From Colony To Sovereign State

"An examination of the development of the Olympic movement in Puerto Rico in the context of national and political identity"--

Differing interpretations of the history of the United Nations on the one hand conceive of it as an instrument to promote colonial interests while on the other emphasize its influence in facilitating self-determination for dependent territories. The authors in this book explore this dynamic in order to expand our understanding of both the achievements and the limits of international support for the independence of colonized peoples. This book will prove foundational for scholars and students of modern history, international history, and postcolonial history.

European colonialism was often driven by the pursuit of natural resources, and the resulting colonization and decolonization processes have had a profound impact on the formation of the majority of sovereign states that exist today. But how exactly have natural resources influenced the creation of formerly colonized states? And would the world map of sovereign states look significantly different if not for these resources? These questions are at the heart of Fueling Sovereignty, which focuses primarily on oil as the most significant natural resource of the modern era. Naosuke Mukoyama provides a compelling analysis of how colonial oil politics contributed to the creation of some of the world's most “unlikely” states. Drawing on extensive archival sources on Brunei, Qatar and Bahrain, he sheds light on how some small colonial entities achieved independence despite their inclusion in a merger project promoted by the metropole and regional powers.

'Surpassing the Sovereign State' shows that in regions throughout the world partially independent territories (including Hong Kong, Cayman Islands, Kurdistan, New Caledonia, and others) tend to be wealthier and more secure than sovereign states. This book explains how these polities emerge, maintain themselves, and sometimes come to an end.

The Sovereignty of Human Rights advances a legal theory of international human rights that defines their nature and purpose in relation to the structure and operation of international law. Professor Macklem argues that the mission of international human rights law is to mitigate adverse consequences produced by the international legal deployment of sovereignty to structure global politics into an international legal order. The book contrasts this legal conception of international human rights with moral conceptions that conceive of human rights as instruments that protect universal features of what it means to be a human being. The book also takes issue with political conceptions of international human rights that focus on the function or role that human rights plays in global political discourse. It demonstrates that human rights traditionally thought to lie at the margins of international human rights law - minority rights, indigenous rights, the right of self-determination, social rights, labor rights, and the right to development - are central to the normative architecture of the field.

The end of colonial rule in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean was one of the most important and dramatic developments of the twentieth century. In the decades after World War II, dozens of new states emerged as actors in global politics. Long-established imperial regimes collapsed, some more or less peacefully, others amid mass violence. This book takes an incisive look at decolonization and its long-term consequences, revealing it to be a coherent yet multidimensional process at the heart of modern history. Jan Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel trace the decline of European, American, and Japanese colonial supremacy from World War I to the 1990s. Providing a comparative perspective on the decolonization process, they shed light on its key aspects while taking into account the unique regional and imperial contexts in which it unfolded. Jansen and Osterhammel show how the seeds of decolonization were sown during the interwar period and argue that the geopolitical restructuring of the world was intrinsically connected to a sea change in the global normative order. They examine the economic repercussions of decolonization and its impact on international power structures, its consequences for envisioning world order, and the long shadow it continues to cast over new states and former colonial powers alike. Concise and authoritative, Decolonization is the essential introduction to this momentous chapter in history, the aftershocks of which are still being felt today. --