11.
101
Quoted in Roxanne Lynn Doty, Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in
North-South Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 3841.
237
Argument and change in world politics
fostering care.
102
Elihu Root, secretary of war from 1899 to 1904, when
the US was establishing the administration of the Philippines by force,
said of US government:
We undertook to go a little farther thanother countries hadgone, andto
make the rst consideration of our government in the islands the train-
ing of the inhabitants inthe difcult art of self-government, so that they
would as soon as possible become competent to govern themselves in-
stead of being governed by us. Accordingly, one of the rst things that
we didwas to sendover teachers by the shipload thousands of them
and to establish schools all over the islands. And then we provided a
form of government under which the Philippines should receive what
may be called clinical instruction in administration and in the applica-
tion of the principles which we consider vital to free self-government
andwe providedthat, stepbystep, just as rapidlyas theybecame famil-
iar with the institutions of free government and capable of continuing
them, the powers of government should be placed in their hands. I am
sure that this view of suitable treatment of the Philippines, so long as
we are to be inthe islands at all, commends itself to the best intelligence
and practical idealism of the American people.
103
While stressing American benevolence in contrast to Spanish corrup-
tion and brutality, Root and others underemphasized the consequences
of the US governments counter-insurgency war in the Philippines.
Some 20,000 guerrilla rebels died, and about ten times that number died
of war-related disease and hunger.
The US government generally argued that occupation was tempo-
rary, while opponents, including socialists and Democratic Party leader
WilliamJennings Bryan, made ethical, practical, andidentity arguments
against war and occupation. One black newspaper editorialized: For
the question of self-government or subjection for the Filipinos is the
102
QuotedinWright, Mandates Under the League, p. 13. Later presidents also framedthe US
role as guardianship: Theodore Roosevelt said, inDecember 1904, that he earnestlyhoped
that in the end they will be able to stand, if not entirely alone, yet in some such relation to
the United States as Cuba now stands. The US was attempting to develop the natives
themselves so that they shall take an ever-increasing share in their own government.
Robert Taft said in December 1912, We are seeking to arouse a national spirit and not, as
under the older colonial theory, to suppress such a spirit. Woodrow Wilson called the US
a trustee of Filipino people in 1915. Wright, Mandates Under the League, pp. 1314.
103
Quoted in Snow, Aborigines in the Law and Practice of Nations, pp. 333334. Similarly,
in 1901 the US Supreme Court implied that US occupation of Cuba was temporary when
it held that the island was territory held in trust for the inhabitants of Cuba to whom
it rightfully belongs and to whose exclusive control it will be surrendered when a stable
government shall have been established by their voluntary action. US Supreme Court
in Neeley v. Henkel (1901), quoted in Wright, Mandates Under the League, p. 13.
238
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
old slavery question put in another form.
104
In 1898, US labor leader
Samuel Gompers argued against expansion, saying it was against the
great principle of self-government of the people, for the people, by the
people. And, he said, Is it not strange that now, for the rst time,
we hear that the Cubans are unt for self-government . . . Gompers
warned with regard to the Philippines, Can we hope to close the ood
gates of immigration from the hordes of Chinese and the semi-savage
races comingfromwhat will thenbe part of our owncountry? Gompers
rejected economic arguments for expansion: it is not necessary that we
shall subjugate by the force of arms any other people in order to obtain
that expansion of trade.
105
US expansion into the Philippines attracted
perhaps the most vehement opposition because the anti-colonial move-
ment there, having nearly defeated the Spanish, did not throw down
their arms and welcome the US but kept ghting, requiring thousands
of US soldiers to suppress them over several years, while thousands of
Filipinos died mounting resistance. The US managed to suppress the
rebels, and occupied the islands until the Japanese invaded in World
War II.
The second face: reform and anti-colonial
organizations
Religious missionaries, educators, and medical personnel went to the
colonies with the aimof improving the conditions of Africans under Eu-
ropean rule. These men and women worked alongside or directly with
private corporations and colonial governments, even as they champi-
oned indigenous rights. As historian Frederick Cooper notes: The re-
formist critique of imperialism gone wrong emphasized the morality
and normalcy of colonial rule.
106
Yet, despite their initial support for
colonialism, reformers arguments graduallybecamemoreanti-colonial.
How did qualied support and minimal reformism become a major
critique of colonialism? First, some missionaries and journalists who
went to the colonies became ardent critics of aggressive humanitar-
ianism because they so believed in colonialism but saw that it had
104
Quoted in Philip S. Foner and Richard C. Winchester, eds., The Anti-Imperialist Reader:
A Documentary History of Anti-Imperialism in the United States. Volume I, From the Mexican
War to the Election of 1900 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1984), p. 168.
105
Quoted in ibid., pp. 202, 205, 207, 210.
106
Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and
British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 27.
239
Argument and change in world politics
failed in its civilizing mission. Second, several anti-colonial organiza-
tions grewfromabolitionist movement roots and the logic of their argu-
ments pulled themincrementally toward increasingly harsh critiques of
colonial practices.
Colonial reformers usedthesametactics as their abolitionist forebears:
they conducted mass public meetings on colonialism and published
journals and pamphlets detailing colonial abuses and their efforts to
ameliorate them. The reformers primarytools were meta-argument and
ethical argument: they directly lobbied parliaments and heads of state
for more humane conditions in colonies, and in some cases supported
African and Asian efforts for independence. For example, in England,
the Aborigines Protection Society formed in the late 1830s to assist in
protecting defenceless, and promoting the advancement of, uncivilized
tribes.
107
Less critical of colonial policy was the Anti-Slavery Society,
though there was considerable overlap in the top membership of both
organizations.
And as with the anti-slavery movement, some Aborigines Protec-
tion Society members, for example Thomas Fowell Buxton, were also
prominent members of the House of Commons. PartlythroughBuxtons
efforts, parliament established a Select Committee on Aborigines. Re-
porting in 1837, the Select Committee was critical of certain colonial
practices: It is not too much to say that the intercourse of Europeans in
general, without any exception in favor of the subjects of Great Britain,
has been, unless when attended by missionary excursions, a source of
many calamities to uncivilized nations. Too often, their territory has
been usurped, their property seized; their numbers diminished, their
character debased, the spread of civilization impeded.
108
The remedy
for these harms was expressed in the committees conviction that there
is but one effectual means of staying the evils we have occasioned, and
of imparting the blessings of civilization, and that is the propagation
of Christianity, together with the preservation, for time to come, of the
civil rights of the natives.
109
Activists sought to increase public awareness of the conditions in the
colonies in order to build broad public support for their amelioration.
In the late 1800s the Aborigines Protection Society (APS) protested the
deportation andexile of African leaders, such as Jaja of Opoba andChief
107
Quoted in Amalgamation of the Anti-Slavery Society and the Aborigines Protection
Society, Anti-Slavery Reporter 28 (MarchMay 1909), 2728: 27.
108
Quoted in Snow, Aborigines in the Law and Practice of Nations, p. 10.
109
Quoted in ibid., p. 11.
240
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
Nana of the Isekiri, and the use of chartered companies to colonize and
form colonial governments. As Annie Coombes notes: the Aborigine
ProtectionSociety made no bones about what they sawas one of the cen-
tral contradictions of using chartered companies as governing bodies
namely the contradiction of maintaining a just government while at
the same time being necessarily constrained to make all decisions on
the basis of achieving the highest dividend. The Societys journal, the
Aborigines Friend, frequently carried vigorous criticisms of traders.
110
The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society merged with the APS in
1909 to form the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society. The
merger was practical and strategic. Now. . . that slavery is so com-
monly found under a disguise, and the great evil which has to be fought
is the exploitation and coercion of natives in order to secure their labour
for the white man, it has appeared to those interested that nothing but
good could result from uniting the two similar bodies, and that one
strong Society, representing the cause of the native races of mankind,
could more effectively serve their interests than two separate organiza-
tions working independently, and often hampered by want of adequate
resources.
111
The new organization published the Anti-Slavery Reporter
and Aborigines Friend, with articles on colonial conditions all over the
globe, reports of British parliamentary and colonial ofce activities, and
summaries of the proceedings of the Society. The Anti-Slavery and Abo-
rigines Protection Societys journal thus attempted to create a different
kind of public knowledge of colonialism, by printing reports of colonial
abuses, that fueled the emotions that became part of the anti-colonial
critique and ethical arguments for reform.
Some socialist, labor, and communist movements also supported and
publicized anti-colonial activismin the Americas and Europe. In Africa,
the reform movement was represented by, for example, the Aborigines
Rights Protection Society in Cape Coast (Gold Coast), founded in 1897,
and in Nigeria by the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Rights Protection
Society. Both lobbied the British government to protect African land
ownership.
112
The African Association, founded in London in 1897 and
110
See Annie Coombes, Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagi-
nation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 33.
111
Amalgamation of the Anti-Slavery Society and the Aborigines Protection
Society, p. 28.
112
Kaniki, The Colonial Economy: The Former British Zones, p. 390. Also see Boahen,
African Perspectives on Colonialism and contemporary issues of the Anti-Slavery Reporter
and Aborigines Friend.
241
Argument and change in world politics
dissolved in 1901, signaled the development of an international collab-
oration between Africans in diaspora and those on the continent, for
improving the lot of those in African colonies. It attracted the support
of white liberals in the Aborigines Protection Society and signicant at-
tention in the mainstream British press. During its brief existence, the
Association lobbied colonial administrators for bettering conditions in
Africa and conducted a Pan-African Conference in London, 2325 July
1900, inaugurating a vital Pan-African movement.
113
Conference atten-
dees, including W.E.B. Du Bois, petitioned Queen Victoria to improve
labor conditions and eliminate pass laws in Southern Africa. The ofcial
response to the petition by Colonial Minister Joseph Chamberlain was
that the queenwouldkeepthe interests andwelfare of the native races
in mind.
114
Revulsion and reform in the Congo and South Africa
Although it is certain that none of the colonized valued colonialism,
indeed long reviled it, European and American discomfort with the
practice did not take root until the turn of the century. Two cases in
particular were widely discussed by the humanitarians and used to
frame arguments about colonial excess: the Congo and South Africa.
Belgian King Leopolds brutal conquest of the Congo rst came under
intense international scrutiny in the 1890s. Recall that Leopolds Congo
Free State (his private colony) had achieved international recognition
and backing as a humanitarian effort: it was to abolish slavery, bring
missionaries and hospitals, and open the Congo to free trade. At the
Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference, King Leopold continued to frame his
actions inthe Congo onhumanitariangrounds. But, in1890 and1891 the
rst severe criticisms of Leopolds governance of the Congo by George
Washington Williams, who exposed terrible labor practices, received
attention in the European and American press. Roads were constructed
and rubber was gathered by conscripted Congolese men. Men, whose
wives and children might also have been kidnapped, were forced to
gather rubber under the lash or at gun-point or else in the fear that they
might never see their families again. Women also suffered the same
113
There had been earlier meetings of the same sort, for instance the Chicago Congress
on Africa in August 1893 and the Congress on Africa in Georgia in December 1895.
P. Olisanwuche Esedebe, Pan-Africanism: The Idea and Movement, 17761963 (Washington,
DC: Howard University Press, 1982), pp. 4547.
114
See Immanuel Geiss, The Pan-African Movement: AHistory of Pan-Africanismin America,
Europe and Africa (New York: Africana Publishing, 1974), pp. 176198. Quote on p. 190.
242
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
fate. Headline coverage in The New York Herald of Williams report on
the Congo, published as a pamphlet, read: The Administration of the
African Free State Declared by an American Citizen to be Barbarous
Investigation Demanded.
115
Williams was also one of the rst to call
for self-rule or international trusteeship in Africa.
116
Because of Leopolds high humanitarian proclamations, when condi-
tions were disclosed including the enslavement of Africans and the
practice of chopping off of hands and heads the irony and hypocrisy
revealed were startling. Leopold responded with a campaign to vilify
and discredit Williams, who died shortly after he made his reports, and
the story faded. Thus, little was achieved in ameliorating conditions
in the Congo. Leopold continued for another decade to claim human-
itarian motives despite evidence of slavery, forced labor, and hostage
taking. Leopold had tremendous incentive not to modify the system.
Leopolds administrationmade huge prots fromrubber gathering, and
claimed half of the private concessionary company prots from rub-
ber (which ran as high as 700 percent due to cheap labor and high
demand).
117
Leopolds management of the Congo eventually received more
scrutiny from E.D. Morel, another reporter.
118
Morel, who was also a
clerk for the company that ran all of the Congos shipping, Elder Demp-
ster of Liverpool, noted that weapons went into the Congo and ivory
and rubber came out. He wrote, These gures told their own story. . .
Forced labour of a terrible and continuous kind could alone explain
such unheard of prots . . . forced labour in which the Congo Govern-
ment was the immediate beneciary; forcedlabor directedby the closest
associates of the King himself.
119
Whereas Morel had previously crit-
icized the humanitarians and been a supporter of colonialism, at the
turn of the century he began to work with anti-colonial critics in the
Aborigines Protection Society in England to expose and promote re-
form of Leopolds practices. Morel left Elder Dempster and began a
full-time career as journalist and Congo reform activist, publishing in
the space of a few years three books on the Congo. Morel and the other
Congo reform activists, most of them also members of the Anti-Slavery
115
Hochschild, King Leopolds Ghost, pp. 101114.
116
Ibid., p. 111.
117
Ibid., p. 160. Also see Packenham, The Scramble for Africa, pp. 588589.
118
Morels unnished history of the movement was compiled and published after his
death by Wm. Roger Louis and Jean Stengers, eds., E.D. Morels History of the Congo Reform
Movement (London: Oxford University Press, 1968).
119
Quoted in Hochschild, King Leopolds Ghost, pp. 180181. Also see Packenham, The
Scramble for Africa, pp. 590592.
243
Argument and change in world politics
and Aborigines Protection societies, publicized many abuses, especially
the colonizers practice of chopping off the hands of Congolese, and got
the Congo on the legislative agenda in Britain. The British parliament
passeda resolutioninMay1903 urgingthat natives shouldbe governed
with humanity and Leopold himself proposed some modest reforms
to meet his critics.
120
But, Morel and others wanted to show that despite
so-called reforms, little had changed in the Congo. He argued against
the Congo state on ethical and practical grounds. His ethical argument
was that slavery is wrong and the Congo was slavery.
Such then was the main task: to convince the world that this Congo
horror was not only and unquestionably a fact; but that it was not acci-
dental or temporary, or capable of internal cure. To show conclusively
that it was deliberate, and that the consequences would be identical
in any part of the tropics where similar conceptions might be intro-
duced. To demonstrate that it was at once a survival and a revival of
the slave-mind at work, of the slave-trade in being.
121
Morels practical argument was that the situation in Congo was the
reverse of the free trade principles under which the Congo state had
been established.
122
Morels effort to reframe debate over the Congo
received crucial support in 1904 when the British consul to the Congo,
Roger Casement, witnessedandexposedatrocities in a report to the For-
eign Ofce and in interviews with the press. Morel and Casement then
formed the Congo Reform Association and Morel spent the next decade
giving public speeches in Britain, and writing articles that were picked
up by British newspapers, including the Morning Post, the Manchester
Guardian, andThe Times.
123
AnAmericanCongoReformAssociationalso
formed. Because of the negative publicity, Leopold was compelled to set
upa commission of inquiry to investigate the charges. Unfortunately for
the king, his handpicked commission, in 1905, essentially agreed with
Casements observations. So did reports from the US consul-general to
the Congo.
The Congo Reform Association in London proposed in 1905 that the
Congo be taken from the king as his private property and run instead
120
Quoted in Hochschild, King Leopolds Ghost, p. 194.
121
Morel, History of the Congo ReformMovement, in Louis and Stengers (eds.), E.D. Morels
History of the Congo Reform Movement, p. 63.
122
Ibid., pp. 6469.
123
Wm. Roger Louis, Morel and the Congo Reform Association 19041913, in Louis
and Stengers (eds.), E.D. Morels History of the Congo Reform Movement, pp. 171220: 173,
187, 196197.
244
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
by Belgium. This idea was supported by the British Foreign Ofce, elite
opinion in Britain, and increasingly in the Belgian parliament. The Re-
form Association kept up the pressure for reforms. Finally, in December
1906, international anddomestic pressure forcedLeopoldtoturnhis pri-
vate colony over to the Belgian government. Conditions in the Congo
improved somewhat because of the international attention and after
Belgium formally took over the colony from Leopold in 1908.
The Boer War also affected English beliefs about African colonialism,
at least as regards their treatment of white settlers. Britain had taken the
Cape Colony from Dutch/Boer settlers in 1814 and over the course of
the century, many English settled in the Cape while the Boers moved in-
land to avoid them, setting up two colonies, Transvaal and Orange Free
State. From 1880 to 1881 the Boers fought unsuccessfully to halt British
encroachment. Still, the Boers faced a greater inux of English when
enormous deposits of diamonds and gold were found in the Transvaal.
Just over twenty years later, Boers fought again to keep the English set-
tlers out, while the Britishwantedostensiblytoensure the political rights
of the English(whothe Boers calleduitlanders) against discrimination
by the Boers. AlthoughBritishforeignpolicy decisionmakers fearedthat
another military action in South Africa would be unpopular at home,
the Transvaal and Orange Free State governments were considered to
be too independent and also too close to Germany.
After provoking the war in 1899, the British government thought de-
feating the Boers would be easy.
124
They were wrong: the British effort
required 500,000 soldiers and cost both sides a total of almost 55,000
lives. The war claimed the lives of about 15,000 Africans as well. Britain
used concentration camps to intern Afrikaners, and between 20,000 and
26,000 men and women, but mostly children, died in the camps, mainly
of dysentery and other diseases.
British conduct in the Boer War was so disturbing to both popular
British and international opinion that, Support groups were formed in
Germany, Holland, France, and Belgium to collect money and send it
to the suffering Boers in South Africa. Foreign brigades were formed,
as in the Spanish Civil War, to ght on the Boer side against the
forces of English oppression and capitalist imperialism.
125
The war
and the almost gratuitous harshness of the subsequent British colonial
124
Basil Davidson, Let Freedom Come: Africa in Modern History (Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 1978), p. 29.
125
Allister Sparks, The Mind of South Africa: The Story of the Rise and Fall of Apartheid
(London: Mandarin, 1990), p. 129.
245
Argument and change in world politics
administration, which, for example, forbade instruction in Afrikaans in
Boer schools, turnedeliteandpopular opinioninEnglandagainst British
control and galvanized Afrikaner nationalism. As Gann and Duignan
argue, the Boer War helped alter popular and elite British views of
the glories of colonial war. The British won a barren victory on the
eld; the imperial idea sustained a blow from which it never recov-
ered. From the military point of view the conduct of the war brought
scant prestige to the British ruling class.
126
So while South Africa re-
mained just as rich in diamonds and gold as before the British victory
over the Afrikaners, British opinion turned around so completely that
South Africa was given autonomous status by Britain in 1910 as a white-
controlled self-governing dominion.
Conclusion
European expansion in Africa was noted for a mix of legalism, inter-
national organization, benevolence, and brute force. Though from the
reading of the Requirement in the Americas to the conquest of Africa,
brutal force was often used to capture and maintain territorial holdings,
treaties between native leaders and the colonial powers were generally
obtained. Again, although these treaties were usually made through
fraud or compulsion, the fact that treaties were obtained at all suggests
that the colonists desired at least an aura of legitimacy.
127
Indeed, as
Dorothy Jones argues, in North America between 1796 and 1871, Out-
right land-grabbing was not nearly so widespread as is commonly be-
lieved. There was no need. The treaty system itself was the primary
vehicle of transfer.
128
She suggests that, This can happen because ac-
countability is not built into the diplomatic system. The only check is
the assumption of countervailing force. When that is absent, as it invari-
ably is in situations of colonialism, the whole treaty system becomes a
weapon in the arsenal of the stronger power.
129
126
L.H. Gann and Peter Duignan, Burden of Empire: An Appraisal of Western Colonialism in
Africa South of the Sahara (New York: Praeger, 1967), p. 37. Also see Leonard Thompson,
The Political Mythology of Apartheid (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
127
Berat, in Walvis Bay, argues that the treaties were primarily a method of notifying other
European colonial powers that a nation had begun the process of colonial occupation of
the region. The treaties were also sometimes temporary holding actions for both sides as
they sought to augment their forces for another battle.
128
Dorothy V. Jones, License for Empire: Colonialism by Treaty in Early America (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. xi.
129
Ibid., p. xii.
246
Faces of humanitarianism, rivers of blood
Yet, accountability was evident: outright land-grabbing was con-
strained by the normative beliefs of statesmen, diplomats, and domestic
opinion. Outright land-grabbing was illegitimate; it hadto be justiedin
terms that wouldseemright at the time. Thus, althoughcolonialismwas
as yet a largely unquestioned practice, the issues of legitimacy and the
rights of the indigenous populations, were not entirely ignored because
the dominant culture, the table on which arguments occurred, was af-
fected by arguments over slavery and the humanity of others. Colonial
reformers fought to frame colonialism as against its own principles.
Supporters of colonialism had always argued that it did something
good in itself, or was a means to a good end. Nearly all involved in the
conquest and colonization said they were motivated by humanitarian
concerns. The argument was that free trade (although in many cases
nothing was traded so much as loot and labor were just taken) would
bring civilization. Open doors were required for commerce and the free
access of missionary societies. During the height of conquest and conso-
lidation of colonial rule, it was clear that Africans and Asians were to be
objects of European control, not the authors of their own aspiration and
actions unless it was to sign a treaty of protection under Europeans.
Few argued that the colonized could govern themselves. This paternal-
ism made sense in the views current at the turn of the century because it
was commonly believedthat the backward races were like children,
who if they werent completely overwhelmed by the colonizer would
need the care of their elders to get along in the world. But, by the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, the specic prac-
tices of colonialism were under greater scrutiny by the reformers who
had moved on from the anti-slavery movement to challenge colonial
practices. As Quincy Wright suggests, this humanitarianism had a long
lineage:
Humanitarian considerations for subject races was from the rst de-
manded by moralists and theologians. Queen Isabella in her letter of
February 19, 1495, urged generous treatment of the Indians. The Mis-
sionary Bartoleme de las Casas and the half-blood Inca, Garcilaso de
la Vega, popularized the cause of the Indian in Spain while the learned
theologianFrancis de Victoria assuredhis students at Salmanca that the
law of nations protected the Indians even though they were indels. It
was not, however, until the later eighteenthcentury that humanitarian-
ismbecame organizedandeffective. Throughthe efforts of the Quakers
John Woolman (172073) and Anthony Benezet (171384) in America;
the Christian philanthropists Thomas Clarkson (17601846), William
247
Argument and change in world politics
Wilberforce (17591833), and Thomas Fowell Buxton (17861845) in
England; and the revolutionary humanitarians Condorcet (174394),
LAbbe Gregoire (17501831), and Mirabeau (174991) in France: soci-
eties were formed in these countries to abolish the slave trade and
protect the aborigines. Their agitation brought legislation against the
slave trade early in the nineteenth century, and their scrutiny was a
continuous stimulus to colonial ofces. Although barbarities against
natives were still frequent enough, public sentiment was sometimes
successfully mobilized for reform, as in the Congo in the early twenti-
eth century.
130
Criticisms of colonialism in the heart of the colonial metropole began
quite modestly but gradually expanded as anti-colonial reformers real-
izedthat their beliefs andarguments about rights couldnot be arbitrarily
limited. Still, many reformers, including those cited by Wright, did not
yet question the main premises of colonialism and would perhaps have
been surprised by the enormous changes wrought from their modest
challenges to colonial practice. As a French critic of forced labor in the
colonies, Joseph Folliet, wrote in 1934: It is precisely because we accept
the general and abstract justice of colonization that we desire, in the
specic and concrete instance, to purify it of all that soils it.
131
Folliet
articulates one face of humanitarianism while German colonial theorist
Paul Rohrbachs social Darwinism is its ugliest representation. But on
the eve of World War I, practices which were acceptable to the major-
ity in the context of colonization of the Americas, were suspect in the
African context precisely because democratic arguments had won the
day in Europe and had only to be fully implemented there. The exten-
sion and institutionalization of reformist beliefs, and how they changed
colonial practices, are addressed in chapter 6.
130
Wright, Mandates Under the League, p. 9.
131
Quoted in Cooper, Decolonization and African Society, p. 27.
248
6 Sacred trust
But if the extent of the offence be measured by the professions of high
moral purpose previously laid claim to, then, iniquitous as has been
the conduct of the EuropeanGovernments towardtheir ownpeoples, it
pales in comparison with their conduct towards the peoples of Africa,
whose territory they parceled out among themselves with the name
of God upon their lips, of whose rights they declared themselves to
be the jealous guardians, whose helplessness they invoked to justify
their own protective aegis, and to whomthey sent their missionaries
that these backward folk might be duly instructed in the gospel of the
Prince of Peace. Civilizing the African, forsooth! There was a pretty
strong element of barbarism in Europes civilizing methods in Africa
before the war.
1
Whether or not people speak in good faith, they cannot say just any-
thing they please. Moral talk is coercive; one thing leads to another.
2
The previous chapter showed how the anti-slavery movements hu-
manitarianarguments rationalizedcolonial expansioninAfrica, yet also
denormalized and began to delegitimize some colonial practices. In this
chapter I show how reform arguments came to dominate colonial dis-
course, and how, with the League of Nations Mandate system, new nor-
mative beliefs rst articulated by the colonial reform movement were
institutionalized. The paternalistic and aggressive humanitarianism of
the Berlin West Africa Conference, which was coupled with conquest,
gradually gave way to the less paternalistic beliefs characteristic of
the Aborigines Protection Society and of W.E.B. Du Bois, E.D. Morel,
and Woodrow Wilson. The aim became uplift, and better that this up-
lift would be accomplished non-violently. Because the humanitarians
1
E.D. Morel, Africa and the Peace of Europe (London: National Labour Press, 1917), p. 67.
2
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations,
2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1992), p. 12.
249
Argument and change in world politics
critique was damning it opened up the space for reconceiving, or re-
framing, colonialism. As old-style colonialism was less and less con-
sidered normal and legitimate, the political balance of power shifted
from naked and unashamed colonialists to those who wanted to at least
reform colonialism. Reformist arguments prompted the reconceptual-
ization of colonial practices and development of the League of Nations
Mandates system. The Permanent Mandates Commission of the League
of Nations changed the context in which arguments about colonialism
occurred, providing a venue for new arguments and the institutional-
ization of new normative beliefs.
World War I and mounting pressures for colonial
reform
Humanitarians critiqued colonialism and asserted new normative be-
liefs during World War I in pamphlets, books, and in their lobbying of
colonial governments. The discussions among diplomats about what
to do with the colonies the victors had captured in World War I was
fundamentally inuenced by this wider reformist discourse, and this
discourse was in turn embodied in the international innovation known
as the League of Nations Mandate system. But it was not obvious that
reform of colonialism would be an outcome of the war.
During World War I, European governments used their colonies to
produce food, revenue, andmanpower for production andmilitary con-
scription. More than one million Africans fought as conscripts and vol-
unteers for European governments, with the majority being forced to
serve; some 150,000 Africansoldiers andcarriers diedinthe war.
3
France
raised nearly 430,000 soldiers and several hundred thousand laborers
from its African colonies during the war and pushed its colonies to
expand their food production for export. French West African, Blaise
Diagne was promised a package of post-war reforms in French Black
Africa if he could recruit the additional men France required for the
Europeanfront. This he did, but the reforms were never put into effect.
4
Belgium raised up to 260,000 from its Congo colony most of whom
3
M. Crowder, The First World War and Its Consequences, in A. Adu Boahen, ed.,
Africa Under Colonial Domination, UNESCO General History of Africa, VII (Paris: UNESCO,
1985), pp. 283311: 283, 295. Also see Myron Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs
S en egalais in French West Africa 18571960 (London: James Currey, 1991) and Basil
Davidson, Let FreedomCome: Africa in Modern History (Boston: Little, Brown andCompany,
1978), pp. 114115.
4
Crowder, The First World War and Its Consequences, p. 306.
250
Sacred trust
served as porters. Britain beneted from over 1.5 million Indian and
coloured colonial subjects serving in the empires military forces.
5
Fur-
ther, both white andblack South Africans fought against the Germans in
East Africa and South West Africa.
6
During the war, revolts against Eu-
ropean rule, both as protests against conscription and to take advantage
of the return of Europeans to their home countries, surged in number.
Though they sometimes required thousands of European troops to put
down, the revolts were not successful.
By the end of the war, the Japanese military had captured German
islands in the Pacic, while Britain, or the British Dominions, Australia,
New Zealand, and South Africa, held German territory in Asia and
Africa. The Allies agreed that captured colonies would not go back to
their former masters, but no one in allied governments appears to have
seriously entertained the possibility of independence for these colonies.
Rather, the British Imperial War Cabinet committee on territorial ques-
tions was in favor of annexation. As Lord Curzon, a member of the
War Cabinet said: we were meditating the carving up of the world
to suit our own interests.
7
The British and Japanese governments se-
cretly agreed in early 1917 to support each others claims to captured
territory, and public opinion was generally in favor of annexation.
8
Self-determination for the territories was ruled out by Britains Foreign
Secretary Balfour who wanted the territory in hand to work out a peace
settlement.
9
5
Themajoritywere Indians andcoloredSouthAfricans, but some 10,000coloredWest
Indians also served. British colonies also provided some 1.4 million white enlistees. The
Military Effort of the British Empire, The Round Table, no. 35 ( June 1919), 495508: 498.
6
Several anti-colonial independence leaders were combatants in World War I for their
respective colonial powers. For example, Norman Manley, a leader of the Jamaican inde-
pendence movement, served in the European theater, where his brother was killed. One
of the rst post-independence heads of state for Jamaica, Manley was also the father of
Michael Manley who served in World War II and later became prime minister of Jamaica
and a staunch pan-Africanist.
7
During March and April 1917, the Imperial War Cabinet in Britain discussed whether
some African territory should be returned to Germany after the war. Most argued against
the return. The group also discussed various other methods for changing colonial ter-
ritory, including a South African proposal for trading land with Portugal so that South
Africa would have a natural frontier and round it off as a compact block of subtropical
territory. Minutes of the Territorial Desiderata Committee of the War Cabinet meeting
quoted in Wm. Roger Louis, Great Britain and Germanys Lost Colonies, 19141919 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1967), p. 83. The fact of the Imperial War Cabinets existence highlights
the extent to which the self-governing dominions of Britain were well on their way to total
independence. The dominions (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa) and India
became members of the League of Nations.
8
Ibid., pp. 7879.
9
Ibid., p. 106.
251
Argument and change in world politics
Why did the Western allies ultimately agree despite their privately
expressed interest in annexation, that they would not keep captured
territory? The concern for applying self-determination to the colonies
did not originate with heads of state. The question of what to do with
the captured territory, and the idea of mandates or international con-
trol, was on the table years before the Paris Peace Conference con-
vened. The press and the war literature were full of such ideas, as
were unpublished private discussions.
10
This was particularly so in
Britain, where some of the most far-reaching proposals for reform were
widely discussed. Since Britain, or its dominions, occupied and con-
trolled the majority of land formerly held by Germany or Turkey, its
position on post-war settlement was crucial. What happened during
the latter part of the war was that ethical arguments moved the center
of the debate from annexation to some kind of international political
control.
The left, and eventually the center, of British intellectual and political
elites argued for some kind of international control of captured German
colonies. For example, J.A. Hobson published Towards International
Government in 1915, calling for international colonial control. In 1917,
E.D. Morel participated in public debates on the subject and published
Africa and the Peace of Europe, which proposed internationalization of
African commerce, though certainly not decolonization.
11
The British
Labour Party, in late December 1917, called for the administration of
all colonies in Africa to be transferred to the proposed Super-National
Authority or League of Nations and proposed that this administra-
tion would take account of the wishes of the people, and also the
protection of the natives against exploitation and oppression and the
preservation of various tribal interests.
12
In 1917, the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, which
still counted members of parliament in its ranks, lobbied British for-
eign policy ofcials to include the concerns of native races in the peace
talks or in a separate meeting to consider colonial policy, whatever
10
H. Duncan Hall, Mandates, Dependencies and Trusteeship (Washington: Carnegie Endow-
ment for International Peace, 1948), p. 108. On previous uses of the words mandate and
mandatory in connection with colonial policy, see Quincy Wright, Mandates Under the
League of Nations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930), pp. 1920. The idea of
countries administering colonies was also not new: Britain had granted South Africa the
right to administer Basotoland and Bechuanaland in 1909.
11
Moreover, colonialism and imperialism were popularly blamed for causing World
War I.
12
Quoted in Louis, Great Britain and Germanys Lost Colonies, p. 91.
252
Sacred trust
the nal outcome of the European hostilities may be. . . .
13
The So-
ciety used both practical and ethical arguments. We also point out
that such a step appears to be not only morally imperative, but in
the truest interests of the Colonizing Powers no less than the native
peoples, because the white races have become largely dependent on
the coloured races for a large proportion of their food stuffs and raw
materials.
14
According to the Society, native inhabitants should be
given a voice in shaping their own destiny; although it was not a
practical proposal . . . this very fact appears to make it more than ever
incumbent on the stronger Powers to devise means for adequately safe-
guarding the rights and welfare of the native inhabitants.
15
The So-
cietys ideas for reform were comprehensive: for example, lynching,
forced labor for private prot, and criminal punishment for breaches
of civil labor contracts should be halted and land for natives should be
reserved.
Yet even the reformers argued among themselves. In July 1917, the
Anti-SlaveryandAborigines ProtectionSocietyheldaconference onthe
future of German colonies where some members argued that German
colonization was unjust because the Germans rarely made treaties with
the local chiefs and they treated the inhabitants badly. Travers Buxton
argued that colonies should not be used like pawns on a chess board,
or merely for bargaining purposes.
16
But, Society members disagreed
about the proper line to take inlobbying for reforms. Charles Buxton, for
example, said the argument for consultation with the natives in former
German colonies had no logical limit and this had far-reaching impli-
cations; if the Society stated that it is in favor of consultation, We are
laying ourselves open as a Society to the charge of hypocrisy. The entire
colonial system was at stake.
Are we prepared to say that what we would apply to the natives of
Africa should apply also to the natives of India? If not, then we lay our-
selves open to this charge of hypocrisy. . . We have hitherto accepted
the principle of parceling out Africa. We have wished that something
better could be found, but, as a matter of fact, we have accepted the
usual view that tropical Africa has got to be parceled out . . . If we are
13
Letter to British Foreign Secretary Arthur J. Balfour from the Anti-Slavery and Abo-
rigines Protection Society, 22 January 1917, published in the Anti-Slavery Reporter and
Aborigines Friend (April 1917), pp. 36:3
14
Ibid., p. 3.
15
Ibid., p. 34.
16
Quoted in Conference upon the Future of German Colonies, Anti-Slavery Reporter and
Aborigines Friend (October 1917), pp. 5059: 52.
253
Argument and change in world politics
going to adopt this newand startling principle, then we ought to adopt
it all around. It should be a general policy.
17
Finally, the Society agreed to a resolution which read: That in any
reconstruction of Africa which may result from this War, the interests
of the native inhabitants and also their wishes in as far as those wishes
can be clearly ascertained, should be recognized as among the principle
factors upon which the decision of their destiny should be based.
18
The resolutions were then forwarded to the British Foreign Ofce and
London-based representatives of the Allied powers. In November 1917
the Society held a conference on international control of colonies. The
attendees again disagreed on which measures were practical and polit-
ically feasible but they seemed to agree that some form of international
supervision was desirable.
19
In addition to pressure at home from humanitarians, British decision-
makers also knew that American President Wilson would probably not
agree to annexation.
20
In January 1918, G.L. Beer, who was later chief of
the colonial division of the US delegation to the Paris Peace Conference,
proposedthat theformer colonies bedealt withunder aMandatesystem.
Wilsons speeches echo Beers tone and language. Beer, in written testi-
mony to the US Congress, said:
Under modern political conditions apparently the only way to de-
termine the problem of politically backward peoples, who require not
only outside political control but also foreigncapital to reorganize their
stagnant economic systems is to entrust the task of government to that
state whose interests are most directly involved. . . If, however, such
backward regions are entrusted by international mandate to one state,
there should be embodied in the deed of trust most rigid safeguards to
both protect the native population fromexploitation and also to ensure
that the interests of other foreign states are not injured. . . But far more
important than any arrangement of this character to secure the inter-
ests of the European and American states in such backward countries
is the necessity of clearly dened provisions to protect the natives from
exploitation.
21
17
Quoted in ibid. p. 54, emphasis in the original.
18
Ibid., p. 59.
19
Conference upon International Control, Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines Friend
( January 1918), 8995.
20
Louis, Great Britain and Germanys Lost Colonies, p. 93.
21
George Louis Beer, African Questions at the Paris Peace Conference (NewYork: Macmillan,
1923), pp. 424425. In January 1918 the US State Department also commissioned the colo-
nial legal scholar Alpheus Henry Snow, who produced the historical study The Question
254
Sacred trust
After the war the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society cor-
responded with both the British Foreign Ofce and President Wilson
in the months before the Peace Conference. To Wilson, on 28 Decem-
ber 1918, the Society wrote, We beg to urge upon your Excellency that
the motive for Colonial expansion should be that implied in the term
Protectorate.
This term implies that the overseas Powers should be in the position
of Trustees for the well being of the inhabitants regardless either of na-
tional or colour distinction, a position which involves: The abolition
of every form of compulsory labour for private prot; the preserva-
tion of indigenous land rights; the rigid restriction of the sale of ardent
spirits within the boundaries of all such Protectorate territories, such
restrictions again to be impartially imposed; the recognition of some
Protectorate and Native rights over sub-surface values, forest and vir-
gin produce; the prevention of communicable diseases.
22
Wilsons representative acknowledged the letter but said the
president did not have time to meet with the Society on his way to Paris
for the Peace Conference. The Societys representative was also pre-
vented by the British government from attending a Pan-African meet-
ing also organized in Paris. The Society then sent another letter to all
delegates of the great powers attending the Paris Peace Conference that
included a longer, more comprehensive, version of their proposal to
President Wilson.
Framing its case as a continuation of the anti-slavery struggle, the
Society said: the time has arrived for the stronger Powers to accept
as the soundest economic and ethical relationship that of Trustee for
the inhabitants and their territory, and that the old policy of regarding
such territories primarily from the point of view of possessions to be
developedinthe interests of the MetropolitanGovernment is out of date
in practice and indefensible both on political and moral grounds.
23
The
strongest Societyproposals includedanappeal toendforcedlabor andto
create an international tribunal where indigenous people could appeal
their treatment. The Societyfurther urgedthat these reforms be extended
beyond the captured territories that all Colonizing Powers adopt
the reforms and suggested that they be applied rst as conditions
of Aborigines in the Law and Practice of Nations in December 1918 (New York: G. P. Putnams
Sons, 1921).
22
Letter to President Wilson quoted in Peace Terms and Colonial Reconstruction, Anti-
Slavery Reporter and Aborigines Friend 9 (April 1919), 29: 5.
23
Letter to Delegates quoted in ibid., p. 7.
255
Argument and change in world politics
attaching to any territory where status is changed as a result of the
war and generally as a standard which every Colonizing Power should
accept for tropical countries and peoples under its National Control.
24
The Societys position was, just as some in the Society feared, an attack
on the whole institution of colonialism, not simply a proposal for how
to treat captured territories. Thus colonial reform became a mainstream
project.
By late 1918, under public and elite pressure, a consensus was thus
formingamongallieddiplomats andelites aroundthe idea of a Mandate
system. Public pressure was in part persuasive because it was consis-
tent with the already ofcially expressed beliefs in self-determination.
Annexation could not be allowed if the victors, especially Woodrow
Wilson and Lloyd George, were to be bound to their war-time rhetoric.
In January 1917, President Wilson told the US Congress, I am propos-
ing, as it were, that the nations shouldwithone accordadopt the doctrine
of President Monroe as the doctrine of the world: that no nation should
seek to extend its policy over any other nation, but that every people
should be free to determine its own policy, its own way of develop-
ment, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little alongwiththe great
and powerful.
25
On 5 January 1918, Prime Minister Lloyd George of
Englandarguedfor a general principle of national self-determination,
to be applied to the German colonies.
26
In his Fourteen Points speech
of 8 January 1918, President Wilson argued for, A free, open-minded
and absolutely impartial adjustment of colonial claims, based upon a
strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions
of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have
equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is
to be determined.
27
If Wilsonian self-determination did not necessarily
meancomplete independence andself-rule, it meant people shouldhave
some say in their affairs. On 11 February 1918, President Wilson said,
24
Ibid., p. 9.
25
Quoted in Gaddis Smith, Monroe Doctrine, in Bruce W. Jentleson and Thomas
Patterson, eds., Encyclopedia of U.S. Foreign Relations, vol. III (NewYork: Oxford University
Press, 1997), pp. 159167: 162. President James Monroe told Congress in 1823 that
American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed
and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for the future colonization
of European powers. Quoted in ibid., p. 160. The Roosevelt Corollary, announced in
December 1904, asserted a US right to intervene to keep Europeans out of Latin America.
26
Quoted in Wright, Mandates Under the League, p. 25.
27
Woodrow Wilson, Fourteen Points, 8 January 1918. Quoted in Antonio Cassese,
Self-determination of Peoples: A Legal Reappraisal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996), p. 21.
256
Sacred trust
Peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty
to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even
the great game, now forever discredited of the balance of power; but
every territorial settlement involved in this war must be made in the
interest and for the benet of the populations concerned, and not as a
part of any mere adjustment or compromise of claims amongst rival
states.
28
The Bolsheviks also called for peace without annexation and
blamed imperialism for the war. During and after the conict, V.I. Lenin
pushed the idea of self-determination and decolonization and made the
argument that imperialism caused the war.
29
In November 1918, a group of US and British elites, known as the
Round Table, met in London and discussed the idea of mandates, pub-
lishing a summary of their deliberations in their journal Round Table. De-
spite his private efforts tokeepcapturedterritories, General JanSmuts of
SouthAfrica, whoprobablyhadreadthe workof the RoundTable before
writing his draft plan for a League of Nations, also proposed a Mandate
system.
30
Smuts plan, published as a pamphlet in December 1918, said
the Mandate system should be conned to Middle East and European
territories of the losers of WorldWar I, because he felt that, The German
colonies in the Pacic and Africa are inhabited by barbarians, who not
only cannot possibly govern themselves, but to whom it would be im-
practicable to apply any ideas of political self-determination in the Eu-
ropean sense.
31
If Smuts idea of who was ready for self-determination
was narrow, he saw Mandate status as temporary, on the route to inde-
pendence. President Wilson drew upon Smuts draft for his own draft
of the League of Nations Covenant, but broadened the Mandate system
to include former German colonies in Africa.
While the Peace Conference was under way, in February 1919 dele-
gates of the First Pan-AfricanCongress alsomet inParis. Opposedbythe
United States and Britain, which denied passports to some of its citizens
28
Quoted in Wright, Mandates Under the League, p. 24.
29
V.I. Lenin, Theses on the Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination
(March 1916) and Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917). See Robert C. Tucker,
ed., The Lenin Anthology (New York: Norton, 1975), pp. 204274. Also see Cassese, Self-
determination of Peoples, pp. 1421 and L.H. Gann and Peter Duignan, Burden of Em-
pire: An Appraisal of Western Colonialism in Africa South of the Sahara (New York: Praeger,
1967), pp. 5571.
30
Campbell L. Upthegrove, Empire by Mandate: A History of the Relations of Great Britain
with the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations (New York: Bookman
Associates, 1954); Wright, Mandates Under the League, pp. 2223.
31
Jan Smuts, The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion (London: Hodder & Stoughton,
1918), quoted in Hall, Mandates, Dependencies and Trusteeship, p. 13.
257
Argument and change in world politics
who wished to attend (including a representative of the Anti-Slavery
andAborigines ProtectionSociety), the meetingfocusedonstrategies for
the liberation for Caribbean and African people.
32
Blaise Diagne, made
famous for recruiting over 60,000 West Africans in 1918 for French mili-
tary service, helped W.E.B. Du Bois organize the meeting and convinced
Frances leader, Clemenceau, toauthorize it over the objections of British
and US governments.
33
Despite the travel restrictions, fty-seven del-
egates from fteen countries attended, including sixteen from the US,
twelve from Africa, and twenty-one from the West Indies. At least one
participant in the Paris Peace Conference, C.D.B. King, a member of the
Liberian delegation, also attended the Pan-African Conference.
34
The Pan-Africanist proposals were comprehensive in a humanitar-
ian reformist sense. Du Bois proposed that all Africa be international-
ized, with the former German colonies as the core, adding other terri-
tories to this base as time went on.
35
Du Bois said: This Africa for the
Africans could be under the guidance of international organization. The
governing international commission should represent not simply gov-
ernments, but modern culture, science, commerce, social reform, andre-
ligious philanthropy. It must represent not simply the white world, but
the civilized Negro world.
36
Notably, the 1919 Pan-African Congress
did not demand an immediate end to colonialism; rather, its proposals
32
On US and British government efforts to scuttle the 1919 Pan-African Conference, see
Paul Gordon Lauren, Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimination
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), pp. 8384; George Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Commu-
nism (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1971), pp. 99100. Immanuel Geiss, The Pan-African
Movement: A History of Pan-Africanism in America, Europe and Africa (New York: Africana
Publishing, 1974), p. 237. Also see Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines Friend 9 (April
1919), p. 6.
33
Clemenceau reportedly told Diagne, Dont advertise it, but go ahead. Quoted in
Geiss, The Pan-African Movement, p. 237.
34
Ibid., p. 238.
35
W.E.B. Du Bois also took a proposal urging self-determination for Africa to Paris for
President Wilson. According to the Chicago Tribune: Dr. Du Bois sets forth that while the
principle of self-determination cannot be applied to uncivilized peoples, yet the educated
blacks should have some voice in the disposition of the German colonies. He maintains
that in settling what is to be done with the German colonies the Peace Conference might
consider the wishes of the intelligent Negroes in the colonies themselves, the Negroes
of the United States, and South Africa, and the West Indies, the Negro governments of
Abyssinia, Liberia, Haiti . . . Chicago Tribune, 19 January 1919, quoted in W.E. Burghardt
Du Bois, The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World
History (New York: International Publishers, 1965), p. 9.
36
Du Bois quotedin the Chicago Tribune, 19 January 1919. Du Bois is also quotedas saying:
We can, if we will, inaugurate on the dark continent a last great crusade for humanity.
With Africa redeemed, Asia would be safe and Europe indeed triumphant. Du Bois,
The World and Africa, p. 9.
258
Sacred trust
were modest in political terms, though radical with respect to economic
issues:
The Negroes of the world demand that hereafter the natives of Africa
and the peoples of African descent be governed according to the fol-
lowing principles:
1. The land: the land and its natural resources shall be held in trust for
the natives and at all times they shall have effective ownership of as
much land as they can protably develop.
2. Capital: the investment of capital and granting of concessions shall
be so regulated as to prevent the exploitation of the natives and the
exhaustion of the natural wealth of the country. Concessions shall al-
ways be limited in time and subject to state control. The growing social
needs of the native must be regarded and the prots taxed for social
and material benet of the natives.
3. Labor: slaveryandcorporal punishment shall be abolishedandforced
labor except in punishment for crime; and the general conditions of
labor shall be prescribed and regulated by the State.
4. Education: it shall be the right of every native child to learn to read
and write in his own language, and the language of the trustee nation,
at public expense, and to be given technical instruction in some branch
of industry. The State shall also educate as large a number of natives as
possible in higher technical and cultural training and maintain a corps
of native teachers.
5. The State: the natives of Africa must have the right to participate in
the government as fast as their development permits, in conformity
with the principle that the government exists for the natives and not
the natives for the government. They shall at once be allowed to partic-
ipate in local and tribal government, according to ancient usage, and
this participation shall gradually extend, as education and experience
proceed to the higher ofces of state; to the end that, in time, Africa is
ruled by consent of the Africans . . . .
37
Du Bois claimed that the Pan-African Congress inuenced the
Peace Conference.
38
That was certainly the intent, since the resolu-
tions adopted by the Pan-African Conference were addressed to the
Allied and Associated Powers assembled in Paris and called for a
permanent Bureau in the League of Nations to oversee protection
of Africans. Still, none of the standard histories of the Paris Peace
37
Quoted in ibid., pp. 1112.
38
Ibid., p. 10.
259
Argument and change in world politics
Conference mention the 1919 Pan-African Congress, though it was cer-
tainly noticed by the governments involved, given the efforts of some of
themto prevent its occurrence.
39
Yet despite DuBois claim, it is not clear
that the Pan-African Congress proposals for a system of oversight for
African colonies had an inuence on the shape of the League of Nations
Mandate system: At best, the resolutions had only a minor impact
upon the deliberations of the Paris Peace Conference.
40
The impor-
tance of the Pan-African Congress, then, lay not in the uniqueness of
the proposals, nor necessarily with any direct inuence on many dele-
gates to the Paris Peace Conference, but rather in the fact that colonial
subjects demonstrated their ability and willingness to organize polit-
ically and attract public attention and campaign for the amelioration
of colonialism. If they were slightly more militant, the Pan-Africanists
were part of a larger movement which pushed for some degree of self-
determination.
The League of Nations Mandate system
The activists proposals for colonial reformandfor managing the former
colonies of Germany and Turkey were much more comprehensive than
the measures ultimately adopted by the Paris Peace Conference of 1919
and written into the Covenant of the League of Nations drafted there.
This was because, [f]ar from envisaging the eventual independence of
colonies such as German East Africa, Allied statesmen at the Peace Con-
ference regarded 1919 as the renewal, not the end, of an imperial era.
41
Equality and self-determination, not just securing peace, were on the
agenda for the rst time, although there was not a consensus on imple-
menting these beliefs. In an important sense, these ideas were nascent
or immanent, not yet believed widely or strongly enough among the
representatives of the Great Powers to radically reshape foreign and
colonial policy, but held just enough to change policy on the margins.
For example, when the Japanese-proposed statement of racial equality
won a majority of votes at the Peace Conference, President Wilson, as
chair of the meeting, rejected it, saying the issue was too serious to be
39
For instance, see H. W. V. Temperley, ed., A History of the Peace Conference of Paris
(London: H. Frowde, and Hodder & Stoughton, 19201924), 6 vols.; David Hunter Miller,
The Drafting of the Covenant (New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1928), two vols.
40
Manning Marable, W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat (Boston: Twayne Publishers,
1986), p. 102.
41
Louis, Great Britain and Germanys Lost Colonies, p. 7.
260
Sacred trust
adopted without unanimous consent, despite the fact that unanimity
was not required to pass motions at the conference.
42
Thus, the Peace
Conference and the Covenant of the League embodied and reproduced
the racial/Eurocentric hierarchy of the nineteenth century, while fore-
shadowing and articulating the belief in self-determination that would
dominate the diplomacy of the mid-twentieth century.
Negotiations over the Mandate systemwere some of the most intense
of the Paris Peace Conference.
43
Consistent withthe ambivalent views of
the day, the Mandate system was a compromise between the three main
ideas on the table about what to do with former colonies: annexation,
international control andadministration, or self-determination. The sys-
tem that ultimately grew out of Smuts and Wilsons draft covenants,
and articulated in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations,
was a combination of continued colonialism, its regulation, and a fore-
shadowing promise of decolonization. The compromise thus acknowl-
edged the widespread belief that annexation was not appropriate but
also embodied the view that the inhabitants of these former colonies
were not yet suited for independence. Specically, Article 22 said that
to those colonies and territories . . . inhabited by peoples not yet able
to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern
world. . . should be applied the principle that the well-being and devel-
opment of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization. . . .
44
The
idea was tutelage in a paternalistic sense. Further, Article 22 states
that the character of the Mandate must differ according to the stage of
development of the people, the geographical situation of the territory,
its economic conditions and other similar circumstances.
45
Reecting perceived differences in development and levels of civ-
ilization, Article 22 created three classes of Mandate. In the language of
the Covenant, and according to the mandatory agreements, the former
lands of the Turkish empire became Class A mandates, having reached
a stage of development where they, with some assistance, would soon
be able to stand alone. The Class B mandates, were at such a stage,
42
See Lauren, Power and Prejudice, pp. 82103.
43
On the negotiations over the Mandate system and Article 22 at the conference see
Wright, Mandates Under the League, pp. 2443. It is important to recall that not all the cap-
tured or disputed territory went into the Mandate system. Areas in Europe were allocated
either to one power or another, or in the case of the Saar region of Germany, placed under
anInternational Commissionof ve members chairedby its Britishmember andincluding
one native of the Saar Basin.
44
Covenant of the League of Nations, Article 22, paragraph no. 1.
45
Covenant of the League of Nations, Article 22, paragraph no. 3.
261
Argument and change in world politics
that the Mandatorymust be responsible for the administrationof the ter-
ritory under conditions whichwill guarantee freedomof conscience and
religion, subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals, the
prohibition of abuses such as the slave trade, the arms trafc, the liquor
trafc . . . The Class C Mandate territories were those which, owing
to the sparseness of their population, or their small size, or their remote-
ness fromthe centre of civilisation. . . canbe best administeredunder the
laws of the Mandatory as integral portions of its territory, subject to the
safeguards above mentioned in the interests of the indigenous popula-
tion. As Wm. Roger Louis says, the Class C mandates were regarded,
in the phrase current at the time, as colonies in all but name.
46
Rather
than deal with all the issues at Paris, the former colonies that were to be
in these categories were dened at a later date by the Allied Supreme
Council (Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the US), and individual agree-
ments were written for each mandate in 1919 and 1920 and conrmed
over the next two years.
47
The allocation of territory to mandatory pow-
ers was, thoughdecidedby a committee, actually basedonwhichpower
tookover the territoryfromTurkeyor Germanyduringthe war.
48
France
and Britain had mandates in Togo and Cameroons by an agreement in
1919. There was never an ofcial mandate agreement between Britain
and the League on Iraq, only a treaty. The Palestine and Transjordan
mandates were split, early on, as were later the mandates for Syria and
Lebanon.
49
Other parts of the Covenant made space for colonial reform. Article 23
charged members of the League to undertake to secure just treatment
of the native inhabitants of the territories under their control. Article 1
46
Wm. Roger Louis, The Era of the Mandates System and the Non-European World, in
Hedley Bull and AdamWatson, eds., The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1984), pp. 201213: 204.
47
See Hall, Mandates, Dependencies and Trusteeships, pp. 130161. Mandatory agreements
were not between the inhabitants of the territories and the mandatory power, but rather
between the League and the mandatory government. Signicantly, and completely in line
with the paternalistic belief of the day, it was rare that the inhabitants of any territory were
consulted about their status after the war. For exceptions, see Cassese, Self-determination
of Peoples. The Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society drew up a draft proposed
mandate agreement and submitted it to the Permanent Mandates Commission in July
1919. Rather more comprehensive than most mandatory agreements that actually came
into force over the next few years, they made their draft Memorandum on Colonial
Mandates public in the October 1919 issue of the Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines
Friend, pp. 6368.
48
Of course, not all captured territory became mandates, only former colonies.
49
League of Nations, The Mandates System: Origin, Principles, Application (Geneva:
League of Nations, 1945).
262
Sacred trust
Table 6.1 League of Nations Mandates
Class Territory Administrative power
A Iraq Great Britain
Palestine and Transjordan Great Britain
Syria and Lebanon France
B Togoland France
Togoland Great Britain
Cameroons France
Cameroons Great Britain
Tanganyika Great Britain
Ruanda Urundi Belgium
C South West Africa South Africa
New Guinea Australia
Nauru Great Britain/Australia
Samoa New Zealand
Pacic Islands: Marshall, Japan
Carolines and Marianas
Source: League of Nations, The Mandates system: Origin, Principles, Application
(Geneva: League of Nations).
noted that any fully self-governing State, Dominion, or Colony . . . may
become a Member of the League, if it was voted in by the League As-
sembly and the prospective member agreed to comply with the obliga-
tions and regulations required of members. Further, the 1885 General
Act of Berlin andthe 1890 Brussels Act were revisedafter the Peace Con-
ference in a separate agreement, the Convention on the Revision of the
General Act of February 26, 1885, and of the General Act and Declara-
tion of Brussels of July 2, 1890. Signicantly, the Convention retainedthe
emphasis of both prior agreements on commercial openness in Africa
but also, in Article 11 committed signatories to continue to watch over
the preservationof the native populations andto supervise the improve-
ment of the conditions of their moral and material well-being.
50
Thus,
after WorldWar I, principles andbeliefs that were essential elements of a
decolonization regime self-determination, nationalism, human rights,
and an international interest in the affairs of colonial administration
were codied in this major international treaty and used to structure
international relations.
50
Convention quoted in Hall, Mandates, Dependencies and Trusteeship, pp. 323328: 326.
263
Argument and change in world politics
Obviously, however, the League of Nations Mandate system, and the
mention of just treatment elsewhere in the Covenant, were a far cry
from advocating or implementing decolonization.
51
As M.E. Chamber-
lain notes, The Mandatory power was required only to provide good
and humane government, to refrain from exploitation, and to suppress
evils such as the remnants of the slave trade.
52
Rather, the Mandate
system was rst primarily a method of monitoring the treatment of
the subjects of mandate territories by means of annual reports by the
mandatory power, as required by the Covenant, to the Permanent Man-
dates Commission. And, as Quincy Wright argued, Probably none
of the mandatory governments has been enthusiastic for the system.
They prefer mandates to nothing but doubtless would prefer colonies
to mandates.
53
Yet, despite the narrow intentions of its authors (and perhaps in part
due to strong criticism of the Mandate system from the left, as not actu-
ally much different than colonialism), the Mandate system grew to be
more than its framers or the mandatory powers intended, ultimately
striking a wedge in the colonial system.
54
The rst edge of the wedge
is found in the content of specic mandate agreements, where modest,
but still signicant, protections for natives were built into the language
of the mandatory agreements.
55
For example, in the Mandate over East
Africa, Britain agreed that land transfers shall take into consideration
native laws and customs.
56
Further, League mandates were the site of increasing scrutiny of colo-
nial labor practices. Besides the enforcement of the anti-slavery regime,
forced labor was to be discouraged in League mandate territories.
57
Forced labor was prohibited, for example, in South West Africa except
51
Critics, such as Stalin, believed the Mandate system was simply imperialism.
52
M.E. Chamberlain, Decolonization: The Fall of the European Empires (Oxford: Basil Black-
well, 1985), pp. 78; Dorothy V. Jones, The League of Nations Experiment in International
Protection, Ethics & International Affairs 8 (1994), 7795.
53
Wright, Mandates Under the League, p. 97.
54
Analysis and mild criticism from the US left came, for instance, from Rayford Logan,
The Operation of the Mandate System in Africa, The Journal of Negro History 13 (October
1928), 423477. Some drafters of the League Covenant took a cynical view. See Lansing,
The Peace Negotiations, pp. 155160. Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, I, p. 47.
55
It must be borne in mind that so-called treaties of protection between natives and
colonizers hadmade some of these promises before. The keydifferences were international
oversight and accountability.
