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Self-Determination: The New Phase

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Walker Connor
Affiliation:
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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Extract

Can two or more self-differentiating culture-groups coexist within a single political structure? The question may well seem clearly settled by the overwhelming factual evidence of contemporary international politics, for it is indeed a truism that political and ethnic borders seldom coincide. Thus, the very existence of a host of multinational states, including such a time-tested example as the Soviet Union, would appear to document an affirmative answer. On the other hand, a recent spate of political unrest within such geographically diverse and historically unrelated states as, inter aliay Canada, Guyana, India, Uganda, Belgium, the Sudan, Burma, Yugoslavia, Cyprus, Rwanda, the United Kingdom, and Iraq, focuses attention on the common root cause of intrastate yet international conflict and again brings into question the assumptions of the multinational state.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1967

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References

1 National Character and the Factors in Its Formation (London 1927), 173Google Scholar.

2 Lord Acton believed that 1831 was the “watershed” year. He considered revolutionary movements prior to that date to be based upon either rival empirical claims or the refusal of people to be misgoverned by strangers. He noted that prior to 1831, Turks, Dutch, or Russians were resisted not as “usurpers” but as oppressors, “because they misgoverned, not because they were of a different race” (Dalberg-Acton, John E. E., The History of Freedom and Other Essays [London 1907], 284Google Scholar).

3 See Wambaugh, Sarah, Plebiscites Since the World War, Vol. I (Washington 1933), 488Google Scholar.

4 See, for example, Wilson's speech before the League to Enforce Peace on May 27, 1916: “We believe these fundamental things: First, that every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live . . .” (quoted in Wambaugh, 4).

5 Wilson was later to admit to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee his amazement and chagrin at the large number of requests for support of independence movements. Excerpts from his testimony are cited in Cobban, Alfred, National Self-Determination (Chicago 1949), 21Google Scholar.

6 Although Europe is similarly afflicted, its present political borders are not the result of fulfilled “self-determination” demands.

7 Considerations on Representative Government (New York 1873), 313Google Scholar.

8 Ibid., 311. Similar fears concerning the ethnic composition of the army played a major role in Nigerian events during 1966.

9 Entitled “Nationality,” it was published in Home and Foreign Review in July 1862 and is reprinted in Acton, History of Freedom, 270–300.

10 Ibid., 289.

11 Ibid., 290.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., 298.

14 National Character, 16.

15 Ibid., 125–26.

16 National Self-Determination, 62.

17 Ibid., 73.

18 Ibid., 62, 63.

19 See, for example, Kahin, George and others, Major Governments of Asia, 2nd ed. (Ithaca 1963), 674Google Scholar.

20 The name of the liberation front is FULRO, a French acronym for the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races. For references to two of the more important revolts of the tribesmen, see the New York Times, September 21, 1964, and December 20, 1965.

21 For a description of the various ethnic strains and their relations, see Le Bar, Frank and others, Laos (New Haven 1960)Google Scholar.

22 For a report that Sarawak may also attempt to withdraw from the Federation because of ethnic considerations, see the New York Times, November 17, 1966Google Scholar.

23 McCabe, Robert, “When China Spits, We Swim,” New York Times Magazine (February 27, 1966), 48Google Scholar.

24 P. 123.

25 P. 63.

26 See, for example, Carter, Gwendolen and others, Major Foreign Powers, 3rd ed. (New York 1957), 7, 8Google Scholar. The degree of assimilation is evidenced by the fact that only a minority of Welshmen and an insignificant number of Scotsmen are able to converse in their original languages, and all but a handful of these are fluent also in English. In both regions there have been recent nationalist movements whose goals range from minor alterations in administrative forms and school curricula to total independence. However, these movements are not considered to pose a serious challenge to “British nationalism,” and, in any event, are a manifestation more of a resurgence of nationalist particularism than of cooperative multinationalism.

27 Huizinga, J. H., “Captain O'Neil and the Anti-Papist,” The Reporter (October 20, 1966), 4344Google Scholar.

28 Fordham, Paul, The Geography of African Affairs (Baltimore 1965), 207Google Scholar.

29 P. 60.

30 Ibid., 79.

31 Mill, 308; Cobban, 144.

32 See, for example, the New York Times, October 9 and October 30, 1966Google Scholar.

33 P. 308.

34 Pp. 294–95.

35 Codding, George Jr., The Federal Government of Switzerland (Boston 1961), 154Google Scholar and passim.

36 Ibid., 39. See also the article in the New York Times of March 19, 1966Google Scholar, which describes the sentencing of secessionists for terrorism, together with the judge's admission of a general climate of political tension.

37 For a historical account of this process as applied to the Turkic peoples of the USSR, see Rywkin, Michael, “Central Asia and the Price of Sovietization,” Problems of Communism., XIII (January-February 1964), 715Google Scholar. For a more general treatment of russification, see also the articles by Richard Pipes and Hugh Seton-Watson in the same issue.

38 This was the consensus at a conference of specialists held at Brandeis University in the fall of 1965, as reported in the New York Times, October 31, 1965. Confirmation of such a program was furnished at a meeting of the Ukrainian Writers Congress in early 1967. In response to complaints that heavy pressures to have Russian replace Ukrainian and other minority languages had been exerted during the early 1960's, a visiting secretary of the Russian Writers Union apologized for the haste with which the program of “merging the cultures” had been introduced (New York Times, January 29, 1967Google Scholar).

39 Quoted by Pipes, Richard, “The Forces of Nationalism,” Problems of Communism, XIII (January-February 1964), 4Google Scholar.

40 Ibid., 5.

41 New York Times, April 16 and April 20, 1966

42 Ibid., February 5, 1966.

43 Ibid., September 18, 1966.

44 For a penetrating treatment of this phenomenon, see Emerson, Rupert, Self-Determination Revisited in the Era of Decolonization (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), esp. 28Google Scholar.

45 A 1962 UNESCO survey estimated that seventy percent of the world's population is essentially unaware of happenings beyond the village. See also Emerson, 36.

46 Pp . 63–64.

47 Recent studies have even questioned the degree of melting that has occurred within the American pot. See, for example, Glazer, Nathan and Moynihan, Daniel, Beyond the Melting Pot (Cambridge, Mass., 1963)Google Scholar.

48 The major exception was the Negro slave.

49 The actions of France and the United Kingdom with respect to their overseas territories, after it became evident that the days of empire were numbered, are not considered true exceptions to this statement.

50 Typical is a so-called Security Bill passed by the government of Guyana in late 1966 and obviously intended by the Negro-controlled government to restrict the activities of the East Indian segment of the population. Under its terms, the prime minister is empowered to intern without trial, for eighteen months, anyone he believes has acted or will act “in any manner prejudicial to public safety or public order or the defense of Guyana” (New York Times, December 9, 1966)Google Scholar.

Within India, Kashmiri leaders have been periodically interned by the Indian government under an “emergency” measure. Moreover, in 1963, essentially in response to a Dravidistan movement, the Indian government passed the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution which sought to “prevent the fissiparous, secessionist tendency in the country engendered by regional and linguistic loyalties and to preserve the unity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity” of the Indian union (cited in Hardgrove, Robert L. Jr., “The DMK and the Politics of Tamil Nationalism,” Pacific Affairs, XXXVII [Winter 1964–65], 397Google Scholar).