The years from 1956 to 1968 saw a profound cultural transformation in majority attitudes to religious minorities, and the latter’s engagement with Ireland. Israel’s victory in the wars of 1956 and 1967 changed the self-perception and public standing of the Jewish community. The disbanding of the British Empire in Africa, which was virtually completed by 1967, helped to detach Protestants from residual ‘West Briton’ nostalgia. In parallel with decolonisation, the beginning of the process of European integration created the prospect of a future political settlement within which minority status would be resolved in a pluralist definition of legitimate belonging. Finally, Vatican II (1962–5) was decisive in transforming the atmosphere of the country, but liberalisation was gradual, and at first often superficial. In 1966 – on the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising – The Irish Times denounced the terrifying conditions of the country’s industrial and reformatory schools. That the minorities as a whole were unmoved by such revelations showed the extent to which – despite professions of liberalism – they were largely part of Ireland’s conservative consensus.

Up to at least the 1960s, English was seen as a world language integrated around two equipollent standards, British and American. Since then, in the wake of decolonisation, this bi-polar constellation has given way to models arguing for various pluricentric constellations. What tends to be overlooked, however, is the fact that the agents of standardisation and the sociocultural environment in which standardisation is taking place are markedly different today from what they were in the mid twentieth century. The power of educated elites to define linguistic standards has weakened considerably, while language technologies and software algorithms enforce homogenisation of usage in the written domain, promoting new norms that are not always in line with traditional notions of ‘good English’. In addition, the global spread of English has not only involved standard varieties, but also some non-standard ones. Removed from their vernacular home-bases, these non-standard forms have gained prestige and become available for new functions. This has produced the ‘standardisation paradox’ that Global English is facing in the early twenty-first century and that the present chapter will illustrate and analyse.

This chapter delves into the concept of ‘Rights of Nature’ (RoN) through a semiotic lens; in particular, the ethnological semiology of Jean Baudrillard has significantly influenced this contribution. RoN challenges conventional anthropocentric legal paradigms by integrating Indigenous cosmovisions in Western jurisprudence. By examining legislative examples such as New Zealand’s Te Awa Tupua Act and Australia’s Yarra River Protection Act, this chapter assesses whether these recognitions faithfully reflect Indigenous viewpoints or merely adapt nature into pre-existing Western ontological (legal) philosophies.

RoN frequently intersects with Indigenous cosmovisions, suggesting a profound, metaphysical significance beyond Western legal constructs. This discussion illuminates the evolving character of RoN and its interplay with legal pluralism. The incorporation of RoN into Western legal systems unveils a dynamic where Indigenous knowledge is recognised but simultaneously streamlined to conform to established legal structures.

The chapter further contemplates the possibility that RoN may simply codify Indigenous rights without capturing the full depth of Indigenous perspectives. Ultimately, RoN signifies an endeavour to broaden the legal recognition of nature and its purported intrinsic values, albeit at the risk of misrepresenting Indigenous knowledge as mere extensions of Western legal ontology. In doing so, RoN adorns itself with the Indigenous symbol and ritual to advance environmental politics.

Like most other African states, the nature of British rule meant late-colonial and early post-colonial Kenya was an extraverted state, inseparably tied in a peripheral manner to global networks of power and capital. As its political leaders set about challenging British rule in the 1950s, they had little choice but to engage with external actors seeking to influence the outcome of the process of decolonisation. But the likes of Tom Mboya did so in nuanced and sometimes contradictory ways. Mboya was certainly a worldmaker, who saw links to international allies as key to the overthrow of British colonialism and the reconstruction of the global economy and international organisations as a necessary outcome of the struggle for independence. In this effort he found considerable support from the United States. But this effort set him in competition with Kenya’s other worldmakers, such as Oginga Odinga, who had very different networks and more radical visions of what a post-colonial world might look like and Kenya’s place within it. In his efforts to assert control over Kenya’s links to the wider world and to exclude his political rivals, Mboya became an adept gatekeeper.

This chapter explores the experiences of hundreds of Kenyan students who travelled to the Soviet Union, East Germany, Bulgaria and other communist states during the late 1950s and 1960s and the politics surrounding them. Initiated for similar reasons as Mboya’s own airlift of students to the United States and expanded in a deliberate effort to compete with Mboya’s programme, the support of students for study in Eastern and Central Europe was a major part of Odinga’s efforts to build his own political base and to address Kenya’s urgent educational needs. After independence in 1963, and with Odinga increasingly in conflict with both Mboya and Kenyatta, these students became a source of considerable political controversy. The fact that some of the students had been sent for military training under agreements struck by nationalist leaders before independent Kenya’s military deals with Britain were finalised meant that returning graduates became the subject of Cold War–inspired rumours of coup plots to support Odinga. With Odinga forced out of the ruling party and government in 1966, the graduates from Eastern and Central Europe were frozen out of senior roles in government.

The conclusion to the book considers the significant contribution of Kenya’s worldmakers to the anti-colonial cause and the place Tom Mboya rightly holds within the pantheon of Kenya’s great nationalist leaders. He is held dearly in the memory of Kenyans as the personification of the potential for a successful Kenyan multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan democracy. His legacy has been invoked regularly at moments of political crisis in the decades following his death. But the conclusion argues Mboya’s legacy was more complicated and interesting than this posthumous memorialisation allows. He shows instead how the practices of worldmaking ran alongside those of gatekeeping. Mboya and others like him had little choice but to adopt this dual strategy of global engagement because of the context of the Cold War. Drawing on Mary Dudziak’s work on the civil rights movement in the United States, the conclusion considers in detail the influence of the Cold War on the politics of decolonising Kenya. Although the Cold War helped enable decolonisation, it also acted to limit the possible trajectories states such as Kenya could adopt once independent.