56
Text of the British Mandate for East Africa, in Hall, Mandates, Dependencies and Trustee-
ship, p. 304.
57
According to their agreements as Mandatory powers, Mandatories were not to armand
use the indigenous populations for military and police, except for domestic purposes.
264
Sacred trust
for essential public works and services, and then only for adequate
remuneration.
58
Similarly, using almost the same language, the text
for the British Mandate for East Africa, says the mandatory power
shall prohibit all forms of forced or compulsory labour, except for
essential public works and services, and then only in return for ad-
equate remuneration.
59
As mandatory in East Africa, Britain agreed
that it, shall protect the natives from abuse and measures of fraud and
force by the careful supervision of labour contracts and the recruiting
of labour.
60
The Permanent Mandates Commission
Beyond the language of mandatory agreements, the greatest power of
the Mandate system to change colonial practice lay in an underrated in-
stitution, the Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) of the League.
The PMCs ofcial role was oversight. But, from the perspective of ethi-
cal argument, the PMC was a venue for arguments about colonial prac-
tice within the mandates and colonies more generally. As such, it (inad-
vertently) promoted the deconstruction of colonialism (denormalizing
and delegitimizing elements of colonial practice) and the construction
of a new paradigm. The PMC, in publicizing the conditions in the man-
dates, also reframed colonial practice. Working in conjunction with the
rest of the League of Nations system and the mandatory administra-
tions, the PMC also articulated criteria for good colonial administration
and created new forms of knowledge and practice about colonialism
in the general public and among colonial administrators, and was thus
the engine for institutionalizing the new normative beliefs about colo-
nial governance. The ultimately revolutionary impact of the PMC was
inadvertent because many PMC members were former colonial admin-
istrators who were ardent advocates of colonialism. Further, the PMC
had little or no direct say in the administration of mandates. Because
it could not directly intervene even its questions and recommenda-
tions on matters of governance had to be conveyed through the League
Council the PMC exercised indirect inuence.
Understanding how ethical argument, reframing, and the institution-
alization of new normative beliefs occurred and worked especially
58
Text of the Mandate for German South West Africa in T.D. Gill, South West Africa and
the Sacred Trust, 19191972 (The Hague: T.M.C. Asser Instituut, 1984), pp. 104105: 105.
59
Text of the British Mandate for East Africa, in Hall, Mandates, Dependencies and Trustee-
ship, pp. 303306: 304.
60
Ibid.
265
Argument and change in world politics
how transparency, accountability, and the idea of progress for natives
was promoted by the process requires an understanding of the en-
tire apparatus of the Mandate system, where three bodies, the League
Council, the League Assembly, and the Permanent Mandates Commis-
sion had roles in supervising mandatory administration. According to
the League Covenant, the mandatory power was to submit annual re-
ports to the Council; the mandatory and the Council would agree, for
each mandate, on the authority of the mandatory power; and a per-
manent commission would receive and examine annual reports of the
Mandatories and advise the Council on all matters relating to the ob-
servance of the mandates.
61
Since the instructions for the PMC were
not explicit in every detail, the League Assembly, the Council, and the
Commission devised the rules and procedures of mandate supervision
and the composition of the permanent commission.
62
Table 6.2 out-
lines the main steps in the process of mandatory supervision by the
League.
Established by the Council of the League in November 1920, the PMC
sat in Geneva and usually met twice a year. After some debate over
the constitution of the PMC, the Assembly decided that the majority of
the ten-member commission would consist of non-Mandatory Pow-
ers. PMC members were to be experts sitting in a private capacity,
and were to recuse themselves if they were citizens of a country whose
mandate was being discussed.
63
Further, a representative of the Interna-
tional Labor Organization usually attended Commission sessions. The
PMC was linked to the secretary general of the League by a secretary
who directeda small staff, known as the Mandates section or secretariat.
PMC and secretariat membership had remarkable continuity over the
nearly two decades it met. For example, there were only three secretaries
from 1921 to 1939 and only two Commission chairmen. Most commis-
sioners served several years, but many served much longer, for exam-
ple, Marquis Th eodoli of Italy served from 1921 to December 1937, and
61
Article 22, paragraphs 79.
62
The membership, organization, and procedures were adopted by the Council on 1 De-
cember 1920 and the Rules of Procedure were devised by the Commission at their rst
session in 1921. Some rules were later claried or revised with amendments at sessions
of the Commission. See League of Nations, The Mandates System, p. 35. Further, accord-
ing to the Mandatory agreements, the Permanent Court of International Justice, establi-
shed by the League, could hear disputes as well.
63
There were originally nine commission members. The rst secretary was made an
extra-ordinary member in 1924 and a tenth member was added in 1926. Commissioners
came fromItaly, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Norway, andSweden andfromthe Mandatory
powers of Belgium, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Japan.
266
Sacred trust
Table 6.2 Process of League Mandate supervision
1. The mandatory administration submitted an annual report to the
Council of the League, answering questions posed to it by the Permanent
Mandates Commission.
2. The Mandate Secretariat received and studied the annual reports, and
distributed the reports to the PMC members. The Secretariat staff also
prepared and distributed questions and background information on the
annual reports to members of the PMC, and drafted reports on the petitions
to the PMC.
3. Members of the PMC examined the reports, petitions, and any
supplementary material sent to it by the Secretariat.
4. The PMC met twice annually to discuss the annual reports and to question
the accredited representatives of the Mandatory power on the content of
their reports and conditions in the Mandate. Each commission member had
anarea of expertise, thoughall, includingthe secretaryandthe representative
from the ILO, could participate in the questioning and discussion.
5. The Mandate secretariat staff prepared the minutes of the PMC and helped
the PMC write its report to the Council. Reports could contain questions,
observations and, rarely, recommendations. The Secretariat staff also kept a
le of the Mandatory powers replies to the Permanent Mandate
Commissions questions and observations.
6. The Council passedonthe PMCreport andtheir owncomments tothe League
Assembly and/or the Sixth (Political) Committee of the League Assembly.
The Assembly, made up primarily of non-colonial powers, discussed
the reports and sometimes made recommendations to the League Council.
7. The League Council, which included mandatory powers, communicated
questions andrecommendations of the PMCandthe Assemblytothe League.
The Council also had the power to appoint PMC members, settle disputes,
and decide when a mandate was ready for independence.
8. Minutes of the PMC, the PMCreport, and the discussion and any resolutions
of the Council and the Assembly were published.
Frederick Lugard, of Britain served fromJuly 1923 to July 1936.
64
Two of
the shorter terms were the British Commissioners W. Ormsby-Gore and
Lord Hankey who resigned the PMC to become members of the British
Cabinet.
At least some PMCmembers were conscious of their role as framers of
public impressions about mandatory government and used the PMCs
authoritytopublicizeconditions inthemandateterritories. Theminutes,
whichinclude the (sometimes verbatim) records of interactions between
commission members and representatives of the mandatory powers,
64
The PMC held thirty-seven sessions, the rst in February 1921, and the last in
December 1939.
267
Argument and change in world politics
were printed annually in English and French, and made available to the
general public, usually within two months of the session.
65
In 1929, the
PMC acknowledged publishing its minutes so that it could secure
the assistance of public opinion in the moral control incumbent upon
the Commission.
66
As Lord Hailey, British member of the Commission
from 1936 to 1939 wrote in 1938, only those who have had experience
in the internal working of an ofcial administration, in circumstances
where there is no organization of public opinion, can appreciate the
strength of the inuence which can be exerted by publicity of the nature
of that involved in the proceedings of the Commission and Council.
67
As important as publicity was in reframing colonial practice, the more
subtle but powerful innovation of the Mandate system was its insti-
tutionalization of international oversight of colonial reform practices,
which changed colonialism in a way that made decolonization more
likely.
68
Normative beliefs about accountability andjust treatment of the
natives were institutionalized when the PMC articulated the terms of
oversight, specied indicators of just treatment, devised measures of
progress, and reviewed the annual reports of the mandatory powers
to the Permanent Mandates Commission. Institutionalization made the
new normative beliefs concrete and simultaneously helped to defamil-
iarize, denormalize, and delegitimize old-style colonialism.
The most important technique for indirectly governing the colonies
and institutionalizing new normative beliefs was the process of annual
reports by the mandatory powers. Each year the same questions were
asked, and each year mandatory administrations submitted reports and
testied before the PMC.
69
It is not surprising that reports by manda-
tory administrators on the conditions within mandates, and their own
actions, tended to put mandatory administration in the best possible
light. The oral questioning of mandatory power representatives by the
65
The minutes of the Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) total over 8,000 pages
according to one estimate. League of Nations, The Mandates System, p. 49.
66
PMC, Minutes of the Fifteenth Session, 1929, p. 15.
67
Hailey, quoted in Hall, Mandates, Dependencies, and Trusteeship, p. 212. Hall believed
that the PMC was not as successful as the Congo reform movement in using publicity and
pointed out: In an autocratic system, where free publicity is not possible, no Mandate or
trusteeship system could operate. Ibid.
68
Of course the Berlin West Africa Conference and its General Act changed colonialism
too, but in a way (by specifying effective occupation) that primarily reinforced the
institution.
69
The reports of the mandatory powers to the PMC were not generally printed in the
Ofcial Journal of the League of Nations or in the minutes of the Permanent Mandates
Commission. The League printed one set in 1925, but decided that it was too costly to
keep up the practice.
268
Sacred trust
PMC was an important innovation of the Commission that helped com-
missioners clarify conditions in the mandates and hold administrators
accountable.
But the Commission limited its oversight in two other respects: the
PMC decided that it would not send missions of inquiry to man-
date territories, nor could inhabitants of the territories directly petition
the PMC. Inhabitants had to go through the mandatory government to
make their petitions, although thirdparties couldsendpetitions directly
to the chair of the Commission. The right of petitionwas usually usedby
Europeans in the mandate territories, andthe mandatory power usually
sent its own comments about the petitions along with the petitions it
chose to transmit. The PMC argued that to hear petitions directly or to
send missions to mandate territories could undermine condence and
authority in the administering powers and would also put the Commis-
sion in the position of being a judicial body, whereas its ofcial role was
one of advising the Council of the League.
70
Perhaps the best illustration of how PMC members saw, in practical
terms, the principle that the well-being and development of such peo-
ples form a sacred trust of civilization, and how the new normative
beliefs about colonialism were articulated and institutionalized by the
PMC is the evolution of its questionnaires on mandates.
71
In 1921, its
rst year of operation, the PMC drew up a list of about sixty questions
that it wanted mandatory powers to answer in their reports with regard
to BandCclass mandates. The PMCquestionnaire was intendedto elicit
information about compliance with international normative beliefs as
stated in the Covenant. Because the focus and language of the ques-
tions was negotiated among members of the Commission, their content
is worth noting as an articulation of the least common denominator
of beliefs about colonial administration. The questions covered slav-
ery, labor, arms trafc, trade and manufacture of alcohol and drugs,
freedom of conscience, economic equality, education, public health,
systems of land tenure, public nances, demographic statistics, and
moral, social, and material well being. The Commission also asked for
copies of all legislative and administrative decisions with regard to each
territory.
70
See League of Nations, The Mandates System, pp. 3846; Wright, Mandates Under the
League, pp. 169184; Hall, Mandates, Dependencies, and Trusteeships, pp. 198207. The League
Council did, on occasion, usually to resolve border issues, send special commissions to
mandated territories. See League of Nations, The Mandates System, p. 45.
71
From Article 22, paragraph 1 of the Covenant.
269
Argument and change in world politics
Despite prohibitions on exploitation and the fact that the administer-
ingpowers werelegallyobligedtopromotethewell beingof inhabitants,
the forced labor that was widespread in non-mandate colonies was also
practiced in the League mandate territories, especially in Africa. On
labor, the Commission asked whether and how free and forced labor
were regulated and protected. Specically, with regard to Class B
mandates the questionnaire asked, 1. What are the measures intended
to ensure the prohibition of forced labour for purposes other than essen-
tial public works and services and what are the effective results of these
measures? 2. For what public works and services is forced native labour
required? How is this regulated? 3. Are there any other forms of forced
labour, such as labour in lieu of taxation, maintenance of highways, etc.
If in the afrmative, how are these regulated?
72
At its ninthsession, the PMCexpandedthe questionnaire to about 275
questions, adding more questions about the status of native inhabitants,
labor, andpublic health. The enlargedscope of inquiryindicates howthe
least common denominator of colonial reformism moved toward more
autonomy and self-determination for the natives under mandatory
administration. One entirely new set of questions focused on native
participation in their own government: 12. Do natives take part in the
general administration and, if so, to what extent? Are any posts in the
public service open to natives? Have councils of native notables been
created? 13. Are there any native communities organized under native
rulers andrecognizedbythe Government? What degree of autonomydo
they possess and what are their relations with the Administration? Do
village councils exist? With regard to Judicial Organization, another
new set of questions asked: 30. How are the courts and tribunals of the
various instances [civil and criminal] constituted? 31. Do they recognize
native customary law, and if so, in what cases and under what condi-
tions? 32. Are natives entitled to ofciate in the courts and tribunals: for
example as assessors or members of the jury?
Other new questions were oriented toward protecting native rights
and welfare, and the section of questions on labor issues was expanded
and renamed from simply Labour to Conditions and Regulation of
Labour.
73
The content of these questions shows a widening scope of
72
Questionnaire Intended to Facilitate the Preparation of the Annual Reports from the
Mandatory Powers. Reprinted in Hall, Mandates, Dependencies and Trusteeship, pp. 319
322: 319320.
73
Minutes of the Permanent Mandates Commission, BandCMandates, List of Questions
Which the Permanent Mandates Commission Desires Should Be Dealt With in the Annual
270
Sacred trust
critical attentionfromabolishingslaverytoextendingnative workers
rights.
55. Are there any laws and regulations regarding labour, particularly con-
cerning:
Labour contracts and penalties to which employers and employed
are liable in the case of their breach?
Rates of wages and methods of payments?
Hours of work?
Disciplinary powers possessed by employers?
Housing and sanitary conditions in the camps or villages of
workers?
Medical inspection before and on completion of employment;
medical assistance to workers?
Compensation in the event of accident, disease or incapacity arising
out of, and in the course of, employment?
Insurance against sickness, old age or unemployment?
. . .
61. Does the existing law provide for compulsory labour for essential
public works and services?
What authority is competent to decide what are public works
and services the essential nature of which justies recourse to
compulsory labour?
What payment is made to the workers?
May such compulsory labour be commuted for a money payment?
Are all such classes of the population liable to such labour?
For what period can this labour be exacted?
. . .
69. Are there any trade unions in the territory? If so, have these unions put
forward any protests or demands?
Some governments objected to the more comprehensive PMC ques-
tionnaire. South Africa, Britain, and Japan opposed the new question-
naire in part on the grounds that it was too long.
74
Other mandatory
powers did not object as much, but at its eleventh session, the Commis-
sion decided that mandatory powers were free to decide whether or not
to use the longer questionnaire. Nevertheless, according to observers,
Reports of the Mandatory Powers, Distributedto the Council, the Members of the League
and the Delegates at the Assembly, Geneva, June 25th, 1926, Publications of the League of
Nations, VI.A. Mandates, 1926, 7 pages.
74
Wright, Mandates Under the League, p. 162. Hall, Mandates, Dependencies, and Trusteeship,
p. 206.
271
Argument and change in world politics
mandatory government reports tended to become fuller and clearer as
the years go by.
75
The more complete the annual reports became, andthe longer andmore
closely the Commission and the accredited representatives worked
together, the more committed the governments were to carrying out
the principles of the mandates. The more complete the background
statistics given by the mandatory powers and the longer the period
of years over which the information stretched, the more they were
committed to telling the truth and nothing but the truth. It became
part of the wisdom of the Geneva experience that a government which
gave statistics committed its future. For once it had begun to give or-
dered data, nothing was more likely to come quickly to light than
a serious inaccuracy. To the trained eye of an international body
and its secretariat . . . a serious inaccuracy, or even the variant fact,
stood out as red lights on the page and invited immediate question
and comment.
76
Thus the PMCreframedcolonial practice byquestioningandpubliciz-
ing conditions in the mandates. New normative beliefs about progress
were institutionalized as the meaning of well-being and development
were articulated and given more precise qualitative and quantitative
measure. The content of the questions tended to articulate specic mile-
stones and signs for making practical the belief that more, not less, au-
tonomy should be given to the people who inhabited the mandates, es-
pecially the native inhabitants, andthus change in a positive direction
was implied, indeed demanded. Because the mandatory administra-
tions reports were annual, and they were expected to show evidence of
improvement inthe economic, political, andsocial conditions of natives,
the mandatory had an incentive to improve those conditions. The fact
that international surveillance was indirect, via self-reports by manda-
tory administrations, meant that to a certain degree, the standards and
expectations of the mandates system was internalized by mandatory
powers. The legitimate mission of colonialism became development,
rather than exploitation. Exploitation was delegitimized and greater
native rights and autonomy institutionalized. The role of the PMC as a
75
James C. Hale, The Creation and Application of the Mandate System: A Study in
International Colonial Supervision, Transactions of the Grotius Society, vol. XXV (London:
Grotius Society, 1940), p. 218. The mandatory Powers, in fact, have continually sought
to render their annual reports more comprehensive, and to include in them all relevant
information concerning points of special interest to the members of the Commission.
League of Nations, The Mandates System, p. 37.
76
Hall, Mandates, Dependencies, and Trusteeship, p. 188.
272
Sacred trust
venue for ethical arguments is illustrated by following the discussion
of PMC supervision of South Africas administration of their mandate.
South West Africa as a mandate
While there were certainly many arguments about South West Africa
within the Permanent Mandates Commission, it is one of the hardest
cases in which to demonstrate that status as a League of Nations Man-
date and supervision by the PMC made a difference. South West Africa
was the last League Mandate territory to become independent indeed,
it was one of the last of any of the worlds colonies to become indepen-
dent when South Africa nally left in 1990. Further, South West Africas
independence came after decades of guerrilla war. What difference did
South West Africas status as a mandate make in the lives of South West
Africans? Were the natives protected from the rapes, lynching, con-
centration camps, and massacres that characterized German colonial
rule? Was South Africa at all deterred from formal annexation by the
fact of supervision by the PMC and the League?
South West Africa was occupied by South African forces ghting
with the Allies early in World War I and ruled under martial law from
mid 1915 until 31 December 1920. When the war ended, thousands of
Germans living in South West Africa were repatriated to Germany, but
thousands remained, and were joined by more than 10,000 new South
African occupiers.
77
General Jan Smuts of South Africa thought German
colonies in Africa too barbaric for inclusion in the Mandate system
and he wanted to annex South West Africa. The South African govern-
ment certainly had the military might to do so. Nevertheless, President
Wilsons vision of the Mandate system prevailed in Paris and South
West Africa became a mandate in 1921.
South West Africa was the only territory specically named in Article
22 of the League of Nations Covenant.
There are territories such as South West Africa and certain of the
Pacic Islands, which, owing to the sparseness of their population,
or their small size, or their remoteness from the centres of civilisation,
or their geographical contiguity to the territory of the Mandatory, and
other circumstances, can be best administered under the laws of the
77
The majority of the population, over 208,000 people, were native and coloured,
and about 19,000 were European according to the 1921 South African census. League of
Nations, The Mandate System, p. 115.
273
Argument and change in world politics
Mandatory as integral portions of its territory, subject to the safeguards
above mentioned in the interests of the indigenous population.
78
In its mandate agreement, signed on 17 December 1920, and in promises
to the natives, South African ofcials pledgedto administer the territory
better than the Germans. Specically, Article 2 of the agreement stated
that the mandate shall promote to the utmost the material and moral
well-being and the social progress of the inhabitants of the territory . . .
South Africa was also given full power of administration and legis-
lation over the territory subject to the present Mandate as an integral
portion of the Union of South Africa.
79
Given this language, it is no
wonder that Smuts told the Union of South Africa Parliament in 1925
that mandate status was close enough to annexation: It gives the Union
such complete sovereignty, not only administrative, but legislative, that
we need not ask for anything more.
80
Although the South Africans regularly contrasted their administra-
tion with what they portrayed as the more brutal rule of the Germans,
South African administration of South West Africa was brutal from the
start and ostensibly little different than old-fashioned colonialism.
81
Al-
ready practicing what it called segregation at home, South Africa
moved to institute the same arrangement in South West Africa by, for
example, conning African natives to native reserves and taking
the best land for whites, as it had done in South Africa in 1913.
82
Well
over 90 percent of South West Africas native population was thus re-
stricted to less than 10 percent of the land. South West Africans were
alsorequiredtopayrelativelyhightaxes, whichbothsubsidizedmanda-
tory administration and forced Africans to work in wage labor on white
farms.
In 1923 the PMC questioned the purpose of the native reserve sys-
tem. In reply, the South African representative said native reserves were
entirely in the interest of the natives. The reasoning was that, na-
tives, if allowed to live with the white people, eventually parted with
their land and became vagrants and a source of danger. The only way
78
League of Nations Covenant, Article 22, paragraph 7.
79
The complete text of the mandate is found in John Dugard, ed., The South West Africa/
Namibia Dispute: Documents and Scholarly Writings on the Controversy Between South Africa
and the United Nations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 7274.
80
I. Goldblatt, History of South West Africa fromthe beginning of the Nineteenth Century (Cape
Town: Juta & Company Limited, 1971), p. 210.
81
See David Soggot, Namibia: The Violent Heritage (London: Rex Collings, 1986).
82
The Germans had also used a native reserve system in South West Africa.
274
Sacred trust
to preserve the native was to bring him gradually under the inuence
of civilisation, as was done in South Africa.
83
This nineteenth-century
language did not fare well in the PMC. The chairman of the commission
asked simply, whether the systemcould be reconciled with the spirit of
the mandates and the civilising mission with which the Mandatory was
entrusted.
84
The South African representative then backpedaled and
attempted to conceal the nature of the system by describing it in vague
terms, saying that the natives originally had their own land which
they lost as a consequence of rebellion.
85
South African evasiveness,
and the doggedness of the PMC, is apparent in the same session during
questioning of the South African representative about labor recruitment
practices in South West Africa. The questioner, Mr. Grimshaw, was the
ILO expert who sat with the PMC.
Mr. GRI MS HAW asked whether vagrants were liable to imprisonment
and compulsory employment.
Major HERBS T said that punishment for vagrancy might take the form
of compulsory employment at a private farm, or at public works, in
return for pay . . .
Mr. GRI MS HAW pointed out that on page 21 of the report, the number
of Ovambos recruited for work was a little over 1,000 apart from
those going of their own accord. Did the recruited natives go under
compulsion?
Major HERBS T said that some pressure was exercised by the native
chiefs. There was a European ofcer in Ovamboland, who was in-
formed of the requirements of the mines. He made these requirements
knowntothechiefs, whothemselves persuadedthenatives torecruit. . .
Mr. GRI MS HAW asked whether men were directly compelled to work.
Major HERBS T saidthere was no compulsion if they couldshowmeans
of subsistence.
86
As this exchange demonstrates, members of the PMC sought to as-
certain the conditions for natives working in the mandate, while South
African representatives triedto put the best face on these conditions and
to justify their policies in light of dominant beliefs. If normative beliefs
and legitimacy did not matter, neither side would have bothered with
such a discussion.
83
PMC, Minutes of the Third Session, 1923, p. 103.
84
Ibid., p. 104.
85
Ibid., p. 104.
86
Ibid., p. 108.
275
Argument and change in world politics
The role of argument is also illustrated in an incident known as
the Bondelswarts affair. Not surprisingly, African resistance to South
African mandatory rule was evident from the beginning and
South Africa often used force to crush that resistance.
87
In 1917, the
South African administration imposed a tax on dogs and the tax was
increased in 1921. The Bondelswarts, located in the southern part of the
mandate, apparently refused to pay the tax and also resisted handing
over ve men, including Abraham Morris, for whom arrest warrants
had been issued in April. Morris had re-entered South West Africa il-
legally from South Africa, and he was apparently armed. This dispute
capped a long period of Bondelswart ill-feeling about taxes, wages, and
other mandatory administration policies.
88
Accounts of what happened
next vary. Most agree that in May 1922 the Bondelswarts prepared to
ght, or at least defend themselves, and the mandatory administration
moved to crush what they called a rebellion of 500 to 600 people, of
which 200 were said to be armed (although only about 40 weapons were
captured after the Bondelswarts were crushed). The mandate adminis-
trator, Gysbert Hofmeyr, then raised a force of about 400 men, armed
with ries and four machine guns, and called in aircraft to bomb the
Bondelswarts. This resulted in what some called a massacre: 100 rebels
died, including Morris and a small number of Bondelswart women and
children. Another 468 of the Bondelswart men were wounded and/or
taken prisoner.
89
The Bondelswarts incident was widely reported in South Africa,
where the press and members of parliament called for an investiga-
tion. One opposition member of the South African parliament, Arthur
Barlow, said that black men in the League of Nations would seize
upon the incident andour name was going to stink in the nostrils of the
countries of the world.
90
But, despite widespread criticism, the prime
minister of South Africa, General Jan Smuts, stood up for the actions of
Hofmeyr, who submitteda report of the event to the government shortly
87
See Petet Katjavivi, A History of Resistance in Namibia (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press,
1988); Colin Leys and John S. Saul, et al., Namibias Liberation Struggle: The Two Edged Sword
(London: James Currey, 1995); Isaak I. Dore, The International Mandate System and Namibia
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1985).
88
John H. Wellington, South West Africa and its Human Issues (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1967), pp. 285286.
89
See A.M. Davey, The Bondelzwarts Affair: AStudy of the Repercussions (Pretoria: University
of South Africa, 1961), pp. 58. Also see Goldblatt, History of South West Africa from the
beginning of the Nineteenth Century and Wellington, South West Africa and its Human Issues.
PMC, Minutes of the Third Session, 1923 (Geneva: League of Nations, 1923).
90
Quoted in Davey, The Bondelzwarts Affair, p. 10.
276
Sacred trust
afterwards. Later, under pressure from the South African parliament,
Smuts agreed to an investigation by the Native Affairs Commission of
South Africa.
Reaction abroad was also critical. In Britain, the secretary of state for
colonial affairs, Winston Churchill, was questioned about the incident
in the House of Commons. Of more concern to South Africa, news of the
incident also reached the League of Nations Assembly where the PMC,
and the Haitian representative to the League Assembly, Mr. Bellegarde,
called for an investigation. Shortly after the Bondelswarts affair, South
Africa was due to answer questions on its annual report to the PMC.
But, South Africa did not send a representative to the PMC in 1922 to
answer questions on its very brief report. The minutes of the meeting
say simply that the PMC regretted the absence of a representative of
South Africa, that it drew attention to the term Protectorate bestowed
upon the mandatory territory in some of the ofcial communications of
the mandatory Power, and that the PMCwould like information about
the rebellion and its repression.
91
Later that year, in diplomatic lan-
guage, the League Assembly unanimously passed a resolution, moved
by feelings of great anxiety for the welfare and relief of the survivor,
expressing its desire to see the full report on the action that South Africa
had promised to produce.
92
In 1923, South Africa supplied the PMC with the required annual
report and two special reports on the Bondelswarts incident prepared
by the administrator of South West Africa and the panel appointed by
Smuts. On 23 July 1923, the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection
Society wrote to the secretary general of the League to point out serious
omissions in the two reports and to note that even according to the
South Africans themselves, the ghting appeared to have been started
by the Mandatory government and that the Bondelswarts were defend-
ing themselves. Further, the Society urged the PMC to hear someone
on behalf of the Hottentots rather than only to hear fromMajor Herbst,
who took part in the attack.
93
Over the course of several days, PMC
members closely questioned the South African representatives on
91
PMC, Minutes of the Second Session, 1922, p. 10. The rst opportunity for the PMC to
comment on South Africas policies came in 1922 but the South African government did
not send anyone to represent the mandatory government at the PMC. South Africa was
the only Mandatory administration which failed to send a representative to the PMC that
year. In fact, nearly every mandatory government sent a high-ranking representative each
year.
92
League of Nations, Assembly Resolution Number 5, Geneva, 20 September 1922.
93
Letter printed as Annex 8, PMC, Minutes of the Third Session, 1923, pp. 287288.
277
Argument and change in world politics
events, focusing their inquiry on the deep roots of the trouble, the
immediate causes of the uprising, South African conduct in repressing
it, and the conditions of the Bondelswarts people following suppression
of the rebellion.
94
After a relatively brief discussion of how the ghting
arose and was conducted, PMC questioning concentrated on the
political and economic causes of the dispute. PMC members asked
why the Bondelswarts could not have some form of self-government.
The South African representatives said that the Bondelswarts, though
they wanted their own chief to be recognized, could not revert to a
primitive systemsince the tribes hadbeen broken upby the previous
government due tothe constant wars inwhichtheyhadengaged.
95
The
minutes note that the PMCfound South African arguments shifting and
contradictory:
The Chairman did not quite understand the conditions prevailing.
At one moment it seemed that the natives had reached some degree
of civilisation; at other times they seemed to be wholly barbarous.
They found on the one hand that there was a tax on dogs, and on the
other that there was no Customs . . . The Commission was informed
that cattle owners must pay a ne if their cattle were not vaccinated or
branded, a regulation that seemed to show that the organisation of the
country was fairly complete. They [the PMC] were now dealing with a
question of credit and of advances, which was difcult to understand
if the people in question were in a primitive stage.
96
The PMC concluded that the uprising itself could have been pre-
vented by better administration and that its repression appears to have
been carried out with excessive severity, and, had it been preceded by
a demonstration of the overwhelming force at the command of the mil-
itary authority, an immediate and perhaps bloodless surrender might
have been anticipated.
97
Upon learning of the PMCs forthcoming conclusions, the South
Africanrepresentative, Major Herbst, requestedasecondhearing, where
he said: I intended to let the case rest where we nished the other
day. . . I had not then considered that it was possible that we might get
an adverse verdict on this matter from the Commission. . . Saying that
94
In a departure from the usual style, where remarks of Commission members and
mandatory representatives were summarized in the third person, the exchange be-
tween the South African representatives and the Commission members were appar-
ently recorded and published verbatim. PMC, Minutes of the Third Session, 1923, 31 July,
1 August, and 7 August respectively, pp. 113125; 126136; 183187.
95
Ibid., p. 128.
96
Ibid., p. 130.
97
Ibid., p. 136.
278
Sacred trust
the administrator, Hofmeyr, had done what nine out of ten administra-
tors would have done in similar circumstances, Herbst tried to reframe
the incident by arguing that the PMC should see the issue as one not of
pre-existing native grievances and a just rebellion harshly crushed, but
as the breach of law by the Bondelswarts. He continued:
What would be the effect on an Administrator of such a censure
coming from a body like the Permanent Mandates Commission?
Could he possibly, with any self-respect, continue in occupation of
the post? . . . Unless action against the Government is suppressed as
speedily as possible, we cannot foresee the consequences . . . We still
have natives there who are only impressed by show of force; that is
all they recognise as appertaining to a government . . . I would ask the
Commission to seriously consider the effect of an adverse criticism in
South Africa. We are going to have an immediate outcry.
98
Despite Herbsts plea, the PMCreport submitted to the Council of the
League and forwarded to the League Assembly, and the separate state-
ment by PMC Chairman Alberto Th eodoli, were critical of the South
African conduct before, during, and especially after the rebellion. The
Commissions report was more diplomatic than the chairmans state-
ment, yet even it was critical of specic practices of the mandatory
administration, including the dog tax and the administrations decree
requiringnatives topurchase brandingirons for their cattle (The whites
actually received their branding-irons, but those which were bought by
natives were kept by the Administration). The report was particularly
critical of the vagrancy law.
The Vagrancy Law of 1920 as interpreted by the Administration made
any native wandering abroad liable to arrest if he could not prove legal
ownership of at least 10 head of cattle or 50 head of small stock.
The magistrate was authorised, in lieu of the punishment prescribed,
to adjudge the accused to a term of service on public works or to em-
ployment under any municipality or private person other than the
complainant, for a term not exceeding that for which imprisonment
might be imposed, at such wages as the magistrate deemed fair. This
power of imposing forced labour for the benet of private individu-
als in lieu of the sentence of the Court is a practice which cannot be
approved.
99
98
Ibid., pp. 183184, 186, 187.
99
PMC, Report on the Bondelswarts Rebellion, in PMC, Minutes of the Third Session,
1923, pp. 290296: 293.
279
Argument and change in world politics
PMCChairmanTh eodoli of Italywas moreblunt inhis assessment. He
argued that the principles which govern mandates and colonies are dif-
ferent: As far as themandatedterritories areconcerned, theCovenant of
the League of Nations . . . has profoundly and substantially altered colo-
nial law and colonial administration. Quoting the Covenant, Th eodoli
argued that the actions of governments ought to be in line with the
purpose of the Mandate system, namely, the well-being and develop-
ment of less-advanced peoples. He said: First in importance come the
interests of the natives, second the interests of the whites. He argued
that although the PMC did not have all the information it needed, my
fundamental impression is that the administration of the territory of
South-West Africa, before, during, and after the incident, seems above
all to have been concerned with maintaining its own authority in de-
fence of the interests of the minority consisting of the white population.
Chairman Th eodoli concludes:
The Administration ought, on the contrary, in my opinion from the
beginning to have carried on a policy and adopted an administrative
practice calculated to lessen the racial prejudice, which in those terri-
tories has always been the fundamental cause of the hostility which
has invariably existed between the native population and the whites.
I think, therefore, that the Administration has pursued a policy of force
rather than of persuasion, and further, that this policy has always been
conceived and applied in the interest of the colonists rather than in the
interest of the natives.
I admit that circumstances in the past, special conditions on the spot,
and the particular characteristics of the population may make the task
of the mandatory Power a very difcult one. My conscience, however,
will not allow me to admit that these difculties justify a departure
from the principles of the mandate . . .
100
On 23 August 1923, the South African representative to the League,
E.H. Walton, replied to the PMC report and the chairmans statement,
taking strong exception to the criticism in both.
101
As a result of the
Commissions work, the Council of the League passed a resolution that,
in diplomatic language, censored South Africa for its behavior in the
affair and expressed its hope that, in the future, South Africa would
100
Statement made by the Chairman, Marquis Alberto Th eodoli, in PMC, Minutes of
the Third Session, 1923, p. 296.
101
E.H. Walton, Comments of the AccreditedRepresentative of the Unionof SouthAfrica
on the Commissions Report on the Bondelswarts Rebellion. Annexed to PMC, Minutes
of the Third Session, 1923.
280
Sacred trust
report improvement in the condition of the Bondelswarts. This might
seem like very little. Still, the South African government protested the
resolution.
102
Though South West Africans continued to resist South African gov-
ernment the administration was much more moderate in response to
protests, such as the conict in Rehobeth in 1925 that could, like the
Bondelswarts incident, have led to a massacre.
103
The PMC continued
to watch the South African administration carefully and to note when it
did not seem to be working in the spirit of the Mandate system. For ex-
ample, in 1925, when the South African parliament enacted legislation
that granted the territorys white population a measure of represen-
tative government, the PMC noted that this did not take the natives
into account. In 1926 and 1927, the PMC, the Council of the League
and the League Assembly all protested a phrase in the treaty between
South Africa and Portugal, which settled the boundary between Angola
and South West Africa, because the language of the treaty referred to
South Africas sovereignty over South West Africa. In 1933, when the
South African Parliament proposed granting representation to the man-
dates white population in the Union Parliament, the PMC, departing
from its usual diplomatic language, criticized South Africas adminis-
trationin1934. The PMCarguedthat turning SouthWest Africa, ineffect
into the fth province of South Africa was, to undermine the princi-
ples of the mandate.
104
The South African government then stalled and
eventually backed off under cover of a new South West Africa Commis-
sion which said that although such an arrangement would not violate
the mandate, in any case it was not necessary to take such a step at
that time. After the opinion of the South African commission on this
point was communicated to the PMC in South Africas annual report,
the PMC then agreed to reserve judgment on the situation.
105
102
Wright, Mandates Under the League, p. 210.
103
On the 1925 campaign of resistance by the Rehoboth community, a petition by the
Rehoboth to the PMC, and South Africas negotiated resolution of the dispute, see Wright,
Mandates Under the League, pp. 210211; Goldblatt, History of South West Africa, pp. 223225.
In 1922, members of the South West African Universal Negro Improvement Association
andAfricanCommunities League (foundedinLuderitz in1921) went toGeneva topetition
the League for black rule in South West Africa. Tony Emmett, Popular Resistance in
Namibia, 19205, in Brian Wood, ed., Namibia, 18841984: Readings on Namibias History
and Society (Lusaka: United Nations Institute for Namibia, 1988), pp. 224258: 237.
104
PMC, Minutes of the Twenty-Seventh Session, 1934, p. 63.
105
PMC, Minutes of the Thirty-First Session, 1937, p. 192. Goldblatt, History of South West
Africa, p. 235. Solomon Slonim, South West Africa and the United Nations: An International
Mandate in Dispute (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), p. 55.
281
Argument and change in world politics
South Africa had to regularly justify its behavior and publicly answer
to the normative standards articulated by the PMC. The regularity and
intensity of outside oversight by the PMC and the League held South
West Africa under international scrutiny and made it accountable in
ways that would not otherwise have been the case. Thus, while South
West Africans were still treated badly, status as a mandate under the
League probably prevented South Africa from annexing the territory
and perhaps deterred the South African government from perpetrating
even more terrible abuses on the African population.
Effects and effectiveness of the Mandate system
The impact of the Mandate system may be assessed on three levels.
First, did conditions improve inside mandates? Second, did the Man-
date system have a concrete impact on colonialism as a set of practices
in non-mandate territories? Were the beliefs, arguments, and practices
articulated and developed with regard to League mandates general-
ized beyond the mandate territories and put into effect in other, non-
mandate, colonies? Of course, if conditions simultaneously improved in
mandates and colonies, then we cannot establish a causal relationship
frommandates to other colonies unless it was the same set of beliefs that
led to the Mandate systemwhich also affected the general conception of
colonialism and led to changes in all colonies. Third, did the Mandate
system(inadvertently) affect howcolonialismwas understood, andthus
reframe the colonial system?
The answer to the rst question, is a qualied yes. International
supervision of the mandatory powers by the PMC and the League
did affect the conduct of the mandatory powers in individual man-
date territories. As envisaged by the language of the covenant, some
class A mandate territories achieved independence, specically Iraq in
1932, and Transjordan and Lebanon in 1944 and 1946.
106
However, this
106
Iraqis rebelled in 1920 against British rule, costing the British 400 lives to squash the
uprising. There were disagreements over controlling Iraqs newly discoveredoil resources
and the British established a monarchy in Iraq where there had been none before. The
same year that Iraq became a League mandate territory, the Kurds of northern Iraq were
promised autonomy in the Treaty of Sevres and the opportunity, at a later date, to apply
to the League for status as a sovereign state. The exact boundaries of Iraq in the Kurdish
region were disputed with Turkey, the former colonizers, until the League sided with Iraq
in 1925 (with the provisos that Turkey would get 10 percent of Iraqi oil revenues from
the Kurdish area and that the rights of the Kurdish population would be respected). Even
after formal independence from Britain in 1932, foreign affairs were still controlled by
Whitehall.
282
Sacred trust
independence was not always complete. In the case of Iraq, for ex-
ample, Britain retained control of foreign policy and defense until after
World War II. But nominal independence was hardly the outcome for
the majority of League mandate territories.
However, if most mandates did not become independent, did the
Mandate system protect the inhabitants of mandate territories from the
abuses that were typical of colonialism? One key point of control in
the complex colonial system was government regulation of labor, and
this is implicitly recognized by the attention the PMC gave to labor
in its questionnaires and oversight. Did labor conditions improve for
the subjects of mandates? In one important respect at least in Africa
conditionfor labor was essentiallythe same regardless of colonial status:
colonial and mandatory governments alike continued to change the
system of labor from subsistence to wage labor, and forced labor was
a feature of both systems. Indeed, as labor historians have shown, the
coerced proletarianization of native labor, whether through forced labor
or taxation, is the great legacy of colonialism all over the world.
On the other hand, there were certainly important differences be-
tween colonial and mandatory labor practices. For example, the recruit-
ment and periods of forced labor in mandates was regularly scruti-
nized by the PMC. The period of forced labor required in the Belgian
mandate territory of Ruanda declined in the late 1920s and early 1930s
from 29 to 13 days per year while forced labor requirements remained
high in Belgiums other African territory, the Congo, where it reached
120 days in World War II. Indeed, compulsory labor grew in some non-
mandate territories: forced labor went from 7 to 12 days per year in
French West and East Africa during the interwar period and in the
Portuguese colonies in Africa forced labor was ofcially six months
per year for men 1460 years old. Head taxes in the Portuguese colonies
could further increase the amount of labor required, since the tax was
payable with three months of labor per year.
107
The greater length of forced labor in the Belgian Congo colony ver-
sus forced labor in a Belgian mandate raises the question of whether
there was any transfer of attitudes from mandate to colony. Were in-
novations in mandate policy or the notion of sacred trust extended to
non-mandate colonies? At least in Britain, the bureaucratic distinction
between colonies and mandates was not rm. The General Division
107
C. Coquery-Vidrovitch, The Colonial Economy of the Former French, Belgian and
Portuguese Zones, 191435, in Boahen, ed., Africa Under Colonial Domination, pp. 351
381: 360, 363, 367.
283
Argument and change in world politics
of Britains Colonial Ofce had the responsibility of dealing with the
League mandates. British Secretary of State for the Colonies Ormsby-
Gore, who had previously served on the Permanent Mandates Com-
mission, told the Foreign Policy Committee of the Cabinet in 1937,
that although Article 22 formally applied only to mandates, the prin-
ciples were, in practice, identical with the principles by which His
Majestys Government was guided in its general administration of the
Colonies.
108
Sometransfer of principles andpracticewas alsoinevitable
in cases such as British mandate territories and colonies in East Africa,
which were economically and politically integrated.
109
And, as will be
discussed in Chapter 7, the Mandate system inuenced the treatment of
colonies in the later United Nations Trusteeship System and the Decla-
ration on Non-Self-Governing Territories.
But, most concretely, the Mandate system appears to have inuenced
labor practices in all colonies. After 1927, four members of the PMC
sat on the newly created Native Labor Committee of the International
Labor Organization. The Native Labor Committee focused on forced
labor andlong-termlabor contracts inall colonies anddependencies, not
just in mandates. As Duncan Hall argues, the conventions on labor that
came out of the Native Labor Committees work aimed at extending to
dependencies in general safeguards rst given international recognition
inthe provisions of the League mandates.
110
In1930the ILOConference
adopted the Forced Labour Convention with 93 votes in favor and 63
abstentions (including France, Belgium, and Portugal); no delegations
could bring themselves to a principled defense of forced labor.
111
The
Conventions goal was the suppression of forced labor in all its forms
within the shortest possible period.
112
Didthe Mandate systemaffect howcolonialismitself was understood
and framed? The Mandate system was supervised by men and women
like LordFrederickLugardof Britain, who, prior tohis service onthe Per-
manent Mandates Commission, was a colonial ofcer and the governor
108
D. J. Morgan, The Ofcial History of Colonial Development, Vol. 1: The Origins of British
Aid Policy, 19241945 (London: Macmillan Press, 1980), p. 17.
109
Hall, Mandates, Dependencies, and Trusteeship, pp. 232233.
110
Ibid., p. 250.
111
Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and
British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 29.
112
The Forced Labor Convention said that forced labor could not be used for private
purposes, but only for public works for at most sixty days per year, with wages and
limited hours. The League of Nations Slavery Convention of 1926 also mentioned forced
labor inthe context of preventingforcedlabor fromdevelopingintoconditions analogous
to slavery.
284
Sacred trust
of Nigeria, for Britain. Lugards notion of the Mandate system was ag-
gressive humanitarianism, rather than reform. British methods, he
said, have not in all cases produced ideal results, but I am profoundly
convinced that there can be no question but that British rule has pro-
moted the happiness and welfare of the primitive races.
113
Lugard
believed in British colonialism: We hold these countries because it is
the genius of our race to colonize, to trade, and to govern. The task in
which England is engaged in the tropics alike in Africa and the East
has become part of her tradition, and she has ever given of her best
in the cause of liberty and civilization.
114
Could he and the other true
believers in colonialism who served on the PMC have intended that the
Mandate system would change the way colonialism was understood
and ultimately undermine the institution? Probably not. Nevertheless,
that was the unintended consequence.
Britains reforms in its largest colony, India, are an example of the
effects of the Mandate system on non-mandate colonies. Indians, of
course, had long fought for autonomy, and reforms had begun well be-
fore the Mandate systemwas put in place, for example, with the mutiny
of Indian soldiers in the Bengal Army in 1857 and the formation of
the nationalist Indian National Congress in 1885. British reforms al-
lowed greater Indian participation in responsible government with
the Indian Councils Acts of 1892 and 1909, but they were not enough
for most activist Indians. Mahatma Gandhi, who gradually developed
his ideas of non-violent resistance, satyagraha, during his decades of ac-
tivism on behalf of Indians in South Africa, returned to India in 1915
and took up his moral campaign there. The 1917 Montague Declaration
called for the gradual development of self governing institutions, but
two years later the British government in India passed the Rowlett Acts
which continued the political restrictions that Britain had imposed dur-
ing World War I.
Indians peacefully protested these restrictions but the British cracked
down on the protesters. The most famous incident occurred when, in
Amritsar on 13 April 1919, British General Dyer ordered his troops to
re, without warning, on several thousand people who were peacefully
disobeying a ban on public meetings. Ultimately, the soldiers killed 379
people andwoundedmore than1,000other protesters. Anofcial British
inquiry into the massacre and subsequent oggings during martial law,
113
Lord Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (New York: Frank Cass (1922)
1965), p. 618.
114
Ibid., p. 619.
285
Argument and change in world politics
found against Dyer.
115
Thus, while similar crackdowns had been unre-
markable, the reframing of the colonial mission, in part exemplied and
in part generated by the League of Nations Mandate System, meant that
the Dyers action was understood differently than before.
In part as a reaction to charges of hypocrisy, Britain again reformed
its India policy with the 1919 Government of India Act that enunciated
a principle of dyarchy, where some spheres, such as education and
health, were transferred to Indian control at the provincial level, while
others such as public order were reserved and remained under British
control.
116
In1924, the Royal CommissiononIndianizationset goals for
increasing the numbers of Indians in the civil service and police force.
From1927 to 1930, the Simon (Parliamentary) Commission developed a
plantointroduce representative government toIndia, thoughthere were
no Indian representatives on the Simon Commission. The non-violent
movement in India, protesting the lack of a direct voice in constitu-
tional reform, grew to have thousands of adherents in the 1930s and
staged many non-violent protests to British rule, attracting world-wide
attention. The 1935 Government of India Act gave an Indian federal
government nominal domestic authority but retained British control
over foreign and military affairs.
117
Thus, Britain reformed the gover-
nance of its largest colony in parallel with the reforms it undertook in its
mandates.
Conclusion
There are several conclusions to draw from this discussion of the
Mandate system. First, public pressure, deployed in the form of
ethical argument, led to the innovation of mandates. Second, ethical
arguments, which took place in the forum of the Permanent Mandates
Commission, were part of the process of institutionalizing reformist be-
liefs. Third, this institutionalization within the Mandate System was
generalized to colonies through various mechanisms colonial admin-
istration, imitation, and international law.
This last point is controversial, but contemporary observers thought
that mainstream beliefs about colonialism shifted because of the
Mandate system and in fact consciously sought to extend mandate
115
See Chamberlain, Decolonization, on this incident, p.16.
116
Ibid., pp. 6, 16.
117
The rst provincial elections in1937 resultedinCongress Partyvictories insix of eleven
provinces and Gandhis party could therefore claim signicant political support.
286
Sacred trust
principles to all colonies. For example, in a report to the Grotius So-
ciety, James C. Hale claimed that the Mandate system was better than
colonialism for inhabitants of mandates. Under the Mandate system,
Hale argued, the natives rights are more fully protected, white settlers
are prevented from exploiting the natural resources of the territory to
their sole advantage, and all States members of the League of Nations
are given an equal voice in this supervision, with a view to maintaining
the trust undertaken by the League on behalf of civilisation.
118
Notably, one of Hales early reports on the Mandate system was sub-
titled, A Study in International Colonial Supervision. Claiming that
it was better than the old colonial system, Hale argued that, The
Mandatory is merely carrying out a trust, the avowed aim of which is
to help the inhabitants of the territory to stand by themselves, and not
to govern them for its sole advantage.
119
Hales report the following
year was titled, The Reform and Extension of the Mandates System:
A Legal Solution to the Colonial Problem. Hale said: despite the di-
versity of colonial aims in the nineteenth century, it is clear that since
the institution of the Mandate System, the governing principle behind
all colonial administration is that of trusteeship.
120
Hale believed that
colonialism was already quite changed because of the Mandate system.
In other words, several of the colonial Powers of the present day, de-
parting from the principle of the exploitation of colonies for economic
purposes, tend towards the principle that they are administering the
territories with a view to furthering the interests of the natives and
raising their standard of civilisation, so that they may one day take
their place in the community of nations. The guardianship is to be
seen in the increase in educational and health services, in the granting
of greater powers to native authorities, and to the encouragement of
native hierarchies.
121
The table on which arguments about colonialism occurred was thus
forever changed because of the League Mandate system. The idea of
a Mandate system, and the eventual end of colonialism through such
a system, was no longer simply the opinion of the colonial reformers
in social movement organizations like the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines
118
Hale, The Creation and Application of the Mandate System, pp. 185284: 204.
119
Ibid., p. 282.
120
James C. Hale, The Reform and Extension of the Mandates System: A Legal Solution
to the Colonial Problem, Transactions of the Grotius Society, vol. XXVI (London: Grotius
Society, 1941), pp. 153210: 155.
121
Ibid., p. 155.
287
Argument and change in world politics
Protection Society. Rather, there was now a colonial problem which
could be solved by extending the Mandate system. Or as Quincy Wright
suggested in 1930:
The question of extending the system to other areas in the administra-
tive sense is of less importance than the extension of its principles. The
system has already resulted in wider recognition of the principle of
trusteeship, that dependencies should be administered in the interests
of their inhabitants; in the principle of tutelage, that the cultivation of
the capacity for self-government is such an interest; of the principle of
international mandate, that states are responsible to the international
community for the exercise of power over backward peoples even if
that responsibility is not fully organized.
122
In sum, at the end of World War I, the political rule, military occu-
pation, and economic domination which characterized colonialism in
previous centuries was still in place, and with the successful crush-
ing of anti-colonial revolts that occurred during the war, the colonizers
were generally quite secure militarily in their colonies. Yet, in one of the
great reversals of international politics, the leaders of the same powers
that practiced colonialism on a scale never before seen in the world,
would construct, with the League of Nations Mandate system, an in-
stitutional mechanism that would gradually deconstruct colonialism.
This was an outcome the architects of the Mandate system never in-
tended, nor apparently even foresaw, yet it was a consequence of their
ethical and practical arguments. Colonialism was thus denormalized,
delegitimized, and an alternative reformist conception was put on the
table and gradually institutionalized. As Edward Grigg told members
of the British House of Commons in 1935, The attack on our position
in Africa is not, in my opinion, coming from Africans or from anybody
outside ourselves. It is coming from within our own ranks . . . If that
kind of propaganda goes on it will undermine the peace of the Colonial
Empire, not because of its effects in Africa, but because of its great effect
upon ourselves.
123
122
Wright, Mandates Under the League, p. 588. A later observer wrote: The mandated
territories became colonial showcases because of the amount of publicity given to them.
The impact of specic colonial policies extended beyond the boundaries of the particular
mandate. The care taken with the pronouncements of native policy in the mandated
territory of Tanganyika, for example, had repercussions in Kenya and Uganda. Wm.
Roger Louis, Imperialismat Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire,
19411945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 93.
123
Edward Grigg, quoted in R.D. Pearce, The Turning Point in Africa: British Colonial Policy
193848 (London: Frank Cass, 1982), p. 12.
288
Sacred trust
As opinion shifted from supporting empire to questioning colonial-
ism, it was no longer possible for colonizers to simply massacre those
who disagreed with colonial government. Indeed, when unrest led to
deaths in colonies, it was increasingly shocking. Mandate became a new
standard of conduct against which all colonial administration was mea-
sured. When colonial administrations failed to show progress of the
sort expected in mandates, as was made evident in reports on labor
unrest, poverty, and malnutrition in the British colonies in the West
Indies and Africa during the 1930s, colonial powers were understood
to be failing a sacred trust.
124
The questioning occasioned by these re-
ports led to commissions to study various colonial problems, grad-
ual reforms, and the inauguration of development assistance to the
colonies. This shift is captured in the writings of a staunch advocate
of colonialism for economic gain, the prominent French colonial of-
cial, Albert Sarraut. In his 1931 book, Grandeur et servitudes coloniales, he
wrote: The natives are people like ourselves. They must be treated as
such, which means securing for them the basic guarantees of such indi-
vidual and personal rights as we claim for ourselves. This is a cate-
gorical demand of association policy: it has moral and practical
consequences. Exemplifying the mix of motives and beliefs which
characterized the period (pragmatic and moral reformism), Sarraut
continued:
Secondly, the colonized races must be protected from the diseases
which strike and decimate them and which reduce the yield of this
mighty workforce. This is the task of medical aid. They should be
protected against acts of violence and fraud which may threaten their
person, work or possessions. Fromthis arises, withthe concernfor gen-
eral security in the country, the effort towards a guarantee for personal
security through the work of a non-partisan, regular judiciary. . . The
native worker must be protected appropriately by means of humane
work regulations. The moral and spiritual value of this mass of human
beings must be raised. This means the development of education. . . .
Finally, our prot eg es must be rendered capable of taking part to a
legitimate and appropriate extent in the administration of their own
countries. It must therefore be made possible for them to hold public
ofce, and the setting-up of representative bodies must enable them
to express their wishes. In a word, they should be associates, and not
124
See Pearce, The Turning Point in Africa, pp. 1718; Cooper, Decolonization and African
Society, pp. 57109; Morgan, The Ofcial History of Colonial Development, vol. I.
289
Argument and change in world politics
serfs, of the power that has taken the fate of their fatherland into its
hands.
125
The idea of colonialism had thus moved from mere exploitation to
development with an eye toward greater self-determination. The view
of colonial subjects had changed from less than human to peoples with
rights, althoughinthe viewof many, theystill neededpaternalistic guid-
ance. These transformations in belief in turn created greater openings
for anti-colonial independence movements to argue and organize polit-
ically for self-government which they were able to exploit in the coming
decades.
125
Quoted in Hans Ansprenger, The Dissolution of Colonial Empires (NewYork: Routledge,
1981), pp. 7980.
290
7 Self-determination
Empires fall; but imperialism is ever resurrected.
1
The British did not relinquish their Empire by accident. They ceased
to believe in it.
2
Both the Colonial Ofce and the Colonial Governments have been
caught inthe ever-present struggle of our nationtoresolve the dilemma
of being autocratic abroad and democratic at home.
3
Many histories and analyses of decolonization stress the post-World
War II era, which seems sensible since this is the period when most de-
colonization occurred in seventy territories between 1945 and 1979,
many of these by 1960 and when anti-colonial normative beliefs were
fully articulated.
4
Yet although European colonialismin Africa and Asia
looked strong in 1945, the foundations for the change in argument, be-
lief, and culture were laid well before that period. Between 1750 and the
1
Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher with Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians:
The Ofcial Mind of Imperialism (London: Macmillan, 1961), p. v.
2
A.J.P. Taylor quotedincorrespondence toWm. Roger Louis, Imperialismat Bay: The United
States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 19411945 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1978), p. xiii.
3
F.D. Coreld, chief native commissioner, in Report on Native Affairs for Kenya: Historical
Survey of the Origins and Growth of Mau Mau (London: Her Majestys Stationery Ofce,
1960), p. 28. QuotedinRoxanne LynnDoty, Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation
in NorthSouth Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1996), p. 106.
4
For example, Robert H. Jackson, The Weight of Ideas in Decolonization: Normative
Change in International Relations, in Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, eds., Ideas
and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1993), pp. 111138; John Darwin, Britain and Decolonization: The Retreat from Empire in the
Post-War World (New York: St. Martins Press, 1988); Henry S. Wilson, African Decolo-
nization (New York: Edward Arnold, 1994). Exceptions to post-1945 era focus are Franz
Ansprenger, The Dissolution of Colonial Empires (New York: Routledge, 1989) and Antonio
Cassese, Self-determination of Peoples: A Legal Reappraisal (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1995).
291
Argument and change in world politics
1930s, arguments made by reformers against the fundamental consti-
tutive practices of colonialism slavery and forced labor challenged
and ultimately led to changes in important aspects of the institution, so
that it was no longer possible to view colonialism itself as legitimate.
5
These changes in colonial practices were signicant enough to say that
the colonialismwhich endedin the mid-twentieth century was not quite
the same institution that had reached its zenith in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.
Post-World War II decolonization may be considered the implemen-
tation and extension of already articulated normative beliefs and ar-
guments. Thus, at this point, much of my explanatory purchase rests
on path dependent processes and institutionalization. Yet one cannot
ignore the events of World War II and the arguments and events of
the post-1945 period, if only because colonialism was still in place at the
endof the war. Nearly 600 million people livedin colonies, mandates, or
protectorates in 1945: Britain had over 60 overseas colonies, mandates,
or protectorates including over 450 million people; France had over
30 colonies, mandates, or protectorates, controlling over 65 million
people; the Dutch had 3 colonies with 53 million people.
6
Several processes contributed to making the post-1945 period the era
of decolonization and, with the exception of continuing attention on
South West Africa/Namibia, they are the focus in this chapter. I em-
phasize the relationship between ethical argument, normative belief,
colonial practice, and political opportunity. Again, my approach is in-
tendedto highlight the process of argument andthe role, inparticular, of
ethical arguments in the growth of anti-colonial sentiments, the decline
of racist beliefs, decreasing public support for maintaining colonialism,
andthe institutionalizationof the normative belief inself-determination.
Though some may nd the description too thick, it is surely too thin
since the force of my argument about ethical arguments, and the role of
argument more generally, rests on the content of arguments and the in-
stitutionalizationof beliefs inthe activities of the UnitedNations andthe
practices of colonial governments. Four trends are highlighted: stronger
5
This did not pose a fundamental legitimation crisis for the colonial regimes themselves
so much as create a policy legitimation crisis. To solve the crisis, colonialism had to be at
least reformed if not ended.
6
Spain had ve colonies including Spanish Morocco with over 1 million people; the
Portuguese Empire included eight colonies with about 11 million people; Belgium had
two African colonies with about 14 million people. See Muriel E. Chamberlain, The
Longman Companion to European Decolonization in the Twentieth Century (London:
Longman, 1998).
292
Self-determination
anti-colonial resistance; the delegitimation of racist beliefs; ethical argu-
ments leading to declining public support for colonialism within the
metropole; and the continuing institutionalization of normative beliefs
in, for example, the United Nations Trusteeship System.
First, anti-colonial movements grewin both the West and the colonies
themselves after 1945. Anti-colonial activists used ethical arguments,
political organizing and military force. This is sometimes described
as a sudden political awakening, though in most cases, anti-colonial
political organizations had deep roots in previous movements that had
greater or lesser degrees of success under colonialism. In the post-1945
period, anti-colonial activists achieved greater success in organizing
colonial populations, they increased coordination across colonies, and
in some cases their associated guerrilla movements acquired better mil-
itary equipment. Most anti-colonial movements simply wanted the exit
of colonial administrations, and self-government along the lines of a
nationalist political program that took state sovereignty as a given. Few
successful movements had in mind anything more radical. In addition,
there was greater international solidarity, especiallyamongdescendants
of African slaves in the Americas, Pan-Africanists, who identied with
colonial people and pressed for the modication and ultimately the end
of colonialism.
Second, during the interwar and post-war period, racist beliefs that
underpinned colonialism were undermined as scientic racism and
social Darwinism were challenged within the scholarly community and
wider liberal culture. This coincided with the increased emphasis on
political and human rights during and after the war. In other words, the
political and cultural basis for anti-colonial arguments shifted from re-
garding natives as inferior or non-human, to at least potentially polit-
ically equal. Third, public support within colonial powers for maintain-
ing colonialism declined as a consequence of the previous generations
successful ethical argumentation regarding colonialism.
Fourth, though the Mandate system died with the League of Nations,
the institutional momentum and mechanisms of the system were car-
ried forward and enlarged by the United Nations with, for instance, the
formation of the United Nations Trusteeship System and UN oversight
of non-self-governing territories. Inaddition, the UNbeganinthe late
1940s to monitor and in some cases conduct plebiscites in UN Trust Ter-
ritories and colonies, ensuring that inhabitants were at least consulted
about their fates. By the 1960s, the UN was a force for decolonization
and the normative belief in decolonization was backed by sanctions
293
Argument and change in world politics
against those states, especially Portugal and South Africa, which con-
tinued a practice viewed increasingly as an anachronism: unmodied
colonialism. Continuing to focus on South West Africa as an indicator
and illustration of the role of particular legal arguments, and because
South West Africas situation became important in changing the atti-
tudes and practices of the UN, I discuss early international efforts to
change the status of South West Africa.
World War II and colonial arguments: changing
opportunity
Even during World War II, it was not clear that colonialism would
soon end. The war heightened the actual and perceived importance
of colonies to the metropole, especially for France and Britain. Speaking
in San Francisco after the war, Great Britains Lord Cranborne main-
tained that liberty could not have been preserved in the Second World
War without colonial empire.
7
As they had during World War I, both
France and Britain relied on the raw materials and food produced in the
colonies, conscripting workers to boost production. Further, hundreds
of thousands of Africans served in the British and French armies, many
serving outside Africa. For example, by June 1940, almost 10 percent
of the French army in France was African.
8
More than 370,000 Africans
served in the British armed forces and tens of thousands more worked
as forced labor on farms and in factories.
9
Indians also served for Britain
in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Even non-combatant Belgiumincreased the
use of forced labor, requiring 120 days compulsory labor in Congo, its
African colony, and in Ruanda-Urundi, its mandate territory.
10
War also catalyzed both positive and negative changes for the
colonies. Poor wage and labor conditions during the war provoked
7
Harold K. Jacobson, The United Nations and Colonialism: A Tentative Appraisal,
International Organization 16 (Winter 1962), 3756. Reprinted in Leland M. Goodrich and
David A. Kay, eds., International Organization: Politics and Process (Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1973), pp. 287306: 306; Harold Macmillan on the War Effort and
Colonial Policy, a speech to the House of Commons, reprinted in A.N. Porter and A.J.
Stockwell, eds., British Imperial Policy, 193864, Volume 1, 193851 (London: Macmillan
Press, 1987), pp. 109124.
8
John D. Hargreaves, Decolonization in Africa (London: Longman, 1988), p. 49.
9
See Immanuel Geiss, Pan-Africanism: A History of Pan-Africanism in America, Europe and
Africa (New York: Africana, 1974), p. 365. Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African
Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), p. 125.
10
Michael Crowder, Africa Under British and Belgian Domination, 193545, in Ali
Mazrui, ed., Africa Since 1935 (Berkeley: University of California, 1993), pp. 76101: 94.
294
Self-determination
strikes and desertion although in some cases, wages were raised, and
work conditions improvedto encourage greater worker compliance and
productivity.
11
As it had during World War I, labor organizing in the
colonies became an increasingly effective form of political activism, as
labor saw it had greater leverage. Anti-colonial activism during the
war occasioned alarm for the colonizers, as when the British viceroy
in India, Lord Linlithgow, wrote to Winston Churchill on 31 August
1942: I am engaged here in meeting by far the most serious rebellion
since 1857, the gravity and extent of which we have so far concealed
from the world for reasons of military security.
12
While greater polit-
ical freedom was allowed in India during the war, in other cases the
autonomy won between the wars was taken away during World War II.
For example, the former British mandate Iraq, given independence in
1932, was occupied by Britain from June 1941 to the end of World War
II because the Iraqi government refused to break off ties with the Axis
powers.
The British White Paper Statement of Policy on Colonial Develop-
ment andWelfare of February1940, whichbecame the basis for the sub-
sequent Colonial Development and Welfare Act of July 1940, outlined a
policy of providing assistance to the colonies so that they could improve
their welfare. As Malcolm MacDonald, then minister of health but for-
merly of the Colonial Ofce, noted, the previous Colonial Development
Act of 1929 was enacted in order to stimulate that development mostly
to bring additional work to idle hands in this country. The 1940 Act,
he argued, breaks new ground. It established the duty of taxpayers . . .
to contribute directly and for its own sake towards the development
in the widest sense of the word of colonial peoples for whose good
government the taxpayers of this country are ultimately responsible.
13
This was a signicant nancial commitment: the Act provided for
55 million over ten years. The goals of colonialism had become rather
like the goals of the Mandate system, at least rhetorically, although the
colonial system itself was not fundamentally questioned at this time by
the British Cabinet or most members of Parliament.
14
11
Cooper, Decolonization and African Society, pp. 110166.
12
Quoted in Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 8.
13
Speech in the House of Commons by Malcolm MacDonald on the Colonial Develop-
ment and Welfare Bill, 21 May 1940, Hansard Parliamentary Debates (19391940), vol. 361,
cols. 4148, 5051, in Porter and Stockwell, eds., British Imperial Policy, pp. 94100: 97.
14
Statement of Policy on Colonial Development and Welfare, discussed in D.J. Morgan,
The Ofcial History of Colonial Development, Vol. 1: The Origins of British Aid Policy, 19241945
(London: Macmillan, 1980).
295
Argument and change in world politics
On the other hand, during World War II the Allies public rhetoric
was lled with calls for self-determination, and colonialism became a
signicant partisanpolitical issue inBritainduringthe war. For example,
the Soviet Union championed a right to self-determination, consistent
with V.I. Lenin and Joseph Stalins arguments in favor of it, and pushed
the most radical of any governments positions on decolonization.
15
The British Labour Party announced in February 1940 its view
that:
For colonial peoples, Labour demands that everywhere they should
move forward, as speedily as possible, towards self-government. In
the administration of colonies not yet ready for self-government the
interests of the native population should be paramount, and should be
safeguarded through an extension and strengthening of the Mandate
System. There must be equal opportunity of access for all peaceful
peoples to raw materials and markets in these colonial territories.
16
The Atlantic Charter signed by Winston Churchill and Franklin
Roosevelt in August 1941 stated, in part, that they desire to see no
territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes
of thepeoples concerned,andthat theyrespect theright of all peopleto
choosetheformof government under whichtheywill live; andtheywish
to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have
been forcibly deprived of them.
17
African independence activists then
used the Atlantic Charter to frame arguments for self-determination
andindependence. For example, a prominent Nigerianactivist, Nnamdi
Azikiwe, published The Charter and British West Africa, and a mem-
ber of the legislative council in Ghana, G.E. Moore, argued in 1943
that if there was the right of all peoples to choose the form of gov-
ernment under which they live it was a right to which the Africans
share.
18
The parts of the Atlantic Charter that dealt with self-determination
sparked immediate debate. Not surprisingly, the Labour Party claimed
the Charter applied to the colonies, as well as to Europe (meta-
argument), while members of the Foreign and Colonial Ofces often
15
Cassese, Self-determination of Peoples, pp. 1419.
16
Labour quoted in James C. Hale, The Reform and Extension of the Mandates System:
A Legal Solution to the Colonial Problem, Transactions of the Grotius Society, vol. XXVI
(London: Grotius Society, 1941), pp. 153210: 161.
17
Atlantic Charter, reprinted in Porter and Stockwell, eds., British Imperial Policy,
pp. 101102.
18
Quoted in Jean Suret-Canale and A. Adu Boahen, West Africa 19451960, in Ali
Mazrui, ed., Africa Since 1935 (Berkeley: University of California, 1993), pp. 161191: 161.
296
Self-determination
disagreed about how to deal with the implications of the Atlantic
Charter.
19
Although President Roosevelt argued that the Atlantic Char-
ters emphasis on self-determination was universally applicable, in
September 1941 Tory Prime Minister Churchill told the House of Com-
mons that the Atlantic Charter was intended to apply only to the states
under Nazi control andwas quite a separate problemfromthe progres-
sive evolution of self-governing institutions in regions whose peoples
owe allegiance to the British crown.
20
On 27 October 1942, Roosevelt
said the Charter applied to all humanity.
21
On 10 November 1942,
Churchill said, I have not become the Kings First Minister in order
to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.
22
Churchill was
not alone in the British government in publicly resisting the extension
of the Atlantic Charter to colonies. Home Secretary Herbert Morrison,
in remarks published in the Manchester Guardian in January 1943, said:
It would be ignorant, dangerous nonsense to talk about grants of full
self-government to many of the dependent territories for some time to
come. In those instances it would be like giving a child of ten a latch key,
a bank account, and a shot-gun.
23
In private, the secretary of state for
the colonies wrote to the deputy prime minister:
The truth, I suppose, is that we do not think the Atlantic Charter at
present applicable in its entirety to Colonial territories. There is, for
instance, the principle of self-determination, which nds a prominent
place in the Charter. Can it possibly be said that the African Colonies
are t for the application of this principle? Or the West Indies? Or the
Pacic Islands? . . . The Atlantic Charter was originally intended, as
I understand it, to be concerned primarily with the European coun-
tries at present overrun by Hitler. They are adult nations, capable of
deciding their own fate. No doubt, the time may come when even the
most backward of our Colonies [will] also become adult nations. But
at present they are children and must be treated as such. Ought we not
to say so, so as to avoid further misunderstanding?
24
19
Onsome of the memos betweenBritishcolonial ofcials regardingthe applicationof the
Atlantic Charter to colonies, see D.J. Morgan, The Ofcial History of Colonial Development,
Vol. 5: Guidance Towards Self-Government inBritish Colonies, 19411971 (London: Macmillan,
1980), pp. 15.
20
Churchills remarks reprinted in Porter and Stockwell, eds., British Imperial Policy,
pp. 103105: 105. Also see Heather A. Wilson, International Law and the Use of Force by
National Liberation Movements (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 58.
21
Quoted in Morgan, The Ofcial History of Colonial Development, vol. I, p. xxvii.
22
Quoted in ibid.
23
Quoted in Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 14.
24
Secretary of State for the Colonies, Cranborne, to Deputy Prime Minister Atlee,
14 January 1943, in Porter and Stockwell, eds., British Imperial Policy, p. 142.
297
Argument and change in world politics
But it was difcult to prevent the Atlantic Charter from being app-
lied to Britains colonies because important elements of the colonial
institution were already denormalized and delegitimized. Like the US,
New Zealands and Australias political leadership were in favor of ex-
tending the Mandate systemin some way; only South Africa and France
supported the British position. Despite Churchills reluctance, the US
and Britain did discuss colonial policy at ministerial and head of state
levels. To clarify the issue, the US and Britain drafted a Joint Declaration
on colonial policy in 1943, promising that Parent or Trustee states
wouldguide anddevelopthe social, economic andpolitical institutions
of the Colonial peoples until they are able without danger to themselves
and others to discharge the responsibilities of government.
25
The fact that the legitimacy of colonialism was in increasingly deep
trouble in Britain is also illustrated by British government discussions
during 1944 about whether to renew and extend the 1940 Colonial De-
velopment and Welfare Act. The argument against extending the act
turned in part on the expense of colonial welfare during the war. The
contribution of the colonies to the war effort was noted with apprecia-
tion but nances were still tight. While the private exchanges within the
government over the Act focus on the amount of money involved, they
also mention the concern of legitimizing British colonial government.
For example, Colonial Secretary Oliver Stanley wrote to Chancellor of
the Exchequer John Anderson: I make no pretence, however, that this
is going to be a protable transaction on a purely nancial calculation.
The overriding reason why I feel that these proposals are essential is
the necessity to justify our position as a Colonial Power.
26
In explain-
ing how he could not whole-heartedly support the request to boost the
colonial development budget because of the expense involved but
could support a smaller increase, Anderson told Stanley, I recognise
the desirability of making some substantial gesture to justify ourselves
before world opinion as a great Colonial power and also to assure the
Colonies themselves of our intentions.
27
In other words, while the is-
sue was ostensibly the amount of the grants to colonies, the pressure
to make substantial grants was evidence of the problem of justifying
colonial government. This was also well illustrated when Stanley, in a
25
Quoted in Morgan, The Ofcial History of Colonial Development, vol. V, p. 8.
26
Secretary of State for the Colonies to Chancellor of the Exchequer, 21 September 1944
in Porter and Stockwell, eds., British Imperial Policy, pp. 202205: 204.
27
Chancellor of the Exchequer to Secretary of State for the Colonies, in Porter and
Stockwell, eds., British Imperial Policy, pp. 206207: 206.
298
Self-determination
secret memorandum to the War Cabinet arguing for a larger commit-
ment than that recommended by the chancellor of the exchequer, made
ethical, identity, and practical appeals in favor of increasing expendi-
tures on colonial welfare.
9. I am not pretending that the assistance to the Colonies which I pro-
pose will not impose some burden upon this country. I do, however,
feel that the Colonial Empire means so much to us that we should be
prepared to assume some burden for its future. If we are unable or
unwilling to do so, are we justied in retaining, or shall we be able to
retain, a Colonial Empire? The burden, however, is innitesimal com-
pared to the gigantic sums in which we are and shall be dealing. Nor is
the apparent burdenwhollyreal. If these sums are wiselyspent, andthe
plans devoted to increasing the real productive power of the Colonies,
there will in the long run accrue considerable benet to us, either in
the form of increased exports to us of commodities which otherwise
we should have to obtain from hard currency countries, or in the form
of increased exports from the Colonies, as part of the sterling area to
the hard currency countries outside.
10. But I am not basing my argument on material gains to ourselves,
important as I think these may be. My feeling is that in the years to
come, without the Commonwealth and Empire, this country will play
a small role in world affairs, and that here we have an opportunity
which may never recur, at a cost which is not extravagant, of setting
the Colonial Empire on lines of development which will keep it in
close and loyal contact with us. To say now in 1945 that with these
great stakes at issue we shall not be able to afford 15 million in 1949,
or 20 million in 1953, is a confession of our national impotence in the
future.
28
Stanley argued, Finally, it is the moment at which to kill the en-
emy propaganda lie that the policy announced in 1940 was forced on
us by our critical situation and that we never meant to implement it.
Nothing would better conrm our faith in our sincerity than that at
the height of our success we should conrm and amplify this policy
which was rst announced in the depth of our disaster.
29
Ultimately
the Act was renewed and the amount increased to 120 million over
the period of 19451956.
30
Thus, by the end of the war, colonialism was
delegitimized to the extent that a reformist agenda was dominant in the
Anglo-American world.
28
Stanley Memorandum of 15 November 1944 quoted in ibid., pp. 208211: 210211.
29
Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 102.
30
Also see ibid., pp. 101102.
299
Argument and change in world politics
Similarly, the French were reluctantly moved to take colonial reform
seriously, although during the war it was not clear they would do so.
General Charles de Gaulle and other French exiles explicitly declared
their desire to win back and keep all their colonies. De Gaulle told
Roosevelt, I know that you are preparing to aid France materially,
and that aid will be valuable to her. But it is in the political realm
that she must recover her vigor, her self-reliance, and consequently,
her role. How can she do this . . . if she loses her African and Asian
territories . . . if the settlement of the war imposes on her the psychology
of the vanquished?
31
But, during the war, colonial reformreluctantly became French policy.
De Gaulle promised in 1941 to give independence to Frances League of
Nations mandates in the Middle East, Syria, and Lebanon. At the 1944
French Africa Conference in Brazzaville, attended by colonial adminis-
trators and De Gaulle, Commissioner of the Colonies Ren e Pleven said,
In Colonial France, there are no peoples to free, no racial discrimina-
tion to abolish. There are populations who feel French and who wish
to take a larger part in French life . . . They should be led toward po-
litical personality and franchise step by step, not wishing to know any
other independence than that of France.
32
At the meetings close the
French resolved that, The aims of the civilizing labours of France in the
Colonies exclude all possibilities of development outside of the French
imperial system: the eventual formationeveninthe distant future of self-
government in the colonies must be dismissed.
33
They further stated,
It is also desired that the colonial peoples should experience this lib-
erty and that their sense of responsibility should be developed little by
little so that they may nd themselves associated in the management of
public affairs in their countries.
34
Although the aim of the Brazzaville
meeting was to discuss issues such as agriculture, economics, medicine,
and administration, and although participants explicitly rejected inde-
pendence as a goal, the meeting ended up discussing participation by
Africans in their own government.
31
Quoted in James W. Silver, Framing a Balance Sheet for French Decolonization:
Raymond Aron, Raymond Cartier and the Debate over the African Empire (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Honors Thesis), p. 47.
32
Quoted in Dorothy Shipley White, Black Africa and De Gaulle: From the French Empire to
Independence (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1979), p. 121.
33
Quoted in Timothy Weiskel, Independence and the Longue Dur ee: The Ivory Coast
Miracle Reconsidered, in Prosser Gifford and Wm. Roger Louis, eds., Decolonization and
African Independence: The Transfer of Power, 19601980 (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1988), pp. 347380: 357.
34
Quoted in White, Black Africa and De Gaulle, p. 124.
300
Self-determination
French colonial policy in the immediate post-war period reected
public ambivalence. Colonial reforms such as allowing trade unions
in 1944, abolishing forced labor in 1946, instituting local assemblies,
and granting representation of territories in the French National Assem-
bly, all had the effect of granting greater rights and representation for
Africans.
35
Also in 1946, the Lamine Gu eye law made all colonial sub-
jects into citizens. On the other hand, French police cracked down on
demonstrations for independence in Algeria in 1945, killing thousands
in the region aroundS etif, andin 1946 France began an eight-year war to
hold on to Indochina. So much had changed in terms of the laws, if not
yet the use of force, that Minister of Overseas France, Marius Moutet,
said in 1946 that, The brutal colonial fact, the fact of conquest, the im-
position of one nation on other nations, the maintenance of sovereignty
that rests only on force, is impossible today. The historic period of col-
onization is passed.
36
Perhaps what Moutet meant was that the use of
brute force against inferior subjects was no longer unquestioned and
unfettered; France still frequently used force, but greater political and
economic freedom was also part of the colonial policy.
Pan-Africanism and anti-colonial solidarity
Pan-Africanism, the solidarity of people of African descent, was both
a cultural idea and a political program with roots in the mid and late
nineteenth-century writings of Ethiopianists and West African scholars
such as John Africanus Horton, James Johnson, and Edward Blyden.
37
35
See Louis, Imperialism at Bay, pp. 4447; Suret-Canale and Boahen, West Africa
19451960, pp. 173174; Majhemount Diop, in collaboration with David Birmingham,
Ivan Hrbek, Alfredo Margrido, and Djibril Tamsir Niane, Tropical and Equatorial Africa
under French, Portuguese and Spanish Domination, 193545, in Ali Mazrui, ed., Africa
Since 1935 (Berkeley: University of California, 1993), pp. 5875: 7274; Elikai MBokolo,
French Colonial Policy in Equatorial Africa in the 1940s and 1950s, in Gifford and Louis,
eds., The Transfer of Power in Africa, pp. 173210; and Rudolf von Albertini, Decolonization:
The Administration of Future Colonies, 19191960 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday &Company,
1971), pp. 364371.
French colonies were grouped into two federations, French Equatorial Africa or AEF,
consisting of what was known as Middle Congo, Chad, Ubangu-Chari (Central African
Republic), and Gabon. French West Africa or AOF consisted of Senegal, French Sudan
(Mali), FrenchGuinea, Upper Volta (Burkina Faso), C ote dIvoire, Dahomey(Benin), Niger,
and Mauritania.
36
Quoted in White, De Gaulle and Black Africa, p. 148.
37
Ethiopianism was primarily concerned with developing an African Christianity, but
it also refuted racist beliefs. The later Negritude, black consciousness, and black pride
movements, which stressed a cultural as well as political and economic analysis of the sit-
uationof Africanpeople, oftenhadaPan-Africancomponent. See P. Olisanwuche Esedebe,
301
Argument and change in world politics
The Pan-Africanists main tools were discursive: education and argu-
ment. One of their most common rhetorical techniques was to expose
hypocrisy and call for consistency between the words and principles of
democratic nations and their overseas practices. Their other tool was
political organizing.
From primarily being based among West African, Afro-British, and
African-American intellectuals, during the period between the two
worldwars, a world-wide Pan-African movement grewto include more
Africans. Pan-Africans also developed a less paternalistic program for
African liberation, and came to have a more sharply focused articula-
tion of their analysis of colonial economics. The Second Pan-African
conference, which held sessions in London, Brussels, and Paris in 1921,
endorsed a declaration stressing racism as a problem and proposed
self-government for backward groups. Going farther than they had
in 1919, conference participants argued that the habit of democracy
must be made to encircle the earth. Despite the attempts to prove that
its practice is the secret and divine gift of a few, no habit is more nat-
ural or widespread among primitive people, or more easily capable of
development among masses. Local self-government with a minimum
of help and oversight can be established tomorrow in Asia, in Africa,
America, and the isles of the sea.
38
A delegation from the conference
then traveled to the Permanent Mandates Commission to present a pe-
tition which politely suggested that, as the spirit of the world moves
towards self-government, mandated areas, being peopled as they are
by black folk, have a right to ask that men of Negro descent, properly
tted in character and training, be appointed a member of the Mandates
Commission as soon as a vacancy occurs.
39
The delegation also asked
the League to take a rmstandonthe absolute equalityof races.
40
This
was certainly ethical argument: it denormalized and delegitimized both
racism and colonialism and offered an alternative which met normative
goals already articulated and widely held. The form of the argument
was logical inference and side-ways reasoning; after rejecting racism,
analogy suggested that there was no limit to democratic principles and
therefore no limit to their practice.
Pan-Africanism: The Idea and Movement, 17761963 (Washington, DC: Howard University
Press, 1982); A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1987).
38
Quoted in George Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism (Garden City, NY: Anchor
Books, 1971), pp. 108109.
39
Quoted in ibid., p. 112.
40
Quoted in ibid., p. 112.
302
Self-determination
Pan-Africanists organized two other congresses before World War II.
In 1923, the Third Pan-African Congress held sessions in London and
Lisbon with wider participation than previous meetings. Again, most
of the demands were modest, requesting that Africans have a voice in
their own governments . . . access to land and its resources . . . trial by
juries of their peers under established procedures of law . . . develop-
ment of Africa for the benet of Africans, and not merely for the prot
of Europeans. The most radical statement was the demand for the or-
ganization of commerce and industry so as to make the main objects of
capital and labour the welfare of the many rather than the enriching of
the few.
41
The 1927 Pan-African Congress held in New York involved
over 200 delegates from eleven countries.
During the interwar period and World War II, many in the African-
American elite were increasingly active in denouncing colonialism and
imperialism. Before and during World War II, even the moderate US
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
was sharply anti-colonial and had strong links and overlapping mem-
bership with other more radical anti-colonial organizations. NAACP
Secretary Walter White wrote to US President Roosevelt in September
1944 to urge that, the U.S. government will not be a party to the perpet-
uation of colonial exploitation andto appoint qualiedNegroes to serve
at U.S. government conferences determiningwar or post war policies.
42
According to historian Penny Von Eschen, the African-American press
kept up a strong critique of the Europeans conduct of the war: There
was erce criticism of the Allies coercive use of unarmed Africans for
transport andlabor battalions. This practice causedsuchhighcasualties,
the Defender [April 1942] charged, that it was a contradiction of the very
principles of liberty and humanity for which we claimto be ghting.
43
But the critique of colonialism was deeper, as the State Department re-
ported in 1944: Leading Negro journals like The Crisis, ofcial organ of
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the
41
Quoted in ibid., p. 118.
42
Quoted in Penny M. Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonial-
ism, 19371957 (Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress, 1997), p. 74. Alsosee Hollis R. Lynch, Black
American Radicals and Liberation of Africa: The Council on African Affairs, 19371955 (Ithaca:
Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, 1978); Hollis R. Lynch, Pan-
African Responses in the United States to British Colonial Rule in Africa in the 1940s, in
Prosser Gifford and Wm. Roger Louis, eds., The Transfer of Power in Africa: Decolonization
19401960 (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 5786; Suret-Canale andBoahen,
West Africa 19451960, pp. 165166.
43
Von Eschen, Race Against Empire, p. 33.
303
Argument and change in world politics
relatively conservative New York Amsterdam News and the militant left-
wing organ, the Peoples Voice conduct a perpetual and bitter campaign
against white imperialism.
44
One of the most important anti-colonial groups in the US, the Coun-
cil on African Affairs, publicized conditions in colonies and supported
liberation movements. Begun in 1937 as the International Committee on
African Affairs to educate Americans about Africa, the Committee was
reorganized into the Council on African Affairs (CAA) in 1942, with a
more explicit Pan-African analysis and liberation agenda. Much of its
work on behalf of Africa was dedicated to public education and out-
reach. The CAA organized rallies featuring some of its famous support-
ers, including the African-American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois and the
enormously popular entertainer Paul Robeson. For example, the CAA
organized a Colonial Conference in New York, at a branch of a public
library on 135th St., on 6 April 1945, which included Kwame Nkrumah
and the African-American intellectuals Rayford Logan and Du Bois,
along with West Indians and Africans. Conference participants called
for an international Colonial Commission to oversee and facilitate the
transition of peoples from colonial status to such autonomy as colonial
peoples themselves may desire.
45
Many other groups questioned colonialism. In June 1945 an All Colo-
nial Peoples Conference met to call for independence. The Pan-African
Conference met in Manchester, England in October 1945 with the goal
of complete and absolute independence, and the decolonization strat-
egy discussed included mass organization through trade unions and
political parties.
46
The meeting included sessions on colonialism in the
West Indies, Asia, and Africa, and participants came from Antigua,
Barbados, Bermuda, Jamaica, Gambia, Uganda, Tanganyika, Nigeria,
Sierra Leone, and other colonies. It included, as usual, W.E.B. Du Bois,
but also three future African heads of state, Kwame Nkrumah of Gold
Coast (later Ghana), Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, and Hastings Banda of
Malawi.
In the United States in the immediate post-war period, the CAA and
NAACP continued to promote anti-colonial activism through public
44
State Department report quoted in ibid., p. 42.
45
Quoted in ibid., p. 77.
46
In addition, the All Colonial Peoples Conference included the Pan-African Federation,
the Federation of Indian Associations in Britain, the West African Students Union, the
Ceylon Students Association and Burma Association. Paul Gordon Lauren, Power and
Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimination (Boulder: Westview Press,
1996), p. 173. See Geiss, Pan-Africanism, pp. 401, 408.
304
Self-determination
education and by directly lobbying government ofcials. The CAA
published the monthly journal New Africa, which included news and
analysis of conditions in Africa.
47
In April 1944 members of the CAAs
executive board met the ofcials of the newly organized Africa Division
of the State Department, and in March 1945, Max Yergan and Alpheus
Hunton of the CAA met with Assistant Secretary of State Archibald
MacLeish. When the San Francisco Conference on the United Nations
opened on 25 April 1945, the NAACP had the status of consultant to
the US delegation.
48
The CAA also sent its program for Africa in the
peace settlement, Text and Analysis of the Colonial Provisions of the
United Nations Charter, to the Secretary of State and US representative
to the UN and published a pamphlet, The San Francisco Conference
and the Colonial Issue, which they sent to all the delegates at the UN
conference.
49
In addition to lobbying the US government and the UN, the CAA at-
temptedtofocus USpublic opinionagainst colonialismwithlarge public
rallies. A CAA rally at Madison Square Garden in 1946, intended to or-
ganize anti-imperialist and democratic forces to inuence American
foreign policy, attracted 19,000 people.
50
The day before the rally, the
New York Herald Tribune printed a letter to the editor that sketched the
problems of land and labor in West Africa, Kenya, and South Africa and
spelled out the inadequacies of American policy on Africa and the at-
tempts by the SouthAfricangovernment to annex South-West Africa.
51
The rally itself was widely covered in the New York Herald Tribune and
the NewYork Times. The CAArally in NewYork for Africa and Colonial
Freedom through a Strong UN in April 1947 critiqued South African
policies. Another CAA rally at New Yorks Madison Square Garden
in September 1947 attracted 15,000 people to hear Lena Horne, Paul
Robeson, and former Vice President Henry Wallace.
52
Despite initial unity and the large public response, the anti-colonial
movement among black Americans fractured after the anti-communist
47
At its peak in 1946, circulation for New Africa was more than 3,000. But, New Africas
inuence was considerably larger than its circulation suggests, as it was subscribed to by
church, labor, educational, and political organizations, and was also read by U.S. govern-
ment ofcials. It also circulated in Europe, particularly among British leftist and govern-
ment circles, and in Africa among nationalist and labor groups. Indeed by 1950 there was
a government ban on it in three African countries Kenya, South Africa, and the Belgian
Congo. Lynch, Pan-African Responses, p. 60.
48
Von Eschen, Race Against Empire, p. 81.
49
Ibid., p. 83; Lynch, Pan-African Responses, pp. 6162.
50
Von Eschen, Race Against Empire, p. 103.
51
Ibid., pp. 103104.
52
Ibid., pp. 9293.
305
Argument and change in world politics
Truman Doctrine was announced in Congress in March 1947. NAACP
leader, Walter White, supported both the Truman Doctrine and the
Marshall Plan, while Paul Robeson and others, including the Progres-
sive Citizens of America (PCA), opposedthe Truman Doctrine andCold
War polarization. The leadership of the CAAsplit in 1948 between those
who supported Truman and those, such as Du Bois and Robeson, who
backed Henry Wallace as a candidate for president in 1948. In 1950 the
US government revoked Paul Robesons passport because, they said,
he was extremely active in behalf of the independence for the colonial
peoples of Africa.
53
But while anti-colonial activism among African Americans was
dampened by the Cold War, it grew in the rest of the world. The 1955
Bandung Conference, held in Indonesia, was hailed as the rst inter-
national conference of colored peoples in the history of mankind by
Indonesias president Sukarno, who spoke of being united against colo-
nialism and racism.
54
African and Asian delegates from twenty-nine
countries, including colonies and newly independent nations, criticized
Western racism as the foundation of colonialism. As Carlos Romulo,
president of the Philippines, said, To bolster his rule, to justify his own
power to himself, Western white man assumed that his superiority lay
in his very bones, in the color of his skin. This made the lowliest drunk
superior, in colonial society, to the highest product of culture and schol-
arship and industry among the subject people.
55
Colonial culture and the decline of scientic
racism
Twentieth-century Pan-Africanists and other anti-colonial activists rec-
ognized the centrality of racist beliefs and the Europeans sense of racial
superiority as a foundation of colonialism and challenged the West on
this account. Although Social Darwinism, or the belief in the natural
53
US State Department quoted in ibid., p. 124. In 1947, the Attorney General included the
CAAon its list of subversive organizations and in 1952 the US Attorney Generals Subver-
sive Activities Control Board labeled the CAA as substantially directed and controlled
by the Communist Party, USA. Ibid., pp. 115 and 134. Von Eschen writes that, The per-
vasive psychologizing of racism marginalized intellectuals such as Du Bois and Hunton,
who located racism in the history of slavery and colonialism. Ibid., p. 158. Though the
CAAdeniedanassociationwiththe Communist Party in1955 it disbanded. The American
Committee on Africa (ACOA) was founded in 1953 and TransAfrica continued solidarity
and anti-colonial work.
54
Lauren, Power and Prejudice, p. 224.
55
Romulo quoted in ibid., p. 225.
306
Self-determination
superiority of those who dominate others, was prevalent in scientic
and popular culture of the West during the late nineteenth century,
Africans had consistently rejected European arguments about African
inferiority, publishing refutations of European racismand championing
African values over European culture.
56
Yet scientic racism and
other racist beliefs were still widespread during the early twentieth
century.
The impetus for Western scientists to reevaluate scientic racism and
social Darwinismcame fromboththe scientic community andthe pop-
ular reaction to Nazism.
57
One early challenge by the famous American
anthropologist Franz Boas, who published The Mind of Primitive Man in
1911, questioned the idea of a difference between the primitive and the
civilized in intelligence. Doubt about the science of race continued to
grow in part because of the difculty in proving distinct racial types.
The anthropomorphic physical anthropology of human measurement
was failing to meet the scientists own criteria for good science. There
was simply too much variation within so-called racial groups to main-
tain rigid typologies based on measurements, and moreover, there was
no single agreed-upon measurement scheme.
58
But more important, perhaps, was the growing desire in the 1930s
among European and American scientists to refute the Nazis views
about race. Adolf Hitlers, Mein Kampf (1925), and the racial ideas of
the Nazi movement, received greater attention after Hitlers election to
chancellor in 1933. In the US, Franz Boas organized anthropologists and
other social scientists to refute racist science. In England, Julian Huxley
and Alfred Haddon in 1935 published We Europeans, a Survey of Racial
Problems With A Chapter on Europe Overseas, questioning racial science.
The scholarly journals Nature and Science published articles, letters, and
editorials about racial science. Scientists also convened conferences on
race and Nazi science.
59
In December 1938, 1,284 scientists in the US, in-
cluding three Nobel laureates, published a Scientists Manifesto critical
of pseudo-scientic racialism.
60
56
Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism, pp. 2022.
57
Turn of the century American intellectual critics of social Darwinism, for instance Boas
and William James, were also often critical of imperialism. See Richard Hofstadter, Social
Darwinism in American Thought, revd edn (New York: George Braziller, 1955), pp. 192200.
58
Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 18001960 (London: Macmillan,
1982), pp. 162169.
59
See ibid., and Elazar Barkan, The Retreat of Scientic Racism: Changing Concepts of Race
in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992), pp. 279346.
60
Barkan, The Retreat of Scientic Racism, p. 337.
307
Argument and change in world politics
World War II itself brought race to the forefront. The Western pow-
ers and the Japanese fought a war lled with racial stereotypes and
racist appeals to national solidarity, while the Nazis carried out their
exterminationpolicybasedonracial ideas.
61
As BritishLabour politician
Clement Atlee told his party in August 1941, Our enemies, the Nazis,
set up a monstrous and ridiculous racial doctrine. They declare them-
selves to be a master-race to which the rest of us are inferior, and if
they assert that claim in respect to Europeans you may be quite as-
sured they are going to apply it to everyone else Asiatics, Africans,
and everyone.
62
At the same time, racism faced serious challenge in
the US when the military became increasingly integrated along racial
lines andthe war promptedthe elimination of some racial barriers in the
private sector.
63
During the war, the famous scholar Ashley Montague
(a former Boas student) published Mans Most Dangerous Myth: The Fal-
lacy of Race. Intent on using a scientic argument for larger political
goals, Montague wrote:
In our time, the problem of race has assumed an alarmingly exagger-
ated importance. Alarming, because racial dogmas have been made
the basis for an inhumanly brutal political philosophy which has al-
ready resulted in the death or social disenfranchisement of millions
of innocent individuals; exaggerated because when the nature of con-
temporary race theory is scientically analyzed and understood it
ceases to be of any signicance for social or any other kind of action . . .
It is highly desirable, therefore, that the facts about race as science
has come to know them should be widely disseminated and clearly
understood.
64
Intellectuals continued their assault on scientic racism after the
war. The anthropologist Claude L evi-Strauss published Race et Histoire
in 1952 challenging crude cultural evolutionism and hierarchies of
societies.
65
Similarly, the UnitedNations Educational, Scientic andCul-
tural Organization (UNESCO) convened meetings and published state-
ments on race concluding that the capacities of all races were similar.
61
See John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacic War (New York: Pan-
theon, 1986).
62
Quoted in Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 125.
63
See Lauren, Power and Prejudice, pp. 108144.
64
Ashley Montague, Mans Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1942), p. ix, quoted in Pat Shipman, The Evolution of Racism:
Human Difference and the Use and Abuse of Science (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994),
p. 161.
65
Paul Clay Sorum, Intellectuals and Decolonization in France (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1977), pp. 224232.
308
Self-determination
UNESCOs July 1950 statement said, in part, Biological differences be-
tweenethnic groups shouldbe disregardedfromthe standpoint of social
acceptance and social action . . . According to present knowledge, there
is no proof that the groups of mankind differ in their innate mental
characteristics, whether in respect to intelligence or temperament. The
scientic evidence indicates that the range of mental capacities in all
other ethnic groups is much the same.
66
The UNESCO position and
other such statements were widely debated among intellectuals, but,
by the 1950s, most scientic racism had been refuted by ofcial bod-
ies such as UNESCO, and it was no longer possible to make crudely
racist statements without challenge.
67
Thus, although, revulsion toward
Nazi views shaped the content of the critique of scientic racism, views
about the darker races were also challenged and revised. The argu-
ment moved forward by analogy: if anti-Semitism was wrong, other
forms of racism were wrong. Colonialism could no longer be normal or
legitimate once scientic racism was dethroned.
UN trusteeship and institutionalization of
anti-colonialism
Though it would not formally disband until May 1946, the League of
Nations essentially died during World War II. And although not of-
cially on the table at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference of 1944 which set
the outlines of the United Nations, the idea of a trusteeship system to
replace the League Mandate system had been discussed by Allied gov-
ernments during the war and among members of the public.
68
Further,
draft plans developed in the US State Department, starting in August
1942, envisaged a system of international supervision encompassing all
dependent territories, not just mandates. A March 1943 draft proposal
written under the direction of Secretary of State Cordell Hull foresaw
establishing at the earliest possible moments dates when these ar-
eas would achieve the status of full independence within a system of
66
The statement was drafted by Montague and rewritten after debates in scientic and
anthropology journals as well as in the popular press. Quoted in Shipman, The Evolution
of Racism, p. 163.
67
See Barkan, The Retreat of Scientic Racism, p. 341 and Shipman, The Evolution of
Racism, pp. 156170.
68
A sample of the debate is a special issue of African Affairs 43 (October 1944) and subse-
quent issues of the same journal. The Round Table also published a discussion in December
1944. See James N. Murray, The United Nations Trusteeship System (Urbana: The University
of Illinois Press, 1957) and Louis, Imperialism at Bay, pp. 448460.
309
Argument and change in world politics
general security.
69
During the Allies Yalta meeting in February 1945,
the US pushed for what it called a trusteeship formula for all colonies,
even while Churchill rejected the notion outright and said he did not
want it discussedat the SanFrancisco Conference to establishthe United
Nations in May and June 1945. Churchill said:
I absolutely disagree. I will not have one scrap of British territory ung
into that area. After we have done our best to ght this war and have
done no crime to anyone I will have no suggestion that the British
Empire is to be put into the dock and examined by everybody to see
whether it is up to their standard. No one will induce me as long as
I am Prime Minister to let any representative of Great Britain go to a
conference where we will be placed in the dock and asked to justify
our right to live in a world we have tried to save.
70
Britain clearly hoped to retain its empire, though Churchill also obvi-
ously knew he would have to muster arguments in favor of it. As Lord
Cranborne, speaking at the San Francisco Conference, said: Do not let
us rule out independence as the ultimate destiny of some of these terri-
tories. It is not ruled out . . . But to have it as a universal goal of colonial
policy would, we believe, be unrealistic and prejudicial to peace and
security. Nor am I sure it is in the minds or desires of the vast majority
of colonial peoples themselves. Cranborne continued, What do these
people want? They want liberty. Let us give themliberty. They want jus-
tice. Let us give them justice . . . Let us help them climb up the rungs of
the ladder of self-government. That is the purpose . . . so that ultimately
dependent or independent they may play their full part in a peaceful,
prosperous and independent world.
71
The arguments in San Francisco among and within delegations over
trusteeship and the fate of all the colonies, as at the Paris Peace Confer-
ence after World War I, was nally resolved by compromise, this time
among the so-calledBig Five powers the US, Britain, France, the Soviet
Union, and China with input from non-governmental organizations
and from other states.
72
Churchill ultimately backed down, agreeing to
the trusteeship system, Chapter XII of the UN Charter, once he was as-
sured participation was voluntary. Thus, the British were pushed by a
change in international political capabilities (as a result of a shift in the
69
Quoted in Murray, The United Nations Trusteeship System, p. 25.
70
Quoted in Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 458.
71
Quoted in ibid., p. 547.
72
Much of the work was done in Committee II/4. See Murray, The United Nations Trustee-
ship System, pp. 3145.
310
Self-determination
balance of international belief) to do, if not an about face, a right angle
turn. Why? By 1945, ethical arguments had succeeded in denormalizing
earlier, more violent forms of colonial rule, delegitimizing the purposes
of the system, and putting an alternative systemof trusteeship on the ta-
ble that would be the model for all dependencies, as they were called.
Further, new normative beliefs were institutionalized as the balance of
belief and capability shifted; Britain was no longer able to dictate the
normative terms of the international order.
Still, the UN Charter ultimately did not go as far as many, notably
Egypt, India, Iraq, and the Soviet Union, would have liked in terms of
protecting and expanding the rights of dependent peoples. Part of the
difculty was in specifying the meaning of self-determination. As the
Venezuelan delegate to the meeting said, If it means self-government,
the right of a country to provide its own government, yes, we would
certainly like it to be included; but if it were to be interpreted, on the
other hand, as connotingawithdrawal, the right of withdrawal or secession,
then we wouldregardthat as tantamount to international anarchy andwe
should not desire that it should be included in the text of the Charter.
73
But the trusteeship system went further than the League Mandate sys-
tem. Specically, after rst stating that the purposes of the UN were
to maintain international peace and security, Article 1 (2) stated that a
purpose was to develop friendly relations among nations based on re-
spect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples,
and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace.
As Antonio Cassese argues, the article had a snowball effect, for it lent
moral andpolitical force tothe aspirations of colonial countries, strongly
backedupbysocialist States. Thus, Article 1(2) was eventuallyperceived
and relied upon as a legal entitlement to decolonization. More impor-
tantly, the United Nations served as an international forum promoting
and channeling the gradual crystallization of legal rules governing this
amorphous subject.
74
The broad language of the opening Chapter of the UN Charter was
specied in Chapters XII and XIII, respectively establishing a Trustee-
ship System and Trusteeship Council. Although there was no explicit
discussion of a date to end trusteeship status in the Charter, eventual in-
dependence was impliedbythe language of Article 76 (b) of Chapter XII,
which stated that the objectives of trusteeship included: to promote
the political, economic, social and educational advancement of the
73
Quoted in Cassese, Self-determination of Peoples, pp. 3940.
74
Ibid., p. 65.
311
Argument and change in world politics
inhabitants of the trust territories, and their progressive development
toward self-government or independence as may be appropriate to the
particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and the freely
expressed wishes of the people concerned . . . Human rights and racial
equality were also explicitly linked to the trust territory system in Arti-
cle 76 (c and d) where other purposes of trusteeship were outlined: to
encourage respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for
all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion . . . to ensure
equal treatment in social, economic, and commercial matters . . . [and]
in the administration of justice . . .
The trusteeship system was small since most of the A class mandates
were already independent by 1945. In January 1946 all the Mandatory
powers of B and C class territories, except South Africa, declared their
intention to draw up trusteeship agreements for their territories. Still,
the portion of people living in trusteeship, out of the total number liv-
ing in old fashioned colonies, was small. Counting the dependencies
of Portugal and Spain, there were more than eight times as many non-
self-governing territories outside the trusteeship system, and they con-
tained over ten times as many people.
75
As with League of Nations
mandates, each UN trust territory was set up with an individual agree-
ment between the trust power and the UN. The following table de-
scribes the United Nations trust territories and their dates of eventual
independence.
The UN trusteeship system continued and expanded the mandate
concept, illustrating how the table on which arguments were made
had been altered by the institutionalization of the Mandate system.
For example, the Trusteeship Council, like the Permanent Mandates
Commission, was to hear reports from trustee powers about their ad-
ministration of trust territories in response to a questionnaire based on
the one used by the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commis-
sion. However, the Trusteeship questionnaire was more detailed than
the League questionnaire and indicates institutionalization of beliefs in
trusteeship and self-determination. Specically, the questionnaire con-
tained the following sections: political advancement in terms of general
administration and judicial organization, economic advancement, so-
cial advancement including human rights, labor conditions and regula-
tions, public health, penal administration, and education. Further, the
reports should answer questions regarding the implementation of UN
75
Jacobson, The United Nations and Colonialism, p. 295.
312
Self-determination
Table 7.1 United Nations Trust Territories
Administering Previous Date of
Trust power status independence
British Great Britain League 1961
Cameroons Mandate Northern part
incorporated into
Nigeria. Southern
part incorporated
into Cameroon
French France League 1960 (Cameroon)
Cameroons Mandate
New Guinea Australia League 1975
Mandate
Ruanda- Belgium League 1962
Urundi Mandate Became two states:
Rwanda and Burundi
Nauru Australia League 1968
Mandate
Pacic Islands US League Palau independent in
(Carolines, Mandate 1994; Marshall Islands
Marshall, and (under independent in 1991;
Marianas Japan) Marianas and
Islands) Federated States of
Micronesia (including
Carolines) became US
self-governing
territories in 1975
and 1979 respectively.
Somaliland Italy Italian 1960 (Somalia)
Colony
Tanganyika Great Britain League 1961 (Tanzania)
Mandate
British Great Britain League 1957
Togoland Mandate Incorporated into
Ghana by plebiscite
French France League 1960 (Togo)
Togoland Mandate
Western New Zealand League 1962
Samoa Mandate
General Assembly and Trusteeship Council resolutions with regard to
the trusteeship territory.
76
The emphasis was clearly on advancement
intheseareas, withtheexpectationthat UNsupervisionwouldaidinthis
76
Murray, The United Nations Trusteeship System, pp. 131139.
313
Argument and change in world politics
process. Further, the UN Trusteeship Council was given greater author-
ity than the League Permanent Mandates Commission in two important
respects. The Council was empowered to make periodic visits to the
trust territories, which it didon occasion.
77
Andthe Trusteeship Council
could hear petitions by the inhabitants of trust territories without hav-
ing those petitions rst screened and forwarded by the administering
authority.
78
The trusteeship system became the model for decolonization of
non-trust colonies, or in UN parlance, the non-self-governing ar-
eas discussed in Chapter XI of the UN Charter, the Declaration Re-
garding Non-Self-Governing Territories. The language of Chapter
XI shows how deeply beliefs in self-determination had penetrated:
Members of the United Nations which have or assume responsibil-
ities for the administration of territories whose people have not yet
attained a full measure of self-government recognize the principle
that the interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount,
and accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the ut-
most, within the system of international peace and security estab-
lished by the present Charter, the well-being of the inhabitants of
these territories . . . The administering powers, according to Arti-
cle 73, should ensure due respect for the culture of the people
concerned. . . develop self-government, to take account of the politi-
cal aspirations of the peoples . . . to promote constructive measures of
development, and report on the economic, social and educational
conditions in these territories. And as with the trusteeship system,
administering governments were required to submit annual reports,
extending the system of accountability to all colonies.
79
To monitor
implementation of the goals for non-self-governing territories, the
General Assembly later established the Committee on Information
from Non-Self-Governing Territories. The template of mandate and
77
Article 87 of the Charter. At rst the British resisted the idea of inspections, fearing
their political impact. Louis, Imperialism at Bay, pp. 9596.
78
Rules of Procedure for the Trusteeship Council, approved 23 April 1947, reprinted in
H. Duncan Hall, Mandates, Dependencies and Trusteeships (Washington: Carnegie Endow-
ment for International Peace, 1948), pp. 371385. Other differences in procedure and sub-
stance are discussed in Hall, Mandates, Dependencies and Trusteeships, pp. 277281.
79
Further, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights extended political rights to
all human beings [who] are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Illustrating how
self-determination was the starting point of debate in the post-war world, the relevant
portions of the Declaration state that Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere
as a person before the law . . . Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his
country, directly or through freely chosen representatives . . . The will of the people shall
be the basis of the authority of government.
314
Self-determination
trusteeship was applied by analogy to all colonies through the Commit-
tee on Information:
The substantive recommendations of the Trusteeship Council and
the Committee on Information have been strikingly similar . . . Both
bodies have advocated the same things: increased educational facili-
ties for the indigenous inhabitants; enlarged social welfare programs
with emphasis on community development; more extensive and com-
prehensive economic programs which would aim at diversication;
and greater opportunity for inhabitants to participate in decision-
making.
80
Thus, normative beliefs in self-government and self-determination
rst expressedandinstitutionalizedinthe League Mandate systemwere
extended to other colonies and institutionalized into standard operat-
ing procedures characteristic of the PMC. But the extent of UN activism
was still the subject of argument within the world body. Some mem-
bers favored an activist policy on the part of the UN in promoting self-
determination and decolonization. As the Indian delegate to the Fourth
Committee of the UN said in late 1946:
the nal object, which was the autonomy of those territories, should
be clearly stated, and . . . the right of the natives to election and partic-
ipation in the administration should be afrmed in detail. In particu-
lar it should be explicitly stated that no racial discrimination, and no
monopoly should be admitted in theory or in fact. Freedom of speech,
freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom to present pe-
titions would have to be guaranteed. No authority should be given to
establish a base without the approval of the United Nations . . . Finally,
it was desirable that as with the Americans in the Philippines, a date
limit for the transitional regime should be xed.
81
But the UN Charter did not promote immediate decolonization in
non-trust territories and there was also disagreement with the Trustee-
ship Council based on differing visions of the purposes of the system.
Thus, as Heather Wilson shows, some of the rst post-war challenges
to colonialism went unsupported by the United Nations despite ap-
peals by nationalist groups seeking self-government andindependence.
For example, in both 1950 and 1951 the question of [French] Morocco
80
Jacobson, The United Nations and Colonialism, p. 296.
81
Ofcial Record of the Second Part of the First Session of the General Assembly, Plenary Meet-
ings (OctoberDecember 1946), Fourth Committee, Trusteeship, Part I (NovemberDecember
1946), p. 70, quoted in Murray, The United Nations Trusteeship System, pp. 5455.
315
Argument and change in world politics
appeared on the agenda of the General Assembly but no debate took
place, despite appeals by members of the Arab League for discussion
of Moroccos status.
82
The French resisted discussion of Morocco in the
UN, claiming that it was a domestic matter. In 1953 the UN General
Assembly adopted a weak resolution urging continued negotiations be-
tween Moroccans and the French, but in 1953 the UN failed to adopt
a draft resolution that recognized the right of the people of Morocco
to complete self-determination.
83
Similarly, the United Nations took
a soft line on French human rights behavior in Tunisia in the early
1950s. On the other hand, by 1960, although in previous years such
resolutions had been defeated, the UN was ready to recognize the Al-
gerians right to self-determination.
84
The unsuccessful French war to
hold on to Algeria ultimately cost more than 500,000 lives over seven
years.
The increasingly active role of the UN in decolonization efforts dur-
ing the 1950s and 1960s, was due perhaps primarily to the greater
portion of former colonies in the UN, but also to the institutionaliza-
tion of anti-colonial normative beliefs.
85
As Harold Jacobson suggests,
the most salient motive force underlying the UNs recommendations
seems to have been a feeling that all racial discrimination should cease
and that the indigenous inhabitants of dependent territories are enti-
tled to a position of full equality.
86
It was inconsistent and thus inco-
herent to keep colonies if colonialism was no longer acceptable among
civilized peoples, once the humanity and at least theoretical equality
of those in colonies was granted. In other words, the UNs activism
was a consequence of both normative beliefs and ethical arguments as
well as a change in political capabilities. Though some former colonies,
e.g. the US sometimes voted in support of colonialism, the majority
of votes in the General Assembly could not be counted in favor of
colonialism.
The scope of self-determination gradually expanded through ethical
argument. UN delegates continually debated the meaning of self-deter-
mination, with some favoring an anti-colonial interpretation of external
82
Wilson, International Law and the Use of Force, p. 63.
83
Draft Resolution A/2526, 22 October 1953, quoted in ibid., p. 64.
84
Ibid., pp. 6566.
85
This shift in membership was most dramatic in terms of new African states: in 1946
African states comprised less than 10 percent of membership and in 1991 African states
were 33 percent of UN members.
86
Jacobson, The United Nations and Colonialism, p. 296.
316
Self-determination
self-determination, and others promoting internal self-determination or
democracy as paramount. Third World and socialist states generally fa-
voreddeningtheconcept as external self-determination, whileWestern
countries generally pushed for a conception that stressed internal self-
government, arguingthat anemphasis onsovereigntywouldencourage
separatism and weaken the international order. Only Chile proposed,
in 1952, to include a right to control natural resources.
87
Culminating decades of ethical argument, in 1960 the UN General
Assembly passed Resolution 1514, the Declaration on the Granting
of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, which said all
dependent people had a right to complete independence.
88
Drafted
and pushed by the African and Asian members of the UN that had
recently won their independence, the language closely resembled that
used at the 1955 Bandung Conference. The resolution condemned colo-
nialism as alien subjugation, domination, and exploitation, and said
that colonialism constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights.
Moreover, the resolution declaredthat armedaction or repressive mea-
sures of all kinds directed against dependent peoples shall cease in or-
der to enable them to exercise peacefully and freely their right to com-
plete independence . . . The Declaration further instructed all states
to observe the provisions of the UN Charter, the UN Declaration of
Human Rights (1948) andthe present Declaration on the basis of equal-
ity, non-interference in the internal affairs of all States, and respect for
the sovereign rights of all peoples and their territorial integrity. Also
notable was the fact that not even the states that still held colonies dared to
vote against the measure. Rather, the colonial powers formed the majority
of the nine abstentions. South Africa, Australia, Belgium, France, Spain,
Portugal, Great Britain, the United States, and the Dominican Republic
abstained, while eighty-nine states voted in favor of Resolution 1514,
and none voted against.
The UN further institutionalized and articulated beliefs in equal-
ity and self-determination in 1961 when the General Assembly estab-
lished the Special Committee on Colonialism to implement the 1960
Declaration.
89
The Special Committee immediately took an activist role
87
See Cassese, Self-determination of Peoples, pp. 4452.
88
Resolution 1514 (XV). Thomas Franke argues that the declaration is contradictory be-
cause it does not consistently use the principle of self-determination. The Power of Legiti-
macy Among Nations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 163165.
89
The UNGAalsocreatedother committees, namelythe Special Committee onSouthWest
Africa and the Special Committee on Portuguese Territories, both established in 1961. In
317
Argument and change in world politics
in the decolonization process, leading the General Assembly and Secu-
rity Council to take stronger positions. From the beginning of its work,
the Special Committee gave priority to Africa under the logic that it
was in Africa that the largest number of people were still living un-
der colonialism and that it was here that the largest colonial territo-
ries still existed.
90
For example, the Special Committee spent fteen
of its rst twenty-six meetings on the problem of white minority rule
in Rhodesia.
91
The Committee heard petitions from Africans who were
organizing for political and economic rights and urged that the gov-
ernment release all political prisoners. Prior to the British colonys 1965
Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), the Special Committee
urged Britain to take a stronger line on Rhodesias racial policies and
requested that all member states refrain from sending arms and ammu-
nition to Southern Rhodesia. Only after the UDI did the UN General
Assembly and Security Council, along with Great Britain, gradually im-
pose mandatory sanctions on Rhodesian imports and exports. Those
sanctions remained in force until an agreement for majority rule was
reached in 1979.
92
Although by the mid-1960s decolonization was a fact for many for-
mer colonies, the UNcontinuedtoargue about colonialism. InDecember
1966 the UNGeneral Assembly adoptedthe International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, which stated in part that all peoples have
the right to self-determination. Further, the Covenant said that all par-
ties to it, including those having responsibility for the administration
of Non-Self-Governing and Trust Territories, shall promote the realiza-
tion of the right to self-determination, and shall respect that right in
conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.
93
1962 the General Assembly dissolved these committees and the much older Committee
on Information, transferring their function to the Special Committee on the Situation with
regard to the Implementation on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and
Peoples, commonly known as the Special Committee or the Committee of Twenty-Four.
90
UN, The United Nations and Decolonization: Summary of the Work of the Special Committee
of Twenty-Four (New York: United Nations, 1965), p. 9.
91
David A. Kay, The Politics of Decolonization: The New Nations and the United
Nations Political Process, International Organization 21 (Autumn 1967), 786811 reprinted
in Goodrich and Kay, International Organization, pp. 307332: 317.
92
A chronology of UN efforts and sanctions is found in Gary Clyde Hufbauer,
Jeffrey Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliot, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered: History and
Current Policy, 2nd edn (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1990),
Case 653, pp. 285293.
93
The Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also says: All peoples may, for their own
ends, freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obli-
gations arising out of an international economic cooperation, based upon the principle
318
Self-determination
In October 1970 UN General Assembly Resolution 2621 (XXV) resolved
that colonialism was a crime that violated the principles of interna-
tional law and the UN Charter. It also proposed a Programme of Ac-
tion for the Full Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting
of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, that consisted of
assisting freedom ghters with material aid, attacking nancial inter-
ests that aided colonialism, and publishing the negative aspects of colo-
nialism as well as UN activities in support of decolonization. Notably,
this resolution passed 85:5:15. The Programme was followed by numer-
ous resolutions recognizing and supporting the struggles of people un-
der colonial or alien rule, including those persons under Portuguese,
Rhodesian, South African, Indonesian (East Timor) and Moroccan
(Western Sahara) domination. Further, individual governments gave
nancial and in some cases military support to anti-colonial organi-
zations. On the other hand, when twenty-six of fty members of the
Organization of African Unity recognized the independence movement
in Western Sahara in 1982, it caused a year-long schism within the or-
ganization. By the early 1970s the governments of the Soviet Union,
Denmark, and Canada all supported Popular Movement for the Liber-
ation of Angola (MPLA).
94
The UnitedNations rmest actions insupport of decolonizationwere
perhaps its sanctions against Portugal, Rhodesia, andSouthAfrica.