Mboya’s engagement with the AFL-CIO was a critical stage in his development as a nationalist and Pan-Africanist leader. Cultivated during a hugely successful tour of the United States in 1956, his relationship with figures connected to the American labour federation would last until his death in 1969. But Mboya’s network in the United States stretched beyond the labour movement. By following Mboya on his 1956 tour, the chapter shows his rapidly developing and deep connection to the American Committee on Africa, which had emerged out of the civil rights movement. Mboya returned home to Kenya as a hero, and decided to capitalise on his fame by standing for election to the colony’s legislative council in 1957, the first opportunity Kenya’s African population had to vote for their representatives. Mboya’s charisma, record as a trade union leader and policy platform certainly made him very popular in his Nairobi constituency, but the financial support his American allies provided was also a significant reason for his success. Mboya also leveraged his international profile on the Pan-African stage too, most notably when chairing the All-Africa People’s Conference held in Ghana in 1958.

Perhaps Mboya’s most famous initiative was the so-called ‘Airlift’, a programme that provided travel assistance to hundreds of Kenyans to enable them to take up scholarship opportunities in North America. Remembered now for its alumni, the airlift was a major part of Mboya’s efforts to get returns from his international networks, both in terms of the political capital he accrued as a result of the massive popularity of the programme and the opportunities it provided to Kenyans. Education was a particularly powerful issue within the politics of decolonising Kenya. The limited educational opportunities provided by British colonial rulers to Kenya’s African subjects meant there was enormous demand and need for any opportunity to travel overseas to acquire a university education. However, the programme was also highly political. The chapter considers the role played by members of Mboya’s American network and how their participation was shaped by Cold War priorities. It also examines the personal experience of the students, with a particular emphasis on the financial hardships many faced as a consequence of the way the programme was deliberately structured.

As the French empire expanded throughout northern and western Africa and from Pondicherry in India east to Royal Vietnam, a new secular mission came into being, one married to the contradictions of aggressive imperialism, a revolutionary past, and democratic governance. Civilisation was elevated to the rarefied realms of imperial law. French colonial administrators and jurists equipped with the prejudices of the metropole carried with them a powerful vision of republican empire to the Mekong, the great river system that lies at the proverbial heart of mainland South East Asia. Yet republican colonialism was undermined by below. In Indo-China, young radicals, jurists, politicians, journalists and scholars engaged in bitter fighting with the creation of a panoptic model of state surveillance, economic exploitation, political repression, racism and the ambiguities of French republicanism. From the creation of the Indo-Chinese Union in 1887 to its demise in 1954, the multiple transformations of legal boundaries in Indo-China reflected the evolving international relations and anti-colonial agitations in Asia. They formed a crucial conjecture in the history of international law.

The introductory chapter presents an overview of the classical doctrine of civil war and discusses some of the reasons for studying them. It argues that some doctrine of civil war is an inevitable component of any international legal system. Observing how the doctrine of civil war that existed in the age of sail and steam has come to seem rather opaque and remote in the present day, this study aims to offer modern readers a valuable review of that past tradition and to help them remember how such a doctrine once came to be and what happened to it. At the same time, the purpose of the book is not to argue for a revival of or return to the classical law, but rather to better understand the aspirations and limitations of the law of past generations, which may not be too unlike those of our own times.

This chapter concludes the historical story arc of the book by identifying the final surrender of the classical doctrine of civil war in international law during the twentieth century. First, it examines the rise of the concept of non-international armed conflicts in the work of the International Committee of the Red Cross and its breakthrough in the Geneva Conference of 1949. As the conference rejected the option of framing Common Article 3 in the conceptual language of the classical doctrine, it in fact abandoned the classical law of civil war by choice. The chapter then shows that many international lawyers soon realised the significance of the event, but notes how the classical concepts nevertheless continued to persist in academic writings, especially in Europe. Finally, the chapter discusses the meetings of the Institut de droit international in 1973 and 1975, where academic lawyers as well accepted the end of the classical doctrine.

The 1970s and 1980s were important decades as the League of Red Cross Societies became one of the world’s largest and most influential humanitarian organisations for disaster relief and prevention. This chapter examines the League’s involvement in Sudan and Ethiopia during these years, when the two countries struggled with drought, famine, and protracted armed conflict. Both National Societies were members of the League prior to the 1960s and could trace their roots to before the Second World War. These examples offer critical insights into how their relationships with the League shaped the relief collaborations, and explore a core concern of the League to build capacity and strong relationships with its member Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies. They confirm that the League’s relations across national borders were often unstable, buffeted by the variously shifting power relations through decolonisation and the Cold War.

One of the main objectives of the League of Red Cross Societies from the 1960s to the 1980s was to improve the systems and methods of its member Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies. These decades saw an enormous growth in membership with new National Societies emerging in the wake of decolonisation in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. This chapter explores how the League responded to the challenges posed by the vastly different capabilities of National Societies. It provides a nuanced examination of the motivations and actions of the League, and addresses the complexities of an international humanitarian body that represented so many different countries, cultures, and systems. The chapter discusses how these issues were tackled in the League’s Development Programme established in 1963. It explores the external challenges that eroded the impact of the Development Programme, and how the League modified its approach as the global economic crisis of the 1970s slowed and even reversed some of the progress made.