95
For
example, the United Nations implemented a voluntary arms embargo
against South Africa in 1963 to hasten Namibian independence and in-
crease the pressure to reform apartheid, and made the embargo manda-
tory in 1977. During the 1970s and 1980s, the UNalso assisted Namibian
efforts for independence from South Africa. In 1984 and 1986 the UN
arms embargo against South Africa was tightenedto include spare parts
andammunition. Similarly, the UNimposedeconomic sanctions against
Portugal and Rhodesia, lifting those only after majority rule was certain
to be instituted in Mozambique, Angola, and Zimbabwe.
96
of mutual benet, and international law. In no case may a people be deprived of its own
means of subsistence.
94
Kenneth Maxwell, Portugal and Africa: The Last Empire, in Prosser Gifford and Wm.
Roger Louis, eds., The Transfer of Power in Africa: Decolonization 19401960 (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 337385: 347348.
95
In 1990 the United Nations began the International Decade for the Eradication of Colo-
nialism. Robert Aldrich and John Connell, The Last Colonies (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1998), p. 159.
96
The UN was not the only international organization that promoted decolonization:
the Organization of African Unity (OAU), founded in 1963, proclaimed the elimination
319
Argument and change in world politics
Anti-colonial movements and negotiated
decolonization
Decolonizationafter WorldWar II generallyfollowedone of three routes:
peaceful negotiatedtransfers of power; internationallymediatedandsu-
pervised independence processes, such as plebiscites and UN Trustee-
ship; or anti-colonial military rebellions. Although strong anti-colonial
movements in the colonies pressed for reform and independence, war
was the exception; negotiated transfer or plebiscite was the rule.
There were several guerrilla wars for independence in the post-war
period, often involving more than one nationalist political movement
strugglingfor theliberationof asinglecolony. Francewas themost active
in trying to maintain its colonies by force against determined guerrilla
resistance in Tunisia, Algeria, Vietnam, and Morocco. In Algeria, the
French faced the Front de Lib eration National (FNL) between 1954 and
1962 before De Gaulle negotiated an agreement for French withdrawal.
Both the Vietnamese and the Algerians were met with brutal force in
response to their rebellions against the French. Nevertheless, France lost
decisively at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and despite great military success
in the late 1950s, negotiated its way out of Algeria in 1962.
97
Multiple
independence movements fought against the Portuguese in Angola
(19611974), Mozambique (19631974), and Guinea-Buissau (1963
1974), nally gaining their independence when the Portuguese gov-
ernment fell to a military coup in 1975 and the new government ne-
gotiated a withdrawal.
98
Similarly, Portugals colony in East Timor was
promisedindependence after the coup, but was invadedby Indonesia in
1975, which occupied the territory until 1999. When Spain left its colony
Rio de Oro (Spanish Sahara) in 1976, the land was occupied by its neigh-
bors Mauritania and Morocco. The occupants of Western Sahara, as it
of colonialism as one of its main purposes. The OAU also proclaimed its determination
to safeguard and consolidate the hard-won independence as well as the sovereignty and
territorial integrity of our States, andto resist neo-colonialisminall its forms. Charter of the
Organization of African Unity, adopted on 25 May 1962, emphasis added. The OAU was
more forthcoming than the UN with material and political support for decolonization
efforts in Africa. The OAU took a stand against Portugal earlier than the UN when it
institutedan economic anddiplomatic boycott against Portugals colonial policies in 1963;
the UN General Assembly called for an arms embargo and economic sanctions against
Portugal in late 1965. In other cases, particularly when the UNneeded guidance on which,
of sometimes several, independence movements to recognize in an African state, it looked
to the organizations recognized by the OAU.
97
See Anthony Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization (London: Longman, 1994).
98
See Norrie MacQueen, The Decolonization of Portuguese Africa: Metropolitan Revolution
and the Dissolution of Empire (London: Longman, 1997).
320
Self-determination
became known, thenbegana long, complex, guerrilla, andlegal struggle
by the people under the Front for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra
and Rio de Oro, or the Polisario Front for independence from their
neighbors.
Colonial rebellion was not conned to indigenous peoples; Euro-
pean colonists also fought to retain their political domination. For
example, Portuguese and Dutch settlers attempted small rebellions
against the metropole, and French colons rebelled in Algeria in 1957
and 1960. The most successful rebellion was the Unilateral Declaration
of Independence (UDI) from Britain by the European colonial settlers of
Southern Rhodesia in 1965. They succeeded in maintaining power until
1980 when a negotiated solution ended their war with the Zimbabwean
liberation armies.
Despite these armed revolts, decolonization was more often the
consequence of a negotiated transition, where independence leaders,
working with labor and political organizations, struggled for peace-
ful and legal transfers of power following elections. British colonies,
for example, often gained independence through staged legal transfers.
The white-settler dominated British dominions of Australia, Canada,
New Zealand, and South Africa had already achieved a de facto inde-
pendence which was recognized at the Imperial Conference of 1926. In
Asia, after the British regained Burma from Japanese control, elections
led to Burmese independence in 1948.
Some nationalist leaders had long histories of working with or in
colonial administrations in order to negotiate a transition to self-rule
and political independence. For example, the rst French Constituent
Assemblies elected in October 1945 and June 1946 included sixty-
three members from overseas colonies. Some of these members had
many years of experience in colonial administration, including men
who would become future leaders of their independent states, such
as F elix Houphou et-Boigny (Ivory Coast) and L eopold Sedar Senghor
(Senegal). KwameNkrumah, thenotedPan-Africanactivist whobecame
the rst leader of Ghana, Africas rst colony to achieve independence
after World War II, was part of a long tradition of African activism and
participation in the British colonial government of the Gold Coast go-
ing back to when two Africans sat on the Legislative Council in 1888.
Nkrumah served as leader of government business after elections in
1951, while subsequent elections gave increasing autonomy to Ghana,
which nally became independent in 1957. In the West Indies, Norman
Manley and his cousin Alexander Bustamante, who led two relatively
321
Argument and change in world politics
evenly matched political parties, negotiated greater autonomy and
ultimately independence for Jamaica over the course of many years.
99
The independence in 1947 of India, Britains largest imperial holding,
was one of the rst post-World War II cases of a largely peaceful trans-
fer of power. Decolonization was a protracted process which Indians
had been struggling to achieve for decades and some devolution of
power had already occurred before World War II. Unsatised with the
pace and content of reforms, however, Indians continued to push for
complete independence, in a largely non-violent effort, but the British
managed to postpone independence until after World War II, partly by
jailing most leaders of the popular Indian Congress Party during the
war. Still, there was a shift in public opinion in Britain toward Indian as-
pirations for independence, which was reected in the change of stance
taken by political parties toward decolonization. For example, Britains
Labour government of 19451951 was more sympathetic than the Con-
servatives to colonial aspirations, identifying them to some extent with
the struggles of the British working classes for their own form of self-
determination.
100
In India and elsewhere, it was explicit British policy to make sure that
the transition from colonial rule to greater self-government and event-
ual independence was gradual. As Secretary of State for the Colonies
A. Creech Jones said in 1948, The central purpose of British Colonial
Policy is simple. It is to guide the Colonial territories to responsible
government within the Commonwealth in conditions that ensure to
the people concerned both a fair standard of living and freedom from
oppression from any quarter.
101
In part, gradualism was intended to
preserve as much control over the process as possible. But the Colo-
nial Ofce also believed that it would take time to train natives in the
mechanics of self-rule. To that end, the British gradually increased the
number of native civil servants in government administrative posts in
many of its colonies and very gradually gave up some of the func-
tions of local government to colonial inhabitants. In addition, British
policymakers believed that implementing a Commonwealth among
Britains former colonies couldpreserve the connectionof the empire. As
Frederick Cooper argues, In the end, ofcials belief in the universal
99
See Victor Stafford Reid, The Horses of the Morning (Kingston, Jamaica: Caribbean
Authors Publishing Co., 1985).
100
M.E. Chamberlain, Decolonization: The Fall of the European Empires (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1985), p. 76.
101
Morgan, The Ofcial History of Colonial Development, vol. V, p. 20.
322
Self-determination
value of European social knowledge did not serve to preserve empire,
but instead to convince French and British ofcials that they could give
it up, believing that they had molded some Africans to the norms of
modernity and that they could bequeath to that elite the task of super-
intending those who had not made the transition.
102
French decolonization was, like the British process, a slow evolution
toward greater recognition of the rights of colonial subjects, as well as
the harsh wrenching of freedom through violent means that occurred
in Algeria and Vietnam. But violence was the exception. French policy
had long been one of assimilation and as a consequence, some formal
recognition of the colonial subjects was already part of French policy.
For instance, the West African Blaise Diagne had been a member of
the French parliament for Senegal during and after World War I and
was given a large role in the colonial administration of Africa after the
war. In the late 1920s, French Indochina was granted a representative
body, dominated by the French but including a large number of elected
Indochinese. As Arthur Girault, an interwar theorist of French colonial-
ism, wrote in 1927, The policy of assimilation is the safety valve which
prevents the rupture: To the man whom we prevent from being prime
minister in his own country because his country is a colony, we must
offer in exchange the possibility of being prime minister of France. The
people we forbid local patriotism must be inspired with love for the
common fatherland, the cult of the Empire.
103
During World War II nationalist elites grew more explicit in demand-
ing changes that would lead from colonialism to self-government in
French Equatorial Africa and French West Africa. While at the 1944
French Africa Conference in Brazzaville, African elites had pressed for
an Empire citizenship for Africans that would give them equal civil
and political rights with the metropolitan French, by the late 1940s and
early 1950s Africans were making more radical demands. An uprising
against France inMadagascar was brutallycrushedin1947. Onthe other
hand, after the war the French allowed and organized elections for mu-
nicipal and colonial representation, and set up the political structures
to accommodate this new level of governance by Africans. In addition,
in 1955 the French began to give preference to Africans over Europeans
to ll vacant posts in colonial administration. Any position that can be
lled correctly by an African must be entrusted to him rather than to
102
Cooper, Decolonization and African Society, p. 20.
103
Quoted in Albertini, Decolonization, pp. 290291.
323
Argument and change in world politics
a European . . . Between equally qualied candidates, the African must
always receive preference.
104
In 1956, the French legislature passed the Loi Cadre, or framework
law, that created territorial assemblies, and eventually led to a vote
in September 1958 in Frances black African colonies over the kind of
relationship they wanted with France. The choice was independence
or a relationship of community where members would enjoy both
greater autonomy and economic advantages. Most French colonies in
West Africa voted for community, except for Guinea, which voted for
immediate independence. Yet in relatively short order, Mali, the Ivory
Coast, Niger, Dahomy(nowBenin), andUpper Volta(nowBurkinaFaso)
peacefully negotiated their independence in 1960. Other French African
territories, including Togo, Madagascar, the Republic of the Congo, and
Gabonachievedindependence in1960 followingroughlythe same path.
Finally, in some cases, the UN facilitated plebiscites in non-self-
governing territories. Plebiscites by international organizations were
not a new feature of world politics. In 1935, for instance, the Council
of the League of Nations had solved a dispute over whether Germany
or France should govern the Saar region with an internationally ob-
served plebiscite.
105
The United Nations made greater use of plebiscites
to help decide the future of territories and the shape of governments.
For example, the areas of British and French administration in Togoland
conducted plebiscites under UN supervision with inhabitants of British
Togoland deciding in 1956 to join Ghana rather than remain a trust ter-
ritory, while the Chamber of Deputies of French Togoland voted in 1958
for independence. Most recently, the United Nations Mission in East
Timor (UNAMET) held a referendum on East Timors status in August
104
French policy quoted in MBokolo, French Colonial Policy in Equatorial
Africa, p. 206.
105
At the end of World War I, France demanded the Saar region as compensation for war
losses. France did not get the Saar, and the area was placed under the government of an
international commission from 1919 to 1935. Germany demanded the return of the Saar
in 1933. A Plebiscite Commission oversaw the voting in 1935. Most residents voted for
reunion with Germany, with the second largest number casting their ballots for contin-
ued trusteeship. See Yves Beigbeder, International Monitoring of Plebiscites, Referenda and
National Elections: Self-determination and Transition to Democracy (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff
Publishers, 1994), pp. 8486. Plebiscites were also used by the French in 1790, 1791, and
1793 to decide the fate of Alsace, Avignon, and Belgium and the Palatinate. Of course
other territories were created or annexed without plebiscite after World War I: Poland and
Czechoslovakia were created; portions of Europe formerly belonging to Germany and
Austria were given to Italy and Poland; and the mandate territories formerly belonging
to Germany and Turkey were all allocated without a vote on the part of the inhabitants.
See Cassese, Self-determination of Peoples, pp. 12, 2425.
324
Self-determination
1999 where over 98 percent of those registered to vote cast ballots, and
of those an overwhelming majority, over 78 percent, rejected continued
government by Indonesia. When violence threatened the result, and the
lives of the people of East Timor, UN member states led by Australia
intervenedandthe UNultimately set up a transitional administration
to assist the recovery andself-determination of East Timor. Table 7.2 lists
some UNsupervisedreferenda. The resort to internationally supervised
plebiscite is perhaps the best example of the institutionalization of the
principle of self-determination.
106
Changing power: declining public support in the
core
Colonial reform movements, from the Congo Reform Association to
the Aborigines Protection Societies, were of course long active in
the metropolitan countries. After World War II however, anti-colonial
sentiment grew in the colonial powers and new organizations, for
example the international League Against Imperialism, pressed for
decolonization.
107
By the middle of the twentieth century, colonial pow-
ers were increasingly constrained by domestic politics as the colonial
consensus cracked. Ultimately, as Gann and Duignan suggest, the ma-
jority of the intelligentsia in France and Britain experienced a revulsion
against imperial ideals.
108
Why was this?
In part, the brutality of anti-colonial conicts often led to declining
domestic support for colonial policy within the metropole, as happened
at the turn of the century with Britains prosecution of the Boer War.
Ethical arguments bolstered by reports of colonial brutality changed
the domestic balance of power within states and made colonial empire
difcult to maintain. For example, British suppression of Malayan com-
munists (19481957) became unpopular in Britain.
In France, left and mainstream French public intellectuals, such as
Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, and Raymond Aron, questioned the
morality andutility of colonies.
109
Initially supportive of Frenchcolonial
policy after World War II, the press also mounted criticism of colonial
policyandFrenchconduct intheir wars inTunisia, Vietnam, andAlgeria.
In 1956, journalist Raymond Cartier published articles in the journal
Paris Match, questioning the economic wisdom of maintaining colonies.
106
See Aldrich and Connell, The Last Colonies.
107
Davidson, Let Freedom Come, p. 190.
108
Gann and Duignan, Burden of Empire, p. 73.
109
Silver, Framing a Balance Sheet; Sorum, Intellectuals and Decolonization.
325
Argument and change in world politics
Table 7.2 International plebiscites and referenda
Supervisor/
Location and Date Authority Issue and outcome
British Togoland UN Population voted in favor of
1956 UNGA Res. union with the Gold Coast rather
944(X) than continued Trusteeship
French Togoland UN Elections for a Chamber of
1958 UNGA Res. Deputies in April 1958
1182 (XII) followed by Chamber of
Deputies vote for independence
British Northern UN Population voted to postpone a
Cameroon 1959 UNGA Res decision on whether to join
1350 (XIII) Nigeria
British Northern UN Northern Cameroon decided to join
and Southern Nigeria and Southern
Cameroon 1961 Cameroon decided to join the
Republic of Cameroun. Results
were endorsed by a UN GA res.
Rwanda 1961 UN Population voted against a
UNGA Res monarchy system
1580 (XV)
Western Samoa UN Population endorsed the constitution
1961 UNGA Res drafted by the Constitutional
1569 (XV) Convention in 1960 and decided
to become independent
Malaysia 1963 UN Future of the Sabah and Sarawak
decided before establishing the
Federation of Malaysia
Cook Islands UN General elections; became a self-
1965 UNGA Res governing territory. Residents
2005 (XIX) are New Zealand citizens.
Aden 1967 UN Election supervision mission failed
Equatorial Guinea UN August referendum on
1968 independence; September,
general elections
West Irian 1969 UN Self-determination
Bahrain 1970 UN Determine wishes of people
Papua New Guinea UN Trusteeship Council sent
1972 UNGA Res observers to the elections for the
2156
(XXXVIII)
House of Assembly
Niue Island 1974 UN New Zealand invited the UN to send
authorities to the referendum
on self-determination where
the population voted in favor
of self-government in Free
Association with New Zealand;
the UN endorsed the results.
Islanders are New Zealand citizens
326
Self-determination
Table 7.2 (cont.)
Supervisor/
Location and Date Authority Issue and outcome
Ellice Island 1974 UN UK requested a UN mission to
observe a referendum on the
separation of Ellice Island from
the Gilbert Islands; the
population voted in favor of
separation and became Tuvalu
Mariana Islands UN UN Trusteeship Council
1974 Trusteeship observed a plebiscite in the
Council Mariana Islands portion of the
Pacic Islands Trust Territory
Comoro Islands UN In 1974, the majority of the
1974 and 1976 population of Anjouan, Grand
Comore, and Moheli voted for
independence while Mayotte
voted in 1947 and 1976 to
remain part of France
French Somaliland UN Election observed
1977
Trust Territory of the UN Referendum; several districts of the
Pacic Islands Territory voted to form a
1978 Federation under the
Constitution of the Federated
States of Micronesia (FSM); in
1982 FSM signed a compact of
Free Association with the US
which came into force in 1986
Palau, Trust Territory UN Plebiscites on the Islands status;
of the Pacic nally determined that the
Islands 1979, 1983, islands trusteeship status would
1986, 1987, 1990 have a Compact of Free
Association with the US;
Became independent in 1994
Namibia 1989 UN Elections for democratic
government
East Timor 1999 UN Referendum on East Timors
relationship with Indonesia;
East Timorese voted to end
their relationship with Indonesia
Western Sahara ? UN Morocco has agreed in principle
but has stalled implementation
of a vote
Sources: Aldrich and Connell, The Last Colonies; Beigbeder, International Monitoring;
Cassese, Self-determination of Peoples; UN Document A/46/609, 19 November 1991,
Human Rights Questions.
327
Argument and change in world politics
Other French intellectuals, by emphasizing torture andthe denial of due
process inthe colonies, stressedthe hypocrisyandironies of Frenchcolo-
nial rule. As Pierre-Henri Simon argued in his Contre la torture (1957),
France, by using torture in the colonies is less menaced by the ac-
tion of its enemies than by the ruin of its principle.
110
Another anti-
colonialist, Jean-Marie Domenach, argued in the journal Esprit in 1957:
The right to independence is a consequence of the right of peoples
to self-determination, of which France made itself the historical pro-
moter. To oppose it would be to oppose our very tradition, our reason
to be heard in the world.
111
Domenach also said of the war in Algeria:
French youth has been placed in this untenable situation of resisting a
people struggling for its dignity.
112
The French state knew it was vul-
nerable to these arguments and tried to conceal the evidence for them;
from 1955 to 1962, of the 269 times when issues of newspapers or mag-
azines were seized by the government, some 40 percent of the cases
concerned publications revealing torture, executions or bad conditions
in prisons or internment camps.
113
Critics of French policy then argued
that colonialism was increasing the danger of domestic fascism.
French support for using the war in Indochina to reestablish order
fell from 37 percent in January 1947 to 7 percent in February 1954, while
those favoring negotiations with the Vietminh grew from 15 percent
to 42 percent of those polled in the same period. Further, by February,
18 percent favored abandoning Indochina altogether and recalling the
troops.
114
The French war against Algerian nationalists (19541962),
eventually engaging about 500,000 troops, grewto be extremely unpop-
ular in France. By the late 1950s, enough reports of torture and brutality
had made it back to France, despite heavy government censorship, to
prompt a debate about the conduct of the war. French opinion in favor
of decolonization, as opposed to those favoring the use of military force
to crush the Algerian rebellion, grew from 39 percent in early 1956 to
56 percent in early 1958.
115
Perhaps the most extreme domestic political reaction to continued
colonialism occurred in Portugal. The Portuguese fought anti-colonial
rebellions at great cost inGuinea-Bissau, Mozambique, andAngola, and
110
Quoted in Sorum, Intellectuals and Decolonization, p. 125.
111
Quoted in ibid., p. 71.
112
Quoted in ibid., p. 148.
113
Jacques van Doorn and Willem J. Hendrix, The Process of Decolonization: The Military
Experience in Comparative Perspective (Rotterdam: Comparative Asian Studies Program,
1987), p. 36.
114
Sondages polling data reported in Sorum, Intellectuals and Decolonization, p. 10.
115
Van Doorn and Hendrix, Process of Decolonization, pp. 7, 26, 36.
328
Self-determination
faced opposition to their rule in their other, smaller colonies as well. On
average, Portugal stationed 105,000 troops in its African colonies from
1961 to 1973, a high proportion of them Portuguese rather than African,
and nearly 9,000 died in the wars.
116
After initially backing repression
of the guerrilla movements, elite consensus on colonial policy gradually
fractured. Some wanted more substantial reform while others thought
the minor colonial reforms of the Caetano government, allowing some
legislative and judicial control in the African colonies, were too much.
A top general in the Portuguese military, Antoni o de Spinola, wrote
Portugal and the Future, which was critical of the policies. Eventually, top
level disagreements in the government about the strategy in Africa
whether to continue the status quo of war or to gradually allow a tran-
sition to independence plus the grievances of junior ofcers, left room
for a military coup in April 1974 by junior ofcers of the Armed Forces
Movement (MFA), who opposed continued empire. As MFA saw it,
Those who beneted from the war were the same nancial groups
that exploited the people in the metropolis and, comfortably installed
in Lisbon or Oporto or abroad, by means of venal government obliged
the Portuguese people to ght in Africa in defense of their immense
prots.
117
InJuly 1974, the newregime passedLaw7/74, whichrecog-
nizedthe right toself-determination, withall of its consequences, includ-
ing the acceptance of the independence of the overseas territories.
118
In 1975, Portugal withdrew from its African colonies.
Ethical argument was not, however, always successful at alteringpub-
lic opinion. In contrast to the British, French, and Portuguese experi-
ences, the population of the Netherlands supported military occupation
of Indonesia. The Dutch campaign against West New Guinea national-
ists for more than a decade (19501962) was popularly supported in the
metropole. Even in 1961, shortly before the actual transition to rule by
Indonesia, 56% [of Dutch opinion polled] thought that Papuas coming
of age was necessary before independence.
119
South West Africa and failed arguments
South West Africas transition from colony to independence as Namibia
was complex. It involved negotiations, guerrilla war, Cold War tension
116
MacQueen, The Decolonization of Portuguese Africa, p. 37.
117
Quoted in Maxwell, Portugal and Africa: The Last Empire, p. 359.
118
Law quoted in MacQueen, The Decolonization of Portuguese Africa, p. 88.
119
Van Doorn and Hendrix, Process of Decolonization, p. 8.
329
Argument and change in world politics
and cooperation, and action by the UN General Assembly, the Security
Council, and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In many ways this
case is bothtypical andunusual andextreme. Inthis discussion, I review
the arguments South Africa made to the world community in their at-
tempt to keep South West Africa, the arguments made by advocates of
Namibian independence, and the logic of International Court of Justice
decisions. South African claims may seem absurd now, but, at the time,
they were persuasive with some, and this is more understandable if we
recall the cultural context, especially in the time between the creation of
the UNand the mid-1960s, when South Africas arguments about South
West Africa were nally rejected in the world body. The case illustrates
the use of ethical arguments by the colonial power, the international
observers who sought to modify South Africas rule, and anti-colonial
activists and guerrillas, notably the South West Africa Peoples Orga-
nization (SWAPO). South African arguments were only ultimately re-
jected when scientic racism was rejected and Namibians themselves
were able to press their case against occupation. However, ethical argu-
ments failed to change the status of South West Africa through most of
this period, but nor was South Africa able to persuade the rest of the
world that their occupation was just.
South Africans persistently argued that South West Africas status
as a mandate should end and the territory should be incorporated
into South Africa. South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts argued in
South Africas House of Assembly on 20 March 1945 that If the League
of Nations lapses, then the mandatory system also lapses . . . The man-
date will have to be abolished, and the territory can be incorporated as
a province of the Union. . .
120
At the San Francisco conference of the
United Nations, South Africa claimed that it had treated the inhabitants
of South-West Africa well and faithfully performed its obligations un-
der the mandate. Because of South West Africas ethnological sim-
ilarity with South Africa, and its economic dependence, There is no
prospect of the Territory ever existing as a separate State, and the ul-
timate objective of the mandatory principle is therefore impossible of
achievement.
121
Using results of a consultation of native tribal lead-
ers (where independence was not an option), the South African repre-
sentative to the UN also claimed that the people of South West Africa
120
Quoted in John Dugard, ed., The South West Africa/Namibia Dispute: Documents and
Scholarly Writing on the Controversy Between South Africa and the United Nations (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1973), p. 98.
121
Dugard, ed., South West Africa/Namibia Dispute, pp. 8990: 90.
330
Self-determination
freely and unequivocably wanted to become part of South Africa.
122
South African diplomats then claimed that the mandate should be dis-
solvedandthat SouthWest Africa shouldbe incorporatedintothe Union
of South Africa.
123
Pan-Africanists, anti-colonial activists, and of course South West
Africans immediately challengedSouthAfricas versionof international
law and history. In early 1946, A. B. Xuma, president of South Africas
African National Congress, sent a cable from Johannesburg to the UN
saying, We have long experience of South Africas policies, and would
not like hundreds of thousands more innocent victims to be brought un-
der South Africas race and colour dominated policies.
124
Xuma urged
the UN to save their black brothers living in the mandated territory
of Southwest Africa from annexation by the Jan Smuts government of
the Union of South Africa.
125
In April 1946, the Namibians living in
exile in neighboring Botswana sent a memo to the UN protesting South
Africas efforts to annex South West Africa, andthe white South African,
Reverend Michael Scott of the Anglican Church, carried a petition from
South West Africans to the United Nations in 1947.
126
In October 1946,
the Council on African Affairs petitioned the UN Human Rights Com-
mission for an investigation of South Africas request to annex South
West Africa, and Alpheus Hunton circulated the CAAs pamphlet See-
ing is Believing The Truth About South Africa. The CAAalso worked
with the Indian government, the ANC, the Indian National Congress,
and the Joint Passive Resistance Council of South Africa to protest the
treatment of Indians in South Africa in 1946 and 1947. In 1946, when the
interim Indian government led charges with the UNGA that Indians
living in South Africa were discriminated against, the CAA organized
letters to Truman, the State Department and the US delegate to the UN
urging full support to the Indian governments petition to the United
122
Quoted in ibid., p. 109. James Barber and John Barratt, South Africas Foreign Policy:
The Search for Status and Security 19451988 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990), pp. 23, 357358.
123
On South African arguments at the last session of the League of Nations in 1946 see
Solomon Slonim, South West Africa and the United Nations: An International Mandate in
Dispute (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), pp. 6872.
124
Quoted in Peter Katjavivi, The Development of Anti-Colonial Forces in Namibia,
in Brian Wood, ed., Namibia, 18841984: Readings on Namibias History and Society (Lusaka:
United Nations Institute for Namibia, 1988), pp. 557584: 564.
125
Quoted in Von Eschen, Race Against Empire, p. 88 .
126
Peter H. Katjavivi, A History of Resistance in Namibia (London: James Currey, 1988),
pp. 3739.
331
Argument and change in world politics
Nations . . .
127
CAA arguments were successful in affecting at least
the African-American communitys understanding: South Africas post
World War II efforts to annex South West Africa were universally con-
demned in African American press.
128
Responding to criticism, the South African delegation presented the
UN with a long memo in October 1946. South Africa made four ar-
guments: granting that the principle of mandates and trusteeship was
ultimately self-government, South Africa claimed that the backward-
ness of the vast majority of the population in South West Africa made
such a goal impossible; it would be very expensive for the mandate
to develop; uncertainty about the future led to difculty in promoting
racial peace anddevelopment; andnally, they repeatedtheir claimthat
the people of South West Africa had already said in a consultation of
their views that they wanted incorporation into South Africa.
129
Debate in the General Assembly over South West Africa was sharp.
For example, the so-called consultation of the South West Africans
throughtheir tribal authorities was derided since noactual votes bythe
people were taken and contrasted with actual voting by whites in the
Territory. In December 1946 the UNGA passed a resolution saying
that South Africa should place South West Africa under trusteeship.
130
The South Africa representative to the UN refused, but nevertheless
promised to continue submitting reports to the United Nations on its
administration and said it would administer the Territory in the spirit
of the existing Mandate.
131
South Africa continued to press the UN to
accede to the incorporation of South West Africa into South Africa,
again arguing that the native and European inhabitants had been con-
sulted and that it would provide for the welfare of both populations.
Because opinion was not uniform within South Africa itself, the gov-
ernment had to argue its case there as well and reassure doubters that
South Africas external arguments would succeed. In the South African
127
Von Eschen, Race Against Empire, p. 86. Also see Lynch, Pan-African Responses in the
United States to British Colonial Rule in Africa in the 1940s, p. 67.
128
Von Eschen, Race Against Empire, p. 88.
129
Summarized in Slonim, South West Africa, p. 79.
130
UNGA Resolution 65 (1), 14 December 1946. Besides recommending that South West
Africa be placed in the trusteeship system the resolution clearly articulates the view that
the people of South West Africa are undeveloped politically. Considering that the African
inhabitants of South West Africa have not yet secured political autonomy or reached
a stage of political development enabling them to express a considered opinion which
the Assembly could recognize on such an important question as incorporation of their
territory . . . . Ibid.
131
Quoted in Dugard, ed., South West Africa/Namibia Dispute, p. 112.
332
Self-determination
House of Assembly during March 1947, members and Prime Minister
Smuts, clearly mindful of the role of argument, spoke of South Africas
case in the world. Member of the South African Parliament Eric Louw
said, South Africas case is good. The grounds on which we base our
case are sound. They are soundjuridically. They are soundfactually, and
I say let us not hesitate. I believe that in this matter we have hesitated
too long. Already there has been some talk of sanctions . . . May I sug-
gest that we must not allow ourselves to be scared by talk of sanctions,
nor to be deected from our course by any such suggestions.
132
In re-
ply, Smuts said that he also thought South Africa had a good case but
should still refrain from using language which looks like a challenge
which may appear provocative and which may put the bristles up of
stronger nations than ourselves and make our case more difcult. It is
not wisdom to use language that looks like a challenge.
133
Prime Minister Smuts attempted to reframe the situation by suggest-
ing that SouthWest Africa was no longer a mandate andhadnot become
a trust territory. Smuts argued that with the termination of the Mandate
system, the reports by South Africa to the UN fell under Chapter XI, on
non-self-governing territories: I should rather associate our position
with that of colonial territories, which do not fall under trusteeship, but
under the colonial system.
134
Seeking to impose this frame on the UN,
South Africa then submitted a report on South West Africa to the
UN, stating that it assumed the report would not be examined by the
Trusteeship Council. After considering the issue of where to examine
the report, the UNGA nevertheless sent it to the Trusteeship Council.
132
Quoted in ibid., p. 124.
133
Smuts quoted in ibid., p. 124.
134
Quoted in ibid., p. 116. On the question of submitting reports to the UN versus the
League of Nations, Eric Louw, said in March 1947: I can speak from personal experience,
having on two occasions had the honour of submitting the South-West Africa report to
the League of Nations Mandates Commission. And Mr. Speaker, let me say this, that
the Mandates Commission of those days was a body of sympathetic affable gentlemen.
And yet, on each occasion I was examined and cross-examined for two full days by the
Commission. I was cross-examined very closely on the Unions administration of South-
West Africa. But I suggest that when these reports . . . go to the UNO, it is going to be a very
different story. The examination of the Union by the UNO Trusteeship Committee will be
very different from what it was in the days of the old League of Nations, because the old
League, with possibly half a dozen exceptions, was a white organisation, an organisation
of predominantly European powers . . . But the UNO is a horse of a very different colour,
because the UNO is predominantly coloured; it consists of predominantly coloured and
Asiatic nations and of off-colour nations. A considerable number of South and Central
American nations are predominantly of mixed blood. And the position is going to be very
different when our representative I pity the poor man turns up to submit his report on
South-West Africa, to the UNO as at present constituted. Quoted in Dugard, ed., South
West Africa/Namibia Dispute, pp. 118119.
333
Argument and change in world politics
When the document was considered in 1947, the Trusteeship Coun-
cil noted that it was incomplete and requested replies by South Africa
to fty questions, including requests for information on the participa-
tion of non-Europeans in the government of South West Africa. When
South Africas delegates replied to the Trusteeship Councils questions
in 1948, they reiterated their position that South West Africa was not
a trust and that its replies should not be taken to imply that South
Africa would be accountable to the UN. The Trusteeship Council re-
jected the South African frame, and adopted a negative report on South
Africas administration of South West Africa, in particular emphasiz-
ing the imbalance between resources available to European and native
populations.
135
In 1949, South Africa declared that the mandate was over. In an im-
plicit recognition of the role of ethical argument, South Africa said it
would no longer submit reports to the UN since this created a situ-
ation where the Trusteeship Council became a forum for unjustied
criticism and censure of the Union Governments administration, not
only in South West Africa but in the Union [of South Africa] as well.
136
South Africa, however, continued to make implicit ethical arguments,
for instance when South Africa informed the UN of the South West
Africa Affairs Act 23 of 1949, under which six white representatives of
South West Africa would sit in the South African House of Assembly,
and four would sit in the Senate. In a nod to the principle of political
representation, one of the white delegates to the Senate would have
thorough acquaintance, by reason of his ofcial experience or other-
wise, with the reasonable wants and wishes of the coloured races of the
Territory.
137
Despite South African recalcitrance, the UN kept trying to get South
West Africa into the trusteeship system. India introduced a resolution,
passed in the Fourth Committee of the UN by a vote of twenty-seven to
twenty in October 1947, urging South Africa to place South West Africa
under international trusteeship. The US, UK, andall other colonial pow-
ers voted against the resolution. In 1949, the UN Fourth Committee
again heard testimony from Reverend Michael Scott on behalf of South
West African natives. Also in 1949, the UNGA adopted a resolution to
135
See Slonim, South West Africa, pp. 9195.
136
South Africas letter to the UN on 11 July 1949 quoted in Slonim, South West Africa and
the United Nations, p. 100. A longer excerpt is in Dugard, ed., South West Africa/Namibia
Dispute, pp. 119120.
137
Quoted in Dugard, ed., South West Africa/Namibia Dispute, p. 120.
334
Self-determination
take the question of South West Africa to the International Court of
Justice. After hearing arguments from South Africa, Egypt, India, the
US and Poland, the ICJ gave the rst of several rulings on South West
Africa in its 1950 advisory opinion. In sum, the opinion said that South
Africa was not obliged to put South West Africa under the Trusteeship
system, but neither could the South African government legally ignore
South West Africas status as a mandate: South Africa was obliged to
promote the material and moral well-being and social progress of the
inhabitants. The Court also afrmed the UNs right to supervise the
mandate, essentially substituting the UN for the League.
138
Following
the ICJ ruling, in 1951 the UN set up an Ad Hoc Committee to im-
plement the advisory opinion and hopefully to negotiate a trusteeship
agreement with South Africa. South Africa argued, however, that the
ICJ opinion was invalid and that they had no obligation to negotiate a
trusteeship agreement for South West Africa with the UN. When South
Africarefusedtocooperate, the FourthCommittee heardtestimonyfrom
South West Africans and again from Reverend Scott about conditions in
South West Africa.
Since there had been no progress in getting South Africa to put South
West Africa under trusteeship, the UN began to treat South West Africa
as a trust territory in all but name. In 1953 the UNGA voted to replace
its Ad Hoc Committee with a newCommittee on South West Africa that
would, among other things, examine South Africas administration of
SouthWest Africa withinthe scope of the Questionnaire adoptedbythe
Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations in 1926.
139
In 1954, the Committee on South West Africa invited South Africa to
submit a report on the territory covering the years for which the UN
had no report. When South Africa refused, the Committee examined
relevant information and wrote its own report which concluded that
after thirty-ve years of administration under the Mandates System,
the Native inhabitants are still not participating in the political devel-
opment of the Territory, that their participation in the economic devel-
opment is restricted to that of labourers and that the social and educa-
tional services for their benet are far fromsatisfactory.
140
South Africa
refused to supply reports the following years, and the 1955 and 1956 re-
ports of the Committee on South West Africa were again quite critical,
138
Advisory Opinion is summarized and discussed in Slonim, South West Africa, pp. 110
122. Most of the text of the opinion is excerpted in Dugard, ed., South West Africa/Namibia
Dispute, pp. 131143.
139
Slonim, South West Africa, p. 141.
140
Quoted in ibid., p. 144.
335
Argument and change in world politics
if anything, growing increasingly harsh as South Africa began to ex-
tend the apartheid system more completely to South West Africa.
141
The UN then established a Good Ofces Committee which tried,
again unsuccessfully, to bring South West Africa into the Trusteeship
system.
The UNGA continued to invite South Africa to put South West Africa
under trusteeship until 1959 and South Africa repeatedly declined to
do so. Given these failures, in November 1960, Ethiopia and Liberia, as
former members of the League of Nations, asked the ICJ for a binding
judgment that Namibia remained a Mandate territory and that South
Africas governance of Namibia (in exporting apartheid to the territory)
was contrary to its obligations as a mandatory power.
142
South Africa
argued that the ICJ lacked jurisdiction. The UNGA passed a resolution
supporting the Ethiopian and Liberian effort, and in the following years
continuedtopass resolutions statingthat SouthAfricahadfailedtocarry
out its responsibilities as a mandate.
143
While the ICJ case was pending, the independence movement in
South West Africa achieved greater external recognition and support.
144
The South West African Peoples Organization (SWAPO) and the South
West Africa National Union (SWANU), had grown out of the early anti-
German resistance efforts and years of political organizing under South
African rule. Denied access to South West Africa, the UNs Special Com-
mittee for South West Africa went to Accra, Dar es Salaam, and Cairo in
1961 to hear petitions from SWAPO and SWANU representatives urg-
ing that SouthAfricas mandate be terminatedandthat self-government
based on one man, one vote be set up.
145
The Committee report con-
cluded that South Africa was unt to govern South West Africa, that
it should be removed from the territory, and called for the indepen-
dence of South West Africa.
146
In 1963 the UNGA adopted a resolution
which dened any further attempt by South Africa to annex South West
Africa as an act of aggression which threatened international peace
and security.
147
141
Slonim, South West Africa, pp. 155, 167. South Africas extension of apartheid to South
West Africa ironically opened South Africa itself to greater criticismof its racial policies as
the area of domestic jurisdiction (Article 2) of the UN Charter, was blurred by the South
Africans themselves.
142
For the text of submissions to the ICJ, see Slonim, South West Africa, pp. 375378.
143
UNGA Resolutions 1565 (XV), 1596 (XV), 1702 (XVI), and 2674 (XX).
144
On this early period see Tony Emmett, Popular Resistance in Namibia, 19205, in
Wood, ed., Namibia, 18841984, pp. 224225.
145
Dugard, ed., South West Africa/Namibia Dispute, pp. 223225.
146
Ibid., pp. 225226.
147
UNGA Resolution 1899 (XVIII), 13 November 1963.
336
Self-determination
When the ICJ ruling nally came in July 1966, the Court found that
Ethiopia and Liberia did not have any legal rights or interests in the ter-
ritory. The South African government proclaimed victory and attacked
guerrilla camps in the Ovamboland region of South West Africa, while
SWAPO and SWANU interpreted the ruling as a sign that they should
intensify their effort for independence, including armed struggle.
148
South African repression of Namibian independence efforts intensied
in response, and the independence movement guerrillas were labeled
terrorists. In spite of the ICJ opinion, by 1966 the vast majority of UNGA
members had come to believe that if an administering power had failed
to live up to either the sacred trust obligation of the League Mandate
system, or of the UNCharter obligations to promote the well-being of
the inhabitants of trust territories, then the trusteeship had been vitiated
by the administering power. This view was clearly articulated in a 1966
UNGA resolution, which passed by a vote of 114 to 2 (with 3 absten-
tions), terminating South Africas right to administer South West Africa
and stating that South West Africa was therefore a direct responsibility
of the UN.
[C]onvinced that the administration of the Mandated Territory by South
Africa has been conducted in a manner contrary to the Mandate, the
Charter of the UnitedNations andthe Universal Declarationof Human
Rights . . . Declares that South Africa has failed to fulll its obligations
in respect to administration of the Mandated Territory and to ensure
the moral and material well-being and security of the indigenous in-
habitants of South West Africa . . .
149
The following year, the UNGA passed a resolution creating the UN
Council for South West Africa and set June 1968 as the target date
for South West African independence.
150
South Africa tried to de-
ect international scrutiny by adopting some of the language of self-
determination, albeit without the substance. In1968 SouthAfrica moved
to create six areas in South West Africa as self-governing nations by
passing the Development of Self-Government for Native Nations in
South West Africa Act. The 1968 Act explicitly uses the language of self-
determination in its preamble: Whereas it is desirable that the native
nations in the territory of South-West Africa should in the realization
148
See Dugard, ed., South West Africa/Namibia Dispute, p. 377.
149
Resolution 2145 (XXI), 27 October 1966. The negative votes were South Africa and
Portugal; the abstentions were France, the UK, and Malawi.
150
Resolution 2248 (S-V), 19 May 1967.
337
Argument and change in world politics
of their right of self-determination develop in an orderly manner to
self-governing nations and independence.
151
Meanwhile, South Africa kept defending its role in South West Africa
at the UN, for example, sending the UN a letter in September 1969 out-
lining its position and arguing that the UN did not have the authority
to revoke its mandate. But the General Assembly and Security Council
rejected the Self-Government Act.
152
The Security Council called upon
all states to refrain from all dealings with the Government of South
Africa purporting to act on behalf of the territory of Namibia and fur-
ther requested all states to increase their moral and material assistance
tothe people of Namibia intheir struggle against foreignoccupation.
153
In response, the South African Department of Foreign Affairs published
a 115 page analysis of the legal status of South West Africa. This pattern
of UN resolution and South Africa reply continued over the next sev-
eral years. The South African government continually rejected the UN
position and consistently argued until the 1970s that South West Africa
ought to be part of South Africa.
The UN General Assembly and Security Council nevertheless found
South Africas arguments without merit and in 1970 asked the Interna-
tional Court of Justice to rule onthe consequences of SouthAfricas pres-
ence inNamibia. The Finnishdelegate tothe SecurityCouncil hopedthat
a correct rulingbythe ICJ wouldhelp. . . tomobilize public opinion.
154
In 1971, after reviewing the legal arguments, South Africas policies, the
relevant UN resolutions, and the Courts previous decisions, the ICJ
found that South Africas occupation, being illegal, had to end. The
principle of self-determination applied to Namibia. Further, Member
States of the United Nations are . . . under obligation to recognize the il-
legality and invalidity of South Africas continued presence in Namibia
[and] to refrain from lending any support or any form of assistance to
South Africa with reference to its occupation in Namibia.
155
The ruling
cleared the way for substantial UN support for the inhabitants of South
West Africa and SWAPO.
Not surprisingly, SouthAfricanPrime Minster B.J. Vorster rejectedthe
ICJ opinion, claimingthat the court was packedagainst SouthAfrica and
151
On the 1968 Act, see Dugard, ed., South West Africa/Namibia Dispute, pp. 431435: 433.
152
See Slonim, South West Africa, p. 328. See UNGA Resolution 2403 (XXIII), 16 December
1968 and UNSC Resolution 264 (1969).
153
UNSC Resolution 269 (1969).
154
Quoted in Slonim, South West Africa, p. 330. Along excerpt of the opinion is in Dugard,
ed., South West Africa/Namibia Dispute, pp. 453481.
155
Quoted in Slonim, South West Africa, p. 337.
338
Self-determination
that the ICJ rulingwas the result of political maneuveringinsteadof ob-
jective jurisprudence.
156
Further, Vorster said, It is our duty to admin-
ister South West Africa so as to promote the well-being and progress of
its inhabitants.
157
Thus, over the course of several years, South Africas
arguments for occupying Namibia were found unpersuasive, and the
UN and ICJ moved to push South Africa out by mobilizing public opin-
ion against South Africas occupation.
International opposition to South Africas behavior in the region and
inside South Africa itself grewin the 1970s and 1980s. As is well known,
there was also vocal opposition to South Africas domestic government
among African states. In 1969, several independent African states is-
sued a statement outlining their opposition to minority rule in Southern
Africa. The Lusaka Manifesto of April 1969, signed by Burundi, Cen-
tral African Republic, Chad, Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia,
Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, andZambia, proclaimedthat signatory states
do not accept that any individual or group has any right to govern any
other group of sane adults, without their consent, and we afrm that
only the people of a society, acting together as equals, can determine
what is, for them, a goodsociety anda goodsocial, economic, or political
organization.
158
The Manifesto also urgedthat South Africa, because of
its denial of human equality, be excluded from United Nations agen-
cies and the UN itself and that South Africa should be ostracized from
the world community . . . isolated from world trade patterns and left to
be self-sufcient if it can.
159
Why was SouthAfrica so interestedinSouthWest Africa that it would
risk such international reaction? Although this is discussed at greater
lengthinchapter 8, simplyput, SouthWest Africa was valuable econom-
icallybecauseof its vast natural resourcewealthintheformof diamonds,
uranium, zinc, and other minerals. Further, as long as South Africa held
South West Africas mineral wealth, this was another potential lever
of inuencing Western government policies toward South Africa itself.
Finally, South West Africa was part of a cordon sanitaire for white mi-
nority rule in South Africa which was, according to the South African
government, under assault from communism and terrorism.
156
Quoted in ibid., p. 344.
157
Quoted in Dugard, ed., South West Africa/Namibia Dispute, p. 491.
158
Lusaka Manifesto, April 1969, reprinted in Colin Legum and John Drysdale, eds.,
Africa Contemporary Record (New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1971), vol. II,
19691970, pp. C41C45: C41C42.
159
Ibid., p. C44.
339
Argument and change in world politics
If South West Africa was so important, why did South Africa refrain
from annexing South West Africa outright? And why did the South
African government keep trying to convince the ICJ and the UN of the
legitimacy of South African position? Part of the answer has to do with
the political culture of Afrikaners and English speaking South Africans.
Manywhite SouthAfricans trulybelievedinthe rule of lawandthat they
could persuade others that they were right. This belief in lawand public
persuasion is evident even in their internal use of lawto enact apartheid
andtoroundupandtrypolitical dissidents inthefamous treasontrials
of the 1950s and 1960s. Second, as Smuts said, the South Africans felt
theyhadnoreasontoalarmthe outside communitysince theyhadmany
of the benets of annexation without proclaiming it. A proclamation
would only have heightened the distance between South Africa and the
United Nations, which increasingly threw its political, and nancial,
support behind SWAPO and the anti-apartheid movement.
Remaining colonies, free associations, and late
decolonization
Throughout, I have arguedthat colonialismhas endedas a distinct prac-
tice of international politics. In the sense that it is no longer acceptable
for states to take territory against the wishes of the inhabitants and to
govern the people there without political representation, colonialism
is over. In another sense, however, colonialism continues for several
million people who live in lands variously described by the governing
authorities as crown colonies, dependencies, overseas territories, or au-
tonomous communities. Most of these places are islands, many of them
beautiful tourist destinations, with small populations.
In many cases, administering states made reports to the United
Nations justifying their treatment of the inhabitants of these territories
and often voluntarily conducted referenda to show that the people
chose their status, or at least approved of it after the fact. Referenda
or plebiscites were held during the 1980s and 1990s in several of these
territories, some conducted under international supervision. For exam-
ple, the US-held territories of the Marshall Islands, Palau, the Virgin
Islands, and Puerto Rico conducted plebiscites in the 1980s and 1990s to
determine their status. When the last UN Territory, Palau, became inde-
pendent in 1994, the UN Trusteeship Council suspended its operations.
Cura cao, Bermuda, Christmas Island, and New Caledonia, held respec-
tively by the Netherlands, Britain, Australia, andFrance, also conducted
340
Self-determination
referenda in the 1980s and 1990s.
160
In some cases, such as in Puerto
Rico, the population voted to keep their status as self-governing de-
pendencies. In other cases, such as East Timor and Tibet where the col-
onizers, Indonesia and China respectively, resisted any change, long,
hard-fought movements for independence or at least greater autonomy
developed and achieved international recognition. In the case of West-
ern Sahara, after a long war for independence by the Polisario Front,
Morocco agreed in principle to a UN referendum, though it has man-
aged to stall its implementation through the 1990s.
What is important about these situations from the perspective of
my argument about ethical arguments and normative belief is the
widespreadpresumptionthat the people inthese territories shouldhave
some say about who governs themandhow. In other words, the starting
point or topoi of discussion and arguments about status is now self-
determination; old-fashioned colonialism is illegitimate even in these
remaining colonies. Thus, decolonizationandself-determinationare the
standards by which present political relations are judged. Even in cases
where colonies remain, most of the governments have gone to great
pains to show that their government is legitimate and desired by the
inhabitants.
In cases where legitimacy is in question because the land was re-
cently taken by force and there are strong independence and autonomy
movements, such as East Timor and Tibet, Indonesia and China respec-
tively have come under tremendous international criticism by human
rights groups, governments, and international organizations. The suc-
cess of their ethical arguments, if not in every instance their political
movements, is illustrated by the fact that leaders of both East Timor and
Tibets independence movements have been recognized internationally
by the press andwith Nobel Peace Prizes. In neither case, however, were
Western governments willing to expend signicant political capital to
help bring self-determination to these lands.
The belated political success of East Timorese independence versus
the failure of Tibetans to achieve independence is thus a consequence of
at least ve factors. First, the political and cultural relationship between
China and Tibet is extremely complex and cannot be easily framed.
Rather, much of the discourse is still at the meta-argument phase where
somecharacterizeTibet as asovereignstateinvadedbyacolonizer, while
others suggest the relation is a more complex religious, cultural, and
160
See Aldrich and Connell, The Last Colonies.
341
Argument and change in world politics
political interrelationship.
161
Second, the Tibetans have not conducted
a large-scale guerrilla conict that has provoked brutal Chinese repres-
sion, and hence, the sympathies of the world have not been engaged
by the emotional outrage that now accompanies brutal repression. East
Timorese were massacred in large numbers after 1975 by Indonesian
armed forces and reports of these massacres, and continued violent re-
pression, were used to great effect by those who argued against the oc-
cupation. When militias destroyed much of East Timors infrastructure
and terrorized its population following the East Timorese vote for in-
dependence in 1999, international observers were outraged. Third, the
invasion of Tibet in 1950 occurred before decolonization norms were
fully articulated and institutionalized, while Tibets de facto and de jure
status as an independent nation was ostensibly less clear in the interna-
tional law of the time. By contrast, East Timor had been colonized by a
Western power, and, when Portugal left, there was an opportunity for
independence. Fourth, China has no powerful domestic opposition to
colonialism to constrain their government or support decolonization.
The transition to relative democracy in Indonesia in 1998 created an
opening for domestic and international public opinion on East Timor,
and hence an opening for ethical argument. When the East Timorese
populationvotedoverwhelminglyin1999for independence, inaUNsu-
pervised vote, Indonesian rule could no longer be considered legitimate
by any current standard. Fifth, Chinas potentially enormous military
and economic power has deterred Western governments from showing
serious and sustained interest in confronting China on human rights
issues. Western governments are unlikely to act until an ethically based
transnational movement mobilizes support for Tibetans on a scale to
rival or exceed the global anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s. If the
status of Tibet canbe reframedthroughethical (andpractical) argument,
change will become more likely.
161
See Tsering Shakya, The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since
1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); Melvyn C. Goldstein, The Snow Lion
and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1997).
342
8 Alternative explanations,
counterfactuals, and causation
I am very busy here going through the Indies archives and calculating
the prot which Spain made then and makes now out of her colonies.
1
I knowenoughtribes inAfrica. Theyall havethesamementalityinsofar
as they yield only to force. It was and remains my policy to apply this
force by unmitigated terrorism and even cruelty. I shall destroy the
rebellious tribes by shedding rivers of blood and money.
2
One of the problems in writing about decolonization is that we know
the end of the story. Whether self-government is seen as the outcome
of a process of preparation carried out by a colonial state or as a tri-
umph wrested from the colonizers by national movements, the story
lends itself to be read backwards and to privilege the process of ending
colonial rule over anything else that was happening in those years.
3
The content of argument, belief, and culture enables, shapes, and limits,
providing a discursive structure to world politics that is as real as the
military forces of states or the balance of power among them. Previ-
ous chapters highlight the use of ethical arguments by agents to bolster
or undermine colonial practices and institutions, but scientic, iden-
tity, and practical arguments were also part of colonial and anti-colonial
discourses. Yet, as acknowledged, there are powerful alternative expla-
nations for the rise of colonial empire, the demise of slavery, and the end
of colonialism that stress economic and balance-of-power forces rather
than discursive forces. Although it is impossible to completely separate
1
King Leopold quoted in Adam Hochschild, King Leopolds Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror
and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Boston: Houghton Mifin Company, 1998), p. 37.
2
Lothor von Trotha quoted in Horst Drechsler, Let Us Die Fighting: The Struggle of the
Herero and Nama against German Imperialism (18841915) (London: Zed Press, 1980), p. 154.
3
Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and
British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 6.
343
Argument and change in world politics
the material from the ideational since humans make arguments
about the nature of the economic and military world and how to best
act in it, and persuasive arguments may lead to behavioral changes
which meet up against constraints in the material world, or change that
material world it might be useful to try to do so now in order to see
the limits of a causal explanation that rests on argument and how the
two realms overlap.
This chapter examines the most powerful alternative explanations
those that rest on material factors for the end of colonialism, con-
cludes the discussion of Namibia, and suggests some counterfactuals in
order to highlight just which conditions were crucial for decolonization
to occur andto recall the role of contingency. I conclude by summarizing
my, now qualied, causal arguments.
Alternative explanations for post-World War II
decolonization
Why the sudden shift toward decolonization as the international norm
after World War II? Though it would be a legitimate inquiry, the focus
here is not on why one imperial power or another was forced to relin-
quish, or voluntarily gave up, its colonial holdings, but rather on why
colonialism ceased to be a dominant practice and became, instead, one
that was viewed as wrong.
4
Still, in explaining the end of colonialism as
an accepted practice, as an accepted relationship among states (at least
from the perspective of the colonizer), one cannot entirely ignore the
specics of these endings, for there may be some underlying economic
or political reasons why all these colonialisms ended that explains the
demise of colonialism and the rise of decolonization as the behavioral
norm. Such are the realist and Marxist arguments, which stress power-
political and economic causes for colonialisms demise.
There are several versions of economic and power-political explana-
tions for post-1945 decolonization growing effectiveness of national
liberation movements; increased expense versus declining prots; and
the exhaustion of the colonizer and these factors are often linked,
even occasionally to ethical explanations. R.F. Betts argues, for example,
In large measure, colonial rule ultimately collapsed in Africa because
of the declining ability a combined nancial, military and moral
4
In understanding particular decolonizations, one must delve deeply into the history of
the metropole, its political, military, and cultural relationship to the colony in question,
and the strength of the liberation movements in the colony.
344
Alternative explanations
condition of Europeans to continue it in the face of African nation-
alist pressure.
5
Liberation movements
One version of the power politics explanation stresses how indigenous
efforts for national liberation became more effective, tipping the bal-
ance of military and political power away fromthe colonizer. According
to this account, peaceful and legal movements of intelligentsia and/or
guerrilla wars for self-determination were fueled by the insults of colo-
nialism and growing nationalist sentiments within the colonies. This
viewemphasizes indigenous efforts for national liberation rather than
the mobilizationof reformers withinimperial states, or arguments made
by the colonized.
This view relies on demonstrating that there were increasingly strong
nationalist anti-colonial movements. And there is no doubt that these
efforts became better organizedandmore effective. For example, during
the twentieth century, the legal movements for change and non-violent
organization, such as the Indian National Congress in India, and the
Convention Peoples Party in Ghana, sought liberation through political
reform and at the ballot box. Armed resistance to colonial powers
e.g. in the United States in 1776, in Haiti in 1804, culminating in the
guerrilla wars of the twentieth century in Algeria, Rhodesia, Vietnam,
and Namibia also became harder to defeat. Moreover, independence
movements could develop and draw upon nationalist sentiments and
pan-national support from their neighbors.
6
Scholars of decolonization movements give several (primarily idea
driven) explanations for growing nationalism in the early twentieth
century, ranging from increased literacy and the transfer of European
nationalist ideals, as natives with Western education returned to the
colonies, towhat HedleyBull describes as the psychological or spiritual
awakening of Asian, African, Caribbean and Pacic peoples . . .
7
This
5
R.F. Betts, Methods and Institutions of European Domination, in A. Adu Boahen,
ed., Africa Under Colonial Domination, UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. VII (Paris:
UNESCO, 1985), pp. 313331: 330.
6
On the other hand there were native collaborators who beneted from slavery, forced
labor, and other economic institutions of colonialism who facilitated and supported colo-
nial practices.
7
Hedley Bull, The Revolt Against the West, in Hedley Bull and AdamWatson, eds., The
Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 217228: 224.
In his famous winds of change speech to the South African Parliament in 1960, Harold
Macmillan said, We have seen the awakening of national consciousness in peoples who
345
Argument and change in world politics
awakening began, Bull argues, among small groups of the Western-
educated, later affecting masses of peoples that led them to perceive the
old order no longer as a fact of nature, but as something that could be
changed, to recognize that by mobilizing themselves to this end they
could indeed change it, to abandon a passive for a politically active role
in world politics.
8
Similarly, Margery Perham claims with regard to
Africa, that:
Most of the tribes quickly accepted European rule as part of an irre-
sistible order, one which brought many benets, above all, peace, and
exciting novelties, railways and roads, lamps, bicycles, ploughs . . . For
the ruling classes it brought new strength and security of status and
new forms of wealth and power . . . It was not until a small minority,
through their attainment of the higher levels of Western education, and
above all through travel came to understand something of the world at
large and of their own place in it that the spell of acceptance began to
be broken. Excited by the wine of these ideas, and smarting, perhaps,
from some experience of the colour bar in Europe, and especially in
Britain the young African would return after some years to his country
to preach the idea that only by self-government could Africans escape
from personal humiliation and win equality of status in a world of
which they were at last becoming aware.
9
Explanations focusing on indigenous efforts also stress the growing
military effectiveness of resistance movements as they were able to sup-
ply themselves with arms and ammunition.
10
What made colonialism
have for centuries lived in dependence upon some other power . . . In different places
it takes different forms but it is happening everywhere. The wind of change is blowing
through this continent and, whether we like it or not, the growth of national consciousness
is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take ac-
count of it. Harold Macmillan, The Wind of Change, in A.N Porter and A.J. Stockwell,
eds., British Imperial Policy, 193864, Volume 2: 19511964 (London: Macmillan Press,
1987), pp. 522531: 524525.
8
Bull, The Revolt Against the West, p. 224. As D.K. Fieldhouse argues: On the one
hand it caused resentment by what it destroyed; on the other hand it encouraged its
subjects to think as Europeans, and in so doing narrowed the gap between ruler and
ruled. Once a sufcient minority of them had acquired European skills and adopted
European assumptions about, for example freedom and equality, alien rule would seem
as intolerable an anomaly as that of one European state by another . . . In these ways and
for these reasons modern colonialism contained the seeds of its own destruction and
decolonization was the inevitable outcome. D.K. Fieldhouse, Colonialism 18701945: An
Introduction (New York: St. Martins, 1981), p. 24.
9
Quoted in A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins, 1987), p. 62.
10
For a summary of European military-technical advantages, including paternalistic ref-
erences to indigenous peoples, see Michael Howard, The Military Factor in European
Expansion, in Bull and Watson, eds., The Expansion of International Society, pp. 3342.
346
Alternative explanations
possible on such a large scale as existed at the beginning of the twen-
tieth century was overwhelming military force on the part of the col-
onizers. Fieldhouse is typical when he argues that though resistance
to colonialism was widespread at the start and was never entirely
eliminated. . . it could everywhere be suppressed or contained because
the imperialist possessed far superior military resources and better
political organization and there were no external powers to support
resistance movements as there were after 1945.
11
According to the
balance-of-forces argument, after World War II the colonizers had long
lines of communication, often several colonies to defend at once, but
fewof the advantages traditionallyassociatedwithdefendingones own
territory, even as the colonized were gaining military might. As Michael
Doyle argues, Independence became possible . . . when the balance
shiftedtothe opponents of continuedrule andthe metropole was not ina
position to apply overwhelming force.
12
Thus, although European mil-
itary might continuedto grow, andwas at its peak just as decolonization
began, the argument is that the ratio of military force between colonizer
and colonized shifted; effective resistance became possible in situations
where military resistance and revolt had previously been ineffective.
Economics of empire
Other explanations for decolonization emphasize the growing expense
of empire. The imperial elites understanding of the costs and bene-
ts of empire changed because empire was in fact less protable than
in the past. This explanation also presumes that one of, or the only,
cause of colonialism was the economic and strategic utility of colonies;
when this utility declined, if it did, rational colonizers let their colonies
go. As Michael Howard argues, On the part of the imperial powers,
empires at least, formal empires were seen to bring neither political
power nor economic advantage commensurate with the effort involved
in maintaining them.
13
European elites realized that neocolonialism
(informal domination of colonial economies and politics) was less
costly than direct military occupation and formal political control.
14
As
M. E. Chamberlain argues:
11
Fieldhouse, Colonialism, p. 25.
12
Michael W. Doyle, Empires (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 369.
13
Howard, The Military Factor in European Expansion, p. 41.
14
In 1930, US State Department ofcial Benjamin Gerig argued in The Open Door and
the Mandates System: A Study of Economic Equality before and since the Establishment of the
Mandates System that international mandates were preferable because they were open
doors. The Mandates System is undoubtedly the most effective instrument yet devised
347
Argument and change in world politics
By the 1950s it had become clear that empire could be expensive in
both monetary terms and, if you chose to defend it militarily, as the
French and Portuguese were to do, in terms of human resources and
of political stability at home as well. Was it worth it? Almost certainly
not, if you could leave behind a sufciently stable political structure
to provide a satisfactory trading partner; that after all . . . was what
the Europeans had been seeking in the nineteenth century; they had
only moved to formal political control when they could not nd it.
The growing nationalist movements seemed likely to provide such a
political structure.
15
Quincy Wright also stresses an economic calculus:
Presently humanitarianismwas strengthened by a newappreciation of
economic expediency. In the exploitation of thinly populated temper-
ate regions extermination of the natives was little loss to the imperial
power and perhaps a gain. Immigrants could ll the gap, supplying
better labor than the natives and also relieving population pressure in
the home territory. But with thickly settled acquisitions like India or
tropical acquisitions like Central Africa it began to be seen that the na-
tive was an important economic asset. Without his labor the territory
could not produce. Thus the ablest administrators like Sir Frederick
Lugard in Nigeria began to study the native and cater not only to his
material but to his psychological welfare with highly gratifying eco-
nomic results.
16
For some, an efciency rationale was probably a persuasive rea-
son for colonizers to engage, at a minimum, in pragmatic reforms or
even to drop their opposition to decolonization. A parallel argument
advanced by both Marxist and non-Marxist theorists of international
political economy suggests that imperialismwas increasingly expensive
at the same time that changes in modes of production made colonialism
less protable. In other words, when the costs of maintaining empire
rose, colonialism was no longer seen as protable compared with the
benets of trade among already industrialized states.
to make the Open Door effective. The mandates principle is irreconcilable with that of
national economic imperialism. Quoted in Wm. Roger Louis, Imperialism at Bay: The
United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 19411945 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1978), p. 91.
15
M. E. Chamberlain, Decolonization: The Fall of the European Empires (New York: Basil
Blackwell, 1985), p. 76.
16
Quincy Wright, Mandates Under the League of Nations (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1930), pp. 910.
348
Alternative explanations
Exhaustion and overreach
Exhaustion arguments have a long pedigree and are often related to an
over-extension or imperial over-reach thesis. As Edward Gibbon
argues in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the decline of
Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness.
Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction
multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time, or accident,
had removed articial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the
pressure of its own weight.
17
The exhaustion explanation for decolo-
nization is that the colonial powers ability to maintain empire declined
due to the drain of the two world wars and the Great Depression, while
armed resistance in the colonies grew. One interwar observer, M.J.
Bonn, wrote, The success of these decolonization movements was not
so much due to their own innate strength as to the war-tiredness of the
great empires. After four years ghting on far-ung fronts, the glamour
of adventure had gone. Even the most reckless spirits had drunk their
ll and long for peace, cleanliness, quiet and rest.
18
Similarly, Gann
and Duignan argue, that after World War I, Britain and France stood
at the zenith of their imperial might, but at the very moment of success,
real power was slipping from their grasp. They were exhausted.
19
Moreover, if colonial powers were fatigued and overstretched at the
end of World War I, by the end of World War II the great powers were
in deep trouble nancially; Britain, for instance, had overseas debts
of 3,355 million. Increasingly nancially strapped and exhausted,
great powers could not bear the expense of policing the empires.
J.D. Hargreaves argues, in addition, that one of the rst causes of a stir-
ring for African independence was the Great Depression, which led to
a decline in commodity prices for sectors of the African agricultural
17
Quoted in Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain
and France, c. 15001800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 162.
18
M. J. Bonn, The Crumbling of Empire: The Disintegration of the World Economy (London:
Allen and Unwin, 1938), p. 152.
19
L.H. Gann and Peter Duignan, Burden of Empire: An Appraisal of Western Colonialism in
Africa South of the Sahara (New York: Praeger, 1967), p. 72. On overreach, also see Paul
Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1988) and
Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1991). One could also argue that the Cold War and the desire of the
European powers to mobilize to defend against the threat of Soviet expansion caused the
colonial powers to reorient their priorities from defense of empire to European defense.
However, this does not take intoaccount uses of empire inthe past as apart of the European
balancing system.
349
Argument and change in world politics
economy, displaced rural Africans, and decreased the metropolitan
powers ability to pay for empire.
20
A reply to the alternative explanations
While these alternative explanations for post-1945 decolonization
increasingly effective liberation movements, greater expense of empire,
and the exhaustion and/or overextension of the great colonial powers
are important in individual cases, they are insufcient as an account of
the end of colonialism as a legitimate practice. When linked together
stronger liberation movements increased the expense of maintaining
empire just as prots were declining and the great powers were weak-
ened by wars with each other the alternative accounts are more plau-
sible, but still not entirely convincing.
On the argument that growing nationalism and anti-colonialism,
which became increasingly effective, brought decolonization, I have
shownthroughout that resistance to colonialismby the colonized from
the conquest of the Aztecs to the invasion of East Timor was constant.
No one in the colonies suddenly awoke to their oppression and began
to ght it; anti-colonial movements resisted the colonizers politically
and militarily from the outset. The question is: why were liberation
movements increasingly effective after 1945? Anti-colonial movements
certainly became better coordinated politically and were also supported
by labor movements within the metropole and other sympathetic inter-
national actors. Thus, mobilizationby liberationmovements was crucial
in determining the precise timing and manner of decolonization in par-
ticular cases. But anti-colonial movements were not necessarily better
armed in relation to the colonizer. Rather, what became increasingly ev-
ident was the declining willingness of colonizers to ght for colonies in
the same brutal ways they had in the past.
Do economic factors account for post-1945 decolonization? Answers
depend on economics at several levels and for several kinds of actors.
Colonies were extremely important during and after the world wars for
those European states which had colonial holdings: colonies supplied
raw materials, cheap labor, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
21
20
J. D. Hargreaves, Decolonization in Africa (London: Longman, 1988), pp. 3234.
21
Recall that not only did France and Britain use conscripts from the colonies to maintain
colonial rule, but conscripts wereusedbothduringandafter theWorldWars tosupplement
the European militaries in Europe, for instance occupying the Rhineland for France after
WorldWar I. Clemenceau, in1919 decidedtomake conscriptionmandatoryinFrenchWest
Africa in order to make up for French manpower shortages due to the carnage of World
350
Alternative explanations
Colonies also partially nanced, through taxation, the post-war recon-
struction of colonial European states. Thus, as one observer notes, The
great irony of decolonization in Africa is that it came almost imme-
diately after the post-1945 period when the metropolitan powers had
regarded their colonies as an essential economic foundation for their
own recovery and future development.
22
Still, the benets of colonies could have been less than the costs of
maintaining them. However, arguments stressing the costs of empire
often fail to take fully into account the fact that inhabitants of colonies
were generally taxed for the privilege of being colonies (taxation with-
out representation) and in some cases, taxes apparently paid for the
occupation, as during British rule of India during the late nineteenth
century. Further, tariffs on imports to colonies also offset the costs of
military occupation.
23
Even later, when development came onto the
agenda, prots likely outweighed the expense of colonial rule in most
cases. Arough calculation suggests that between 1945 and 1951 Britain
extracted some 140 million from her colonies, putting in only about
40 million under the Colonial Development and Welfare acts.
24
But in
1952, with falling commodity prices, the colonies were not such an asset.
This brings us to the core question: was colonialism protable? In
terms of the average settler, metropolitan citizen, investor, or native
colonial subject there is no one-size-ts-all answer to the question of
colonialism and prot: the economics of colonialism were protable
for some and not for others, depending on the period. For Portugal,
which was in a difcult economic situation in the post-World War II
era, its African colonies provided valuable revenue. Portuguese Angola
was rich in iron, diamonds, and oil. And as Kenneth Maxwell notes of
Portugal, the large surplus from the African territories would be
painful to lose. Portuguese revenue from its African colonies was sub-
stantial, not only subsidizing occupation, but bolstering the Portuguese
government even in the last years of Portuguese colonialism.
In 1973 such earnings represented as much as 5 percent of the gross
national product, about $540 million. All the cotton of Mozambique
War I. MyronEchenberg, Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs S en egalais inFrench West Africa
18571960 (London: James Currey, 1991), pp. 4246. Also see Gann and Duignan, Burden
of Empire, p. 213.
22
David Fieldhouse, Arrested Development in Anglophone Black Africa? in Prosser
Gifford and Wm. Roger Louis, eds., Decolonization and African Independence: The Transfer of
Power, 19601980 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 135158: 139.
23
See Doyle, Empires, pp. 236, 251, 253.
24
Fieldhouse, Arrested Development? p. 140.
351
Argument and change in world politics
was exported to Portugal and 99.7 percent of its sugar, both at well
below world prices. At the same time, the wages of the Mozambique
miners working in South Africa were converted into gold shipments to
Lisbon in effect a hidden subsidy to the Portuguese war effort, since
the bullion was valued at the ofcial rate of $42.20 an ounce instead of
the world market price of close to $200 an ounce in 1974. During the
three years before the coup, the ofcial value of this gold amounted to
at least $180 million.
25
Still, protability was not uniformly distributed. For example, in their
study of the economics of the British colonial empire, Lance Davis and
Robert Huttenback argue, The British as a whole certainly did not ben-
et economically from the Empire. On the other hand, individual in-
vestors did. In the Empire itself, the level of benets depended upon
whom one asked and how one calculated. For the colonies of white set-
tlement the answer is unambiguous: They paid for little and received
a great deal. In the dependent Empire the white settlers, such as there
were, almost certainly gained as well.
26
On the other hand, Davis and
Huttenback argue, As far as the indigenous populationwas concerned,
while theyreceiveda market basket of government commodities at truly
wholesale prices, there is no evidence to suggest that, had they been
given a free choice, they would have bought the particular commodities
offered, even at the bargain-basement rates.
27
Most damaging to the economic argument is that the worlds largest
colonial power, Great Britain, was uncertain about the economic and
strategic benets of its colonial holdings inthe crucial periodafter World
War II. Britishgovernment documents showthat ofcials simply didnot
know if colonial empire paid, or if so, how much. In a 1957 memo to the
Colonial Policy Committee, which he copied to the colonial secretary,
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan requested an account of the colonial
balance sheet. Macmillan wrote, I should also like to see something
like a prot and loss account for each of our Colonial possessions, so
that we may be better able to gauge whether, from the nancial and
economic point of view, we are likelytogainor lose byits departure. This
would need, of course, to be weighed against the political and strategic
considerations involved in each case. What the prime minister says
25
Kenneth Maxwell, Portugal and Africa: The Last Empire, in Prosser Gifford and Wm.
Roger Louis, eds., The Transfer of Power in Africa: Decolonization 19401960 (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 337385: 358.
26
Lance E. Davis and Robert A. Huttenback, Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: The Eco-
nomics of British Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 267.
27
Davis and Huttenback, Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire, p. 267.
352
Alternative explanations
next suggests that he was attempting to make a rational decision about
Britains colonial policy. And it might perhaps be better to attempt an
estimate of the balance of advantage, taking all these considerations
into account, of losing or keeping each particular territory. There are
presumably places where it is of vital interest to us that we should
maintain our inuence, and others where there is no United Kingdom
interest in resisting constitutional change even if it seems likely to lead
eventually to secession fromthe Commonwealth.
28
On the other hand,
it is also clear from the statement that colonies may have been kept
despite their protability or strategic importance.
Macmillans request for a balance sheet was a bit late and the answer
he received was ambiguous. Three studies were done, and in the last,
the conclusionwas drawnthat the economic considerations were fairly
evenly matched. Consequently it was felt that the economic interests
of the United Kingdom were unlikely in themselves to be decisive in
determining whether or not a territory should become independent.
Nor was it believed that strategic considerations should be uppermost,
as the maintenance of bases against the will of the local Government and
people would seriously limit their usefulness.
29
Nor was there a clear
consensus during the 1950s on the protability of the colonies among
Englands educatedpublic; rather, it was a topic of heateddebate among
politicians and intellectuals.
To decide whether material constraints forced colonizers to decolo-
nize, or declining prots decreased their willingness to pay the costs
of occupation, would require a complex balance sheet. Then scholars
would have to decide whether gains by individual merchants, capital-
ists, or states were offset bythe losses of metropolitantaxpayers, andjust
what the signicance of these numerical gures was in terms of politics
and capacity to act. Moreover, one would have to know whether these
calculations were done by the imperial ofces for the cabinets of colo-
nial powers. At least in one case, Britain, the calculations were done
very late, well after decolonization had begun.
28
Macmillan also wrote: It would be good if Ministers could know more clearly which
territories are likely to become ripe for independence over the next few years or, even if
they are not ready for it, will demand it so insistently that their claims cannot be denied
and at what date that stage is likely to be reached in each case. Personal Minute from the
Prime Minister to the Lord President of the Council, 28 January 1957, reprinted in Porter
and Stockwell, eds., British Imperial Policy, 193864, vol. II, p. 451.
29
D.J. Morgan, The Ofcial History of Colonial Development, Vol. 5: Guidance Towards Self-
Government in British Colonies, 19411971 (London: Macmillan, 1980), p. 102.
353
Argument and change in world politics
Explanations that stress declining protability also fail to explain
why if imperial powers recognized or began to believe that empire
was no longer protable colonizers often stayed on, and in some cases
fought extremely costly wars to maintain imperial control. If economic
explanations for colonialism and for decolonization are to make sense,
one must conclude that leaders of colonial powers were slow learners
or that other interests and beliefs kept states interested in colonies.
30
Alternatively, one may conclude that empire was actually protable for
certain classes and those classes pushed the rest of the state, through
coalition logrolling, to take and maintain colonies. When the coalitions
fell through, their colonial policies were abandoned. And if empire be-
came less protable, this was in part due to the efforts of reformers: the
mission became humanitarian development, and such development in
the form of schools, clinics, and infrastructure did not come cheap.
What about the argument that formal imperialism (direct occupation
and control) became more expensive than informal imperialism (the in-
formal control of neocolonialism)? The problems with this account are
several. First, wasnt it always the case that it is cheaper over the long
run to trade than raid or coerce? If this is so, why would any rational
government have colonies? Second, if formal colonialismwas necessary
to turn colonial subjects into wage laborers, to create the infrastructure
of roads, railways, and ports, and to build the economic assets of plan-
tations and mines, could not colonizers have left most colonies much
earlier? Why maintain, for instance, Jamaica or Ghana, decades after
each had infrastructure, markets, and wage labor economies?
What about the exhaustion/overextension thesis? These arguments
take several forms: the colonizer was outnumbered, colonizers faced
greater logistic or nancial problems, or the colonizers militaries were
relatively weak. The exhaustion/overextension argument is the one
best supported by evidence. For example, by ghting three guerrilla
wars at once, Portugal, never an economic powerhouse, was apparently
overextendedin Africa during the 1960s and1970s. By 1974, over a mil-
lionPortuguese hadseenservice overseas. One of everyfour adult males
was in the armed forces.
31
Similarly, colonizers were overextended
30
Despite his own emphasis on the economics of French colonialism, Raymond Aron
argued: The leaders of France have always thought of the national destiny in politi-
cal terms rather than economic terms. He believed that France had aspired to glory
rather than prot, preferred crusades to commerce. Quoted in Silver, Framing a Balance
Sheet, p. 37.
31
Maxwell, Portugal and Africa, p. 339. Also see R.J. Hammond, Portugal and Africa,
18151910: A Study in Uneconomic Imperialism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966).
354
Alternative explanations
in the rst wave of Latin American decolonization from Spain in the
early nineteenth century. Whereas Haiti achieved independence from
France via a slave revolt in the late 1700s, several Spanish colonies in
South America achieved independence as a consequence of the over-
throw and occupation of Spain by Napoleonic France in 1808. While
some colonial settlers remained loyal to Spain, most notably in Cuba,
others used the opportunity to rebel, sparking civil wars in Mexico and
Venezuela and revolts elsewhere in Spains American empire. When
Spain restored its monarchy and recovered from French occupation, it
sent troops in 1812 to restore its empire in the Americas. Yet Sim on
Bolvar, Miguel Hidalgo, Jos e de San Martn, and other rebels man-
aged to free large swaths of the empire, notably Ecuador, Venezuela,
Columbia, and Chile and Spain was forced to retreat from New World
colonialism.
32
Yet all the exhaustion arguments, when applied to the decolonization
of the mid-twentieth century, face the problem that there was nothing
new about population ratios or distance. Specically, the colonizer was
almost always outnumberedandfacinglonglines of communication. At
the beginning of the twentieth century, for example, about 12 percent of
the British Empires population was British or European; in 1914 French
Africa was controlled by a handful of some 4,200 white Frenchmen,
dispersed over a territory fourteen times the size of the metropole and
inhabited by between 15 and 16 million Africans.
33
If always historicallyoutnumbered, didcolonizers, after WorldWar II,
face greater logistical difculty maintaining long lines of communica-
tion to the colonies? On the contrary, improvements in transportation
and communication in the post-war era actually decreased logistical
problems. If the thesis is that colonizers couldnot pay, theyalsoprobably
found it difcult to pay for repression after World War I, yet they con-
tinued to do so for decades following the war. Why did not colonial
empires fall apart after World War I? Were there cumulative effects of
32
See Jorge I. Dominguez, Insurrection or Loyalty: The Breakdown of the Spanish American
Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980). Portuguese loss of control over
Brazil was more gradual, though it was also sparked by Napoleonic advances in Europe.
Inanycase, settler revolts didnot dramaticallychange the social andeconomic structure of
Latin American states; the hierarchy of Spanish descendent settlers over mestizos, Indians
and slaves remained essentially in place.
33
Dennis Judd, Empire: The British Imperial Experience from 1765 to the Present (New York:
Basic Books, 1996), p. 3; Henri Brunschwig, The Decolonization of French Black Africa,
in Prosser Gifford and Wm. Roger Louis, eds., The Transfer of Power in Africa: Decolonization
19401960 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 211224: 216.
355
Argument and change in world politics
both world wars and the subsequent Cold War on human, material, and
nancial resources, gradually decreasing the ability of the colonizers to
hold onto their colonies? Colonial empires for the most part remained
intact until ten and fteen years after World War II. Or did these world
wars make the colonies appear, as the British said, even more valuable
to the colonizer?
If the exhaustion is said to be military, the evidence is only partly
supportive. Britain and France were much stronger militarily at mid-
century vis-` a-vis their colonies than they were before and they could
have likely kept their colonies if they had chosen to do so. After defeat-
ing Hitler, both countries were secure at home and could have put their
military forces to work repressing the anti-colonial militaries. In some
cases, notably Vietnam and Algeria, France did so. Only marginal pow-
ers defeated Spain, weak Portugal, and apartheid South Africa under
sanctions foundcolonialisma great military andeconomic burdenand
were forced to retreat.
Thus, various economic or power-political explanations for decolo-
nization may seem plausible at rst glance, but this set of arguments is
less persuasive when one considers four additional points. First, if the
great colonial powers hadchosento use their military might to defeat re-
bellious colonies in the mid-twentieth century, they would likely have
won, the efciency of guerrilla tactics and the advantages of ghting
from ones own territory notwithstanding.
34
To be successful, the colo-
nial powers would simply have had to resort to the time-tested tech-
niques of Germanys von Trotha extermination. Notably, von Trotha
went to the effort of killing more than half the native population of
Namibia before it had been established that the colony would be prof-
itable. Only an ethical argument explanation can suggest why extermi-
nation was no longer on the table.
Second, evidence for economic explanations of colonialismanddecol-
onizationis ambiguous andmaybeindeterminate. Economic arguments
assume that, at the end of European colonialism in the twentieth cen-
tury, colonies were less protable and therefore less important to the
metropolitan powers. Again, the argument is that imperial expansion
resulted from the capitalist desire to nd new markets, cheap labor,
and inexpensive raw materials, and so on. But if one examines the eco-
nomic history of European contact with non-European regions, colonies
34
The exception is Portugal which was not a great economic power by the 1960s and did
not have the great military resources of France or Britain.
356
Alternative explanations
were not always associated with signicant protability, and on the
other hand, in some instances, trade occurred on terms extremely fa-
vorable to Europeans, yet colonies were not always established. As
Peter Liberman shows, even the conquest and economic exploitation
of industrialized states can be protable, if less than efcient.
35
Thus,
decolonization was not economically determined: decolonizing pow-
ers could have held onto the formal political control of their colonies
for economic reasons. Still, as emphasized below, economic (practical)
arguments were certainly important in helping to sustain or dissolve
support for colonialism.
Third, the seeds of the decolonizationregime articulatedinthe League
of Nations Mandate system began to germinate in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. This was precisely when colonies were
considered necessary by the colonial powers for economic and strategic
reasons, and when colonies were, on the whole, considered to be quite
protable. Fewdisputed the economic and strategic benets of colonial-
ism until mid-century, when the system was already in deep normative
trouble.
Finally, economic and military conditions for the end of particular
colonial empires (a high-cost, low-benet ratio, military defeat, and
overextension and exhaustion) have obtained in the past when colonies
were lost in war or were temporarily too costly to maintain, but colonial
empire as an institution was never outlawed or the subject of sanctions
before the mid-twentieth century. Colonies had been abandoned, lost,
or exchanged throughout history. What was different about the decolo-
nization of the mid-twentieth century was its systematic-ness, and the
fact that it would be very difcult today, and in the foreseeable future, to
practice colonialism. Though colonizers might have desired the wealth
that came with holding colonies, the public and inuential elites in the
metropole were gradually persuaded that colonialism itself was an ab-
horrent practice, and they were no longer willing to tolerate and pay
for it as they had in the past. As Fieldhouse argues, at least in the West
European democracies, governments were vulnerable to criticism of
brutality by liberals and humanitarians such as the British Anti-Slavery
Society.
36
35
Peter Liberman, Does Conquest Pay? The Exploitation of Occupied Industrial Societies
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). For qualications, see Stephen G. Brooks,
The Globalization of Production and the Changing Benets of Conquest, Journal of
Conict Resolution 43 (October 1999), 646670.
36
Fieldhouse, Colonialism.
357
Argument and change in world politics
Practical arguments
Ethical arguments about colonialismwere deployed alongside scientic
and identity arguments about the practice. In addition, practical argu-
ments about the protability and strategic value of colonialism were
deployedby proponents of colonialism, reform, anddecolonization and
indeed were as ubiquitous as ethical arguments about the practice.
Advocates of empire often argued that colonies were protable. Even
Adam Smith, a critic of colonies on the grounds that they were pro-
tectionist and inhibited free trade, wrote in the Wealth of Nations, To
propose that Great Britain should voluntarily give up all authority over
her colonies . . . would be to propose such a measure as never was, and
never will be adopted, by any nation in the world.
37
As noted earlier,
the nineteenth-century French advocate of empire, Prime Minister Jules
Ferry, argued, Colonies are for rich countries one of the most lucrative
methods of investing capital . . . I say that France, which is glutted with
capital and which has exported considerable quantities, has an interest
in looking at this side of the question.
38
After World War I, the advo-
cates of Frenchcolonialismfrequently toutedthe economic andstrategic
virtues of colonies. Yesterday, France needed colonial contingents for
the war. Tomorrow it will need them in order to refashion its military
instrument. Henceforth its security will be a tributary of its colonies.
39
Albert Sarraut, Frances colonial minister from 1920 to 1924, wrote sev-
eral studies of French colonialism in which he argued that colonies of-
fered the opportunity for great economic gain. His La Mise en Valeur des
Colonies publishedin19221923 urgedgreater investment inthe colonies
in order to boost Frances own economy: to supply, without any de-
lay, to the needs of our national life the increased amount of primary
products that it demands, this is the aim.
40
In the 1930s, the German
Ofce for Colonial Policy, whose job in part consisted of convincing
the German people of the virtues of colonies, often used economic ar-
guments. The 1939 speakers guide for the ofce included this talking
point: Colonies are needed because of Germanys lack of space. They
are to provide raw materials and markets . . . Aside from their material
37
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (London: 1966), vol. II, pp. 112113.
38
Quotedin A. AduBoahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1987), p. 31.
39
Albert Sarraut quoted in Rudolf von Albertini, Decolonization: The Administration and
future of the Colonies, 19191960 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company Inc., 1971),
p. 268.
40
Quoted in ibid., p. 270.
358
Alternative explanations
value, colonies must be sought by the Reich in order to provide German
youth with a testing ground for character.
41
Similarly, Britains Lord
Lugard, in The Dual Mandate, argued that war proved the value of the
colonies against the arguments of the Little Englanders.
42
The argument that colonies were economically important was also
deployed by advocates of colonial rule after World War II. For example,
after the discoveryof oil inthe Sahara, Frances Resident Minister Robert
Locoste said in April 1957, These discoveries which are, it appears, of
world importance, must conrm our country in her African vocation
and justify all the more the effort of the metropole to reintroduce calm
into Algeria, which is the key to the Sahara.
43
Similarly, British Conser-
vatives in power during World War II tended to argue that the colonies
were crucial economically and therefore essential for Britains world
position.
Conversely, critics of colonialism also frequently used economic ar-
guments. Some claimed that colonialism, because it typically involved
protectionism, was inherently less protable than free trade. Indeed,
protectionism was characteristic of European colonialism. For exam-
ple, for two centuries during the height of mercantilism, from the
1650s to the 1850s, British tariff regulations required that all colo-
nial trade must be carried on ships owned and registered in Britain
and that all goods imported to the colonies must either be the prod-
uct of Britain or transshipped through Britain, with duties paid there.
British colonies were forbidden to manufacture or export most goods,
with only limited manufacturing allowed. Proponents of free trade ob-
jected to this system, arguing that competition would be more prof-
itable. Others argued that the value of British trade with its colonies
was small and generally diminishing. And others argued that only
a few benet from imperialism: Although the new Imperialism has
been bad business for the nation, it has been good business for cer-
tain classes and certain trades within the nation. The vast expenditure
41
Wolf W. Schmokel, Dream of Empire: German Colonialism, 19191945 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1964), pp. 3435.
42
Lord Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (London: Frank Cass, (1922)
1965), p. 609.
43
Quoted in James W. Silver, Framing a Balance Sheet for French Decolonization:
Raymond Aron, Raymond Cartier and the Debate over the African Empire (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Honors Thesis), pp. 1213. Further, this viewseems to have been
widely shared. When the journal of the French Institute of Public Opinion, Sondages, pub-
lished the answer to the question, Do you think France will be able to exploit the Saharan
petroleum reserves if Algeria becomes Independent, in September 1957, 18 percent an-
swered yes, and 53 percent said no. Silver, Framing a Balance Sheet, p. 13.
359
Argument and change in world politics
on armaments, the costly wars, the grave risks and embarrassments
of foreign policy, the stoppage of political and social reforms within
Great Britain, though fraught with great injury to the nation, have
served well the present business interests of certain industries and
professions.
44
Individual colonies were also singled out for criticismon the grounds
that they were unprotable. In 1865, British colonial reformer Charles
Adderly claimed that Britains possessions in West Africa, costing a
million pounds a year, were a waste, and the parliamentary Committee
on West African Affairs, in agreement with Adderly, said: All further
extension of territory or assumption of government, or new treaties
offering protection to native tribes, would be inexpedient . . .
45
After
World War I, one British observer wrote, The glorious days when the
native could be squeezed for the benet of the Crown, as well as for the
planters and merchants prots, are gone forever. From the budgetary
point of view, colonies cost more than they bring in. Tributes have gone
out of fashion and subsidies are the rule.
46
In the 1930s the scholar Grover Clark set about computing what he
called The Balance Sheets of Imperialism: Facts and Figures on Colonies.
Three main claims have been made as to the value of colonies: that
they provided important outlets for population; that the possession of
themgave important opportunities for protable trade which otherwise
would not be available; that control over the sources of raw materials
in colonies added to a nations security in time of war and gave it im-
portant advantages in times of peace.
47
Clark concluded that colonies
44
J.A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (New York: James Pott & Co., 1902), pp. 5152.
Hobson did not think, however, that the economic motive was the chief cause of imperi-
alism. Rather, he emphasized the causal role of the non-economic factors of patriotism,
adventure, military enterprise, political ambition, and philanthropy and argued that
the motor power of Imperialism is not chiey nancial: nance is rather the governor
of the imperial engine, directing the energy and determining its work: it does not consti-
tute the fuel of the engine, nor does it directly generate the power. Finance manipulates
the patriotic forces which politicians, soldiers, philanthropists, and traders generate.
Ibid., p. 66.
45
Quoted Davis and Huttenback, Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire, p. 9.
46
Bonn, The Crumbling of Empire, p. 333.
47
Grover Clark, The Balance Sheets of Imperialism: Facts and Figures on Colonies (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1936), p. v. He comments on the moral dimensions of colo-
nialism when he says of early colonial activity: What they were after was trade, or loot,
or both and in many cases they were none too scrupulous about the methods they used
to get what they wanted. Ibid., p.6. Clark describes an anemic little clerk, the British
colonist, Cecil Rhodes, as a quite unscrupulous but vastly interesting and able empire
builder . . . Grover Clark, A Place in the Sun (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1936),
p. 33.
360
Alternative explanations
might have been protable before 1800 but were certainly not so after
1880, and each of these claims is essentially fallacious.
For the eight decades preceding the new drive for colonies which
started in the 1880s, the governments as such spent considerably more
on expansion than they received directly from it. These losses ulti-
mately fell on the taxpayers. But private interests were making good
prots on trade with the overseas territories, and the governmental
expenditures were much less than they came to be later. Perhaps the
private prots roughly equaled the governments losses. In any case,
between 1800 and 1880, the balance for the people as a whole in the
colony-holding countries was not large on either the debit or the credit
side of the ledger.
Since 1880, however, the cash costs to the countries which have used
force to get or keep control of colonies unquestionably have been very
substantially more than any possible cash prots derived from the
trade with the territories controlled.
48
Focusing on the period from 1878 to 1934, Clark provides exten-
sive empirical support for his claims that colonialism does not pro-
vide prot, resources, or benets from migration but actually sows
instability and war as countries compete for these prizes. Clark ends
his book with a call to keep political control of the colonies since
independence would probably lead, especially in Africa and the Pa-
cic, to chaos but to open colonies to trade in order to insure real
equality of economic opportunity in the colonies for the nationals of all
countries.
49
Britains Labour party, after World War II, held that colonialism
mainly beneted capitalists. As John Strachey, a post-war Secretary
of State for War argued, Exactly contrary to the popular prejudice,
a nation is likely to-day [sic] to be strong or weak in inverse ratio
to imperial possessions.
50
In France, Raymond Aron stressed eco-
nomic reasons for French withdrawal from Algeria in La Trag edie
algerienne and LAlg erie et la R epublic, published in 1957 and 1958.
Despite the ostensible importance of colonies to the French econ-
omy, Aron argued, the war in Algeria was a diversion of resources
from France while the withdrawal of young men from the French
economy to ght the war tightened the labor market, and led to
48
Clark, Balance Sheets of Imperialism, p. 3.
49
Ibid., p. 18. Clark approved of the Mandate system but thought it did not do enough
to protect and promote free trade.
50
Quoted in Louis, Imperialism at Bay, p. 34.
361
Argument and change in world politics
growing inationary pressure. He said France could simply buy
the oil it needed and did not have to physically control the Saha-
ran oil supplies. It is the currency of payment, not sovereignty on
the drilling sites or on the pipelines that is essential.
51
Similarly,
RaymondCartier publishedmanyarticles inParis-Matchinthelate1950s
questioning the economic wisdom of colonies.
In Black Africa, France pays. It assumes for the metropolitan bud-
get the salaries of the governors, administrators, magistrates, police.
It takes on the costs of meteorology, the geographic service, the radio
stations . . . of principal airports. It completely covers the military ex-
penses which have risen up to 50 billion [Francs per year] for all the
overseas territories. It covers currency shortages, the budget decits,
subsidizes in growing proportions the majority of colonial projects.
52
Thus, practical arguments were a feature of colonial and anti-colonial
discourse. Strategic, balance-of-power arguments were also common.
During the Cold War, for example, some argued that decolonization
posed an increased risk of political instability for the colonizer.
But beginning in the late nineteenth century colonialism was less and
less considered a legitimate means to the ends of prot and security. As
notedinchapter 7, beliefs about what it was goodandright todointerms
of economic exploitation were already divided at the middle part of the
twentieth century. A 1946 opinion poll asked, Should we administer
our colonies above all for the prot of France, or above all for the prot
of the indigenous populations? Asking the question illustrates that
the economic motive for colonialism was already denormalized. French
opinion was roughly evenly divided, with 31 percent saying for the
prot of France, 28 percent for the prot of the natives, and 25 percent
for the prot of both.
53
Non-economic arguments in favor of colonialism religious and civ-
ilizing missions based on the presumed inferiority of non-Europeans
were also delegitimized at the same time that the ideas of self-
determination and sovereignty were more widely believed and ap-
plied. This is why colonizers did not continue to use the same meth-
ods of imprisonment, mutilation, and massacre that they had in the
past employed with great success to control and intimidate. Thus,
colonialism ended not because it was less protable or because the
51
Quoted in Silver, Framing a Balance Sheet, p. 14.
52
Quoted in ibid., p. 32.
53
Paul Clay Sorum, Intellectuals and Decolonization in France (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1977), p. 16.
362
Alternative explanations
material balance between colonizer and colonized changed. Colonial-
ism was no longer legitimate for economic, military, or civilizing
reasons.
Alternative explanations for South Africas exit
from Namibia
What accounts for South Africas withdrawal from Namibia in 1990?
SWAPO began its armed struggle in 1966 and South Africa began a
war against Angola in 1975 that featured several large-scale assaults.
54
At the peak of its regional military engagement, the South African
Defence Force (SADF) occupied one-third of Angolan territory as it
fought SWAPO and conducted a campaign of military destabilization
over the entire Southern African region. A negotiated settlement to
South Africas war in Angola, brokered in 1988 by the United States and
the Soviet Union, included South African withdrawal from Namibia.
This case thus exemplies the complex relationships among economic,
strategic, and normative factors and indicates the limits of an ethical
argument explanation. South West Africa/Namibia was both extremely
protable and costly to maintain. South African foreign policy meant
that it was increasingly overextended in the region, while international
sanctions weakened the South African military. South Africas wars
against Angola and SWAPO eventually ground to a stalemate, and
though South Africa had nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, it
did not escalate their use.
Economics of occupation
Was it reasonable, in purely economic terms, for South Africa to hold
on to South West Africa/Namibia after the UN revoked South Africas
mandate in 1966? Though economic statistics regarding Namibia were
generally withheld after 1966, South Africa included the gures for
Namibian mining in statistics for South African mining the occupation
does appear to have been protable. First, Namibia provided an outlet
for South African goods, making it valuable to South Africas private
sector when economic sanctions against South Africa were anticipated
54
See in Colin Leys and John S. Saul, et al., Namibias Liberation Struggle: The Two Edged
Sword (London: James Currey, 1995); Peter H. Katjavivi, A History of Resistance in Namibia
(London: James Currey, 1988); Dennis Herbstein and John Evenson, The Devils Are Among
Us: The War for Namibia (London: Zed Books, 1989).
363
Argument and change in world politics
andthen imposed. Second, South Africa exploitedNamibias signicant
mineral resources, the most protable of which were diamonds and
uranium. Specically, Namibian diamond production accounted for
22 percent of the South African De Beers corporations after-tax pro-
ts in 1978. Third, labor was cheap in Namibia due to the suppression
of black wages, increasing the prot margin of Namibias most lucrative
sector, the mining industry.
Was occupation of Namibia overly expensive? Because gures
detailing the full costs of the occupation were never published by
South Africa, it is difcult to know whether costs outweighed prots
and how the costbenet ratio changed over time. For example, the
South West Africa administrations spending on police and defense
for 19871988 were, respectively, R136 million and R191.9 million.
55
But
the share of the total South African defense budget spent on Namibia
is unknown and not likely ever to be known. South Africa also
subsidized expenditures for the South West African Territorial Force
and the administration of the territory of Namibia. The occupation of
Namibia cost R1.7 million per day in the mid 1980s while the cost of
killing a single SWAPO insurgent has risen to R600,000.
56
In 1988, the
war in Namibia cost South Africa $1 million (R2.15 million) per day,
not including the subsidy to the Namibian government which Pretoria
put at $400 million a year (R860 million).
57
The total cost of the twenty-
three-year war against SWAPO was some R8 billion ($3 billion).
58
Fortunately for South Africa, the SWA/Namibian mining industry
subsidized their occupation of Namibia through taxation. For example,
from 1 April 1987 to 31 March 1988, R255 million of the R600 million in
Namibian government revenue that came from taxes and duties came
from the mining industry. Much of that money, R130 million, came
from diamond production.
59
Lead, zinc, silver, copper, and tin mined in
Namibia were all taxedat 40 percent; diamonds were taxedat 60 percent;
and taxation for uranium was a sliding scale, rising to as much as
70 percent. Prots remained substantial, however, because of low
wages.
55
Africa South of the Sahara 1991 (London: Europa Publications Limited, 1990), p. 749.
56
Christopher Coker, South Africas Security Dilemmas (New York: Preager, 1987), p. 45.
57
Africa Research Bulletin, Political Series 25 (15 December 1988), 9062.
58
Susan Brown, Diplomacy by Other Means: SWAPOs Liberation War, in Leys and
Saul, Namibias Liberation Struggle, pp. 1939: 37.
59
Africa South of the Sahara 1991, p. 749.
364
Alternative explanations
Was South Africa exhausted or over-extended?
Three elements of potential exhaustion and overextension must be con-
sidered: the South African militarys loss of life during the decades
of occupation and war; the resource drain of occupation at a time
when South Africa faced international sanctions; and South Africas
self-encirclement as the region responded to its destabilization policies.
While it should not be difcult to determine, it is hard to know
whether the South African military was increasingly drained by the
occupation of SWA/Namibia and the Angolan war. The South African
government appeared to systematically under-report the deaths result-
ing from combat, malaria, and other causes. An SADF archivist inter-
viewed shortly after the conicts ended claims that no overall tally of
casualties in Namibia and Angola were ever made because they were
too few to count. He continued, no one believes me when I say that,
but its true. There were just too few to count.
60
Indeed, the ofcial
SADF gures were confusing. Thus, the South African public never had
complete gures, even after the war ended, although unofcial gures
for combat related deaths totaled 715 for all South African forces, in-
cluding police, SADF, and SWATF.
61
Whatever the real number of deaths and injuries due to combat, dis-
ease, and accidents, white casualties were obviously a concern for South
African decisionmakers, and the SADF took several measures to de-
crease casualties and to convince the public that the numbers were low.
To decrease their dependency on white South African troops, and to
keep white South Africans, especially those in the part-time services,
away from the brunt of the ghting in Namibia, South Africa increas-
ingly relied on black Namibians and on non-white soldiers from
South Africa. The Namibianization of the occupation forces in South
West Africa began in the early 1970s. In the mid-1970s, South Africa
organized bantustan (black homeland) based units linked to the eth-
nic homelands in Namibia, and in 1980 South Africa formally estab-
lished the South West African Territorial Force (SWATF), an indigenous
army designed to take over the brunt of the repression inside Namibia.
South Africa introduced compulsory service for all Namibians in 1981.
The SWATF was rapidly mobilized to a force of 20,00024,000, and grew
to 35,000 in early 1989, with duties in both Namibia and Angola.
62
As
60
Interview with the author, Pretoria, 27 May 1991.
61
Brown, Diplomacy by Other Means, p. 37.
62
Free at Last?, Washington Notes On Africa (Spring 1989), p. 2.
365
Argument and change in world politics
one white South African noted, deaths of black troops, who now carry
the brunt of the ghting, are hardly ever reported since 1976 it has been
ofcial SADF policy not to reveal their names or provide statistics.
63
By 1986, South Africa claimed that SWATF provided 51 percent of all
SouthAfricancommandedsoldiers inNamibia andthe SADFnotedthat
the expansion of SWATF resulted in a gradual decline in the call-up of
Citizen Force members for service in the SWA operational area.
64
SWAPO and South Africa made conicting claims regarding casual-
ties, but both sides agree that South African losses grew.
65
In early 1977,
the South African Defence Ministry reported 33 security force casual-
ties in Namibia since April 1975.
66
In 1982 the SADF said 77 troops were
killed in action in Namibia, 149 died of other causes, and 259 deaths
were accidents.
67
The SADF claimed that 30 members of the security
forces in Namibia were killed in 1985 and that 32 were killed the follow-
ing year.
68
In late 1985, the South African government said 560 South
African lives had been lost in Namibia since the late 1970s.
69
SWAPO
gures suggest a much higher rate of casualties. In 1984 SWAPOs Peo-
ples Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) claimed to have killed 71
SADF and SWATF troops in May, June, and July alone.
70
In the month
of August 1988 alone, PLAN reported that they killed 113 enemy sol-
diers, woundedmany others, andcapturedor destroyedSouth African
military vehicles in twenty separate military actions.
71
63
Gavin Cawthra, Brutal Force: The Apartheid War Machine (London: International
Defence & Aid Fund for Southern Africa, 1986), p. 178.
64
Republic of South Africa (RSA), White Paper on Defence and Armaments Supply 1986,
p. 18. Mark Phillips, The Nuts and Bolts of Military Power: The Structure of the SADF,
in Jacklyn Cock and Laurie Nathan, eds., Society at War: The Militarization of South Africa
(New York: St. Martins Press, 1989), pp. 1627: 26; Cawthra, Brutal Force, pp. 199204.
65
Over 10,000Namibianpeople were killed(1percent of the population), andover 100,000
ed the country to neighboring states, mostly, approximately 72,000, to Angola. Tony
Weaver, The South African Defence Force in Namibia, in Cock and Nathan, eds., Society
at War, pp. 90102: 90.
66
RSA, White Paper on Defence 1977, p. 7.
67
Note that for 1982, SWAPO gures for total deaths are less than SADF gures, as-
suming that SADF gures for deaths by accidents and other causes are actually combat
deaths. PLANclaimed that over 2,000 enemy soldiers were wounded and 466 killed. The
SADF also claimed to have killed a thousand PLAN combatants though only 157 were
accounted for by reports of specic actions. Reported in Namibia a Nation Under
Siege, Resister, no. 27 (AugustSeptember 1983), 1213: 12.
68
Reported by the End Conscription Campaign, Militarization Facts and Figures, p. 3.
69
Coker, South Africas Security Dilemmas, p. 29, citing The Times (London) report of 18
September 1985, is imprecise about the dates that these gures cover, but the context
suggests that these were SADF deaths since 1978.
70
Cawthra, Brutal Force, p. 179.
71
News from the Battleeld, The Combatant (August 1988), 1921.
366
Alternative explanations
The SADF did admit many casualties due to accidents in operational
areas, including occupied southern Angola; between January 1979 and
June 1983 accidents claimedthe lives of 647 servicemenandinjuredover
3,000. As Christopher Coker notes: Only 107 were reportedkilledin ac-
tion. These gures seem highly suspect. Either the South African army
is unusually accident prone or else casualties in the eld have been
deliberately disguised as accident statistics.
72
Interviews with white
South Africans after South Africas withdrawal from Namibia and An-
gola indicate that some soldiers injured in battle were instructed to lie
about the cause of their injuries: a common excuse for the loss of limbs
was for individuals to say that they had been in an auto accident in
South Africa.
73
Was SWAPO increasingly effective? SWAPO claims about SADF and
SWATF casualties may have been exaggerated to bolster morale or be-
cause of incomplete information on the fate of South African wounded.
Nevertheless, it appears that in several engagements during the 1980s in
both Angola and Namibia, South Africa lost more troops than ever be-
fore even though the SWATF and the 32 Battalion (primarily composed
of mercenaries), took over more of the direct ghting with SWAPOs
military arm, PLAN.
South African casualties probably grew for three reasons. First,
South Africa faced increasingly active and effective military opposi-
tion from SWAPO. Second, the very repressiveness and horror of South
Africas occupation of Namibia seemed to increase SWAPOs determi-
nation.
74
Third, the policy of recruiting black Namibians into SWATF
and the SWA police met with increasing resistance: for example, in
January 1981, 5,000 Namibian refugees arrived in Angola to avoid
conscription.
75
Namibian resistance to conscription meant that more
SADF troops were brought into operational areas from South Africa.
Was South Africa overextended? After 1974, South Africa conducted
a regional destabilization strategy which gradually prompted the state
to mobilize large numbers of its white citizens and also increased
the pressure for international sanctions against South Africa. When the
Portuguese government fell in a military coup in April 1974, the new
Portuguese government immediately began negotiations with the liber-
ation movements in Angola andMozambique, leading to independence
72
Coker, South Africas Security Dilemmas, p. 44.
73
Interviews by the author in Johannesburg, May 1991.
74
Coker, South Africas Security Dilemmas, p. 42.
75
Cawthra, Brutal Force, p. 202.
367
Argument and change in world politics
for both in 1975. While South African Prime Minister Vorster said pub-
licly that South Africa had nothing to fear from a black government in
Mozambique, ofcials also said that South Africa had lost its cordon
sanitaire, was under total onslaught, and ought to respond with a
total strategy.
76
Under the total strategy, South Africa began a program of regional
destabilization and war, which eventually led to self-encirclement and
contributed to South Africas economic stress. No direct military threat
was perceived: [T]he military threat to the R.S.A. nds its only ac-
tual physical expression in the existence of armed elements of banned
political organizations accommodated in neighboring states. They at-
tempt to inltrate the R.S.A. for the purposes of terrorism, sabotage
and subversion with a view to overthrowing the existing order.
77
South Africa would use all available means military, psychological,
economic, political, sociological, technological, diplomatic, ideological,
cultural etc. to eliminate the threat posed by communism, the ANC,
and its supporters.
78
South Africa tried diplomacy and economic embrace to inuence the
new regimes in Angola and Mozambique.
79
Also in 1974, South Africa
suggested the creation of a greater Ovambo Bantustan (African home-
land) straddlingthe AngolaSouthWest Africa border whichcouldhave
reduced South Africas problems with what they believed to be the
most militant element of SWAPO, the northern Namibian Ovambo peo-
ple, and isolated the largest component of SWAPO military strength.
It would also have decreased Angolan territory.
80
Diplomacy failed.
76
ColinLegum, SouthernAfrica: The Secret Diplomacyof Detente, inColinLegum, ed.,
Africa Contemporary Record, 19741975 (New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1975),
vol. VII, pp. A3A15: A7.
77
RSA, White Paper on Defence and Armament Production, 1975, p. 7. The total strategy con-
cept is drawn from Andr e Beaufre, a French strategist. Andr e Beaufre, An Introduction to
Strategy (New York: Preager, 1965). As one observer notes: when one looks at the total
strategy in depth and in relation to Beaufres writings, it appears to have very little au-
thenticity of its own. Total strategy. . . is essentially Beaufre writ large in the particular
counter-revolutionary context of contemporary South Africa. Philip H. Frankel, Preto-
rias Praetorians: CivilMilitary Relations in South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1984), pp. 2970: 46. Also see Steven Metz, Pretorias Total Strategy and Low-
Intensity Warfare in Southern Africa, Comparative Strategy 6 (1987), pp. 437469.
78
RSA, White Paper on Defence 1977, p. 4. The White Paper also says that it is important
to achieve understanding by governments and citizens of other countries of the RSAs
internal policies and the western humanistic tradition upon which they are based. p. 9.
79
Africa Contemporary Record, 19701971, vol. III, pp. A11A17; Legum, Southern Africa:
The Secret Diplomacy of Detente, p. A9.
80
Robert S. Jaster, The Defence of White Power: South African Foreign Policy Under Pressure,
(London: Macmillan, 1988), p. 69.
368
Alternative explanations
For Angola and Namibia, the total strategy meant almost continuous
use of military force. South Africa also sponsored the Mozambican
National Resistance (MNRor Renamo) against Mozambique, even after
signing an agreement to halt support for the MNR in 1984. Against
Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe, South Africa mixed
relatively lost-cost military actions, including air and ground raids
against suspected terrorists, with economic incentives and economic
coercion.
The total strategy because it involved total military and economic
mobilization put tremendous stress on the South African military,
economy, and society both directly, as the government mobilized, and
indirectly, as the international community sanctioned South Africa for
its regional aggression and apartheid. White males were drawn out of
the economy for military service, the industrial sector was pushedto de-
velopweapons, andpublic support for the occupationgraduallywaned.
Ironically, South African foreign policy thus helped to undermine the
apartheid system it was designed to save.
81
Between 1975 and 1990, South Africa more than doubled its full-time
military forces by increasing conscription rates.
82
In 1977, the national
service period for white conscripts was increased from one to two years
in order to respond to the decision to wage war in Angola and meet
the determined resistance of the Namibians. By the early 1980s, one of
every ten white South African males was in the armed services at any
one time.
83
Full-time forces were supplementedbypart-time Citizen forces and
commandos who were regularly called to do up to three months
of border-camp service in the operational areas of Namibia and
Angola.
84
The entire white male population of apartheid South Africa
was subject to military service from ages 16 to 65.
81
Neta C. Crawford, The Domestic Sources and Consequences of Aggressive Foreign Policies:
The Folly of South Africas Total Strategy, Working Paper, no. 41 (Centre for Southern
African Studies, University of the Western Cape, South Africa, 1995).
82
South Africas full time (permanent force) military in 1965 was 26,500, with 13,500 in
the Citizen Force and 51,500 in the Commandos. In 1970 full time military was 43,800,
with 26,550 in the Citizen Force and 58,000 in the Commandos. IISS, The Military Balance,
for 19651966 and 19701971.
83
M. Brzoska, South Africa: Evading the Embargo, in Michael Brzoska and
Thomas Ohlson, Arms Production in the Third World, eds. (London: Taylor & Francis,
1986), pp. 193214: 194.
84
The average number of camps per member [of the CitizenForce], over a periodof three
years, was 2.09 (authorized number 3) while the average number of days of service over
a period of three years was 87 (authorized number is 120 days in two years). RSA, White
Paper on Defence and Armaments Supply 1986, p. 5.
369
Argument and change in world politics
All white males must register for military service at 16, while still in
school. They are then liable for service in the full-time force. Those
who do not make a career in the permanent force are required ei-
ther before or after tertiary education to render two years of national
service . . . After this they are placed in the part-time citizen force for
twelve years, during which time, they must serve up to 720 days in
annual 30-, 60- or 90-day camps. Then they are placed in the active
citizen force reserve for ve years andmay be requiredto serve 12 days
a year in a local commando unit until the age of 55. Finally, they are
placed on the national reserve until they are age 65.
85
In June 1979, SADF 8,000 reservists were deployed to Namibia to
track down SWAPO forces.
86
By 1988 there were 175,000 in the Citizen
Force and150,000 inthe Active CitizenForce Reserve. Between1980 and
1990, there were also 90,000 to 140,000 commandos serving part time.
87
Mobilization of all SADF full- and part-time forces in the mid-1980s
would perhaps have totaled between 500,000 and 1 million men, and
would rapidly bring the economy to its knees.
88
Finally, to reduce
dependency on white soldiers, South Africa gradually integrated its
military during the 1970s, and by 1986, almost one quarter of full-time
SADF forces (24 percent) were either black (12 percent), coloured
(11 percent), or Indian (1 percent).
89
Other militaries in the region
mobilized to keep pace with the South African threat.
90
South Africas regional aggression and its occupation of Namibia
provoked an international response. The UN Security Council adopted
a voluntary arms embargo against South Africa in August 1963, calling
upon all states to cease forthwith the sale and shipment of arms,
ammunition of all types and military vehicles to South Africa.
91
In
response, South Africa developed an indigenous military produc-
tion base, and in 1968, South Africa established foundations for the
Armaments Development and Production Corporation of South Africa
(Armscor), several companies closely afliated and coordinated by the
state to ensure that the weapons needed by the SADF were produced
85
Phillips, The Nuts and Bolts of Military Power, p. 18.
86
Jaster, The Defence of White Power, p. 93.
87
IISS, The Military Balance (London: Brasseys) for the years 19801990.
88
Phillips, The Nuts and Bolts of Military Power, p. 19.
89
RSA, White Paper on Defence and Armament Supply 1986, p. 17.
90
Of course the governments of Angola and Mozambique were ghting South African
supported guerrilla forces, which also caused them to increase their military forces.
91
UN Security Council (SC) Resolution 181, 7 August 1963. See Neta C. Crawford, How
Arms Embargoes Work, in Neta C. Crawford and Audie Klotz, eds., How Sanctions Work:
Lessons From South Africa (New York: St. Martins, 1999), pp. 4574.
370
Alternative explanations
Table 8.1 Numbers in the armed forces of Angola, Mozambique,
South Africa, and Zimbabwe, 19751990
Angola Mozambique South Africa
a
Rhodesia/Zimbabwe
b
1975 30,000 20,000 50,000 15,000
1976 35,000 21,000 59,000 17,000
1977 47,000 26,000 67,000 17,000
1978 47,000 25,000 78,000 24,000
1979 47,000 30,000 70,000 38,000
1980 47,000 30,000 70,000 94,000
1981 53,000 30,000 78,000 74,000
1982 54,000 30,000 78,000 50,000
1983 54,000 32,000 77,000 46,000
1984 60,000 34,000 97,000 46,000
1985 66,000 35,000 95,000 46,000
1986 70,000 65,000 90,000 45,000
1987 74,000 65,000 102,000 45,000
1988 107,000 65,000 100,000 45,000
1989 100,000E 71,000 103,000 49,500
1990 100,000E 72,000 77,400 56,400
E: estimated.
a
Full-time military.
b
Zimbabwe became a majority rule government in early 1980. The gures noted
prior to 1979 are for the armed forces of the white controlled government.
Sources: Figures for 19751977 are taken from the US Arms Control and Disar-
mament Agency, World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers, 1987; for 1978
1988 from World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers 1989, (Washington,
DC: US Government Printing Ofce, 1987, 1990; for 19891990 from Interna-
tional Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 19891990, and 1990
1991 (London: Brasseys, 1990).
by South African industries or procured abroad. In the mid-1970s, in
anticipation of a mandatory UN arms embargo, South Africa increased
its procurement schedule and domestic production, saying, The RSA
must, as far as practicable, be self-sufcient in the provision of arms
and ensure their continued production.
92
In 1977, the UN Security Council condemned South Africa for its
acts of repression and attacks on its neighbors, arguing that the
military build-up by South Africa and its persistent acts of aggression
against the neighboring States seriously disturb the security of those
states. It also declaredthat the acquisitionby SouthAfrica of arms and
92
RSA, White Paper on Defence 1977, p. 9.
371
Argument and change in world politics
related mat erial constitutes a threat to the maintenance of international
peace and security.
93
The Security Council imposed a mandatory arms
embargo on South Africa, prohibiting exports of weapons, ammunition,
military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary and police equipment,
and spare parts, while also prohibiting states from granting licensing
arrangements to manufacture military equipment in South Africa.
When the SADF moved into South African townships, and increased
regional military aggression, the UN Security Council passed a resolu-
tion in December 1984 requesting that all states refrain from importing
South African produced arms, ammunition, and military vehicles.
If South Africa wanted to remain at war in Namibia and Angola,
with the UN arms embargo in place, it had to increase its domestic
arms production. Before 1963, South Africa spent 70 percent of its mil-
itary budget on arms procurement overseas, most of it from the UK.
But by 1984, almost 100 percent was spent within South Africa for lo-
cal arms production.
94
By 1990, South Africa had 975 private contrac-
tors engaged by Armscor.
95
Arms procurement and military industry
became an enormous drain on the South African economy during the
1970s and1980s: The absorptionof scarce resources (capital, labour and
foreign exchange) and the crowding out of non-military public and
private investment andof non-military R&Dnot only exacerbatedmany
of the existing structural problems in the apartheid economy. . . but
also contributed to the underdevelopment, declining productivity
and poor international competitiveness of the civilian economy.
96
Table 8.2 shows the growth in ofcial expenditures for acquisitions by
Armscor.
97
While the embargo, and arms production to counter it, strained
the South African economy, South Africas tightly linked military and
foreign policies toward Angola and Namibia led to military overexten-
sion. In 1975 South Africa articulated increasing alarm over the actual
and potential military collaboration between SWAPOguerrillas and the
93
UN SC Resolution 418, 4 November 1977.
94
Signe Landgren, Embargo Disimplemented: South Africas Military Industry (London:
Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 9. Also see William Cobbett, Apartheids Army and
the Arms Embargo, in Cock and Nathan, eds., Society at War, pp. 232243.
95
RSA, Brieng on the Organization and Functions of the South African Defence Force and the
Armaments Corporation of South Africa, Limited 1990, p. 66.
96
Peter Batchelor and Susan Willett, Disarmament and Defence Industrial Adjustment in
South Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 48.
97
It is unlikely that the clandestine purchase of armaments is included in ofcial South
African government gures.
372
Alternative explanations
Table 8.2 South Africas expenditures
for arms acquisition
Year ending Millions of Rand
a
1967 23
1969 52
1971 68
1973 102
1975 296
1977 689
1979 921
1980 1,178
1981 1,235
1982 1,450
1983 1,591
1984 1,571
1985 1,865
1986 2,463
1987 2,300
1988 2,743
1989 4,845
a
Not in constant Rand.
Source: RSA, Brieng on the Organization
and Functions of the South African Defence
Force and the Armaments Corporation of South
Africa, Limited 1990, p. 66.
Angolan independence movements. South Africa saw Angola, domi-
nated by the Marxist MPLA, as a haven for the ANC and SWAPO and
as a launching pad for Soviet aggression. Fighting among three ma-
jor independence movements in Angola the MPLA, UNITA and the
FNLA also threatened South African economic interests in Angola,
particularly the Calueque dam on the Cunene River.
SADF invadedAngola in July andAugust 1975, saying, South Africa
responded to a call from the workers in the CaluequeRuacana scheme
to protect them. . . This military intervention was then extended in or-
der to deect the effects of the Angolan civil war from the northern
border of South-West Africa and inhibit SWAPO efforts to capitalize
on the unstable situation in the southern region of Angola.
98
The ini-
tial invasion was small, involving about 500 SADF troops taking up
98
RSA, White Paper on Defence 1977, p. 6.
373
Argument and change in world politics
positions near the hydroelectric installations along the Cunene River,
and disarming UNITA, FNLA, and MPLA troops.
99
By late August,
South Africa occupied a strip of territory 50 km (c. 31 miles) deep
along the border. In September and October of 1975, the SADF esca-
lated and moved up the Angolan coast while Zairean and FNLA troops
attempted to crush the MPLA from the north. In response, Cuba sent
just under 500 military instructors in October to assist the MPLA, and
in November sent 650 troops to help the MPLA turn back the invaders.
Thus, despite coming within 100 miles of the capital, South Africa was
forced to retreat. The SADF columns had outrun their supply lines
while the MPLA forces were rapidly reinforcing themselves with heavy
arms.
100
Western support, particularly covert assistance from the US Central
Intelligence Agency, was not enough to ensure a quick SADF or UNITA
victory in Angola. By December, SADF forces were suffering what they
considered signicant losses. SADF retreated in early 1976, but the
invasion became the prototype for the basic pattern of South African be-
havior towardAngola over the next tenyears: frequent small-scale sabo-
tage, periodic large-scale militaryincursions, the occupationof southern
Angola, and military support of UNITA.
101
It is unlikely that UNITA
could have survived without South African government support in
the form of weapons, vehicles, and fuel: From a demoralized band
of 3,000 men who ed into the bush [in 1976], UNITAs leader Jonas
Savimbi claims to have built a force of 30,000 who are active in every
province up to the tenth parallel.
102
In addition, former FNLA guerril-
las were trained by South Africa and organized into the 32 Battalion
which later became a permanent 4,000 member element of the
SADF.
103
99
Christopher Coker, South Africa: ANewMilitary Role in Southern Africa 19691982,
in Robert Jaster, ed., Southern Africa: Regional Security Problems and Prospects (New York:
St. Martins Press, 1985), pp. 142150: 143.
100
Cawthra, Brutal Force, p. 147.
101
The relationshipfromthe mid-1970s tothe late 1980s betweenSouthAfrica andUNITA
was quite close. UNITA, an indigenous organization, grew to depend quite heavily on
South African weapons, training and logistical support. In some cases, as documented
by Phyllis Johnson and David Martin, Apartheid Terrorism: The Destabilization Report, The
Commonwealth Secretariat (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), SADF forces
performed covert sabotage missions in Angola but left evidence to suggest that it was
UNITAs work.
102
Coker, South Africa: A New Military Role in Southern Africa 19691982, p. 145.
103
Robert S. Jaster, The 1988 Peace Accords and the Future of South-Western Africa,
Adelphi Papers, no. 253 (Autumn 1990), pp. 1011; Coker, South Africas Security Dilemmas,
p. 39.
374
Alternative explanations
SouthAfrica intensiedits military effort inAngola, attempting to de-
feat the Angolan government and crush SWAPO, but the bush war, as
they called it, suffered from both the UN arms embargo and the Cuban
military presence. In June 1980 and August 1981, SADF launched large-
scale military incursions into Angola and occupied Cunene Province.
104
Cuban military assistance to Angola increased so that by late 1983,
when South Africa launched another effort, Operation Askari, Cuban
aid was able to make a difference in the battle for Cuvelai, Angola.
The SADF lost at least ten aircraft, including four sophisticated Mirage
ghter aircraft. This was a signicant blow given the inability to replace
any Mirage lost from their already small inventory because of the arms
embargo.
105
Moreover, the embargo led to a spare parts shortage: of the
fewer than 70 sophisticated French Mirage aircraft in the South African
arsenal, in the late 1980s, more than half of the aircraft were grounded
due to the lack of spare parts.
106
After invading Angola again in 1983, South Africa, under the Lusaka
Accords of February 1984, agreed to withdraw from Angolas Cunene
province by the end of March. But South Africa never completely with-
drew. In July 1984, South Africa admitted that it had halted withdrawal
on the rationale that SWAPO, which had not been part of the agreement,
was still operating in the region.
Escalation and stalemate
Between 1985 and 1988, there were numerous military clashes between
the Angolan military and UNITA anti-government guerrillas and the
SADF. Moreover, the scale of South African operations in support of
UNITA, including sabotage, increased.
107
In 1985, the United States
Congress repealedtheClarkAmendment banningUSaidtoUNITA, and
in 1986 US military support resumed. Since South Africa hadbeen fund-
ing UNITA, this amounted to a subsidy of South African foreign policy:
104
Coker, South Africa: A New Military Role in Southern Africa 19691982, p. 144.
Coker, p. 143, argues: Although these operations have been described as raids the termis
somewhat misleading. Most recentlytheyhave amountedtofull-scale invasions involving
armoured cars, ghter bombers and large detachments of troops.
105
In 1980 there were six Canberra B and six Buccaneer bombers with 32 Mirage F1AZ
ghters in the arsenal; by 1987 there was one less Canberra, six Buccaneer, and 15 Mirage
F1AZ. IISS, Military Balance for 19801981 and 19871988.
106
Coker, South Africas Security Dilemmas, pp. 3334.
107
Angola blamed over 3,000 acts of sabotage from 1976 to June 1987 on the economically
vital BuengelaRailwayonSADFandUNITA. SeeJohnsonandMartin, ApartheidTerrorism,
pp. 129, 130 and Cawthra, Brutal Force, p. 159.
375
Argument and change in world politics
US aid to UNITA was $15 million in 1986, and again in 1987.
108
Despite
external assistance, neither South Africa nor UNITA was able to defeat
Angolas Peoples Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA).
The turning points were two battles: for UNITA occupied Mavinga
in 1985, and the siege of Cuito Cuanavale from 1987 to 1988. When
Angola lost a bid to oust UNITA from Mavinga in the fall of 1985, due
to the intervention of South African forces, the Angolans purchased
sophisticated aircraft and radar from the Soviet Union and in May 1986
Angola received the new equipment. South Africa remained in south-
ern Angola, and the US sent sophisticated anti-aircraft equipment to
UNITA.
109
In August 1987, FAPLA began a counter-offensive against UNITA
forces in Mavinga, and SADF forces sought to take Cuito Cuanavale
because it was the site of an important Angolan aireld. The battle for
Cuito lasted months, but the Angolans held. The SADF sent in 3,000
men and perhaps 2,000 SWATF troops to support the estimated 10,000
well-trained UNITA forces already in Mavinga.
110
SADF encircled the
Angolan military, and FAPLA retreated to their base in Cuito Cua-
navale about 200 miles fromthe border fromOctober to December 1987.
South Africa continued to incur (as well as inict) substantial losses
during this period. . . FromSeptember to November, South Africa listed
thirty-ve SADF members killed in combat: a record for any like pe-
riod in the war. Another twenty-six died from cerebral malaria.
111
In
November 1987, South Africas head of state, P.W. Botha, visited a base
in southern Angola to boost the morale of SADF forces. In December
SouthAfrica rejecteda UNresolutionfor SouthAfrica to withdrawfrom
Angola and the siege continued.
In March 1988, Cuba sent 15,000 fresh troops. But instead of staying
in rear positions as was characteristic of past deployments, the Cubans
108
In1988, US assistance to UNITArose to $3045 million; in1989, aidwas $5060 million;
in1990, aidwas $6580million. U.S. Still Fuels War inAngola,WashingtonNotes onAfrica,
Spring 1990, pp. 1011; US Aid to Unita . . . The Beginning of the End? Washington Notes
on Africa, Winter 1990, pp. 46.
109
On US andSoviet assistance, to UNITAandthe MPLArespectively, see GeraldBender,
The Eagle andthe Bear inAngola,The Annals of the AmericanAcademyof Political andSocial
Science 489 (January 1987), 123132; Michael McFaul, Rethinking the Reagan Doctrine
in Angola, International Security 14 (Winter 1989/90), 99135.
110
South Africa never had more than 9 000 troops inside Angola, although most sources
claim the number was closer to 3 000. Thomas Ohlson, The Cuito Cuanavale Syn-
drome: Revealing SADF Vulnerabilities, South African Review 5 (Braamfontein: Raven
Press, 1989), pp. 181190: 185.
111
Jaster, The 1988 Peace Accords, p. 18.
376
Alternative explanations
participated in the counter-attack which ultimately turned the battle
in Angolas favor. Angolas anti-aircraft defences made the loss of
irreplaceable aircraft costly for the South Africa air force, and armoured
cars were stopped with anti-tank missiles.
112
SADF troops were driven
to defensive positions around the Calueque dam in Southern Angola.
On 27 June, a SADF commander led an assault on Cuban troops
and killed 150 men. The Cubans retaliated with an air assault on the
Calueque position, killing twelve SADF members. Moreover, SWATF
forces mutinied and 360, mostly black soldiers, were imprisoned
because they refused to ght. A senior SADF military commander said
of the 1988 confrontation and Cuban build-up: This was more than
we could handle. Had the Cubans attacked [Namibia] they would have
overrun the place. We could not have stopped them.
113
SADF claimed
that only fty-two whites died in the entire operation.
The war inside Namibia also grew in intensity and scale, but the ratio
of the opposing military forces appears to have been rather lopsided.
Portraying its military actions in Southern Africa as peacekeeping,
anti-terrorism, and training, South Africa justied attacks against
Namibian refugee camps during 1978 and 1979 as against SWAPO
supporters and members. AMay 1978 SADF attack on Kassinga refugee
camp in southern Angola left over 600 Namibians dead, and nearly half
of those killed were children.
114
In March 1979, South Africa attacked
SWAPO camps in Zambia, and Angola reported numerous small-scale
incursions by South Africa in 1979.
115
In 1979, the SADF said, The
protection of South-West Africa and her peoples against terrorism
remains a priority task which has been one of the most important
activities of the SA Army in the past year . . . The operational task in
SWA also affords an important opportunity for members of the SA
Army to acquire practical experience in that type of warfare which, in
fact, serves as a very important rounding off of the SA Armys training
112
Johnson and Martin, Apartheid Terrorism, p. 147.
113
QuotedinJaster, The 1988Peace Accords,p. 23. This assessment appears tobe aslight
exaggeration. First, the Cubans clearly stated that they were not interested in crossing the
border between Angola and Namibia and they never did so. Second, while the disposition
of South African forces in the March 1988 battle is not clear, it seems that if Cuban and
Angolan forces had crossed the border, there were sufcient troops and equipment to at
least have produced a stalemate at the border. But such a battle would have cost even
more white South African lives.
114
Cawthra, Brutal Force, 149; Johnson and Martin, Apartheid Terrorism, p. 140. The
Angolangovernment reportedthat 700 men, women, andchildrenwere killedat Kassinga.
UN, Namibia Bulletin, no. 3 (September 1978), p. 11.
115
UN, Namibia Bulletin, no. 3 (October 1979), pp. 1316.
377
Argument and change in world politics
program.
116
One British mercenary, Trevor Edwards, deserted after
serving for nine months in the SADF 32 Battalion:
Our main job is to take an area andclear it. We sweepthrough it andwe
kill everything in front of us, cattle, goats, people, everything. We are
out to stop SWAPO and so we stop them getting into the villages for
food and water. But half the time the locals dont know whats going
on. Were just fucking them up and it gets out of hand. Some of the
guys get a bit carried away. And SWAPO still get by us and cross the
cut-line between Angola and Namibia. Its not as if we are stopping
them.
117
SWAPOs military presence in the region was small, with fewer than
2,000 guerrillas in 1980, but grew to between 6,000 and 8,000 troops
during the mid 1980s.
118
Estimates of South African forces commit-
ted to Namibia vary but the number seemed to sharply increase in the
late 1970s and 1980s. In 1977, there were an estimated 53,200 SADF in
Namibia; in May 1979 SWAPO testied in the UN that there were about
75,000 SADF troops and personnel in Namibia.
119
In 1982 Defence Min-
ister D.F. Malan admitted that there had been a ftyfold increase in
the number of South African troops in Namibia and South Africa since
1975.
120
By 1986, the UN estimated that South Africas total occupation
was more than 100,000 troops in Namibia, comprising mercenaries,
additional reinforcements that are frequently airlifted into the Territory,
as well as locally recruited elements and an increasingly armed white
settler community.
121
Throughout the 1980s, SWAPO claimed modest military successes,
which South Africa persistently denied. SADF also denied UN reports
that it was engaged in violent repression inside Namibia, although a
South African Air Force song, to the tune of Ghost Riders in the Sky,
captures thefeelingandSADFstrategy: TheBillyBoys wereloadingup,
One dark and windy night, Six bombs each, Mark 82s, It was a fearsome
116
RSA, White Paper on Defence and Armaments Supply 1979, p. 18. Abbreviations are in the
original.
117
Quoted in Nick Davies, The Guardian (London), 29 January 1981. Reprinted in UN,
Namibia Bulletin, no. 1 (1981), pp. 2932: 29.
118
Coker, South Africas Security Dilemmas, p. 30.
119
UN, Namibia Bulletin, no. 2, ( July 1977), pp. 1819; UN, Namibia Bulletin, no. 2,
( July 1979) p. 20.
120
UN, The Military Situation in and Relating to Namibia (New York: United Nations,
1983), p. 5. This is an odd number.
121
UN, The Military Situation in and Relating to Namibia (New York: United Nations,
1987), p. 2.
378
Alternative explanations
sight, To strike at dawn, that was their task, Against the Swapo swine,
To Kill the commies in a group, Before they cross the line . . . The bombs
were right on line, The Swaps were taken by surprise, Death came so
quick and fast, No more would they terrorize, Theyd met their end at
last . . .
122
The UNreported evidence of terrible brutality committed in Namibia
by SADF, SWATF, and the 2,000 to 3,000 mercenaries from Western
nations ghting for South Africa. A former member of the SADF,
Bill Anderson, told the United Nations in 1976 of SADF activities in
Namibia.
His unit had been involved mostly in sweeping areas of suspected
guerrillas and in guarding the northern Namibian border. Orders had
been given to capture every male over the age of puberty and to kill
those who ran away. His batallion [sic] had captured between 200 and
300 men. The prisoners were kept blindfolded, with their hands tied
tightly behind their backs. They were frequently assaulted, punched,
burnt with cigarettes or had sand stuffed into their mouths by men
of all ranks, even in the presence of senior ofcers. The interrogations
themselves were conducted in special tents and were accompanied
by various forms of torture, include [sic] water torture and electric
shock.
123
Could South Africa have won the war in Angola and kept Namibia
if it had used all its military might? South Africa lost its conventional
military edge because the UN arms embargo made it difcult to replace
equipment. For example, losses of twenty-two aircraft in battle and an-
other twelve due to accident or error between 1974 and 1989 were large
given the small size of its total inventory.
124
On the other hand, despite
the UN embargo, South Africa successfully pursued the development
of nuclear weapons during the 1970s and 1980s to offset its numeri-
cal disadvantage in Africa.
125
Because South Africa was unwilling to
use its six nuclear weapons, its declining conventional military capa-
bilities were thus signicant. Ultimately, the arms embargo meant that
South Africa was far enough behind in military technology to help turn
the balance in Angolas favor when, in the late 1980s, Soviet weapons
122
Excerpt of The BillyBoys Song, words byRickCulpan. DickLord, Vlamgat: The Story
of the Mirage F1 in the South African Air Force (Weltevreden Park, South Africa: Covos-Day
Books, 2000), pp. 269270: 269.
123
UN, Namibia Bulletin, no. 1, (April 1977), pp. 910.
124
Lord, Vlamgat, pp. 267268.
125
David Fig, Sanctions and the Nuclear Industry, in Crawford and Klotz, eds., How
Sanctions Work, pp. 75102.
379
Argument and change in world politics
and thousands of Cuban military forces were pumped into Angola
at the request of the Angolan government. Thus, the combination of
South Africas relative military isolation and the increased quality of
Angolan arms led to a shift in the balance of forces.
But South Africa did not use all its military capabilities. For exam-
ple, why did South Africa forgo using its nuclear weapons? Were the
constraints strategic there were few or no military targets worth the
expenditure of an expensive nuclear weapon or normative/political,
specically, the fear of international approbation, increased isolation,
and sanctions?
Negotiating Namibian independence
In the 1960s and early 1970s South Africa discussed Namibia with UN
representatives. In April 1977, Britain, France, West Germany, and the
United States formed a Contact Group to negotiate with South Africa
over Namibia. Under intensied pressure, South Africa accepted UN
Security Council Resolution 435 of 29 September 1978 which called for
the withdrawal of South Africas illegal administration from Namibia
and the transfer of power to the people of Namibia with the assis-
tance of the UnitedNations. . . Resolution435 also establisheda United
Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) to supervise indepen-
dence elections. The Contact Group initiative foundered when South
Africa added more conditions to its withdrawal. Still seeking interna-
tional legitimacy for the occupation, South Africa also reformed its gov-
ernment of South West Africa by agreeing to elections for a Constituent
Assembly. South Africa sponsored the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance
(DTA) and SWAPO boycotted the December 1978 elections. The inter-
national community called the unsupervised elections illegal, and not
surprisingly, the DTA won. Thus, as one scholar noted, South Africa
managedtogive the appearance of co-operatingwiththe Contact Group
and moving the negotiations forward, while in fact avoiding rm com-
mitments and blocking progress.
126
In 1981, the Reagan administration proclaimed a new US policy
toward South Africa, constructive engagement. The Reagan admin-
istration opposed sanctions against South Africa, and Contact Group
efforts dissolved into trilateral negotiations, as the chief State Depart-
ment ofcer on Africa, Chester Crocker, began talks with Angola and
126
Jaster, The 1988 Peace Accords, p. 12. Also see Jaster, The Defence of White Power,
pp. 106108.
380
Alternative explanations
South Africa. In 1984 South Africa signed separate agreements to cease
military operations against Angola and Mozambique but soon ab-
rogated both. The Reagan administration began openly supporting
UNITA, eventually convincing the Congress to repeal the Clark Amend-
ment in 1985, and proposed a linkage strategy: South Africa would
agree to withdraw from Namibia if and when Cuban troops aiding An-
gola withdrew. The Angolan government briey withdrew from US
mediated negotiations in early 1986 but returned to the bargaining ta-
ble in mid July 1987. The Soviets joined the diplomatic effort, and in
May 1988 Cuba entered the negotiations. In late July 1988 the parties
agreed in principle that South Africa would leave Namibia and that
Cuba would withdraw its troops. From the point when Cuba joined
the negotiations and agreed to linkage, much of the bargaining was
over the pace of Cuban withdrawal from Angola and the timing of
Namibian independence.
127
There were no SWAPO representatives at
the negotiations. In December 1988, the Brazzaville Protocol agree-
ment to end the war between Angola and South Africa was formally
signed.
Implementation of the agreement was not awless, nor did peace im-
mediately follow in Angola and Namibia. Indeed, one of the largest
battles in the war in Namibia occurred in early April 1989: SWAPO
troops returning to Namibia were attacked by the SADF and more
than 200 SWAPO ghters died. Demobilization nevertheless contin-
ued and elections were held under UN supervision. SWAPO won a
majority and Namibia became independent on 21 March 1990 under a
SWAPO government.
128
One member of a South African psychological
action (propaganda) team deployed in Namibia, said I dont under-
stand how SWAPO won the independence elections in 1990 no one
we met in the villages said they supported SWAPO.
129
However, the
Namibian government publicly expressed concern that plots uncov-
ered to overthrow the SWAPO government in 1990 were orchestrated
by South Africa.
130
Indeed, in 1991 Nico Basson, a white South African
127
See Gerald J. Bender, Peacemaking in Southern Africa: the Luanda-Pretoria tug-of-
war, Third World Quarterly 11 ( January 1989), 1530; and Gillian Gunn, A Guide to the
Intricacies of the Angola-Namibia Negotiations,CSIS Africa Notes, no. 90 (8 September
1988).
128
The transition was also not without bitterness: In some predominantly white suburbs
around Windhoek [Namibias capital], residents are ying the swastika, according to
Mark Verbaan, Namibia: Opening a New Chapter,Africa Report 35 (MayJune 1990),
2528: 26.
129
Interview with the author, 27 May 1991, Pretoria, South Africa.
130
Africa Research Bulletin, Political Series, 27 (August 1990), 9804.
381
Argument and change in world politics
who worked for the South African-backed Democratic Turnhalle Al-
liance, described SADF efforts to inuence the 1989 election, inltrate
SWAPO, and sabotage the UN forces supervising the transition process
in 1989.
131
Ethical argument
At many points in the history of South West Africa/Namibia, it has
seemed as if brute force rather than ethical argument was decisive. Yet
ethical argument played a role throughout, shaping the material and
normative constraints felt by South Africa. First, sanctions by West-
ern governments whose interest in South Africas mineral wealth
would have argued against embargos were imposed primarily as
a consequence of ethical arguments made by the international anti-
apartheid movement. These sanctions placed military and economic
constraints on South Africa and hastened South Africas overextension.
The oil and arms embargoes were particularly harmful, exacerbating
the military constraints South Africa faced in Angola and Namibia.
132
Again, sanctions were put inplace as a consequence of normative beliefs
held by anti-apartheid activists who made successful ethical arguments
and would have been unlikely, even unthinkable, fty or one hundred
years earlier when dominant normative beliefs favored colonialism.
133
Second, South Africa faced increasingly effective resistance inside
Namibia, in part because SWAPO was able to use ethical arguments
to mobilize the international community in support of their struggle for
independence. The UNs recognitionof SWAPOas the sole andauthen-
tic representatives of the Namibian people meant that South Africa
never felt sufciently condent to ban SWAPOs legal political pres-
ence in Namibia.
134
And without nancial and material support from
the UN and others, SWAPO would have found it much more difcult
to ght the apartheid regime.
Third, although most of the political ferment in South Africa during
the 1970s and 1980s concerned apartheid, there were ethical arguments
inside South Africa about policy toward Namibia and South Africas
131
Christopher S. Wren, South African Describes Army Namibia Plot, The New York
Times, 1 July 1991, p. A7.
132
Neta C. Crawford, Trump Card or Theatre: An Introduction to Two Sanctions
Debates, pp. 324; How Arms Embargoes Work, pp. 4574; and Oil Sanctions Ag-
ainst Apartheid, pp. 103126, in Crawford and Klotz, eds., How Sanctions Work.
133
Audie Klotz, Norms in International Relations: The Struggle Against Apartheid (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1995).
134
Leys and Saul, Namibias Liberation Struggle, p. 14.
382
Alternative explanations
other neighbors. Ultimately, opinion about South African foreign policy
inside white South Africa became divided in the 1980s even as
the government attempted to silence dissenters and discredit their
arguments.
135
White South African males began to resist conscription
in larger and more vocal numbers, although some just quietly refused
to appear for their national service or yearly Citizen Force camps,
and some left the country, ostensibly to pursue higher education. The
End Conscription Campaign (ECC) formed in South Africa in 1983
mobilized white males of draft age in South Africa and was supported
by human rights, religious, womens, and student groups. As resistance
to conscription grew, ECC activists were detained and police raided the
homes and ofces of ECC members. The army formed a unit to track
down draft resisters in 1987, and in 1988 the government banned the
ECC.
136
In August 1988, just two weeks before the banning, the ECC
organized a public announcement by 143 white males of their refusal to
serve in the SADF. The ECC engaged in political education campaigns
about South African foreign policy: immediately after formation in
1983 the ECC embarked on a No War in Namibia campaign.
137
In
addition, the Committee on South African War Resistance, formed
in 1978, published a four part series focusing on South Africas
occupation of Namibia in its journal Resister.
138
In September 1989, 771
conscripts publicly refusedto serve inthe SADF.
139
The Deputy Minister
of Defence accused the ECC members of being weak: lacking in the
moral bre to defend the country against Russia and its surrogates.
140
135
During the 1980s, activists from all racial groups were subjected to government ban-
ning, detention, harassment, and assassination. For example, in 1985 the Congress of
South African Students was banned. In 1988 alone, 528 students, scholars, and teachers
were detained, while about 570 trade unionists, workers, and community political orga-
nizers were detained. From 1976 through the rst six months of 1988 18,675 people were
detained under security legislation and an estimated additional 40,996 were detained un-
der state of emergency regulations from 21 July 1985 to December 1988. David Webster
and Maggie Friedman, Repression and the State of Emergency: June 1987 March 1989,
South African Review 5, (Braamfontein, SA: Raven Press, 1989), pp. 1641.
136
Laurie Nathan, Marching to a Different Beat, in Cock and Nathan, eds., Society at
War, pp. 308323.
137
The best account of the ECC through 1988 is Nathan, Marching to a Different Beat.
The white anti-conscription movement is chronicled in the periodical, Resister: Journal of
the Committee on South African War Resistance, published in Britain until 1991. Also see Out
of Step: War Resistance in South Africa (London: Catholic Institute of International Relations,
1989).
138
The series began in Resister, no. 27 (AugustSeptember 1983).
139
We Say No to the SADF: National and International Registers Launched, Resister,
no. 64 (First Quarter 1990), 67: 7.
140
Quoted in Nathan, Marching to a Different Beat, p. 317.
383
Argument and change in world politics
Between 1975 and 1978, on average some 1,750 conscripts failed to
report for national service induction. In 1985, 7,589 conscripts failed to
report, 50 percent of the number to be inducted. The government said
later that most of these no-shows were accounted for, but stopped an-
nouncing induction gures for subsequent call-ups. The 1986 Defence
White Paper atly stated that the objections of churches to national ser-
vice will result in the Defence Force being reduced to inefciency.
141
In a government brochure describing national service commitments for
white males, the role of the anti-conscriptionmovement was minimized.
The brochure states that the reduction of the initial national service pe-
riod announced by the State President on 7 December 1989, was the
nal result of an investigation which was launched on our own initia-
tive earlier in the year and not in any way due to pressure frominformal
pressure groups.
142
Thus, the ethical arguments of the war resisters
who did not have to make arguments which could have led to govern-
ment harassment, abuse, and arrest contributed to the weakening of
South Africas military capabilities. In addition, there appeared to be
increased desertion among SADF troops serving in Namibia. In 1981,
of the 577 held in SADF detention centers, 519 were serving sentences
for refusing to serve in the eld or for going absent without leave.
143
Moreover, SADF conscripts were known to be deliberately vandalizing
military equipment in operational areas.
144
Finally, the anti-war movement in South Africa had some success
in changing white opinion. White support for South Africas policy of
attacking terrorist/guerrilla bases in neighboring states declined. In
1982, 81.1 percent of white South Africans agreed with this policy. In
May 1988, a poll showed 63 percent of whites supporting attacks and
by January 1990, 58.7 percent thought South Africa should attack such
bases. The intensity of white support also declined, with 60 percent of
those who denitely agree with the policy in 1982 and 1984 declining
to 23.9 percent denitely agreeing in 1990.
145
Thus, my analysis of the South West Africa case throughout the
book has shown the limits of an ethical argument explanation. Yet it
also demonstrates that what some call material factors namely the
141
RSA, White Paper on Defence and Armaments Supply 1986, p. 7.
142
RSA, SADF brochure, National Service, p. 12.
143
Coker, South Africas Security Dilemmas, p. 44.
144
Ibid., p. 45.
145
Andr e Du Pisani, What Do We Think? A Survey of White Opinion on Foreign Policy
Issues, No. 5 (Johannesburg: The South African Institute for International Affairs, May
1990), p. 10.
384
Alternative explanations
economic benets of occupation, the costs of sanctions, more effective
resistance in Namibia andAngola, andSouth Africas declining military
capability were affected by ethical argument. As bad as the German
and South African rule of South West Africa was, if there had been no
ethical argument, the situation would likely have been much worse for
the inhabitants of the region.
Counterfactuals
The strength and limits of an explanation are often tested by comparing
the actual turn of events to counterfactuals.
146
If key conditions had
been different could colonialismhave survived the twentieth century as
a legitimate institution? I briey discuss three counterfactuals.
First, if Germany had won World War I, how would the world be
different with respect to colonialism? There would certainly have been
no League of Nations since the League idea came out of the Anglo-
American community that won the war. Without the victory of the
Western allies, there would also likely have been no German or Turkish
territories to dispose of in some way or another. Further, without a
League and captured territory, there would have been no Mandate
system, no International Labor Organization, and no dominant powers
with populations interested in championing self-determination and
institutionalizing those beliefs.
The fact that Germany lost World War I, and had its colonies stripped
from its possession, contributed not only to the Mandate system, but to
Germanys post-war grievances. A German colonial lobby formed after
World War I to protest the peace settlement persistently called for recol-
onization and both private and government resources were devoted to
persuading Germans of the values of colonies. They argued that they
neededlivingspace andthat their former Africancolonies, the League
mandates, had been stolen from them and should be returned.
147
During the mid-1930s, the Nazi government raised what became
known as the Colonial Question. Germany argued that Britain had
exaggerated or lied about their ill-treatment of South West Africans
146
I thank Jon Mercer for reminding me of the importance of explicitly discussing coun-
terfactuals. Auseful introductionis PhilipE. Tetlock andAaronBelkin, eds., Counterfactual
Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Methodological, and Psychological Perspectives
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
147
See Wolfe W. Schmokel, Dream of Empire: German Colonialism, 19191945 (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1964).
385
Argument and change in world politics
and others and used ofcial government publications to counter the
colonial guilt lie. When the Nazis and Italians raised the Colonial
Question to British diplomats in the 1930s, there was a serious dis-
cussion of the issues in Britain, although the British ultimately, for
several reasons, decided against returning the colonies to their former
colonial masters. Some argued that return would break up British lines
of communication on the African continent. The British public was also
against returning the colonies. Further, ethical arguments supposing
that a change in the language spoken in the mandated territory would
harm education efforts implied the Africans right to self-determination.
According to the Labour Party, this might well put back the clock of
advancement for the indigenous population for a generation, and that
population has a moral right to veto them which the Labour Party
should uphold.
148
In the House of Commons Debate on the question
on 7 December 1938, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Malcolm
MacDonald, assured the House that both the wishes of the inhabitants
of the territories and of the House itself would have to be considered
before any decision was taken.
149
What if Germany, Italy, andJapanhadwonWorldWar II? The German
Reich was explicitly bent on re-establishing German colonial territory,
and Germanys place in the sun, and there is good evidence to believe
the German government would have undertaken new colonization if it
hadbeensuccessful inthe war. Further, in1939, the Germangovernment
undertook planning for a colonial empire that included, among other
things, a reliance on forced labor.
150
Germany, Italy, and Japan also took
territory and established colonies during the war. If the Axis powers
had won, the League of Nations, already essentially ended at the outset
of World War II, would likely not have had a successor in the formof the
United Nations. There would have been no United Nations Trusteeship
System and no Declaration on Non-Self-Governing Territories. Further,
if the Nazis had won, Nazi Germanys racist beliefs would probably not
have been so thoroughly discounted in the West.
Both of these counterfactual scenarios highlight the key conditions of
democratic normative beliefs and culture. Specically, the outlines of
148
Labour Party, The Demand for Colonial Territories and Equality of Economic Opportunity
(memorandum, March 1937), p. 48 quoted in D.J. Morgan, The Ofcial History of Colo-
nial Development, Vol. 1: The Origins of British Aid Policy, 19241945 (London: Macmillan,
1980), p. 21.
149
Morgan, The Ofcial History of Colonial Development, vol. I, p. 21.
150
Schmokel, Dream of Empire: German Colonialism, 19191945, pp. 137184.
386
Alternative explanations
the colonial policies and practices of Germany, Italy, and Japan were
little different from those of Britain or France. The differences were
in their domestic political orders. The defeat of Germany and its al-
lies by more democratic states who were willing and able to impose
their democratic norms on the conquered ensured the triumph of po-
litical liberalism, specically the greater articulation and extension of
democratic normative beliefs and practices in both the core democ-
racies of the West and in those powers relations to their colonies.
The necessity to articulate the principles at stake in the two wars
solidied and heightened the commitment to democracy and self-
determination in the victorious states. The contradictions andhypocrisy
of colonialism by self-proclaimed democracies were also highlighted
and heightened by the wars. The cluster of principles and normative
beliefs that fed into the evolving practice and emergent norm of de-
colonization principles of equality, self-determination, nationalism,
democracy, human rights, non-intervention, and anti-racism gained
broader persuasive power as they were increasingly applied in the
heart of the colonial powers, the mother countries, and as these ar-
guments were generalized beyond the privileged members of colonial
society.
Would the colonizers have remained had colonial resistance move-
ments beenless effective? Most anti-colonial resistance movements were
never great military threats to colonial powers. But they did raise the
ethical stakes by posing the problem of how the colonial power would
respond. Andthe political effectiveness of anti-colonial movements was
signicant. They articulated ethical dilemmas, publicized colonial gov-
ernment atrocities, and humanized the colonized in the eyes of the col-
onizer. Moreover, to the extent that anti-colonial movements were able
to force concessions such as unionization, political representation, and
judicial reform, they were an integral part of the decolonization process.
Less effective anti-colonial movements would thus likely have meant a
longer life for colonialism.
How ethical arguments undermined colonialism
Practitioners of colonialism made arguments in favor of the practice
based on religious/philosophical, practical, scientic, and identity be-
liefs. The core of these arguments contained a sharp distinction between
Europeans and outsiders and the belief in Western European religious,
economic, cultural, biological, and scientic superiority. Yet there were
387
Argument and change in world politics
always Europeans, and of course Native Americans, Africans, and
Asians, who questioned the beliefs and practices of colonialism, and
in particular its most harsh elements, slavery and forced labor. In-
deed, the main arguments about colonialism between 1492 and 1900
concerned the ethics of its two primary constitutive practices, slavery
and forced labor, rather than any serious questioning of colonialism
itself.
The ethical explanation for decolonization stresses two consequences
of ethical argument. First, ethical arguments fostered growing disbelief
in the normality, legitimacy, and necessity for slavery and colonialism,
ultimately nurturing what became a widespread normative distaste for
colonial empire among the political elites and mass public of colonial
powers. Slavery and colonialism depend logically on a belief in human
inequality while arguments about the rights of humans are cumula-
tive and expanding by the nature of their content. Specically, there
was no logical limit to applying human rights and self-determination
arguments once people began to believe, at least in principle, in human
equality.
What is the logicalconnectionbetweenthe endof slaveryandforced
labor, and decolonization? The cluster of principles and normative be-
liefs that fed into the evolving practice and emergent behavioral norm
of decolonization are: equality, self-determination, nationalism, democ-
racy, human rights, non-intervention, and anti-racism. What these nor-
mative beliefs have in common is respect for the other and non-violent
relations that is their core value. These values were extended(oftenim-
perfectly and sometimes hypocritically) from sovereigns to individual
humans in the core with increased democratization for white males, to
the idea of universal human freedom (the abolition of slavery) to other
historically weak groups (women and minorities) and states (decolo-
nization and non-intervention).
Earlyadvocates of colonial reformandlater proponents of decoloniza-
tion called on colonizers to act in ways that were consistent with their
(evolving) identities, including their newly discovered empathy with
the other, colonial subjects. Ultimately, persuasive ethical arguments
caused a shift in opinion on the issue of the legitimacy of colonialism
among non-colonial powers, and then reformers and anti-imperialists
inside the colonial powers. Later, the non-colonial states pressuredreluc-
tant colonial powers into granting their colonies independence. Ethical
arguments about reforming colonialism harnessed the emotions of em-
barrassment andshame onthe part of colonizers. Andethical arguments
388
Alternative explanations
(as well as practical and identity arguments) were used by the colonized
to mobilize their peers to resist it.
151
Second, persuasive ethical arguments changed the economic and po-
litical context for colonialism: bymakingslaveryillegitimate, persuasive
ethical arguments increased the costs of colonialism and decreased its
prots; and by making aspects of colonial rule illegitimate, persuasive
ethical arguments decreased the willingness of domestic populations in
the metropole tosupport colonialism. Specically, because of persuasive
ethical arguments, two important constituent practices of colonialism,
slavery and forced labor, became increasingly suspect (they were defa-
miliarized and delegitimized) as colonial powers democratized. Nor-
mative beliefs and ethical arguments helped anti-slavery movements
outlawslavery andregulate forcedlabor. As the colonizer hadto pay for
labor, some of the costs of colonialismincreased and the greater expense
was used as evidence that colonialism was no longer in the economic
interests of great powers. The belief systems and practices surround-
ing and supporting colonialism as the dominant practice among great
powers were thus modied by the changing view of the normality of its
constitutive and related practices.
Further, persuasive ethical arguments shifted colonial actors concep-
tions of their interests andalteredthe capabilities of the colonizers as the
growing normative revulsion for empire and its constitutive practices
was accompanied by domestic resistance to the burdens of empire.
152
The domestic populations of colonial powers increasingly resisted the
taxes and conscription required to maintain colonial holdings. The
source for this domestic revulsion and resistance among the publics of
the colonizers was the sense that empire was not right and certainly
not worth the torture, repression, and vast sums of money required
to maintain it. Domestic resistance to empire was not new what was
perhaps new in the twentieth century was the role of international
media and thus the extent to which the publics of colonizers were aware
of the techniques their governments used to sustain empire. What was
also new was the unwillingness of colonial publics to use violence, es-
pecially genocide and torture, to maintain empire. And it was no longer
glorious for colonizers to die for empire because of these new identity
151
Hendrik Spruyt, The End of Empire and the Extension of the Westphalian System:
The Normative Basis of the Modern State Order, International Studies Review 2 (Summer
2000), 6592.
152
This discussion should not be taken to mean that public sentiments in favor of, or
against, colonialism were the same among all European colonizers.
389
Argument and change in world politics
and normative beliefs. Thus, the ability of colonial powers to impose
colonialism declined as the balance of belief shifted from supporters of
colonialism to supporters of reform and decolonization. There was no
longer an international consensus on the virtues of maintaining colonial
rule.
It also became harder to mobilize domestic populations for colo-
nial occupation at the same time as resistance inside the colonies in-
creased, altering the capabilities of actors in the colonialanti-colonial
equation. It was no longer possible, as the great powers had done
in the late nineteenth century with their embargo on shipping arms
to Africa, to deny support to anti-colonial movements. Mainstream
liberals and socialists were willing, and frequently eager, to supply
anti-colonial movements with money, and sometimes weapons. The
greater legitimacy and international support for anti-colonial inde-
pendence movements led to stronger guerrilla movements and le-
gal challenges to colonial rule as outsiders sent aid to independence
forces.
How and why did new normative beliefs come to be applied to colo-
nial subjects? There were two catalysts for the shift toward recognizing
a principle and then a right to self-determination in the colonies: the end
of slavery and the articulation, by colonial subjects, of their rights. Both
of these catalysts fostered a long-term movement toward the human-
ization of the other, in this case, those who were different from those
with military power: the growing acknowledgment by states and so-
cieties that all individuals, regardless of their citizenship, race, religion,
or other dening characteristics, are entitled to basic protections of life,
property, and contract.
153
Perhaps as important as the end of slavery was the fact that West-
ern educated members of the colonial empires were able to press their
case themselves, in increasing numbers after World Wars I and II, us-
ing the language and the legal justicatory modes of the colonizers.
This is not the same as the argument that European nationalism spread
to the colonies and infected indigenous peoples with national aspira-
tions. Nor is it to say that anti-colonial ethical arguments originated in
153
Ethan Nadelmann, Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in Interna-
tional Society, International Organization 44 (Autumn1990), 479526: 483. Moreover, as the
historian Michael Adas has argued, the very brutality of World War I contributed to the
sense that the so-called civilized nations were not so civilized. Michael Adas, Machines as
the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1989), ch. 6.
390
Alternative explanations
the West.
154
Rather, the publics and political elites of the great powers
foundit increasingly difcult to argue that the subject races were inca-
pable of self-government not yet able to standby themselves when
clearly intelligent and articulate members of those peoples fought with
Europeans during the world wars and then came to Europe to present
their own case, in the language of the colonizers and from within the
logic of their dominant belief systems of Christianity, democracy, and
free markets. Thus, the identities of both the colonizer and the colo-
nized were reconstructed through anti-colonial arguments made by the
colonized and the colonizer became more receptive to decolonization
arguments.
Emotions, specically, empathy and identication, were also impor-
tant in the decolonization process but their causal role is deeply inter-
twinedwiththe role of arguments.
155
As long as the colonizer couldhate
and disdain the colonized, it was easier to maintain beliefs in European
superiority and the right, indeed obligation, to replace the political, so-
cial, and economic systems of the colonized with those of the colonizer.
The belief in European superiority also interfered with the colonizers
ability to appreciate and empathize with the victims of slavery, forced
labor, mutilation, and torture. Decolonization became possible only in
an era when the beliefs about colonial subjects were reassessed. The
ethical arguments that challenged colonial beliefs about the colonized
would likely not have been as persuasive had not the colonizer begun to
feel differently about the colonized; the colonizer would likely not have
felt differently about the colonized had they maintained their belief in
European superiority.
The process of institutionalizing normative beliefs in international
treaties and the procedures of international organization was also ex-
tremelyimportant. Once certainnormative beliefs were put intopractice
and institutionalized, for instance by translating the belief into colonial
law or by making a practice subject to the international oversight of
the Permanent Mandates Commission, the colonial world was changed.
154
Robert H. Jackson, The Weight of Ideas in Decolonization: Normative Change
in International Relations, in Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, eds., Ideas and
Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1993), pp. 111138: 112, 119, 134.
155
I am not the rst to point out the importance of emotions in this context. Ethan
Nadelmann argues that norms emerge and are promoted because they reect not only
the economic and security interests of dominant members of international society but
also their moral interests and emotional dispositions. Nadelmann, Global Prohibition
Regimes, p. 524.
391
Argument and change in world politics
Thus, endingslaverychangedthe economic andpolitical context of colo-
nialism; the articulation and implementation of good labor practices in
the colonies after World War I enabled labor to appeal unfair practices,
and it lowered barriers to labor organizing; and the articulation and
implementation of the normative belief in sacred trust and develop-
ment eventually led to a greater role for colonial subjects in their own
government, creating sites where native critics of colonial policy could
make their arguments heard and affect other colonial practices. This
was a sort of ethical boot-strapping: successful ethical arguments led
to institutionalization of new normative beliefs, and when the standard
operating procedures of colonialism changed, the social movement mo-
bilization for decolonization became easier.
This is not to say, as Robert Jackson does, that there is an irreversibil-
ity about these political norms.
156
Nor is it to argue, as Jackson does,
that the normative ideas of self-determination not only preempted
colonialism but also precluded its reform into international trusteeship,
say, or associate statehood.
157
He suggests that as an indication of the
preemptive character of anti-colonial ideas, colonial institutions and
policies are not only untenable but even unthinkable.
158
Rather, as the humanitarian intervention debate of the early and mid-
1990s shows, ethical arguments can support a variety of institutions
and practices including the reinstitution of colonialism or the Mandate
System. For example, advocates of humanitarian intervention have
argued that humanitarian interventions to save the failed states of
the world are in the self-interests (in terms of economic gains and global
stability) of the great powers.
159
Similarly, historian Paul Johnsons
proposedsolutionto the problems of corrupt government andeconomic
disaster is international trusteeship managed by the civilized coun-
tries: The Security Council could commit a territory where authority
has irretrievably broken down to one or more trustees . . . empowered
not merely to impose order by force but to assume political functions.
He suggests that the mandate of the trustees would usually be of
limited duration 5, 10, 20 years . . . and their ultimate object would
be to take constitutional measures to insure a return to effective
self-government with all deliberate speed. But the mandate may
156
Jackson, The Weight of Ideas, p. 137; also see pp. 113, 138.
157
Ibid., p. 115.
158
Ibid., p. 138.
159
Gerald B. Helman and Steven R. Ratner, Saving Failed States, Foreign Policy 89
(Winter 19921993), 320.
392
Alternative explanations
last 50 years, or 100.
160
He argues: The only satisfaction will be the
unspoken gratitude of millions of misgoverned or ungoverned people
who will nd in this altruistic revival of colonialism the only way out
of their present intractable miseries.
161
Johnson attempts to make
his argument persuasive in a context where colonialism is thoroughly
delegitemized by painting a picture of past colonialism as a benevolent
institution, reluctantly initiated by colonizers (who thought they were
doing good), and maintained for the purpose of obtaining trade and
spreading civilization and stability. They [the Europeans] could not
trade without stability, and to get stability they had to impose it. So
they built little forts, which became bigger and eventually turned into
the nucleus of colonies. European colonialism in its origins was to some
extent a reluctant and involuntary process.
162
But Johnsons argument
is less persuasive now than it might have been during the 1960s.
What has changed over the last one thousand years is the growth of
the belief in human equality. Yet, decolonization did not become the be-
havioral normsimply because of the endof slavery or the presence of In-
dians, Asians, and Africans in the midst of the imperial powers. Rather,
it was the arguments that were framed, extended, or sparked by these
events, and the contradictions these arguments exposed (between the
rhetoric of self-determination that was so widely proclaimed during the
world wars and the actual conditions of the people in the colonies) that
led to a growing recognition and inuence of ideas about the equality of
the other that formed the core of the decolonization regime.
163
Social
movements denormalized and delegitimized both slavery and colonial-
ism. The publicity efforts of the social movements, as well as press cov-
erage, were crucial in this process. Reformers both inside the colonies
and in the metropole exposed and publicized the colonial condition,
especially the facts that imprisonment, censorship and torture were im-
portant elements of maintaining colonialism and suppressing indige-
nous movements.
164
They were able to reframe these practices from
160
Paul Johnson, Colonialisms Back And Not a Moment Too Soon, New York Times
Magazine 18 April 1993, pp. 22, 4344: 44.
161
Ibid., p. 44.
162
Ibid., p. 43.
163
As M.J. Bonn said: The democracies of the West had become genuine democracies;
they realized the incongruity of vast empires ruled by democracy. Imperialism, as a
missionary creed, did not appeal to the masses any longer. Bonn, The Crumbling of
Empire, p. 153.
164
On transnational social movements see Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Ac-
tivists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks inTransnational Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1998).
393
Argument and change in world politics
being understood as necessary and ultimately benevolent and repre-
sent them as horric, counterproductive, and alien to the values and
identity of Europeans.
Anti-colonial arguments had been made for centuries before the
twentiethcentury process of decolonization began; what made those
arguments persuasive to more people were changes in the culture of the
metropole. Military repressionandcrude exploitationwere increasingly
distasteful to colonizers because, and to the extent that, the culture of
those societies had become more democratic. But, this is only part of the
causal story; without a shift in the interests and capabilities within the
colonial powers (partially driven by these shifting normative beliefs)
formal colonialism would probably not have given way to decoloniza-
tion. This is why it is so important to understand how normative beliefs
and ethical arguments can become institutionalized and change the eco-
nomic and political context.
Was it primarily the delegitimation of colonialism that led to decolo-
nization or did ethical arguments contribute to changing assessments
within the colonial powers of the values they assigned to empire, and
hence to changing the very interests of the imperial powers? Or did eth-
ical arguments and normative beliefs play little independent role, with
most of the impetus for decolonization borne by the changing interests
and capabilities of the colonizers? As Nadelmann has argued, It is dif-
cult and often impossible to determine whether those who conform
to a particular norm do so because they believe the norm is just and
should be followed, or because adherence to the norm coincides with
their other principle interests, or because they fear the consequences
that ow from defying the norm, or simply because conforming to the
norm has become a matter of habit or custom.
165
The ethical argument explanationfor the endof colonialismpasses the
tests I proposed in chapter 2 for demonstrating the causal importance
of normative belief and ethical argument. First, there is the temporal
test. Normative beliefs should be raised and ethical arguments should
be given and found persuasive before practices are changed. Years, if not
several decades, of ethical argument preceded changing colonial prac-
tices. Indeed one of the ndings of this book is just how long it takes to
alter deeply embedded, widespread, taken for granted social practices.
Second, after an ethical argument succeeds, that is, convinces a suf-
cient number of people so that a once taken for granted practice is no
165
Nadelmann, Global Prohibition Regimes, p. 480.
394
Alternative explanations
longer a given, one would expect a (not necessarily universal) congru-
ence between the normative beliefs that underpinned the ethical argu-
ments and the behavior. In other words, if slavery and forced labor are
found to be wrong, they should no longer be widely practiced. Indeed,
although it took decades, both slavery and colonialism were largely
eliminated. Where they do continue to exist, these practices are either
not tolerated, as in the case of slavery and unmodied colonialism, or
the institution has been modied, as with colonialism, so that it does not
have the same features as the older institution. Even where colonies re-
main, they have political institutions which involve signicant political
participation for the colonized and some form of self-government.
The third test is whether normative beliefs that underpin ar-
guments for changing a practice are used in arguments about cor-
rect behavior, and those who use them are not ignored or mocked.
This occurred in the case of colonialism with the normative belief
in self-determination initially expressed by Woodrow Wilson, W.E.B.
Du Bois, and other leaders of this generation. International leaders
of the next generation, for example, Prime Minister Churchill (a for-
mer colonial minister), who balked at the application of the Atlantic
Charter to British colonies, felt bound not only to use the words of
self-determination, but to help institutionalize the process of decoloni-
zation by consenting to elements of the UN Charter that applied to
non-self-governing territories. By the early 1960s, even the colonial
powers were unwilling to vote against anti-colonial resolutions at the
UnitedNations andthe prime minister of Britainwas compelledtomake
a speech about the independence wind of change blowing through
Africa.
Fourth, we can believe that normative beliefs and ethical arguments
have some causal force if, when their prescriptions for behavior are not
adhered to, those who out them attempt to justify their (non-normal)
behavior on ethical or practical grounds. South Africa for decades tried
to do this at both the United Nations and the International Court of
Justice. That South Africa felt compelled to make its arguments about
South West Africa on ethical grounds showed the dominance of partic-
ular normative beliefs and the importance of the process of argument.
A fth test, that normative beliefs should be linked with other nor-
mative beliefs, and become part of the arguments used to advance
these other beliefs a test for coherence was certainly satised.
Anti-slavery, human rights, and self-determination beliefs were dis-
cussed together, with each normative beliefs reasoning being used to
395
Argument and change in world politics
legitimize the other normative beliefs. This cluster of beliefs became a
rich, deeply intertwined, discourse of both argument and law. The clus-
ter of normative beliefs associated with decolonization were linked in
arguments and increasingly applied to UN resolutions and actions that
supported human rights in colonial and newly independent states. If
normative beliefs were unimportant, and ethical arguments unpersua-
sive, then no one would bother using them as the foundation for other
normative beliefs or ethical arguments.
Sixth, if ethical arguments and normative beliefs have power, we
should expect the use of international sanctions, by the majority of the
international community, to change the behavior of those who violate
the normative prescriptions, or to punish those who support such norm
violators. Sanctions were used against violators of the anti-colonial nor-
mative prescription. For example, an arms embargo and other sanc-
tions were put in place by states and international organizations against
South Africa because of its occupation of Namibia. In addition, as UN
and OAU sanctions against Portugal and South Africa demonstrated,
sanctions were not only discussed and approved, they were applied.
166
Still, there were no signicant international sanctions against China for
its occupation of Tibet, at least by 2001.
Finally, since we would never expect rational actors to behave con-
trary to their interests, ethical arguments may be viewed as causally
important whether, and to the extent that, actors with incentives to vio-
late normative prescriptions act counter to their interests and follow
the new normative prescriptions, or re-frame their interests in light of
coming to hold new normative beliefs. For this last test to be valid three
conditions should hold: states (or the inuential elites that shape gov-
ernment policies) should know their interests (or at least believe they
do); actors should not have been compelled by other (non-normative)
circumstances, such as a change in their ability to pursue their interests
because of, for example, sanctions; andactors must not have foundsome
other way of achieving the same ends, while not technically violating
the normative prescriptions that followed from ethical arguments.
167
166
Sanctions were not universally applied by members of the international commu-
nity. See Landgren, Embargo Disimplemented; George W. Shephard, ed., Effective Economic
Sanctions (New York: Preager, 1991); and Crawford and Klotz, eds., How Sanctions Work.
167
Of course if actors change their behavior due to sanctions imposed by others acting
from normative convictions, then an ethical explanation is appropriate. Similarly, if actors
change their means for achieving the same ends, they may have done so as to appear in
compliance with normative beliefs.
396
Alternative explanations
The rational interest test is, of course, problematic because actors un-
derstanding of their interests change as their normative beliefs change.
As implied above, we might better ask about the degree to which actors
understanding of their interests change as a consequence of normative
beliefs. This simple interest test of the effectiveness of normative ar-
guments do actors act counter to their interests? ought not to be seen
as putting a rm barrier or making a dichotomy between the normative
and the self-interested behavior of actors. Nevertheless, for the sake of
clarity, I will consider the interest versus normative belief argument in
its pure form here.
Colonial powers frequently acted against their interests and often
could not demonstrate their economic interests were being met in any
given colonial enterprise. Further, those interests were as much ethi-
cal, cultural, and religious as they were economic. Still, if one takes
a narrow interpretation of interests as economic or strategic, there is
some evidence that normative beliefs and ethical arguments on occa-
sion trumped material interests. Certainly, the greatest colonial power
inthenineteenthandtwentiethcenturies, actedagainst its perceivedin-
terests by outlawing the slave trade and peacefully withdrawing from
several of its colonies. British elites openly and privately discussed their
fears that ending slavery or decolonizing might hurt themeconomically.
Yet they did both anyway.
I have throughout emphasized the mechanisms of argument and
change. Yet we must also ask more generally why some arguments
are persuasive, and others not. In the context of decolonization, I have
shown how advocates of change (and somewhat unwittingly, the prag-
matic reformers) overcame the extrinsic andintrinsic constraints on suc-
cessful argument. But change did not go as far as it could have gone.
Specically, some argue that neocolonialism the informal penetration
and control of weaker states by the great powers and multinational cor-
porations based in the former colonial powers is such an effective
means of extraction that the colonizers simply shifted from one method
of exploitation to another. In other words, the colonizers gave up on for-
mal empire without muchresistance because theyfounda more efcient
and less distasteful (to their publics) method of domination. However,
if neocolonialism was recognized by the political and business leaders
of colonial states to be efcient, why didnt all great and small powers
immediately move to set up neocolonial relations and withdraw from
colonies the moment they had established the means for informal con-
trol? Raising or framing the condition of neocolonial relations shows
397
Argument and change in world politics
both the penetration of normative beliefs about self-determination and
the discursive and institutional limits of those beliefs as they developed
historically. In other words, to ask why decolonization was limited in
most ways to the granting of political control is to articulate the extent
to which the belief in self-determination, understood as a political and
physical right, has penetrated our understanding of relations between
peoples. Decolonization was limited primarily to the political realm
because the emphasis of the decolonization process, as it developed
out of the anti-slavery and colonial reform movement and the League
of Nations Mandate system, was on decolonizing bodies and granting
political representation. As Antonio Cassese argues, the term alien
domination or subjugation does not contemplate economic exploita-
tion. Rather alien subjugation, domination, and exploitation cover sit-
uations in which one Power dominates the people of a foreign territory by
recourse to force.
168
Neocolonialism has not escaped critique. It is just that the challenge
is relatively weak at the rst stages of a meta-argument framing eco-
nomic relations between former colonies and colonizers as exploitation,
andthendenormalizinganddelegitimizingunequal relations. Free mar-
ket capitalism is still the dominant belief system, or as Antonio Gramsci
would say, it is hegemonic. In fact, capitalist beliefs and culture have
obviously grown stronger with the end of Soviet style communism and
the weakening of European and non-aligned movement experiments
in socialism. Before economic relations between former colonizers and
their former colonies can signicantly change, both the ethical and prac-
tical arguments of those who argue against neocolonialism will have
to become more persuasive. Persuasive ethical arguments that change
complex social systems must rst reframe the dominant practice. Re-
formers arguments must denormalize and delegitimize the dominant
practice. Activists must also propose an alternative and work to change
the balance of political power that supports the dominant practice. But
ultimately their success depends on gradually institutionalizing new
normative beliefs. This is hard work, it may take decades or even cen-
turies, and the ripple effects of argument and change may go in direc-
tions unanticipated by reformers.
168
Antonio Cassese, Self-determination of Peoples: A Legal Reappraisal (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 99.
398
9 Poiesis and praxis: toward
ethical world politics
Violence is for the morallyinfallible. If youare convincedthat youalone
have truth, there is little recourse but to threaten, intimidate, bribe or
coerce those who disagree with you if they do not come around to your
view or ultimately if these methods are unavailing, to use force. That,
more or less, is what we see on the international scene today.
1
While the last decade of the twentieth century was characterized by
the reconguration of worldpolitics with the endof the ColdWar, it was
also markedby arguments about humanitarianinterventions (e.g. Haiti,
Somalia, Kosovo) and the failure to intervene (Rwanda). In some cases,
most dramaticallyinRwanda where a genocide occurredbefore the eyes
of the world in 1994, the failure to undertake humanitarian intervention
prompted, for some, remorse and a desire to act more quickly. Remorse
was heightened when General Romeo Delaire of Canada, who com-
manded the UN force in Kigali prior to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda,
said that a force of 5,000 trained soldiers could have prevented much
of the killing. On the other hand, some fear that easing the legal and
political path to humanitarian interventions will lead to more interven-
tions undertaken for self-interested or strategic reasons. The legitimacy
and conduct of humanitarian intervention the threat or use of military
force to protect or promote human rights is thus likely to remain one of
the central problems of world politics. At issue is the future of millions
of people who, if not rescued by the international community, or some
benevolent power, may be left to suffer or die at the hands of brutal dic-
tators or genocidal aggressors. Or perhaps the subjects of humanitarian
1
Robert Holmes, On War and Morality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989),
p. 288.
399
Argument and change in world politics
intervention will be rescued but still suffer under the inept, if benev-
olent and paternalistic, guiding hand of their saviors who set up short
or medium-term governments to save failed states. Humanitarian in-
terventions may slide down the slippery slope to humanitarian occu-
pations and state building.
2
It is thus crucial to ask how the recourse to
humanitarian intervention will be decided and how such interventions
will be conducted.
Although the change from analysis to prescription and from colo-
nialism and decolonization to issues of humanitarian intervention may
seemabrupt, I take up these questions for several reasons. First, debates
about humanitarian intervention are in many ways a continuation of
arguments about colonialism and decolonization. When scholars, poli-
cymakers, andcitizens propose interveningtosave failedstates or tohalt
humanitarian disasters, they may do so because they fear the instability
that can result from such crises. But interveners also often articulate a
moral or religious obligation to act to protect others.
3
The impulses and
arguments in favor of humanitarian intervention are thus not dissimi-
lar to colonial arguments: advocates of humanitarian intervention pose
justications that recall the civilizing mission of colonialism, while the
subjects of these interventions also often articulate uneasiness with their
conduct, likening them to recolonization. As President Robert Mugabe
of Zimbabwe said at the Millennium Summit: If the new millennium,
like the last, remains an age of hegemonic empires and conquerors do-
ing the same old things in new technological ways, remains the age of
the master race, the master economy and the master state, then I am
afraid we in developing countries will have to stand up as a matter of
principle and say, Not again.
4
Second, decolonization and humanitarian interventions are histori-
cally linked through the mandate and trusteeship systems and speci-
cally through United Nations activismin the transition fromSouth West
Africa to Namibia. Namibia is perhaps the prototype case of the inter-
national community taking an activist role in preventing human rights
abuse, sending troops to protect human rights, and using its capacity to
build states.
2
Ernst B. Haas, Beware the Slippery Slope: Notes toward the Denition of Justiable
Intervention, in Laura Reed and Carl Kaysen, eds., Emerging Norms of Justied Interven-
tion (Cambridge: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1983), pp. 6387.
3
See Cecelia Lynch, Acting on Belief: Christian Perspectives on Suffering and Violence,
Ethics & International Affairs 14 (2000), 8397.
4
QuotedinBarbara Crossette, U.N. MeetingEnds WithDeclarationof CommonValues,
The New York Times, 9 September 2000, A1.
400
Poiesis and praxis
The UNs role in South West Africa evolved over the course of four
decades from witnessing, documenting, and publicizing South African
abuse, to assisting Namibias independence movement, to determin-
ing the structure and process of the transition from South African oc-
cupation and rule toward independence. In 1967 the UN essentially
set up a shadow government of Namibia when the UNGA passed
a resolution creating the UN Council for South West Africa, and the
UN began to give signicant resources to SWAPO. In 1978, the UN
Security Council passed Resolution 435 which set up a transition assis-
tance group to assist with new elections when they should occur. In
1982, the UN drew up a Settlement Plan which contained the princi-
ples for a Constituent Assembly in Namibia and for a Constitution.
The UN also developed an informal checklist for the impartial gover-
nance of Namibia during what would be a period of transition from
the illegal government of South Africa to the legal government of
Namibia. In 1989 the UN Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) was
nally created and put in place to supervise elections and a tran-
sition to democracy for Namibia. Concrete planning for decoloniza-
tion and state-building thus occurred over the course of about seven
years. The plans included a code of conduct for the elections, agreed
to by all parties, and plans for the demobilization, disarmament, and
reintegration of about 30,000 former combatants, restructuring of the
police force, and democratization. UN assistance for elections for de-
colonization was not new; what was new was the complexity of the
mission the UN Special Representative and UNTAG were engaged
in the detailed logistics of the demilitarization of South West Africa
at the same time that it set up a shadow government, provided hu-
manitarian assistance, and supervised elections. Before the UN forces
arrived in 1989 there was a terrible clash between South African forces
and SWAPO. Demilitarization and a more or less peaceful democratic
transition were guaranteed by the UNTAG military presence which
numbered about 8,000 in total, from 110 countries, functioning as civil-
ian police monitors, election supervisors, and military personnel in
UNTAG in 1989. UNTAG was considered a success and a model:
SWAPO wanted help, the world provided it, and elections were de-
clared free and fair with the new government taking over peacefully in
1990.
Third, the possibility and practice of humanitarian interventions
raises the question of how to reconcile clashing normative beliefs.
Specically, the development of Western theories of sovereignty, as
401
Argument and change in world politics
well as the long history of colonialism and the struggle for decolo-
nization, generated a deserved respect for the legal and political con-
cepts of self-determination and non-intervention. On the other hand,
the development of human rights norms which helped to create
the conditions for decolonization elevates the status of the individ-
ual in world politics and challenges the inviolability of sovereignty
as a legal protection for states which violate human rights. Some
even argue that states vitiate their sovereignty when they violate
the social contract by allowing or engaging in human rights abuses.
Humanitarian intervention thus pits powerful normative beliefs and
international legal conventions against each other: state sovereignty
and the rule of law may be violated to protect or promote individual
rights.
Fourth, the discussion in the preceding chapters about the uses of eth-
ical argument, emotion, and strategic political action to abolish slavery,
curb forced labor, and end colonialism illustrates how nascent beliefs
may become dominant and how an informal international polity may
coalesce to govern specic issue areas and change dominant practices.
Arguments and beliefs make the world as much or more than economic
factors or a drive for power. I showed that normative beliefs shaped
colonial practice and ethical arguments were used to uphold colonial-
ism. I also showed how colonial reformers and anti-colonial activists
deployed ethical (as well as practical and scientic) arguments to un-
dermine the practices and ultimately the legitimacy of colonialism; new
normative beliefs were institutionalized in international organizations
and colonies, further undermining colonial practice. When the majority
of states, expressing and acting on the political will of those who sought
to end slavery and colonialism, changed their practices and developed
new laws, they both purposely and inadvertently reformed world pol-
itics. It is possible to do so again with regard to the related problem of
humanitarian intervention.
This chapter develops a framework for a poiesis and praxis of eth-
ical argument using discourse ethics and thus marks a sea change in
the tone and substantive focus of the book from analysis to sugges-
tions for practical action. Poiesis is the Greek word for the process of
making something, and praxis is the utilization of theoretical knowl-
edge in a practical activity. I propose a discourse ethical approach to
the problem of humanitarian intervention. Specically, I suggest that
interested actors consciously conduct an ethical argument on the ques-
tions of when the resort to humanitarian intervention is just, and how
402
Poiesis and praxis
such interventions shall be conducted, using techniques based on dis-
course ethics. The aim is to develop a convention on humanitarian
intervention.
But before proceeding to a discussion of how humanitarian interven-
tion may be usefully addressed through discourse ethics, I establish a
role for both ethics and ethical argument in world politics. I then turn
to the question of why ethical arguments, which might clash with self-
interests narrowly dened, are sometimes appealing. I then review dis-
course ethics, suggesting how it might be used to address the problem
of humanitarian intervention.
Potential for ethical praxis
There are at least three conicting arguments widely heard about the
potential of international ethics.
5
Realists argue that there are noethics in
international life moralityis a g-leaf for interests. Humanrights have
purely instrumental value in the political culture; they provide a useful
tool for propaganda, nothing more.
6
The ethics of international life is
the ethics of the dominant powers; the strong do as they will, the weak
as they must, and morality is the product of power.
7
The preceding
chapters on the role of normative beliefs and ethical arguments were
intended to persuade you that such a view is, at the least, questionable.
Asecondview, heldby liberals, asserts that morality is already woven
intothe fabric of international politics. Amore ethical worldorder is pos-
sible, if onlywe practice our politics inline withuniversallyvalidnorms.
There are such things as universal human rights which ought to be pro-
tected and extended.
8
Indeed, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human
Rights unselfconsciously rests on naturalist foundations: All human
beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights . . . Everyone has the
right to life, liberty, and security of person.
9
As Ken Booth argues, just
because many Western ideas were spread by commerce and the Gatling
5
This section is a substantially revised version of Neta C. Crawford, Postmodern Ethical
Conditions and a Critical Response, Ethics & International Affairs 12 (1998), 121140.
6
Noam Chomsky, Humanitarian Intervention, Boston Review 18 (DecemberJanuary
19931994), 36: 5.
7
Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, 19191939: An Introduction to the Study of
International Relations (New York: Harper & Row: 1964), p. 81.
8
See for example, Charles R. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1979); John Vincent, Human Rights and International
Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); John Rawls, The Law of Peoples
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
9
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 1 and 3.
403
Argument and change in world politics
gun, it does not followthat every idea originating in the West, or backed
by Western opinion, should therefore simply be labeled imperialist
and rejected. There are some ethnocentric ideas and individual
human rights is one of them for which we should not apologize.
10
The problem, from this perspective, is getting others to recognize rights
and to put justice above the narrowly dened interests of states.
Poststructural andcritical theorists argue that whether or not we think
that there are ethics in international life, or that there ought to be, there
are no rmgrounds for any particular ethical belief; ethics is contextual.
Critical theorists questionthe foundations of belief eventhe possibility
of providing ahistorical, timeless, and decontextualized foundations
and disagree with both liberals and realists, arguing that although
people and states do act on the basis of moral convictions and norma-
tive beliefs, there is nothing objective or timeless about those beliefs.
11
J urgen Habermas argues that Enlightenment faith in reason has been
profoundly shaken by its own logic.
After a century that, more than any other, has taught us the horror
of existing unreason, the last remains of an essentialist trust in reason
have been destroyed. Yet modernity, now aware of its contingencies,
depends all the more on a procedural reason, that is a reason that
puts itself on trial. The critique of reason is its own work: this double
meaning. . . is due to the radically anti-Platonist insight that there is
neither a higher nor a deeper reality to which we could appeal . . .
12
As Habermas notes, Under the ethnomethodologists microscope
even the most ordinary features of everyday life become something
strange.
13
Since there are no universally valid foundations for nor-
mative beliefs, it is not clear why one cultures answers to problems
10
Ken Booth, Human Wrongs and International Relations, International Affairs 71
( January 1995), 103126: 113.
11
While there are signicant differences among them, feminist, postmodern, poststruc-
tural, and critical theoretical perspectives share a critical attitude toward positivism, natu-
ralism, anduniversalism, assertingthat our understandings of the social andnatural world
are social constructions. Following from Nietzsche, Horkeimer, and Foucault, these theo-
rists are post andcritical inthe sense of questioning the promise of the Enlightenment.
For introductions, see Drucilla Cornell, The Philosophy of the Limit (New York: Routledge,
1992); David Couzens Hoy and Thomas Mc Carthy, Critical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell,
1994); Jim George, Discourses of Global Politics: A Critical (Re)Introduction to International
Relations (Boulder: Lynn Reinner, 1994).
12
J urgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law
and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), p. xli.
13
J urgen Habermas, Reconstruction and Interpretation in the Social Sciences, in Moral
Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 2142: 42.
404
Poiesis and praxis
of international ethics should be privileged. Post-structuralists suggest
that we come to hold particular beliefs both through the operations of
power (a view not dissimilar from E.H. Carrs analysis) or through the
process of building a social consensus. In other words, we argue about
our beliefs, provide evidence, and occasionally change our minds.
None of these views is dominant, and thus, the status of ethics in
contemporary world politics is ambiguous and paradoxical. As real-
ists charge, world politics is frequently characterized by the nasty and
the brutish to the point where some suggest that the phrase inter-
national ethics is an oxymoron. Conversely, as liberals suppose, in-
ternational law has become characterized by substantive propositions
about how we ought to act. Specically, the principles of respect for
self-determination, non-intervention, and the rule of law were codied
in international law starting in the late 1800s.
14
The content of inter-
national law has thus enabled its process, fostering the conditions for
non-coercive relations among states and respect for individual humans.
As Steven Lukes argues, The principle that human rights must be de-
fended has become one of the commonplaces of our age even as hu-
man rights are violated virtually everywhere.
15
We notice and are
disturbed by those violations.
But, as critical theorists suggest, many scholars and activists are in-
creasingly uncertain about how to ground liberal propositions. The
shoring up of the legal-normative foundations for the sovereign state
system occurred just as states came under increasingly obvious assault
in the practical realm of day-to-day inter-state interactions (via, for
example, the globalization of nancial ows, powerful multinational
corporations, the internationalization of information, the media, and
cultural expression, and transnational social movements) and as state
sovereignty was thoroughly denaturalized by critical and constructivist
approaches to international relations theory.
16
The end of colonialism
put Western cultural arrogance on notice. We are troubled not solely
14
Dorothy V. Jones, The Declaratory Tradition in Modern International Law, in Terry
Nardin and David R. Mapel, eds., Traditions of International Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992); Dorothy V. Jones, Code of Peace: Ethics and Security in the World of
Warlord States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
15
Steven Lukes, Five Fables About Human Rights, in Stephen Shute and Susan
Hurley, eds., On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1993 (New York: Basic Books,
1993), pp. 1940: 20.
16
Jens Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995); Cynthia Weber, Simulating Sovereignty: Intervention, the State and Symbolic Exchange
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber,
eds., State Sovereignty as Social Construct (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
405
Argument and change in world politics
by injustice, but also by theoretical scruples about the universality of
any given view of justice and human rights as a basis for intervention.
The relationship between the theory and practice of human rights is
problematic.
17
Foundations are under assault even as human rights
foundationalism serves to undermine the sovereignty of states in prin-
ciple and in practice. This is similar to what Antonio Cassese has noted
about the effects of believing in self-determination: The ascendancy of
international norms governinghumanrights has forcedthe traditionally
rigid, pure-statist regime to recognise individuals as legal subjects . . .
18
Advocates thus nd it necessary to defend the notion of universal hu-
man rights so self-evidently proclaimed after World War II against
relativism and critical theory.
19
Perhaps in the past it was possible to
unselfconsciously argue the primacy of sovereign states and that might
makes right, possible to assert that our creator endowed us with certain
rights, but, due to the self-consciousness of the postmodern perspec-
tive, we no longer uncritically accept such assertions. Yet even critical
theorists take an ethical stance when they deny the legitimacy of
systems of exclusion.
20
The appeal of human rights and ethical arguments
Realist, liberal, andcritical perspectives sit uneasilyside byside inworld
politics. Some scholars attempt to reconcile this cacophony through an
appeal to intuition. For instance, as Richard Rorty notes, human rights
foundationalism is outmoded.
21
Why then is the human rights realm
so resilient against critique? Rorty, building on the work of Eduardo
Rabossi, argues that we are now a human rights culture and sug-
gests that we can accept this cultural fact without trying to ground
it in something natural. Rorty says the most philosophy can hope
to do is to summarize our culturally inuenced intuitions about the
right thing to do in various situations . . . We see the formulation of such
17
Stephen Shute and Susan Hurley, Introduction, in Shute and Hurley, eds., On Human
Rights, pp. 218: 3.
18
Antonio Cassese, Self-determination of Peoples: A Legal Reappraisal (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 165.
19
Michael J. Perry, Are Human Rights Universal? The Relativist Challenge and Related
Matters, Human Rights Quarterly 19 (August 1997), 461509; Thomas M. Frank, Are
Human Rights Universal? Foreign Affairs 80 (JanuaryFebruary 2001), 191204.
20
Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the
Post-Westphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), p. 10.
21
Richard Rorty, Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality, in Shute and Hurley,
eds., On Human Rights, pp. 111134: 116.
406
Poiesis and praxis
summarizing generalizations as increasing the predictability, and thus
the power and efciency, of our institutions, thereby heightening the
sense of shared moral identity which brings us together in a moral
community.
22
Habermas also appeals to intuition as a ground for nor-
mative belief moral philosophy concerns itself with clarifying the
everyday intuitions into which we are socialized.
23
Situating human
rights and morality in historical context and arguing that human rights
discourse is generalization that summarizes our intuitions is both a
relief and profoundly unsatisfactory. It is a relief to stop searching for
foundations and recognize that they are historically based.
But to replace foundations, e.g., Judeo-Christian commandments and
the Kantiancategorical imperative to treat others as ends andnot means,
and the recourse to universal reason with intuition does not solve
the problem of what to do. What if our intuitions are quite harm-
ful to some individuals or classes of people? What if intuitions con-
ict? Moreover, using the word intuition glosses over the complexity
of ethical reasoning, its situatedness in the experiences of individuals
and cultures (whether that culture is of epistemic communities, for-
mal organizations, bounded political communities such as nations and
states, civilizations, or global), and the relationship of ethical reasoning
to ethical argument. For example, liberal intuitions about humani-
tarian intervention can be traced. Specically, decolonization laid the
groundwork for current arguments about humanitarian intervention
by extending the idea of respect for sovereignty from the Western core
to the global level, while it also limits sovereignty by elevating the sta-
tus of human rights. The discourse about humanitarian intervention
takes the shape it does, and is deeply problematic, because it occurs
in the context of a decolonization regime that stresses sovereignty and
self-determination.
It is useful then to adopt only part of the argument about intuition.
We can recognize that the contemporary era is characterized by belief
in human rights. And we can, in order to act, stop searching for rm
grounds for human rights other than that most of us believe in them.
But we should probably not look to intuition as a pseudo-ground for
22
Ibid., p. 117.
23
J urgen Habermas, Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justica-
tion, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, 43115: 48. Moral intuitions . . .
instruct us on how best to behave in situations where it is in our power to counteract
the extreme vulnerability of others by being thoughtful and considerate. J urgen Haber-
mas, MoralityandEthical Life: Does Hegels Critique of Kant Applyto Discourse Ethics,
Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, pp. 195215: 199.
407
Argument and change in world politics
human rights, or any other normative beliefs, even as we recognize
that this is exactly what we are, in part, doing. It is still worthwhile to
try to articulate good reasons for human rights and other normative
beliefs. This means recognizing that functional utility arguments (e.g.,
community works better when there are egalitarian ethical standards,
and there is less social unrest if we treat all well) and reciprocity
(do unto others as you would have them do unto you) are two good
reasons for human rights, and for ethical action more generally, but that
they are not the only grounds.
The preceding analysis of colonial arguments and the explanation
of the role of argument in decolonization illustrate that the grounds
of particular normative beliefs are historically contingent, specic to
cultures, and that we hold certain normative beliefs because we learned
they are good, or we later came to be persuaded of their goodness. If we
struggled to articulate the grounds of our intuitions, we might well be
able to say what it is we have learned and why we think those things
are convincing. In the future, if we are open to persuasion, we may well
believe that something else is good. Intuition is thus another word for
socialization, empathy, and conviction.
While one can stress the process of ethical argument, we must
still account for the persuasive appeal of particular ethical arguments
and normative beliefs. Why would individuals nd normative beliefs
about equality and human rights appealing so much so that they are
sometimes willing to forgo the advantages of exploitation and even
sometimes bear the costs of working for change? What makes ethical
arguments persuasive? There are at least three possible reasons why hu-
man rights beliefs are appealing (beyond the viewthat we are obliged to
believe in human rights) which are not mutually exclusive: coherence,
self-interest, and practical-emotional.
The coherence view suggests that egalitarian normative beliefs are
attractive because they are part of a larger belief systemthat individuals
and groups hold. To hold human rights beliefs is to be consistent with
the web of other philosophical/religious, identity, normative, and prac-
tical beliefs that individuals have become convinced are good. There
is nothing particularly unique about human rights beliefs in this view;
they are merely consistent with other beliefs and rules.
A self-interest explanation suggests that human rights beliefs are ap-
pealing because individuals conceive of themselves, regardless of their
actual position, as potential objects of discrimination and unequal treat-
ment. Thus, humans support equal rights, even if they would benet
408
Poiesis and praxis
from inequality, because they recognize that but for the grace of god
(or luck), they too could be in an inferior position. The sense of con-
tingency is initiated and bolstered by egalitarian beliefs there is no
divine right or biological superiority that counterbalance the greed,
arrogance, and solipsism that are left once inferiority of the other can no
longer be used to justify and legitimize inequality. Principles of justice
and fairness that all could live with follow.
24
The practical-emotional view says that individuals nd normative
beliefs about equality and human rights appealing because humans
live in community and, in fact, usually crave positive contact with
others.
25
Our sociabilityis bothpractical andemotional: alone we cannot
fend for ourselves emotionally or physically, nor can we continue our
species and achieve many of our goals. The most efcient and emotion-
ally satisfying way to run community may be consensually, or at least
democratically; efcient because non-democratic forms require coercion
(or brain-washing), andsociallysatisfyingbecause humans, for the most
part, appear to prefer social harmony over prolonged acrimony. Repres-
sion might be desirable for self-interest reasons (it may bring the op-
pressor wealth and power) but it is undesirable for emotional reasons,
which explains why oppressors go to such great lengths to deny, even
to themselves, that they are oppressors. Thus, democratic norms may
be appealing over the long run because they satisfy community/social
interests in harmonious relations. Humans may prefer to feel they are
taking others into account just as they wish others to take their views
into account. It may simply feel better.
26
Carried to a conclusion one
might argue that humans are inherently other regarding.
As I argued above, much of what led to the end of slavery and the
delegitimization of colonialism was ethical argument. Another element
was the empathyelicitedbythe victims andcritics of these practices. The
subjects of slavery, colonialism, and apartheid participated in their own
humanization in the eyes of the oppressor and those who actively and
passively supported oppressors. Slave narratives, novels, plays, media
accounts of atrocities, all brought the reality and the humanity of the
oppressed other into sharper emotional focus. One could not hear
24
See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971);
Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations.
25
This is not a communitarian argument, though communitarians might nd it compat-
ible with elements of their views.
26
On other aspects of emotion in world politics, see Neta C. Crawford, The Passion
of World Politics: Propositions on Emotion and Emotional Relationships, International
Security 24 (Spring 2000), 116156.
409
Argument and change in world politics
and be persuaded by ethical arguments that took the other into account
as deserving of good treatment and agency if the image of the other was
extremely negative. I am inclined to this third view but think all three
coherentist, self-interest, and practical-emotional may account for the
ever-widening appeal of human rights and democratic norms.
Decisions about how to act in international politics are permeated
through and through with normative assumptions, assertions, and eth-
ical arguments, but the place of ethics in international politics is am-
bivalent and paradoxical, while the appeal of ethical arguments is not
clear. Charismatic and religious authority are no longer invested with
the same legitimacy they once were, brute force no longer makes right,
yet we cannot always agree on the substance of normative beliefs in
order to act. Under modern conditions of life none of the various ri-
val traditions can claim prima facie general validity any longer. Even
in answering questions of direct practical relevance, convincing reasons
can no longer appeal to the authority of unquestioned traditions.
27
It is
hard to know which grounds, if any, are correct, and then how to make
decisions. If there are no rm a priori logical grounds for international
ethics, or we cannot agree on the substance of ethics in world politics,
how can actors legitimately decide what to do when faced with ethical
dilemmas?
Discourse ethics: deciding how to decide
The way to proceed in a pluralist world where ethical beliefs clash,
even beliefs about the existence and foundation of ethics, is to agree
on legitimate procedures for decisionmaking. The turn to discourse,
which includes but is not limited to communicative ethics, is in part
a move from a substantive to a procedural conception of moral and
political theory. Rather than providing values grounded in an account
of human nature or reason, discourse based approaches offer a set of
procedures that, if followed, would yield principles legitimating social
practices andinstitutions.
28
Procedure does not guarantee a consensual
outcome, but it does make violent conict over the outcome less likely.
27
J urgen Habermas, Morality, Society and Ethics: An Interview with Torben Hviid
Nielsen, in J urgen Habermas, Justication and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), pp. 147176: 151.
28
J. DonaldMoon, Practical Discourse andCommunicative Ethics, inStephenK. White,
ed., The Cambridge Companion to Habermas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995), pp. 143164: 143.
410
Poiesis and praxis
Perhaps the most fully articulated views of discourse ethics are found in
the scholarship of Habermas, building on the work of Karl-Otto Apel,
and in the arguments of Iris Marion Young, writing from a feminist
perspective.
29
I use Habermas understanding of discourse ethics as a
starting point, criticize it, and modify it for use as a praxis of world
politics.
The starting point for discourse ethics is the belief that for decisions
and normative beliefs to be followed, they must be justied they must
be seen to be normatively good, they must be done for good reason,
and all those affected by a decision must consent on some level. For
Habermas, only those norms deserve to be valid that could meet with
the approval of those potentially affected insofar as the latter participate
in rational discourses.
30
The approval develops through a process of
dialogue.
Only when [a] decision emerges from argumentation, only when it
comes about in accordance with pragmatic rules of discourse, do
we consider the resulting norm justied. One has to make sure every-
one concerned has had a chance to freely give his consent. Argumenta-
tionis designedto prevent some fromsimplysuggestingor prescribing
to others what is good for them. . . [T]he rules of discourse themselves
have a normative quality, for they neutralize imbalances of power and
provide for equal opportunities to realize ones interests.
31
Normative validity andlegitimate decisions are arrivedat throughcom-
municative action where participants seek consensus.
Habermasian discourse ethics occurs in an ideal speech situation
where interlocutors hope to come to an uncoerced understanding: only
the force of the better argument convinces. Communicative action pre-
sumes that actors attribute the same meaning to particular expressions,
that what they say is comprehensible/understandable to the hearer, that
their propositions are true, and that their propositions are right in the
29
Karl-Otto Apel, Is the Ethics of the Ideal Communication Community a Utopia? On
the Relationship Between Ethics, Utopia, and the Critique of Utopia, in Seyla Benhabib
and Fred Dallmayr, The Communicative Ethics Controversy (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1995),
pp. 2359; Habermas, Discourse Ethics; Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of
Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). Also see Christian Reus-Smit,
The Constitutional Structure of International Society and the Nature of Fundamental
Institutions, International Organization 51 (Autumn 1997), 555589.
30
Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 127. Habermas argues that law works either
through coercion and fear of sanction, or because people want to obey when they believe
the law is right.
31
Habermas, Discourse Ethics, p. 71.
411
Argument and change in world politics
sense of being basedon norms (normative beliefs) that can be redeemed,
that is, shown to be valid. Further, one assumes that participants are sin-
cere, and that they are ready to take on the obligations that result from
reaching consensus.
32
Discourse ethics also entails the universal ex-
change of roles in which participants come to understand each other
through a dialogue where interlocutors listen to each other.
33
But, before all this can occur, certain preconditions should obtain.
First, the argument must be minimally logical (coherent). Second, as-
suming some relief from pressure to act, the procedure must allow ac-
tors to test validity claims and question any assertion, while interlocu-
tors must give reasons for disputing a proposition. Third, the structure
of the situation must rule out all external or internal coercion other
than the force of the better argument and thereby neutralize all motives
other than the cooperative search for truth.
34
Every competent subject
must be allowed to participate, to bring any assertion into the discourse,
and to express their attitudes, desires, and needs.
35
Habermasian discourse ethics also entails ve basic categories of
rights within legal communities. First, each person is owed a right
to the greatest possible measure of equal liberties that are mutually
compatible. Second, rights are guaranteed to those who are members
of a particular community, with the community determining member-
ship. Third, individuals are guaranteed equal treatment; those who feel
their rights have been infringed upon must be able to make a claim
against the community. Fourth, citizens must have basic rights to partic-
ipate in processes of opinion and will formation. Fifth, these civil rights
imply that there are basic rights to the provision of living conditions
that are socially, technologically, and ecologically safeguarded, insofar
as the current circumstances make this necessary if citizens are to have
equal opportunities to utilize [their] civil rights.
36
Of course, Habermas recognizes that not all action is communicative.
With strategic action, actors seek to inuence the behavior of another
by means of the threat of sanctions or the prospect of gratication in
order to cause the interaction to continue as the rst actor desires.
37
Speech is not always ideal because real human beings are driven by
other motives in addition to the one permitted motive of the search for
truth.
38
The problem of democratic politics becomes one of expanding
32
Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, pp. 45, 19.
33
Habermas, Discourse Ethics, p. 65.
34
Ibid., p. 89.
35
Ibid., p. 89.
36
Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, pp. 122125.
37
Habermas, Discourse Ethics, p. 58.
38
Ibid., p. 92.
412
Poiesis and praxis
the scope of communicative action and prescribing limits for strategic
action.
Critique of pure discourse ethics
It is common to dismiss discourse ethics as utopian. Recognizing that
world politics is already characterized by argument, on the other hand,
creates room to consider the possibilities of discourse ethics. Taking
discourse ethics seriously, however, entails recognizing that the pro-
cess has both practical and discursive limits, some of which may be
overcome.
First, logistics must be taken into account. Discourses take place
in particular social contexts and are subject to the limitations of time
and space . . . Topics and contributions have to be organized. The open-
ing, adjournment, and resumption of discussions must be arranged.
39
Someone, or all participants, must set agendas, organize discussion, and
end arguments; and we know that the process of agenda setting itself
has substantive consequences. Thus, Habermas notes:
Because of all of these factors, institutional measures are needed to
sufciently neutralize empirical limitations andavoidable internal and
external interference so that the idealized conditions always already
predisposed by participants in argumentation can at least be ade-
quately approximated. . . [A]ttempts at institutionalization are subject
in turn to normative conceptions and their goal, which spring spon-
taneously from our intuitive grasp of what argumentation is. This as-
sertion can be veried empirically by studying the authorizations, ex-
emptions, and procedural rules that have been used to institutionalize
theoretical discourse in science or practical discourse in parliamentary
activity.
40
Second, discourse ethics may be inefcient andslow, andbetter suited
to developing normative consensus over a long period of time, rather
than for making quick decisions in contexts that require immediate ac-
tion. But political issues often seem quite urgent and many actors are
involved. How can we slow the effects of war, poverty, or social unrest
while we deliberate? Part of the solution may lie in organizing discourse
so that large numbers of actors work in caucuses and several caucuses
work at once. To speed future deliberation, scholars of international
ethics might also make it their job to revisit the past and constantly
reevaluate how humans acted in particular ethical dilemmas. Lessons
39
Ibid., p. 92.
40
Ibid., p. 92.
413
Argument and change in world politics
of the past cannot be applied like a cookie cutter, but the habits of con-
textually based reasoning will aid deliberation. Pre-discourse, or what
scholars of mediation call pre-negotiation, is vital in instances where
actors who dont share the same understanding of events and the good,
must develop a shared vocabulary.
Urgency is less an issue for ethical worldpolitics than one might think
because almost all have already agreed that certain situations deserve
immediate action: specically, genocide and wars of aggression. What
remains inthose cases is to agree that the events beingobservedare actu-
ally genocide or aggression, and certainly this process of interpretation
can be painfully slow as those who do not want to act, or simply dis-
agree, contest the interpretation. In categories of urgent cases, majority
rule may have to sufce as a guide to action.
Third, Habermas presupposes that all actors confer the same meaning
on linguistic expressions. The world. . . is constituted only for an inter-
pretation community whose members engage, before the background
of an intersubjectively shared lifeworld, in processes of reaching under-
standing with one another about things in the world.
41
Habermas also
suggests that The condition for the truth of statements is the potential
agreement of everyone else.
42
This assumption, problematic even in
contexts where the background consensus is wide and deep, is even
more difcult to sustain in the context of discourses among commu-
nities that hold different belief systems. Discourse ethics among those
who do not share a lifeworld thus requires pre-discourse, where the
meaning of terms and the background for beliefs is agreed upon, and so
actors agree on truth (or at least the terms of the debate and the scope
of disagreement).
Fourth, Habermas emphasizes that practical discourse and commu-
nicative action rest on our shared background assumptions the life-
world and on the authority of archaic institutions that we take
for granted. The lifeworld forms both the horizon for speech situa-
tions and the source of interpretations, while it in turn reproduces itself
only through ongoing communicative interactions.
43
If Habermas is
right about the dependence of practical arguments on a background
consensus, when interlocutors lifeworlds are narrow, we can expect
41
Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 14.
42
J urgen Habermas, Vorstudien und Ergazugen zur Theorie des Kommunkativen Handelns
(Frankfurt: Surkamp, 1984), p. 107 quoted in William Outwaite, Habermas: A Critical
Introduction (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 41.
43
Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, p. 22.
414
Poiesis and praxis
little creativity from actors searching for solutions. Are lifeworlds rich
enough for us to critique dominant practices and nd creative solutions
to them? If one believes in essential identities, our points of view will
be narrow and our interests narrowly conceived. But as feminist theo-
ries of identity and difference suggest, all subjects are mutually and
multiply constituted.
44
Further, it is possible for humans to empathize
and take other roles to understand different points of view.
This is quite unlike Beitz arguments, based on Rawls, that interna-
tional justice based on principles that all actors would derive in an orig-
inal position (under a veil of ignorance) would require interlocutors to
step outside identities.
45
Participants in an argument, even if they did
not know their social position, could not climb out of their cultural life-
worldcontext without abandoning their linguistic communicative com-
petence. Habermasian practical discourses depend on content brought
to themfromoutside. It wouldbe utterly pointless to engage in practical
discourse without a horizon provided by the lifeworld of a specic so-
cial group and without real conicts in a concrete situation in which the
actors consider it incumbent upon them to reach a consensual means of
regulating some controversial social matter.
46
Fifth, while Habermas wants all those potentially affected by a norm
to have a chance to speak, his formulation of discourse ethics neverthe-
less restricts participation in deliberation. On the one hand, Habermas
says that humans have a basic right to living conditions that make it pos-
sible for them to use their civil rights. This is a signicant condition that
has radical implications for democratic participation. But, Habermas
does not take into account other restrictions on who can speak. Speci-
cally, discourse takes place within communities, andthose communities
determine group membership. People who are displaced, or for some
reason dened as outside a community, at least in Habermas formula-
tion, have no right to participate. International politics must nd ways
to accommodate the speech of the millions who are internally and in-
ternationally displaced.
Further, Habermas argues, [e]very subject with the competence to
speak and act is allowed to take part in a discourse.
47
Competence
44
Jane Flax, Displacing Woman: Toward an Ethics of Multiplicity, in Bat-Ami Bar On
and Ann Ferguson, eds., Daring to Be Good: Essays in Feminist Ethico-Politics (New York:
Routledge, 1998), pp. 143155: 145.
45
Rawls, A Theory of Justice; Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations; Rawls, The
Law of Peoples with The Idea of Public Reason Revisited.
46
Habermas, Discourse Ethics, p. 103.
47
Ibid., p. 89, emphasis added.
415
Argument and change in world politics
includes communicative competence that is beyond agreement about
the language itself the ability to produce grammatically correct sen-
tences. Competence also includes the ability to reason in the ways that
are recognized as reason. So, Young argues, Habermas retains vestiges
of a dichotomy between reason and affectivity. He rather rmly sep-
arates discourse about feelings from discourse about norms.
48
Those
who are radically different in their beliefs, understanding of causality,
and even in their view about the utility of language versus other forms
of expression to persuade, may not be able to effectively argue with
others. The different will not necessarily be denied access to arguments;
rather, they will not be understood, and they may even be dismissed out
of hand.
49
Adominating or hegemonic discourse provides a regime of
truth, a means of assessing not only whether statements are true or false
but also whether they have any meaning at all or are mere nonsense.
50
Moreover, others will not always be able to speak with persuasive force.
Specically, the very young and those understood to be mentally ill are
not generally considered competent, although experience tells us that
they can often participate in discourse. Further, on the occasions when
individuals are intoo muchphysical or emotional painto thinkor speak,
they cannot effectively participate.
Thus, it wouldperhaps be better to think of communicative capability
or capacity rather than competence, turning competence criteria from a
restriction into an exhortation to enhance the capacities of both speak-
ers and hearers. The capacity of interlocutors to listen and understand
each other, vital in situations where interlocutors are equally powerful,
is even more important when a weaker party needs a more powerful
partys assistance (e.g. intervention and foreign aid). Along these lines,
Richard Rorty argues that our desire to promote human rights changes
because our feelings about the other change: most of the workof chang-
ing moral intuitions is being done by manipulating our feelings rather
than increasing our knowledge.
51
Rorty suggests that the emergence
of the human rights culture seems to owe nothing to increased moral
knowledge and everything to hearing sad and sentimental stories.
52
48
Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, p. 118.
49
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientic Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1962); Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language
(New York: Pantheon, 1972).
50
James F. Keeley, Toward a Foucauldian Analysis of International Regimes,
International Organization 44, 1 (Winter 1990), pp. 83105: 91.
51
Rorty, Human Rights, p. 118.
52
Ibid., pp. 118119.
416
Poiesis and praxis
Dialogue encourages the telling of these stories in their complexity, and
helps ensure that assistance is welcome.
Sixth, discourse ethics must take political power intoaccount.
53
Power
is ubiquitous in politics, whether we dene it as the ability to use phys-
ical force to coerce others, the ability to command instant authority, the
power of shared beliefs, or the capacity to set agendas. Indeed, as I have
emphasized, recognizing power is crucial to understanding the process
of political argument as it really occurs. Political argument does not
occur on a level playing eld, and when change occurs due to political
argument, it is because the balance of belief, andthe authorityassociated
with it, has shifted.
A discourse ethical approach has to avoid the pitfall of taking dis-
course out of its political context. In other words, discourse ethics that
stresses dialogue between two others can be depoliticizing if hearing
sad and sentimental stories yields a person-to-person or case-by-case
response to problems when what is required are institutional changes
designed to level the playing eld. However, in discourse ethical sit-
uations, power differences are less important if all actors assertions
are open to tests of their validity. As soon as I am able to ques-
tion the basis of your arguments, the power differential has been at
least partially bridged. Discourse ethics practiced as part of ethic of
care, as discussed below, may prevent the process from losing sight
of larger political, economic, and social contexts, and mistaking per-
sonal responsibility for institutional responsibility. In addition, as long
as some are unable to be heard because of lack of access to media
and relevant institutional fora where opinions are shaped and poli-
cies set, then the conditions for discourse ethical politics have not been
met.
Seventh, discourse ethics seems, at least on the surface, to be too
rational. Indeed, the process depends on actors being able to listen to
each other and to dispassionately withstand probing and testing of their
validity claims. How can those who have little or no trust in others ever
hope to engage in discourse ethical dialogue? Indeed, if empathy and
other emotions play a crucial role in determining our ability to under-
stand others, and our willingness to help them, then those of us who
wish to increase the scope for argument must work to increase em-
pathy. Rorty suggests this is done through sentimental education that
sufciently acquaints people of different kinds with one another so
53
Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, pp. 132168.
417
Argument and change in world politics
they are less tempted to think of those different from themselves as
only quasi-human.
54
Rorty also regards the provision of basic needs as
crucial. Security and sympathy go together . . . The tougher things are,
the more you have to be afraid of, the more dangerous your situation,
the less you can afford the time or effort to think about what things
might be like for people with whom you do not immediately identify.
Sentimental education only works on people who can relax enough to
listen.
55
Though there is little reason to infer this from Rortys own
words, his argument should not be used to say that the poor are unt to
engage in dialogue or that they cannot feel empathy for others. Rather,
Habermas and Rortys arguments should be read as an obligation to
increase the capacity of all to engage in dialogue. Aspects of globaliza-
tion that increase contact among cultures, that allow us to comprehend
the beliefs, poetry, and agency of others, increase the background of
empathetic understanding.
56
However, if discourse ethics is to work in
situations where actors have a history of violent conict and ethnocen-
tric disregard for the other, much more emotional work must be done
to increase the capacity of interlocutors to listen to each other. The prob-
lems of competence/capacity, power, and standards of rationality and
reason, require institutional guarantees of access for all speakers.
Finally, Habermas (at some points) seems to suppose that the goal
of discourse ethics is the agreement of all on the best solution. There is
also the possibility that in searching for single best solutions, interlocu-
tors will become mired and pass up sub-optimal solutions that could
avoid stalemate. As Beitz argues, actual agreement of everyone con-
cerned is too stringent a requirement to place on the justication of
moral principles.
57
It is impossible to eliminate all difference of opin-
ion and understanding, though this is not necessarily bad. Habermas
argues that because there will be areas where all affected cannot agree,
we will tend to agree to norms that are least constricting, and that tol-
erant diversity will result. The more abstract the agreements become,
the more diverse the disagreements with which we can non-violently
live.
58
This outcome wouldideally encourage respect for difference but
it is not clear where boundaries begin and end.
54
Rorty, Human Rights, pp. 122123.
55
Ibid., p. 128.
56
Of course other aspects of globalization do just the opposite, as difference, and even
some cultures, are overwhelmed and sometimes obliterated by the march of mainly
Western ideas, commodities, and practices.
57
Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, p. 19.
58
J urgen Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), p. 140.
418
Poiesis and praxis
Because the standard, almost rote, critique of discourse ethics is that
it is too utopian for domestic contexts, much less for world politics,
most of these issues are not discussed by scholars of world politics, or
even by political theorists. Yet, as suggested above, many criticisms of
discourse ethics can be answered. Can discourse ethics be applied to
world politics?
Discourse ethics and world politics
The analysis of colonialism and decolonization shows that though eth-
ical argument is ubiquitous and consequential, world politics does not
followdiscourse ethics. But some have suggestedthat it can andshould.
J urgen Haacke argues that discourse theory targets precisely those
questions [with] which students of international politics are perenni-
ally confronted: how do we and how can we address interpersonal, in-
tergroup, intersocietal, or interstate conicts that inevitably arise given
the plethora of competing views, values, identities, interests, and needs
espoused by humanity.
59
Similarly, Thomas Risse argues that true rea-
soning, or the logic of arguingina Habermasiansense, is alreadyevident
in world politics.
60
Andrew Linklater proposes to use discourse ethics
andanethics of care tocreate social relations that are more universalistic,
sensitive to cultural difference, and less unequal.
61
Despite these assertions, it appears on the surface that discourse
ethics is particularly ill-suited for international politics. Characteristics
that might allow for discourse ethics in domestic politics do not appear
to be in place in world politics. Authority in domestic politics is found
in both legitimate procedures and in established institutions that derive
their authority through either their acceptance as part of the lifeworld
or through their connection to other taken-for-granted institutions.
Habermas assumes that there is a background consensus for domestic
politics the lifeworld and archaic institutions undergirding commu-
nicative action and discourse ethics but international politics is surely
characterized by different lifeworlds and few archaic institutions. Inter-
national ethics inthe current era occurs ina context of anarchy nominal
sovereign equality among states and the absence of an enforcer and
59
J urgen Haacke, Theory and Praxis in International Relations: Habermas, Self-
Reection, Rational Argumentation, Millennium 25 (Summer 1996), 255289: 261.
60
Thomas Risse, Lets Argue! Communicative Action in World Politics, International
Organization 54 (Winter 2000), 139.
61
Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community.
419
Argument and change in world politics
real inequality and hierarchy. Moreover, force is omnipresent in inter-
national politics. Like all argumentation, practical discourses resemble
islands threatenedwithinundationina sea of practice where the pattern
of consensual conict resolution is by no means the dominant one. The
means of reaching agreement are repeatedly thrust aside by the instru-
ments of force.
62
And, nally, some see the possibilities for peaceful
coexistence and discourse slipping further away in the post-Cold War
world where the great divisions among humankind and the dominat-
ing source of conict will be cultural.
63
How could discourse ethics
work in the context of anarchy; clashing civilizations that regard each
others lifeworlds as irrational; a dearth of accepted, legitimate, and
effective institutions; unequal power and ability among states to par-
ticipate in speech and to act; and the constant possibility of recourse to
force?
Yet world politics is closer to the conditions for discourse ethics than
it appears at rst glance. As Beitz argues, the international realm is
coming more and more to resemble domestic society in many of the fea-
tures usually thought relevant to the justication of (domestic) political
principles.
64
World politics already depends as much on the process
andcontent of arguments as oncoercionandrelations of military power.
But there are differences between argument as a mode of persuasion,
either of the other or of third parties, and the much less common form
of discourse ethical argument as a search for understanding, consensus,
or as a form of social or public reasoning. How could actors in world
politics begin to apply discourse ethical processes?
The content of international law has increasingly provided for the
possibility and even occasionally the reality of non-coercive relations
among states. Respect for individual human rights has grown. So has
respect for sovereign states. In fact, sovereign equality as a normative
belief, and the decreasing legitimacy of the use of force, already enables
states and some non-state actors to engage in argument and potentially
indiscourse ethics. The primaryconditionof ideal speech, freedomfrom
coercion, is thus partiallypresent inthe dominant ideologyof worldpol-
itics. And, in the twentieth century, individuals and states established
62
Habermas, Discourse Ethics, p. 106.
63
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations? Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer
1993), pp. 2249: 22.
64
Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, p. 8.
420
Poiesis and praxis
international institutions that serve as venues for argument for states
and peoples.
65
These venues, such as the UNGeneral Assembly, though
they certainly embody global inequalities of wealth and military power,
are at least formally equal and organized to facilitate speech among
the representatives of all states. Ironically, sovereignty may also cover
the violation of rights if governments characterized by widespread
and systemic human rights abuses at home sit on international com-
missions and at the United Nations, and make use of the democratic
procedures of those bodies. Because sovereignty is valued and non-
democratic states are allowed to participate in international delibera-
tions, democracy at the international level may not be mirrored at the
domestic level.
International institutions thus only potentially provide a framework
for the procedural guarantees necessary to overcome the obstacles dis-
cussed above in implementing discourse ethics. Therefore, it is vitally
important for the process of discourse ethics that states not be the only
interlocutors. Non-governmental organizations, social movement orga-
nizations, and cultural exchanges are already also venues for discourse.
Further, epistemic communities create and maintain regimes of truth
and, to a certain degree, follow discourse ethics.
Discourse ethics is possible in world politics among representatives
of states andcivil society. There are, even under anarchy, incentives to be
honest and fair. To be taken seriously in their future interactions have
their statements and commitments be seen as credible interlocutors
have an incentive to be sincere, truthful, and willing to follow through
(pacta sunt servanda) withthe actions requiredby the consensus achieved
through their discourse.
Moreover, the diversity of perspectives in world politics is a strength,
rather than an obstacle, in the process of deliberation. Though humans
share elements of a commonhistory, theydo not share anunderstanding
of that history; nor do all humans agree on a set of values and goals for
the present and future. A dearth of perspectives (lifeworlds) is not an
immediate concern at this historical moment. Because, in most matters,
states and people acting in world politics cannot rely on the illusion of
preexisting consensus, the need for procedural versus substantive (rule
based) morality among states and people is more blatantly obvious in
65
Of course argument among the representatives of states occurred prior to the twentieth
century.
421
Argument and change in world politics
worldpolitics thanindomestic politics. It is precisely because we cannot
rest on preexisting agreement that democracy in the form of discourse
ethics is vital. Andbecause we cannot assume that we knowwhat others
mean by their statements in world politics, and that their values and
interests are the same, we must be particularly attentive to their speech
and also be willing to make our arguments transparent.
Meanwhile, other international institutions such as global news me-
dia, globally available culture, and more frequent and genuine interac-
tions among people, help to produce the empathy that facilitates role
taking and also the background of shared experiences and assumptions
on which discourse can rest, at least for a moment. (This is not un-
problematic: the BBCs and CNNs views still come primarily from the
West.) Because sovereign equality is presumed (though not actual) and
the overt hegemonic imposition of norms is illegitimate, there is more
room for the operations of discourse ethics than ever before in world
politics.
Finally, consensus does not always have to be achieved, nor should it
necessarily be the goal. As the history of worldpolitics andinternational
law indicates, there are ways for states to act together without consen-
sus, and without using sanctions. There are also ways to allow varia-
tions in behavior. This is done by striving to develop principles rather
than immediately moving to develop law and institutionalizing proce-
dures. As Cassese argues, international principles serve an important
function. When States cannot agree on denite and specic standards
of behaviour because of their principled, opposing attitudes, but need,
however, some sort of basic guideline for their conduct, their actions and
discussions eventually lead to the formulation of principles.
66
Interna-
tional legal principles, such as self-determination, according to Cassese,
have both a high degree of generality and abstraction and they reect
the dominant culture. Cassese argues:
In this respect principles are a typical expression of the present world
community, whereas in the old community relatively homogenous
and less conictual specic and precise rules prevailed. Principles,
being general, loose and multifaceted, lend themselves to various and
even contradictory applications, and in addition are susceptible to be-
ing manipulated and used for conicting purposes. On the other hand,
66
Principles do not differ from treaty or customary rules simply in that they are more
general and less precise . . . Rather, principles differ from legal rules in that they are the
expression and result of conicting views of States on matters of crucial importance.
Cassese, Self-determination of Peoples, p. 128.
422
Poiesis and praxis
principles have great normative potential and dynamic force: among
other things, one can deduce from them specic rules, to the extent
that these rules are not at variance with State practice.
67
Hard cases
Two questions must be addressed: who can participate in discourse
ethics andhowshouldactors proceedif they cannot come to agreement?
Discourse ethics requires democratic practices among interlocutors and
implies that collectivities, in order to be legitimate in discourse ethical
practice, are themselves democratic. What if potential participants are
not democratic intheir internal structure andprocess? Non-democracies
can and do participate in institutions which at least formally ascribe to
discourse ethical principles. But ought they be allowed to do so? Are
interventions into the internal life of states in instances where the right
to life is not at issue ever justiable?
Ethical issues, which arise in specic historical contexts and have
unique features, cannot be (and are not usually) decided in the ab-
stract. We cannot know for certain how to act in a situation without
considering its particulars, and we are always confronted by new sit-
uations. However, it seems foolish and impractical to throw every-
thing into the category of to be decided and renegotiated. One sus-
pects that some things ought to be taken for granted such as the
protection of the right to participate in decisions if all actors want
to guarantee their ability to speak regardless of their particular in-
dividual status and if we would like to respond to urgent problems
within a time period that allows for decisions to have some possibil-
ity of being relevant. Thus, there are guides to action on even the hard
cases.
In the rst hard case, what if actors cannot come to agreement? What
if, after an attempt at discourse, actors cannot agree even on general
principles? What if one side refuses to engage in dialogue and uses
force to get their way? In some cases, it may be ne to decide not to act.
But inaction may have dire consequences for those who cannot control
others but are still affected by their actions. In these situations, we may
have to act somehow if inaction would threaten our well-being or our
existence. What can be done? The rst answer is simply to try harder.
Agreement maynot seempossible unless interlocutors reasonbackward
to what they can agree on and then forward to the particulars of the
67
Ibid., pp. 128129.
423
Argument and change in world politics
problem. Only then may it be possible for them to agree on something.
In some cases they may have to go even further, to the realm of possible
futures where imagination is another realm of experience. The hard
cases then demand a form of dialogue, and, in particular, a form of
listeningthat is not possibleuntil participants inarguments havelearned
to listen empathetically.
68
The presumption must be against the use of
force.
Taking democracy seriously also means that we must learn to accept,
at least for the moment, outcomes we dont like if the practice does
not affect us directly. This does not mean that everything is allowed
and ought to be praised. Culture can be torture and authenticity the
means of maintaining oppressive power structures.
69
Ethical argument
is at work when novelists, human rights organizations, and politicians
publicize female circumcision, call it genital mutilation, and elicit our
help in stopping the practice. We must also accept that others will nd
it impossible to accept outcomes they dont like and will continue to
argue with their opponents. It is not ethical to sanction those one dis-
agrees with, as a rst resort. If interlocutors cannot come to a normative
consensus, it may be more fruitful to shift to other kinds of argument,
such as practical or scientic arguments. In the case of female circumci-
sion/genital mutilation, a scientic argument against the practice would
stress potential and likely medical consequences of such a procedure,
while practical arguments would emphasize the opportunity costs of
using public health moneys to treat people for the complications of an
elective surgical procedure.
If actors do not behave according to discourse ethical principles, then
it may be just to engage in strategic action and sanctions. Taking dis-
course ethics seriously that is, only those norms deserve to be valid
that meet or couldmeet withthe approval of all affectedintheir capacity
as participants in a practical discourse thus has implications for the
legitimacy of interlocutors. Non-democratic states are not legitimate in-
terlocutors. That is, if the laws of a state are not derived democratically
because participants are systematically denied the opportunity to par-
ticipate in discourse, these states are not t for communicative action
with other communities.
Does this mean that non-democratic states should be left out of inter-
national deliberations? In theory, yes. In practice, non-democratic states
68
See Flax, Displacing Woman; David Campbell, Politics Without Principle: Sovereignty,
Ethics, and the Narrative of the Gulf War (Boulder: Lynn Rienner, 1993).
69
Booth, Human Wrongs, p. 115.
424
Poiesis and praxis
should be the subject of strategic action sanctions, bargaining, threats,
and incentives rather than communicative action. As Beitz argues,
unjust institutions do not enjoy the same prima facie protection against
external interference as do just institutions, and in fact, other things
equal, interference with unjust institutions might be justied when it
has a high probability of promoting domestic social justice.
70
Yet this
does not mean total isolation or embargo is always appropriate. Non-
democracies may be allowed to participate in institutions that follow
discourse ethical procedures with certain conditions attached to their
participation. Democratic states that seek to sanction other states ought
to be able to justify and convince their own populations, and those
of other democratic states, that sanctions are appropriate. Further, in
line with the obligation to provide living conditions for people to prac-
tice their civil rights, sanctions must include humanitarian exemptions
and direct aid to those persons who are most vulnerable. Discourse
should simultaneously proceed with those parts of the community that
are democratic and therefore legitimate.
Humanitarian intervention and discourse ethics
International law, including the UN Charter, building on the tradition
of respect for sovereignty articulated in the Treaty of Westphalia, pro-
hibits the use of force by states, except in self-defense. Humanitarian
intervention seems to be prohibited as well.
71
Yet interventions that are
at least nominally motivated for humanitarian purposes are conducted
and may well seem imperative in some situations. Is it ever appropriate
to intervene with military force to promote or protect human rights val-
ues? Is it legitimate for international society to impose normative beliefs
inside a community, for instance to promote human rights or forms of
economic life?
In the context of a decolonization regime, the only instances that
seem to warrant interventions into the domestic affairs of others are
those where a state or group within the state is depriving its citizens of
the right to life, andtheir ability to speak. The UNandother bodies have
provided assistance or even conducted plebiscites, referenda, and elec-
tions sothat people couldformindependent states andbeginthe process
of self-determination. On the other hand, while there is great sympathy
70
Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, p. 121.
71
Simon Chesterman, Just War or Just Peace? Humanitarian Intervention and International
Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
425
Argument and change in world politics
for the idea of preventing or halting grave human rights abuses, es-
pecially genocide, there is similarly skepticism about the possibility of
disinterested humanitarian interventions. As Hans Morgenthau said,
it is futile to search for an abstract principle which would allow us
to distinguish in a concrete case between legitimate and illegitimate
intervention.
72
He argues that, All nations will continue to be guided
in their decisions to intervene and their choice of means of intervention
by what they regard as their respective national interests.
73
If communities, like individuals, have rights to the greatest possible
extent as long as their actions do not harm others, then intervention is
warranted only when one communitys actions infringe upon the rights
of other communities to determine their lives. It follows that states that
use force against other states andpeople ought tobe stopped: aggression
justies intervention. Should it matter if the aggression occurs within
state boundaries? International law is ambivalent on this point, as is in-
ternational practice. The genocide in Rwanda in 1994 occurred without
humanitarian intervention to halt it, and intervention to halt Serbian
aggression in Bosnia (a region of Yugoslavia) was very slow in coming.
Humanitarian intervention in Somalia by the US and UN in 1993 oc-
curred but then went sour, with the interveners becoming combatants.
Andinterventionby West Africantroops inSierra Leone inJanuary 1999
to halt a civil war was characterized by terrible brutality on the part of
the intervening forces.
Humanitarian intervention thus poses a complex set of problems.
What is the difference between humanitarian assistance and interven-
tion. When is humanitarian intervention warranted? How can human-
itarian interventions be implemented so that they at least do no harm
and hopefully do some good? What are the limits of humanitarian inter-
vention? In addressing these questions actors face difcult conceptual
tasks as well as tensions andcontradictions between intentions andcon-
sequences. And this is not to mention the political dilemmas of securing
the will to intervene and mounting adequate force.
The main theories of world politics leave us ill-prepared to address
issues of humanitarian intervention. Realists, stressing self-interested
actors seeking power, argue that truly humanitarian interventions are
impossible: so-called humanitarian interventions must be a cover or
justication for state interests. States should only intervene when vital
72
Hans Morgenthau, To Intervene or Not to Intervene, Foreign Affairs 45 (April 1967),
425436: 430.
73
Ibid., p. 430.
426
Poiesis and praxis
interests are at stake, in which case the resort to humanitarian inter-
vention is likely to be rare. Liberals who believe that humans have
other attributes besides self-interest namely empathy, benevolence,
and a respect for human rights grant the possibility of humanitar-
ian interventions, but have difculty theorizing the who, what, where,
when, why, and how of humanitarian interventions. Liberals want to
do good, and they try, but they are troubled by the difculty of doing
so, in part because the historical context of colonialism and decoloniza-
tion makes any intervention suspect. Constructivists, emphasizing the
historical and social construction of institutions and practices, can tell
us that the practice and problems of humanitarian intervention are not
new, but the meaning of humanitarian intervention is not necessarily
constant. Constructivists and poststructuralists can help us contextu-
alize the present understanding of humanitarian intervention, and can
show us how we got to where we are in terms of law and institutions.
But constructivists have little to say about what to do.
If theories of world politics are unsatisfactory, can theories of moral-
ity and ethics help us decide the questions of when to act and how to
conduct humanitarian intervention? Utilitarian ethical approaches offer
one possibility: we couldsimply decide that humanitarianinterventions
ought to be undertaken when the benets of action outweigh the costs
and risks of inaction. But how do we know the benets of action, and
what if costs and risks are very high? How are we to value the inde-
pendence of a people, their right to live without fear of massacre, and
against the cost of lives sent to preserve their rights? And what of the
opportunity costs of action? Which things should we forgo at home so
that others can live? Howshall we measure the costs of inaction? Would
we feel right letting others suffer if the material costs of action outweigh
the benets?
If utilitarianism is decient, perhaps a deontological approach that
starts with universal normative beliefs could offer guidance. However,
there is insufcient agreement within and among states about interna-
tional ethics beyond the bare minimum principles of non-intervention
except in cases of genocide and aggression. Yet even in the case
that would most clearly seem to warrant humanitarian intervention
genocide the duty of a particular response is not entirely clear.
The 1948 Genocide Convention, which denes the crime of genocide,
states that perpetrators of genocide shall be punished after the fact.
But the Convention does not articulate a clear method to prevent
or halt genocide. Rather, Article 8 of the Genocide Convention says:
427
Argument and change in world politics
Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the
United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United
Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression
of acts of genocide . . .
74
Further, it appears that there were very few,
if any, instances of humanitarian intervention to prevent genocide ei-
ther before or after the Genocide Convention came into force. It is
difcult to recall a single clear international effort to prevent or halt
genocide in the last century where some other motive for interven-
tion was not also at work. If genocide is an undisputed instance jus-
tifying humanitarian interventions, why are interventions to halt it so
rare?
Nor is there a consensus, beyond the problem of genocide, within the
activist community about the other sorts of crises that are the legitimate
triggers for humanitarian intervention. Does inept government, civil
war, or famine warrant humanitarian intervention? International law
would seem to prohibit such interventions. Further, even if they were
allowed, what if the intervened upon dont want such help? Moreover,
some principles conict.
More troubling, there are fundamental ontological and ethical prob-
lems that destabilize the discussion of humanitarian intervention. As
attractive as they are, deontological approaches beg the question of why
we shouldndparticular rules persuasive enough to be boundby them,
and not some other rule. What is the good? How shall we seek to do
good? How do we decide in cases where we disagree? Who is the rele-
vant we who decides and acts? What is any one persons obligation
to another?
75
Humanitarian intervention is thus a real conundrum for theorists.
Moreover, the practice of humanitarian intervention and it will not
stop even as diplomats and scholars try to sort out the problems is ex-
tremely complex, involving many different actors with sometimes con-
icting views of the aims and best methods for conducting humanitar-
ian interventions. The subjects of humanitarian intervention are rarely
asked what they would like, and sometimes when they are able to be
heard, because in fact they have been speaking all along, we do not
listen. Finally, humanitarian interventions sometimes make situations
worse, while interventions that fail to take into account the wishes of
74
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Approved
and proposed for signature and ratication or accession by General Assembly resolution
260 A (III) of 9 December 1948, entry into force 12 January 1951, Article 8.
75
StanleyHoffman, Duties Beyond Borders (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UniversityPress, 1981).
428
Poiesis and praxis
the intervened upon, which do not even allow that they have agency,
are of questionable legitimacy and likely also to face serious practical
problems.
This last feature of the practice of humanitarian intervention, the fail-
ure to treat the intervened upon as if they were active agents, links
colonialism and present-day humanitarianism. Often the impetus for
humanitarian interventions was and is increased empathy for the other.
When we think of the other as more like us, it is not acceptable that we
should let thembe subject to the ills we could prevent, such as genocide,
starvation, and bad government. But, from the perspective of the inter-
vened upon, there is also a strong element of arrogant paternalism (not
dissimilar to the paternalism that supported colonialism) in the drive to
promote liberal markets, human rights, and democracy through foreign
aid, trade policy, economic sanctions, and military interventions.
Feminist scholars have developed ideas about an ethic of care that
might help us sort out exactly when and howto intervene to help others
in a way that is welcome and not idiosyncratic.
76
Joan Tronto, taking an
anti-naturalist, anti-essentialist perspective, argues that care is both a
practice and a disposition aimed at maintaining, continuing, or repair-
ing the world.
77
She says, What is denitive about care . . . seems to be
a perspective of taking the others needs as the starting point for what
must be done.
78
Tronto emphasizes that perceptions of needs can be
wrong. Even if the perception of the need is correct, how the care-givers
choose to meet the need can cause new problems.
79
An ethic of care,
she argues, requires us to be attentive, responsible, competent, and re-
sponsive in care giving. Addressing the criticism that this is a private
morality which leaves in place political and structural obstacles to care,
Tronto argues that conceiving of morality and politics fromthe perspec-
tive of an ethic of care has revolutionary implications for social relations
in that we will see how care, primarily done by the weak, is currently
organized to suit the powerful. If the challenge is to heighten regard for
others over self-interest narrowly dened, and to broaden the concep-
tion of community to include others who seem quite different, then an
ethic of care is well suited to solving moral problems.
76
Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984); Sarah Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Towards a Poli-
tics of Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989).
77
Joan C. Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (New York:
Routledge, 1993), p. 104.
78
Ibid., p. 105.
79
Ibid., pp. 107108.
429
Argument and change in world politics
An ethic of care could be useful then in promoting an attitude that
arrests the potential paternalisminthe discourse andpractice of human-
itarian intervention. Specically, those who would be intervened upon
by great powers must be part of any discourse about potential humani-
tarian intervention. As Michael Shapiro argues, an ethics of encounter
must necessarily recognize that we cannot know the other and must not
attempt to x their identities with our narratives. We must be open to
their understanding of themselves.
80
As important as this dialogue might be, as Fiona Robinson suggests,
the ethics of care demands that we ask not only should we intervene in
this or that crisis. Rather, moral attention needs to be paid to develop-
ing an understanding of the moral relations which exist, and the moral
decisions that are constantly being taken, both before andafter the ques-
tion of humanitarian intervention actually arises; this in turn demands
a critical analysis of the social relations which exist within societies, and
between societies in the global context.
81
In other words, humanitarian
crises do not generally arise, full blown and out of nowhere. Rather, the
everyday foreign policies of states and the individual actions of citizens
may promote conditions that lead to the violation of human rights or
help prevent them. States which violate human rights, like all states in
the international system, have allies or at least regular economic interac-
tions with other states. Human rights violators need guns, fuel, training
in the techniques of torture, and so on. They also need or would like,
external recognition of their legitimacy as a government. This is exactly
what the great powers oftenprovidedtogovernments suchas Indonesia,
Chad, South Africa, the Sudan, and Cambodia during the Cold War. As
one African observer of the Senegalese human rights case against the
former dictator of Chad, Hissene Habr e, remarked: Hissene Habr e was
received and honored in Paris as a head of state and ally. France never
regarded him as a dictator. This case is much more complex than the
role of Habr e. There is the role of France that supported him. There is
the role of the United States that supported him. If we are to judge
Hissene Habr e, we have to also judge those who supported him.
82
Fol-
lowing that logic backwards along the causal chain, if we are to prevent
80
See Michael J. Shapiro, The Ethics of Encounter: Unreading, Unmapping the
Imperium, in David Campbell and Michael J. Shapiro, eds., Moral Boundaries: Rethinking
Ethics and World Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1999), pp. 5791.
81
Fiona Robinson, Globalizing Care: Ethics, Feminist Theory, and International Relations
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1999), p. 146.
82
Babacar Sine, quoted in Norimitsu Onishi, African Dictator Faces Trial Where He
Once Took Refuge, The New York Times, 1 March 2000, pp. A1 and A3: A3.
430
Poiesis and praxis
abuses, we must prevent the active and passive support of those abuses.
Holding an attitude of care entails holding a long view of how our ac-
tions andinactions affect the life possibilities of others. Citizens may put
pressure on their governments to withdraw support from those coun-
tries which engage in torture, expulsions, and murders. This is a step
short of comprehensive and formal international sanctions that may
obviate the need for later humanitarian interventions.
A convention on humanitarian intervention
It is precisely because we cannot agree on substance even in the case
of genocide, where the Genocide Convention of 1948 prohibits geno-
cide and says states ought to act to prevent it, but provides no clear
guidance on how to halt or prevent genocidal acts that I propose a
procedural method for moving forward which borrows from and mod-
ies discourse ethics. Bearing in mind the problems and promise of
discourse ethics and an ethics of care, I propose that interested actors
fromall over the globe begin a discourse ethical dialogue with the object
of developing a convention on humanitarian intervention. There have
been attempts at developing guidelines for humanitarian intervention
before and others have proposed working to develop a consensus.
83
My
call differs from those efforts in stressing a discourse ethical procedure.
The procedural aim must be to conduct a discourse with all poten-
tial actors who will then develop an approach to deciding questions of
humanitarian intervention. The substantive aim would be to establish
general procedures for avoiding humanitarian crises and, when nec-
essary, conducting humanitarian interventions. As it is now, there are
some general and specic guidelines on the conduct of humanitarian
interventions developed by UN agencies, non-governmental organiza-
tions, and some governments, but there is no global framework, in part
because the legality of humanitarian intervention is questionable.
Without getting deeply into the substance which must be decided
through a global discourse any convention probably has to answer at
least the following questions. What are the causes of humanitarian cri-
ses? How can humanitarian crises be prevented? What is a humanita-
rian interventionversus a political intervention? What kinds of human-
itarian crises demand an international response? What are the limits of
83
See Richard Caplan, Humanitarian Intervention: Which Way Forward? Ethics &
International Affairs 14 (2000), 2338: 3134.
431
Argument and change in world politics
humanitarian intervention, for example, can state building properly be
consideredhumanitarianintervention? Whocanlegitimatelycall for hu-
manitarian interventions? Who shall be consulted when the need arises
to intervene? Who, specically which organizations, are authorized to
undertake humanitarian interventions? What shall be the nature of le-
gitimate humanitarian intervention practice; is deadly force acceptable
and in what instances? When elements of humanitarian interventions
go awry, how shall those responsible be identied and treated?
The authors of the convention will not be able to devise one size ts
all answers to these questions. They must devise a set of principles that
is exible enoughto suit the kinds of instances the international commu-
nity agrees ought to be the objects of humanitarian intervention. While
each case will be unique, there are two generic scenarios that the au-
thors of a convention should consider addressing: preventing genocide;
halting ongoing genocide.
The irony of using discourse ethics to develop a protocol for the use
of force to protect others rights, is obvious. But this irony heightens
the necessity of such an approach. Without a conversation open to all
and where all presuppositions and arguments are open to challenge,
humanitarian intervention may become a practice that resembles colo-
nial interventions. In other words, humanitarian intervention violates
discourse ethical principles and this is precisely why a discourse ethical
practice must be usedto decide whenforce canor must be used. Without
a wider and sustained conversation, truly humanitarian interventions,
already rare and deeply contradictory in theory and practice, may be-
come more rare, while interventions under the rubric of humanitarian
intervention may proliferate, despite the fact that such interventions
are about something else, such as promoting a political or economic
form of life preferred by the powerful. Thus it is crucial that a con-
vention on humanitarian intervention should not be drawn up only by
representatives of likely interveners. All peoples should participate in
the discourse, including non-state actors. Indeed, those who are subjects
of humanitarian intervention are already speaking. The issue is whether
they are heard. Such an open dialogue will be emotional and political;
the scars of colonialism have not healed, while the failures of recent hu-
manitarian interventions have perhaps only deepened those wounds.
A convention would take years to accomplish, and no doubt more
than one humanitarian crisis will arise before a convention is achieved.
What could a long, probably simultaneously emotional and legal-
istic, discourse do to help in cases of urgent humanitarian crises?
432
Poiesis and praxis
A world-wide discourse on humanitarian intervention could have sev-
eral important benets, many of whichwouldoccur before a convention
is articulated.
Dialogue could help actors see the consequences of their actions, in
the long chain of events, which help create humanitarian crises (such
as great powers sending arms to authoritarian regimes to promote the
interests of the great power), and help actors avoid, prevent, or halt
those actions. Avoiding the crises that lead to humanitarian interven-
tions by being attentive to the ways that external actors are setting
the groundwork for crises or failing to act to discourage early abuse
would clearly be better than intervening after the fact.
The process of reaching agreement on the language of a covenant
would help articulate and shape the international normative beliefs that
must be claried before crises can even be identied. Discourse leading
to a convention on humanitarian intervention couldhelp actors develop
thecontext tounderstandcomplexcrises anddevelopbetter causal mod-
els for dealing with them. The discourse might also help actors decide
which features of crises frame it as humanitarian, and allow them to
respond more quickly than the years it took to help Bosnian Muslims.
Finally, the process of dialogue could contribute to creating the respect
for difference necessary to making world politics more ethical. Greater
legitimacy might be attached to interventions if the entire international
community were part of the discourse that leads to a convention on
humanitarian intervention. In sum, this approach melds principle with
process, emotion with reason.
Devising a convention on humanitarian intervention is clearly an
enormous challenge. To add to the complexity, a convention on human-
itarian intervention must provide for its own revision. Still, we already
have a head start on the content of such a convention. Discourse ethics
and the critical perspective of an ethics of care/encounter imply a very
narrow scope of just interventions. Murder justies intervention and
sanctions. Political repression only justies sanctions against states if
those who are repressed call for them not intervention.
Because comprehensive economic sanctions may have enormous
consequences both intended and unintended, we must also consider
comprehensive international sanctions as a form of intervention. Inept
government, or the urge to save failed states, does not justify compre-
hensive sanctions by states. Sanctions and intervention to change eco-
nomic organization or political arrangements that we simply disagree
with (such as no-growth economies or anarchist political organization)
433
Argument and change in world politics
thus ought not to be permitted. Sanctions that cost lives to promote po-
litical and economic systems are not acceptable; political and economic
forms of life that cost life justify sanctions and intervention. Persuasion
ought to be the rule. On the other hand, if individuals and groups do not
wish to participate or interact with regimes that they nd abhorrent, no
laws should force that interaction. Conversely, those who would avoid
contact should allow others to interact. Each side may seek to persuade
the other to change their policy.
Realizing ethical world politics
In those instances when we must interact with others and we nd our-
selves in conict over ends or means, if we do not at rst see an obvious
way to act in matters that concern all of us, we can use discourse ethical
principles to nd that way. Yet, in many ways, world politics is very far
fromconditions of communicative action, discourse ethics, andanethics
of care. My arguments about the importance of the table on which argu-
ments rest and are understood, specically the ways the background of
culture andpreexistingbelief constrainandenable the persuasiveness of
arguments, showwhy normative change is often slow, incremental, and
path-dependent. Yet the history of colonial reform and decolonization
suggests that ethical arguments are already an important part of the
process of world politics. Decolonization is a necessary precondition
for discourse ethics in world politics, but it is certainly not sufcient.
Movement toward ethical world political relations would be helped by
an ethical discourse on humanitarian intervention, the next frontier of
ethical world politics. And, despite many problems, there are signs that
world politics is moving in the direction of realizing discourse ethics
and an ethic of care. Anarchy the absence of hierarchy in the con-
text of international organizations, transnational contact, local activism,
and traditions of international law that constrain the use of force, pro-
vides opportunities to deliberate. World government is not necessary
for discourse ethics to work. Anarchy and the clash of civilizations are
a virtue, not an obstacle to the development of ethical world politics.
Because no one can presume understanding, it is obvious that we must
work toward it.
But some conditions of world politics do have to change to allow
greater scope for discourse ethics and ethical world politics. Most im-
portantly, taking discursive democracy seriously as the foundation of
ethics in world politics means that human needs rise to the top of the
434
Poiesis and praxis
agenda they are not solely a matter of benevolence but crucial to le-
gitimacy. A procedural commitment to ethics implies that the world
community has obligations to promote the capacity of its members to
participate in deliberation on issues that affect them. Both discourse
ethics and the ethics of care underscore the importance, indeed our
obligation, to better the material conditions of the least well-off, and to
increase the sensitivity of the already well-off so that all are able to par-
ticipate in the construction of their communities and able to empathize
enough with the other to know when and how they are to act in a caring
way. The ways that the actions of the well-off directly and indirectly
hurt the poor and weak must be claried and corrected. It is not enough
to say that the poor or the different have the right to speak, we must
remove the economic and institutional obstacles to their participation.
As we lower the material andinstitutional barriers todiscourse ethical
dialogue, wemust alsolower thebarriers of arrogance, hostility, andfear.
To be in an ethical relation with another is to be in an emotional and
other-regarding relationship: the other deserves and has our tolerant
respect and sympathy. We need to start in an ethical relation in order to
have discourse ethics, and discourse ethics allows us to maintain and
deepen the ethical relation.
Discourse ethics is certainly difcult and not easily achieved within
households, much less within states or across boundaries of culture and
political systems. Yet taking argument analysis, discourse ethics, and
the skepticism of critical perspectives seriously expands the possibil-
ities for ethical world politics. Little of the discourse ethical dialogue
that I advocate will be easy and much of it will be extremely difcult,
especially when it comes to questioning cherished assumptions, chang-
ing comfortable ways of being in the world, and making real changes
in relations of power. Consistent with the postmodern literary theorists
analytical emphasis on discourse as a social construction that materi-
ally reproduces the worlds norms, hierarchies, and values, argument
analysis and discourse ethics emphasize how our arguments can, with
difculty and persistence, change the world.
435
Appendix. African decolonization
Current country Colonizer at Method of
name independence Date decolonization
Algeria France 1962 Guerrilla war and negotiated
independence.
Angola Portugal 1975 Guerrilla war and negotiated
Portuguese withdrawal
followed by long civil war and
South African intervention.
Benin France 1960 Self-governing territory in 1958.
Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Botswana Britain 1966 Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Burkina Faso France 1960 Self-governing territory in 1958.
Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Burundi Belgium Trust 1962 UN supervised referendum in
1961 decided against
monarchy; separated from
Rwanda in 1962.
Cameroon France and 1960 Former French Trust Territory
Britain Trust 1961 Cameroun united in
1961 with British Trust
Territory after UN supervised
plebiscite in 1961.
Canary Islands Spain Became an autonomous
community of Spain with two
legislatures under 1978
constitution.
Cape Verde Portugal 1975 Negotiated transition.
(cont.)
436
African decolonization
Continued
Current country Colonizer at Method of
name independence Date decolonization
Central African France 1960 Self-governing territory in 1958.
Republic Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Chad France 1960 Self-governing Territory in 1958.
Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Comoros France 1975 Voted to remain French in 1958;
Plebiscites in 1974; three main
islands voted for independence
and declared it unilaterally. In
1976, one island voted to remain
French.
Congo Belgium 1960 Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Djibouti France 1977 In a May 1977 referendum, inhabi-
tants overwhelmingly voted to
become independent, leading to
independence in June.
Egypt Britain 1922 Protectorate terminated in 1922
and Egypt was declared
sovereign; Britain only
gradually withdrew. Out in
1956.
Equatorial Spain 1968 UN-supervised referendum on
Guinea independence in 1968, followed
by UN-supervised general
elections.
Eritrea Italy/ 1993 Occupied by Italy 18851941;
Britain/ British occupation/Trusteeship,
Ethiopia 19411952; Guerrilla war
against Ethiopia and
referendum in 1993.
Ethiopia Italy 1941 Italian Occupation 19361941
opposed by the League of
Nations.
Gabon France 1960 1958 Referendum granted
self-government.
Gambia Britain 1965 Negotiated and granted
independence.
Ghana Britain 1957 Negotiated and granted indepen-
dence. British Togoland voted
for union with the Gold Coast
in 1956 (UNGA Res. 944 (X))
(cont.)
437
Appendix
Continued
Current country Colonizer at Method of
name independence Date decolonization
Guinea France 1958 Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Guinea-Bissau Portugal 1974 Guerrilla Movement
Ivory Coast France 1960 1958 Referendum granted
self-government.
Kenya Britain 1963 Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Lesotho Britain 1966 Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Liberia private 1847 Settled by US born African-
Americans.
a
Libya Italy 1951 British and French admin.
19431951, then negotiated
transitiongranted
independence.
Madagascar France 1960 Major rebellion in 1947; 1958
referendum granted
self-government.
Malawi Britain 1964 Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Mali France 1960 Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Mauritania France 1960 1958 Referendum granted
self-government.
Morocco France 1956 Guerrilla war and negotiated
independence.
Mozambique Portugal 1975 Guerrilla war and negotiated
Portuguese withdrawal
followed by long civil war.
Namibia South Africa 1990 Guerrilla war and negotiated
Mandate South African withdrawal. UN
supervised elections in 1989.
Niger France 1960 1958 Referendum granted
self-government.
Nigeria Britain 1960 British territory of Northern
Cameroon decided to join
Nigeria in 1961 UN supervised
plebiscite.
Rwanda Belgium 1962 UN supervised referendum in
Trust 1961 decided against monarchy;
separated from Burundi in 1962.
Sao Tom e Portugal 1975 Granted independence.
and Principe
(cont.)
438
African decolonization
Continued
Current country Colonizer at Method of
name independence Date decolonization
Senegal France 1960 1958 Referendum granted
self-government.
Sierra Leone Britain 1961 Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Somalia Italy, Britain 1960 Negotiated transitiongranted
Trust independence.
South Africa Britain 1910 Granted white settlers
self-government, followed by
long struggle for majority rule
which succeeded in 1994.
Sudan Britain 1956 Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Swaziland Britain 1968 Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Tanzania Britain Trust 1961 Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Togo France Trust 1960 UN supervised elections in 1958
UNGA Res 1182 (XII).
Tunisia France 1956 Guerrilla war and negotiated
independence
Uganda Britain 1962 Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Walvis Bay South Africa 1994 Negotiated transition to Namibia.
Western Sahara Spain/ Africas last colony. Morocco
Morocco and Mauritania invaded in
December 1975; Mauritania
withdrew in 1979; Polisario
declared Saharan Arab
Democratic Republic; ceasere
in 1991. UN referendum and
settlement is stalled.
Zambia Britain 1964 Negotiated transitiongranted
independence.
Zimbabwe Britain 1965 Unilateral Declaration of
(Rhodesia) Independence by white settlers,
followed by guerrilla war for
majority rule which succeeded
in 1980.
a
The African-Americansettlers of Liberia, despite their ownandtheir ancestors
histories of slavery, and notwithstanding the strong inuence of the US Cons-
titution on their own constitutional arrangements, did not establish a political
system that treated natives and African-Americans equally. Thus, the ideas of
self-determination and equality were not always applied even by those who
had beneted from the abolition of slavery.
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Wendt, Alexander, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999).
White, Dorothy Shipley, Black Africa and De Gaulle: From the French Empire to
Independence (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press,
1979).
Williams, Eric, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina, 1944).
Williams, Jerry M. and Lewis, Robert E. (eds.), Early Images of the Americas:
Transfer and Invention (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1993).
Wilson, Heather A., International Law and the Use of Force by National Liberation
Movements (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
Wilson, Henry S., African Decolonization (New York: Edward Arnold, 1994).
Wood, Brian (ed.), Namibia, 18841984: Readings on Namibias History and Society
(Lusaka: United Nations Institute for Namibia, 1988).
Wright, Quincy, Mandates Under the League of Nations (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1930).
Young, Iris Marion, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1990).
456
Index
Abelson, Robert, 48
Abingdon, Earl of, 198
abolition movement, 160161, 162, 168,
176184, 389
Aborigines Protection Society, 183, 202,
240241, 243, 325
accountability, 105, 246247, 266
Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves
(1807), 188
Adas, Michael, 390n
Adderly, Charles, 360
Adedeji, Adebayo, 137
Africa, 205221
decolonization, 436439
in 1880, 206
in 1914, 219
Africa Squadron, 166, 184
African Association, 202, 241242
African National Congress, 331
agent, 2, 343
Aix-la-Chapelle treaty (1818) 185
Alexander VI, Pope, 140, 141, 145,
155
Algeria, 320, 325, 328, 356
Alker, Hayward, 12n, 20, 28n, 40n, 85n,
119n
All Colonial Peoples Conference
(1945), 304
Alvarez, Sonia, 61
American Colonization Society, 183
analogy, 5n, 18, 2122, 26, 79, 99, 102, 114,
196, 198199
Anderson, John, 298
Angola, 220, 320, 328, 351, 363, 367368,
369, 371, 380, 381
Cuban assistance to, 374, 375, 376377,
380
Cuban withdrawal from, 381
Movement for the Popular Liberation
of Angola (MPLA) 373, 374
National Front for the Liberation
of Angola (FNLA), 373374
Peoples Armed Forces for the
Liberation of Angola (FAPLA), 376
South African invasions of, 372379
Union for the Total Independence of
Angola (UNITA), 373, 374, 375376
Anstey, Roger, 165n, 181
anti-colonial movements, 179, 293, 295,
304306, 325, 345347, 387390
anti-colonial resistance, 139140, 142143,
202, 216218, 251, 271, 293, 320321,
323, 345, 350, 355, 387
Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection
Society, 241, 252254, 258, 262n, 277,
287288
Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines
Friend, 241
Anti-Slavery Society, 176, 178, 240, 357
Antislaving Act (1818), 188
Apel, Karl-Otto, 411
apprenticeship, 161, 183, 191
Aquinas, Thomas, 143
Archimbaud, L eon, 25
argument
dened, 14
formal analysis of, 16, 119120
informal analyis of, 16, 119125
purpose of, 2930
scope of, 3132
Aristotle
on argument, 1516, 27, 120n
on slavery, 142, 151, 171
Armed Forces Movement, 329
Aron, Raymond, 325, 354n, 361362
associative reasoning, 5n, 17, 197
457
458 Index
Atlantic Charter (1941), 296298, 395
Atlee, Clement, 308
Australia, 251, 321
Axelrod, Robert, 93, 94, 132
Azikiwe, Nnamdi, 296
balance sheet memorandum, 352353
Balfour, Arthur, 252, 253n
Banda, Hastings, 304
Bandung Conference (1955), 306, 317
Barlow, Arthur, 276
Bebel, August, 233
Beer, George, 254
behavioral norms, 86, 9193
Beitz, Charles, 415, 418, 420, 425
Belgian Congo, 205, 242245, 207, 339
belief, 6, 910, 3757, 81
change of, 5355, 7576
foundations of, 4345, 404
mass and elite, 5557
belief systems, 4953, 6970, 72, 81
contingent beliefs, 5152, 71
core beliefs, 71, 121
role beliefs, 5152, 72
Benedict, Ruth, 58, 59
Benezet, Anthony, 172, 174, 176, 177,
195, 247
Berat, Lynn, 143, 246n
Berlin West Africa Conference (188485),
201n, 202, 207210, 212, 213, 215, 249,
263, 268n
Betanzos, Domingo de, 149, 150
Betts, R.F., 344345
Bismarck, Otto, 207, 208, 221, 222
Blum, Douglas, 51
Blyden Edward, 217218, 301
Boas, Franz, 307, 308
Boer War, 245246, 435
Bolvar, Sim on, 187, 355
Bolland, O. Nigel, 156157
Bondelswartz (or Bondelswarts), 229
rebellion (1922), 276281
Bonn, M.J., 349, 360
Booth, Ken, 61, 403404, 424
bootstrapping, 106, 392
Botha, P.W., 376
Botswana, 331, 369
Boulding, Elise, 62
Brazzaville French Africa Conference
(1944), 300, 323
Brazzaville Protocol (1988), 381
British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society,
183184
Brussels General Act (1890), 211, 263
see also Conference of Brussels
Bryan, William Jennings, 238
Bull, Hedley, 63, 67, 345346
B ulow, von, 230231
Burma, 321
Burundi, 339
Bustamante, Alexander, 321
Buxton, Charles, 110, 253254
Buxton, Thomas Fowell, 186n, 240, 248
Buxton, Travers, 253
Caledon Proclamation (1809), 193
Camus, Albert, 325
Canada, 161, 321
capabilities, 103104, 389390, 392, 394
Carr, Edward Hallett, 83, 93, 403, 405
Cartier, Raymond, 325
Casement, Roger, 244
Cassese, Antonio, 6970, 106, 311, 398, 406,
422423
Castlereagh, Lord, 181
casuistry, 120n
Cawthra, Gavin, 374
Central African Republic, 339
Cerrato, Alonzo L opez de, 150, 151,
155, 156
Chamberlain, Joseph, 190, 242
Chamberlain, Muriel E., 264, 286, 322,
347348
change, 1, 75, 80, 103104, 435
Charles V, 148149, 151n, 152
Chomsky, Noam, 403
Churchill, Winston, 277, 295, 296298,
310, 395
civilization, 208, 247
Clark, Grover, 360361
Clarkson, Thomas, 177, 178, 247
Clemenceau, Georges, 258
Cobb, Roger, 70, 75n
Cobb, T.R.R., 171172
coercion, 15, 31, 130, 417, 420
Cohen, Joshua, 8385, 127
coherence, 44, 52, 79, 110113, 408
Coker, Christopher, 375n
colonial conscripts, 250251, 294, 350351n
Colonial Development Act (1929), 295
Colonial Development and Welfare Act
(1940), 295, 298
colonialism
causes of, 136, 360n
dened 131132, 135137
economic arguments about, 325,
350355, 356357, 358363
Columbus, Christopher, 140, 144
Commission on International Justice and
Goodwill, 194195
Committee of Twenty-Four, 318n
Commonwealth, 322
Index 459
communicative action, 411412, 313,
414, 425
compensation for emancipation, 170
Conference of Brussels (188990), 211, 212,
216, 242
Congo Reform Association, 202, 244245,
325
Congo reform movement, 242245
Congress of Verona (1822), 185
Congress of Vienna (1815), 184185
Conservative Party, 322
content, 2728, 71, 81, 85, 113, 122, 343
see also meaning
Convention Peoples Party, 345
Coombes, Annie, 241
Cooper, Frederick, 239, 284, 322323, 343
Coreld, F.D., 291
Cortez, Hernando, 144145, 146n
Corwin, Arthur, 185
Council of Fourteen, 152156
Council of the Indies, 148, 150, 151n, 152
Council on African Affairs (CAA),
304306, 331
counterfactuals, 385387
courts of mixed commission, 185186
Covenant of League of Nations, 260263,
266
Article 1, 262263
Article 22, 261262, 273274
Article 23, 262
Cranborne, Lord, 294, 297, 310
Crocker, Chester, 381
Crummell, Alexander, 217
Cuba, 186, 237
culture, 6, 5778
dened, 69, 6468
framing, 7273
global, 6768,
in international relations theory, 5964
as lifeworld, 6871
Curtin, Philip, 186187
Curzon, Lord, 251
Dagnino, Evalina, 61
Dallmayr, Fred, 69n
Davis, Lance, 352
De Gaulle, Charles, 300
Declaration on Granting of Independence
to Colonial Territories and Peoples
(UNGA Resoution 1514), 317
Programme of Action for the Full
Implementation of, 319
decolonization, 320325
dened, 8n, 136138
deconstruction, 101103
Delaire, Romeo, 399
delegitimation, 101, 102103
democratization, 386387, 394
denormalization, 100, 101, 102
Der Derian, James, 28
Dernberg, Bernhard, 234, 235
Diagne, Blaise, 250, 258, 323
Diaz, Bartholemew, 205
discourse ethics, 410425
capacity, 416, 418, 435
competence, 412, 415416, 418
critique of, 413419
hard cases and, 423425
humanitarian intervention and, 425434
non-democracies and, 421, 423, 424425
pre-discourse, 414
rights entailed, 412, 418, 434435
urgency, 413414
Dolbens Act (1788), 161
Domenach, Jean-Marie, 328
Doty, Roxanne Lynn, 20, 65, 70, 123, 131
Douglass, Frederick, 179
Doyle, Michael, 347
Drescher, Seymour, 169170, 191
Du Bois, W.E.B., 185n, 242, 249, 258, 304,
306, 395
Duffy, Gavan, 119120, 121
Duignan, Peter, 192, 200n, 246, 349
Dumbarton Oaks Conference (1944), 309
East Timor, 3, 320, 324325, 341342
Eden, Lynn, 66
Edwards, Trevor, 378
effective occupation, 208210
Elbourne, Elizabeth, 192, 195196
Elder, Charles, 70, 75n
Elster, Jon, 41n
Eltis, David, 166, 167, 170
Emancipation Act (1833), 161, 182
emotions, 2527, 36, 38, 78, 98, 104, 115,
241, 388, 391, 408, 416, 432, 433, 435
empathy, 102, 118, 195, 198, 204, 388, 408,
409410, 415, 418, 422, 424, 427, 429
encomienda, 144, 150, 151, 152, 155, 156,
191
epistemic communities, 24, 36, 66, 68, 71
Equiano, Olauda, 179
Escobar, Arturo, 61, 71
ethic of care, 417, 419, 429430, 433, 435
ethical argument
dened, 67, 14, 24, 41, 82
disingenuous uses, 98, 100, 125126,
255, 267
emotion and, 26, 115, 117118, 409
failed, 234235
practical argument and, 100n
process of, 85, 109, 122123
460 Index
ethical argument (continued)
receptivity to, 112117, 408409
tests for, 123124, 394397
ethical explanation, 119124, 126127, 129
objections to, 124130
role of ethics, 8385, 403406
Ethiopia, 336, 337, 339
Evangelista, Mathew, 5n
exhaustion thesis, 349350, 354356
falsiability, 129
fear, 3031
Federking, Brian, 119120, 121
Ferdinand, King of Spain, 146
Ferry, Jules, 214, 358
Ficht, Johan, 72
Fieldhouse, D.K., 346n, 347, 351, 357
Fi evez, Leon, 201
Finnemore, Martha, 35, 43n, 80, 87, 97,
102104, 107n
Flax, Jane, 415
Florini, Ann, 94
Folliet, Joseph, 248
forced labor, 159, 190197, 220221,
283284, 301
arguments for, 192193
reform, 193197, 264265
see also encomienda and repartimiento
Foucault, Michel, 43, 47n, 54, 99n, 131,
201202
Fourth Committee, United Nations,
334, 335
Fox, Richard, 68, 73, 76
Foyle, Douglas, 41n, 56
framing, 1922, 35, 99, 102, 122, 266, 265,
267, 333, 341
Fran cois, Curt von, 224, 225226
Franke, Thomas, 317n
Frankel, Philip, 368
French Equatorial Africa, 301n, 323
French Indochina, 232, 328
French West Africa, 301n, 323, 350n
Freud, Sigmund, 60
Gallagher, John, 203, 214, 291
Galtung, Johann, 62
Gandhi, Mahatma, 285
Gann, L.H., 192, 200n, 246, 349
Gardenfors, Peter, 44, 54
Gelpi, Christopher, 87, 9394
genocide, 339, 339, 399, 414, 426, 427428,
429, 431, 432
Genocide Convention (1948), 427428, 431
George, Alexander, 4647
George, Lloyd, 256
Gerig, Benjamin, 347348n
Ghana, 321, 324, 354
Gibbon, Edward, 349
Girault, Arthur, 323
Gladstone, William, 203
Goering, Heinrich, 222
Gompers, Samuel, 239
Government of India Act (1935), 286
Gramsci, Antonio, 398
Granville, Lord, 202, 222
Grigg, Edward, 288
groupthink, 7475
Guam, 237
Guinea-Bissau, 320, 328
Haacke, J urgen, 419
Haas, Ernst, 400
Haas, Peter, 66
Habermas, J urgen, 29, 33n, 34n, 69, 404,
407, 410413, 414416, 418420
habit, 44, 58, 88, 92, 93, 102, 109, 111, 394
Habr e, Hissene, 430
Haddad, Deborah, 20
Haddon, Alfred, 307
Hale, James, 272, 287
Hall, H. Duncan, 268n, 272
Hargreaves, J.D., 349350
Harris, Raymond, 175
Hastings, Warren, 161n
Herbst, Major, 275, 277, 278279
Herder, Johann, G., 7172
Herero, 222223, 226227, 229
Heyrick, Elizabeth, 159, 178
Hitler, Adolf, 307
Hobbes, Thomas, 1213, 83
Hobson, J.A., 252, 359360
Hofmeyr, Gisbert, 276, 279
Holmes, Robert, 399
Holsti, Ole, 45
Homer-Dixon, Thomas, 19, 119n
Horne, Lena, 305
Horton, John Africanus, 217218
Howard, Michael, 346n, 347
Hull, Cordell, 309310
human rights, 388, 402, 403, 405, 406407,
408410, 426, 427, 430
humanitarian intervention, 114, 392,
399403, 425434
proposed convention on, 431434
humanitarianism
aggressive, 201202, 203, 235, 237, 285
reformist, 190, 202, 203, 235, 239246,
393
humanization, 388, 390, 409410
Huntington, Samuel, 60, 6263, 420
Index 461
Hunton, Alpheus, 305, 306n, 331
Hurley, Susan, 405406
Husserl, Edmund, 69
Huttenback, Robert, 352
Huxley, Julian, 307
hypocrisy, 98, 100, 102, 110, 115, 128, 302
ideal speech, 29, 36, 411, 412, 420
ideas, 4950, 81, 344, 345
identity argument, 5, 6, 14, 2426, 194195,
343
identity beliefs, 25, 4243
political identity, 114
India, 251, 285286, 322, 331, 334
Indian National Congress, 331, 345
indirect rule, 220221
Indonesia, 325, 329, 341
innovation, 7476
institutionalization, 2829, 91
of normative belief, 99, 101, 105109
of anti-slavery, 184188
of colonial reform, 268, 286
of anti-colonial beliefs, 316, 391392
Instrument of Obedience and Vasalage
(1573), 155
instrumental argument see practical
argument
instrumental beliefs, 28, 4142
Inter Caetera (1493), 140141
interests, 4950, 80, 81, 83, 91, 9495, 103,
108, 115, 118, 124, 125, 396397, 403,
404, 408409, 426, 427
International Court of Justice, 330, 335,
336337, 338339
International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (1966), 318
International Labor Organization (ILO),
266, 267, 275, 284
interpretation, 128129
intuitionism, 406408, 416
Iraq, 3, 262, 263, 282n, 283, 295
Isabella, Queen of Spain, 146, 247
Jackson, Robert, 95, 140, 390391, 392
Jacobson, Harold, 294, 315, 316
Jaja of Opoba, 215, 240
Jamaica, 321322, 354
James, William, 307n
Janis, Irving, 7475
Jennings, Lawrence, 170
Jepperson, Ronald, 6364, 112
Jervis, Robert, 46, 72, 104
Johnson, Alistair Iain, 62
Johnson, James, 217218
Johnson, Paul, 392393
Joint Declaration on Colonial Policy
(1943), 298
Jones, A. Creech, 322
Jones, Dorothy, 68, 246
Jonson, Albert, 18, 121
Judd, Dennis, 355
justication, 12, 125126, 128, 298, 310, 411
Kant, Immanuel, 407
Karapin, Roger, 19, 119n
Kariko, Daniel, 228, 229
Katzenstein, Peter, 39n, 6364, 112
Keck, Margaret, 104, 109n
Keeley, James, 416
Kennedy, John F., 121
Kenya, 339
Kenyatta, Jomo, 304
Keohane, Robert, 86n, 93
Khong, Yuen Foong, 18, 22
Kier, Elizabeth, 58, 61, 65, 66, 73, 129130
Klein, Martin, 171, 196, 199
Klotz, Audie, 87
Kratochwil, Friedrich, 40, 86, 107n
Kuhn, Thomas, 47n, 52n, 100n
Kuwait, 3
Labour Party (British), 252, 296, 322,
361, 386
Lacoste, Robert, 359
Laffey, Mark, 4950, 113
Lakatos, Imre, 129n
Lamine Gu eye law, 301
Las Casas, Bartolom e de, 8, 151158, 247
Lasswell, Harold, 11
Lausanne, Institute of International Law
(1888), 210, 211, 212
Laws of Burgos (1512), 145146
League Against Imperialism, 325
League of Nations, 249250, 251n,
265266, 309, 333n
Assembly of, 266, 277
Council of, 265266, 281
see also Mandate system
learning, 5355, 72
legitimacy and legitimation, 3335, 79, 99,
102, 246, 246, 341, 424425
legitimation crisis, 3435, 292n
Leites, Nathan, 47n
Lenin, V.I., 257, 296
Leopold, King of Belgium, 207, 242245,
343
Lesotho, 369
Leutwein, Theodore, 224226, 229, 233
LeVeen, Phillip, 187
Lev-Strauss, Claude, 308
462 Index
Levy, Jack, 2122, 55
Lewy, Guenter, 114
L eygues, Georges, 201
Leys, Colin, 382
Liberia, 205, 336, 337
Liberman, Peter, 357
lifeworld, 6871, 73, 117, 414415, 419
Linklater, Andrew, 406, 419
Linlithgow, Lord, 295
Livinston, David, 208
Lloyd, Christopher, 164, 165, 186
Logan, Rayford, 304
logic, 17, 27, 102, 113, 388, 412
Loi Cadre (1956), 324
London Missionary Society, 193
L opez de Salecedo, Diego, 147
Luard, Evan, 37, 39, 63, 8081
L uderitz, Adolf, 207, 222
Lugard, Frederick, 267, 284285,
348, 359
Luis, Wm. Roger, 260, 262, 288n
Lukes, Stephen, 405
Luow, Eric, 333
Lusaka Manifesto, 339
Lynch, Hollis, 305n
MacDonald, Malcolm, 295, 386
MacLean, John, 49
MacLeish, Archibald, 305
Macmillan, Harold, 345346n,
352353
Madagascar, 323, 324
Malan, D.F., 378
Malet, Sir Edward, 201, 208209
Mandate system, League of Nations, 8,
260290, 312, 333n
effects of, 282286
agreements, 264265
supervision process, 267
territories of, 263
forced labor, 271
Mandelbaum, Michael, 132
Manley, Michael, 251n
Manley, Norman, 251n, 321
Manseld, Lord, 160161
Marable, Manning, 260
Marshall Plan, 306
materialism, 43, 7679, 84, 344
Mauritania, 320
Mauritius, 161, 182
Maxwell, Kenneth, 351352
McKinley, William, 237, 238
Mead, Margaret, 58, 60, 62
meaning-content, 2728, 73, 113, 414
Mefford, Dwain, 21
Melian dialogue, 139, 225n
Mercer, Jon, 385n
meta-argument, 1923, 35, 40, 73, 78, 101,
102, 116, 122, 180, 341
metaphor, 5n, 18, 73
metonym, 5n, 18
Midgley, Claire, 178
Miers, Susanne, 190n
Miller, William Lee, 11
Monroe Doctrine, 256
Montesinos, Antonio, 145, 151
Montesquieu, 172173
Montezuma, 146n
Moon, J. Donald, 410
moral interests, 103
Morel, E.D., 243244, 249, 252
Morgenthau, Hans, 1213, 93, 426
Morocco, 320
Morris, Abraham, 276
Morris, Thomas, 189
Morrison, Herbert, 297
Mozambique, 220, 320, 328, 351352,
367368, 371
Mozambiquan National Resistance
(Renamo), 369
Mueller, John, 96, 97
Mugabe, Robert, 400
myths, 58, 73
Nadelmann, Ethan, 9596, 97, 138,
390, 391n, 394
Nama, 222236
Namibia
elections, 381382
ethical arguments and, 382385
United Nations assistance, 400401,
see also South West Africa
Nardin, Terry, 122
National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), 303306
nationalism, 7172, 345
natural law tradition, 143
Nazi
colonial policy, 385386
racial theories, 307308
neocolonialism, 137, 353, 397398,
400
New Laws of the Indies for Good
Treatment and Preservation of the
Indians (1542), 149150, 152
New Zealand, 251, 321
Nkrumah, Kwame, 304, 321
Non-Self-Governing Territories,
Declaration on, 284, 314
Noothout, Johann, 232
normalize, 99
Index 463
normative belief, 20, 4041, 85
distinguished from behavioral norms,
8698
meta-normative 90
types, 8990
scope, 90, 93
normativity, 92, 110
norms, 4041
see also behavioral norms
Nyerere, Julius, 3
Obichere, Boniface, 215
operational code, 4647
Ordinances about the Good Treatment
of the Indians (1526), 148
Organization of African Unity, 319320n
organizational culture, 66
Ormsby-Gore, W., 267, 284
Ortz, Tom az, 148
Oviedo, Gonzalo Fern andez de, 146147,
148149, 151, 153, 154
Pagden, Anthony, 151
Paine, Tom, 173
Palau, 340
Palmerston, Lord, 168169
Pan-African Conferences, 242, 255,
257260, 302, 303, 304
Pan-Africanism, 218, 251n, 301306
Paris Peace Conference, 252, 255, 259260
Payne, Rodger, 21
Paz, Matias de, 145
Perham, Margery, 346
Permanent Court of International Justice,
266n
Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC),
8, 250, 265273, 274275, 277282, 312,
314, 315, 333n, 391
questionnaires of, 269272, 335
persuasion, 4, 6, 1416, 22, 3033, 118
persuasiveness, 7, 26, 3233, 3637, 53, 78,
79, 85, 111, 112117
Philippines, US occupation of, 237239
philosophical beliefs, 3040
plebiscite, 320, 324325, 326327, 340341,
425
Pleven, Ren e, 300
political opportunity structures, 105, 204,
290, 292
polygenism, 212213
Portugal, 141, 328329, 351352, 354,
356, 367
positive law tradition, 140
practical argument, 5, 6, 14, 23, 343
practical inference, 24, 27
see also syllogism
practical reason, 1112, 15, 16
pragmatic reforms, 104, 127128, 189,
196, 397
Price, Richard, 89
principles, 422423, 432
pro-colonial lobbies, 213214
procedural turn, 410, 421422, 435
process, 12, 910, 14n, 27, 109, 122
protability
of colonialism, 3, 4, 105, 190n, 200,
347348, 351354, 356357
of forced labor, 197198
of slavery, 167171, 197198
of slave trade, 164165, 167, 180181
public opinion, 322, 325, 328329, 384, 389
Puerto Rico, 237, 341
Pye, Lucien, 6061
Quakers, 176177, 178
Quevedo, Juan de, 148
racism, 212, 260, 306309, 330
Ranger, Terrence, 217
rational account of role of norms, 9395
rational actor theory, 8585, 117, 125, 129,
170171, 396
rationality, 4, 1213, 3739, 43, 44, 78, 79,
81, 83, 117, 353, 417418
Raymond, Gregory, 87, 89
reason, 10, 12, 15, 1819, 28, 73, 7879,
117118, 416, 433
receptivity, 112117
reconstruction, 103
reformist discourse, 250
Rehobeth rebellion, 281n
Reiter, Dan, 6, 47, 72
religious arguments
about colonialism, 138, 140141, 142,
145, 146, 149, 362
about slavery, 174175, 180, 198, 199
repartimiento, 155156, 191
representation, 1923, 99
see also framing
Republic of Congo, 324
Requirement, The (1513), 146147, 155, 246
resilience of beliefs and behavioral norms,
109111
Resolution 2621, UNGA (1970), 319
Revision of the General Act of February
26, 1885 and of the General Act and
Declaration of Brussels of July 2, 1890,
Convention on (1919), 263
Rhodes, Cecil, 360
Rhodesia, 318, 321, 371
Rio de Oro, 220, 320
see also Western Sahara
464 Index
Risse, Thomas, 12n, 419
Robeson, Paul, 304, 305, 306
Robinson, Fiona, 430
Robinson, Ronald, 203, 214, 291
Rohrbach, Paul, 227228, 233, 248
role, 4243, 52, 82, 111
Romulo, Carlos, 306
Roosevelt, Franklin, D., 296297, 300,
303
Roosevelt, Theodore, 213, 236237, 238n
Root, Elihu, 238
Rorty, Richard, 44, 406407, 416, 417418
Rosen, Stephen Peter, 61
Ross, Marc Howard, 92
Round Table, 257
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 173
Ruis, Francisco, 148
Rusk, Dean, 121
Russell, Richard, 42
Russett, Bruce, 62
Ruventlow, Graf, 233
Rwanda, 339
Ruanda-Urundi, 363, 313
Saar, 324n
Sahlins, Marshall, 7778
Sampson, Martin, 66
San Martn, Jos e de, 187, 355
sanctions, 20, 41, 92, 104, 106, 110, 123,
125, 138, 293, 318, 319, 396, 412, 422,
424, 425, 431, 433434
against South Africa, 363364, 369,
370372, 375, 379, 380, 382, 396
Sarraut, Albert, 289290, 358
Sartre, Jean Paul, 325
Saul, John, 382
schema theory, 48, 53
Schlieffen, Graff, 229, 230
scientic arguments, 56, 14, 24
Scott, Michael, 331, 334, 335
Scramble for Africa, 215
Select Committee on Aborigines, 240
self-determination, 261, 263, 296297, 315,
322, 337338, 362, 387, 388, 393, 395,
398, 403, 405, 406, 422
post-World War I, 250252, 256
United Nations debates on, 315316
Sep ulveda, Juan Gin es de, 8, 151, 152153
Shapiro, Michael, 70, 430
Sharpe, Granville, 174, 175, 183n
Sherman, William, 147, 150n, 157
Shute, Stephen, 405406
sideways reasoning, see associative
reasoning
Sierra Leone, 183n, 186, 205, 217
Sikkink, Kathryn, 43n, 91, 97, 102, 103, 104,
107n, 109n
Silvan, Donald, 20
Simon Commission, 286
Simon, Herbert, 38
Simon, Pierre-Henri, 328
Sine, Babacar, 430
slave revolts, 168
slavery, 162190
anti-slavery arguments, 172175,
179180, 181, 182
economics of, 161171
injustice of, 84
Native American Indian, 147150, 155,
157, 163
pro-slavery arguments, 171172,
175176, 180181
Smith, Adam, 168, 173, 189, 358
Smith, Anthony, 71
Smith, Steve, 45
Smuts, Jan, 257, 274, 276277, 330, 331,
333, 340
Snow, Alpheaus Henry, 254n
Snyder, Jack, 126, 129n, 349n
social Darwinism, 212213, 227228, 248,
203, 306309
social movements, 5, 29, 37, 57, 76, 116n,
393
Solow, Barbara, 159
Somalia, 339
South Africa, 245246, 251, 321
anti-war movement in, 383384
arguments regarding South West
Africas status, 330334
Armscor, 372, 373
casualties in Angola and South West
Africa, 365367, 376
Committee on South West Africa War
Resistance, 383
End Conscription Campaign, 383
invasion of Angola, 372379
South African Defence Force (SADF)
363, 365, 366367, 369371, 373379,
382, 383384
total strategy, 368370
see also South West Africa
South West Africa, 8, 207, 221236, 329340
Contact Group, 380
Constructive Engagement, 380
Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA),
380, 382
Development of Self-Government for
Native Nations in South West Africa
Act (1968), 337338
disputed status, 330334, 338339
Index 465
economic value of, 363367
German extermination policy, 230
as Mandate, 273282
mineral wealth of, 339, 364
Namibianization, 365
Peoples Liberation Army of Namibia
(PLAN), 366, 367
Security Council Resolution 435,
380, 401
South West African Affairs Act
(1949), 334
South West Africa National Union,
336, 337
South West African Peoples
Organization (SWAPO), 330, 336, 337,
340, 363, 364, 366, 372, 375, 377, 378,
381, 383, 401
South West Africa Territorial Force
(SWATF), 364, 365, 367, 376377,
379
United Nations Council for South West
Africa, 337
United Nations Special Committee on,
317n, 336
United Nations Committee on, 335336
United Nations Trusteeship Council
and, 333334
Spain, 141, 161, 355, 356
Special Committee on Colonialism, UN,
317318n
Special Committee on the Situation with
Regard to the Implementation on the
Granting of Independence to Colonial
Countries, 318
Stalin, Joseph, 296
Stanley, Henry Morton, 207
Stanley, Oliver, 298299
Starn, Orin, 68, 73, 76
Stephen, James, 175
Strachey, John, 361
strategic action, 412, 413, 425
structure, 2, 80, 115
Sublimus Deus (1537), 149
Sudan, 339
Sukarno, Achmed, 306
Sumner, William G., 110111
suppression of slave trade, 166167,
184187, 188189
Swaziland, 369
syllogism, 5n, 1617, 2728
Sylvan, Donald, 20
table for argument, 116117, 125
Taft, Robert, 238
tamemes, 144, 149150
Tannenwald, Nina, 89
Tanzania, 339
Tarrow, Sydney, 116n
Taylor, A.J.P., 291
Taylor, Charles, 128
Temperly, Howard, 166n
Temporary Slavery Commission, 196
Tetlock, Philip, 51n
Th eodoli, Alberto, 266, 279280
Thiers, Adolphe, 170
32 Battalion, 367, 374, 378
Thompson, Janice, 40n
Thorson, Stuart, 20
Thucydides, 83, 139
Tibet, 3n, 341342
Togo, 262, 324
Togoland, 324
topoi, 23, 109, 121, 125, 141, 341
topos, 68
Toulmin, Stephen, 16n, 18, 121
Tour e, Samori, 216
treaties of protection, 215, 222224, 247,
264n
Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), 141
Treaty of Utrecht (1713), 163
Treaty of Washington (1862), 189
Tronto, Joan, 429
Trotha, see von Trotha
Truman, Harry, 331
Truman Doctrine, 306
Trusteeship Council, United Nations,
312314, 333334
questionnaire, 312
Trusteeship system, United Nations, 284,
293, 309
territories of, 312, 313
Truth, Sojourner, 179
Tucker, Seth, 119120, 121
Tunisia, 320, 325
Turley, David, 174n
Turner, Nat, 179
Turner, Scott, 67
Uganda, 339
unanticipated effects, 104105, 189n, 190,
196, 202, 204, 265, 285, 288, 397, 398,
402
UNESCO (United Nations Educational,
Scientic and Cultural Organization),
308309
Unilateral Declaration of Independence
(UDI), 318
United Nations (UN), 293294
Committee on Information, 315, 318n
San Francisco conference on, 310
466 Index
United Nations Charter, 310, 311, 314,
395, 425
Chapter XI, 284, 333
Chapter XII, 311
United Nations Transition Assistance
Group (UNTAG), 380, 401
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(1948), 314n, 317, 403
Vasquez, John, 56n, 62
Vattel, E., 143144
Verba, Sydney, 38, 60
Vertzberger, Yacoov, 22, 48, 60, 64, 67, 70,
71, 73
Victoria, Queen of England, 242
Vietnam, 320, 325, 356
Vitoria, Francisco de, 143, 149, 156,
218, 247
Von Eschen, Penny, 303, 306n, 331332
Von Trotha, Lothar, 229231, 343, 356
Vorster, B.J., 338339
Walker, R.B.J., 60
Walker, Stephen, 4546
Wallace, Henry, 305, 306
Walton, Douglas, 17, 28n
Walton, E.H., 280
Waltz, Kenneth, 13
Walzer, Michael, 82, 98, 100, 102, 249
Watson, Adam, 63
Weber, Max, 38, 47n, 55
Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842),
189
Weingast, Barry, 39
Weldes, Jutta, 4950, 113
Wendt, Alexander, 1, 63, 64, 112, 114n
Western Sahara, 220, 341
White, Walter, 303
Wilberforce, William, 174n, 177, 180, 181,
247248
Williams, Eric, 165166
Williams, George Washington, 242243
Wilson, Heather, 315316
Wilson, Woodrow, 238n, 249, 254, 255,
256257, 260261, 395
Witboi, Hendrik, 222226, 231, 233
Woolman, John, 176, 177, 247
World War I, 250251, 323, 324n, 350n
World War II, 294301, 350n, 386
Wright, Georg Henrik von, 90
Wright, Quincy, 131, 247248, 264,
288, 348
Wright, Ronald, 58
Xuma, A.B., 331
Yalta (1945), 310
Yergan, Max, 305
Young, Iris Marion, 411, 416
Zambia, 339
Zimbabwe, 369, 371
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
69 Bill McSweeney
Security, identity and interests
A sociology of international relations
68 Molly Cochran
Normative theory in international relations
A pragmatic approach
67 Alexander Wendt
Social theory of international politics
66 Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (eds)
The power of human rights
International norms and domestic change
65 Daniel W. Drezner
The sanctions paradox
Economic statecraft and international relations
64 Viva Ona Bartkus
The dynamic of secession
63 John A. Vasquez
The power of power politics
From classical realism to neotraditionalism
62 Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (eds.)
Security communities
61 Charles Jones
E. H. Carr and international relations
A duty to lie
60 Jeffrey W. Knopf
Domestic society and international cooperation
The impact of protest on US arms control policy
59 Nicholas Greenwood Onuf
The republican legacy in international thought
58 Daniel S. Geller and J. David Singer
Nations at war
A scientic study of international conict
57 Randall D. Germain
The international organization of credit
States and global nance in the world economy
56 N. Piers Ludlow
Dealing with Britain
The Six and the rst UK application to the EEC
55 Andreas Hasenclever, Peter Mayer and Volker Rittberger
Theories of international regimes
54 Miranda A. Schreurs and Elizabeth C. Economy (eds.)
The internationalization of environmental protection
53 James N. Rosenau
Along the domestic-foreign frontier
Exploring governance in a turbulent world
52 John M. Hobson
The wealth of states
A comparative sociology of international economic
and political change
51 Kalevi J. Holsti
The state, war, and the state of war
50 Christopher Clapham
Africa and the international system
The politics of state survival
49 Susan Strange
The retreat of the state
The diffusion of power in the world economy
48 William I. Robinson
Promoting polyarchy
Globalization, US intervention, and hegemony
47 Roger Spegele
Political realism in international theory
46 Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (eds.)
State sovereignty as social construct
45 Mervyn Frost
Ethics in international relations
A constitutive theory
44 Mark W. Zacher with Brent A. Sutton
Governing global networks
International regimes for transportation and communications
43 Mark Neufeld
The restructuring of international relations theory
42 Thomas Risse-Kappen (ed.)
Bringing transnational relations back in
Non-state actors, domestic structures and international institutions
41 Hayward R. Alker
Rediscoveries and reformulations
Humanistic methodologies for international studies
40 Robert W. Cox with Timothy J. Sinclair
Approaches to world order
39 Jens Bartelson
A genealogy of sovereignty
38 Mark Rupert
Producing hegemony
The politics of mass production and American global power
37 Cynthia Weber
Simulating sovereignty
Intervention, the state and symbolic exchange
36 Gary Goertz
Contexts of international politics
35 James L. Richardson
Crisis diplomacy
The Great Powers since the mid-nineteenth century
34 Bradley S. Klein
Strategic studies and world order
The global politics of deterrence
33 T. V. Paul
Asymmetric conicts: war initiation by weaker powers
32 Christine Sylvester
Feminist theory and international relations in a postmodern era
31 Peter J. Schraeder
US foreign policy toward Africa
Incrementalism, crisis and change
30 Graham Spinardi
From Polaris to Trident: The development of US Fleet Ballistic
Missile technology
29 David A. Welch
Justice and the genesis of war
28 Russell J. Leng
Interstate crisis behavior, 18161980: realism versus reciprocity
27 John A. Vasquez
The war puzzle
26 Stephen Gill (ed.)
Gramsci, historical materialism and international relations
25 Mike Bowker and Robin Brown (eds.)
From Cold War to collapse: theory and world politics in the 1980s
24 R. B. J. Walker
Inside/outside: international relations as political theory
23 Edward Reiss
The Strategic Defense Initiative
22 Keith Krause
Arms and the state: patterns of military production and trade
21 Roger Buckley
US-Japan alliance diplomacy 19451990
20 James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel (eds.)
Governance without government: order andchange inworldpolitics
19 Michael Nicholson
Rationality and the analysis of international conict
18 John Stopford and Susan Strange
Rival states, rival rms
Competition for world market shares
17 Terry Nardin and David R. Mapel (eds.)
Traditions of international ethics
16 Charles F. Doran
Systems in crisis
New imperatives of high politics at centurys end
15 Deon Geldenhuys
Isolated states: a comparative analysis
14 Kalevi J. Holsti
Peace and war: armed conicts and international order 16481989
13 Saki Dockrill
Britains policy for West German rearmament 19501955
12 Robert H. Jackson
Quasi-states: sovereignty, international relations
and the Third World
11 James Barber and John Barratt
South Africas foreign policy
The search for status and security 19451988
10 James Mayall
Nationalism and international society
9 William Bloom
Personal identity, national identity and international relations
8 Zeev Maoz
National choices and international processes
7 Ian Clark
The hierarchy of states
Reform and resistance in the international order
6 Hidemi Suganami
The domestic analogy and world order proposals
5 Stephen Gill
American hegemony and the Trilateral Commission
4 Michael C. Pugh
The ANZUS crisis, nuclear visiting and deterrence
3 Michael Nicholson
Formal theories in international relations
2 Friedrich V. Kratochwil
Rules, norms, and decisions
On the conditions of practical and legal reasoning in international
relations and domestic affairs
1 Myles L.C. Robertson
Soviet policy towards Japan
An analysis of trends in the 1970s and 1980s

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