Human Rights in the Shadow of Colonial Violence: The Wars of Independence in Kenya and Algeria (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights) - Hardcover

Buch 32 von 111: Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights

Klose, Fabian

 
9780812244953: Human Rights in the Shadow of Colonial Violence: The Wars of Independence in Kenya and Algeria (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0812244958 ISBN 13: 9780812244953
Verlag: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Human Rights in the Shadow of Colonial Violence explores the relationship between the human rights movement emerging after 1945 and the increasing violence of decolonization. Based on material previously inaccessible in the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations Human Rights Commission, this comparative study uses the Mau Mau War (1952-1956) and the Algerian War (1954-1962) to examine the policies of two major imperial powers, Britain and France. Historian Fabian Klose considers the significance of declared states of emergency, counterinsurgency strategy, and the significance of humanitarian international law in both conflicts.

Klose's findings from these previously confidential archives reveal the escalating violence and oppressive tactics used by the British and French military during these anticolonial conflicts in North and East Africa, where Western powers that promoted human rights in other areas of the world were opposed to the growing global acceptance of freedom, equality, self-determination, and other postwar ideals. Practices such as collective punishment, torture, and extrajudicial killings did lasting damage to international human rights efforts until the end of decolonization.

Clearly argued and meticulously researched, Human Rights in the Shadow of Colonial Violence demonstrates the mutually impacting histories of international human rights and decolonization, expanding our understanding of political violence in human rights discourse.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Fabian Klose teaches history at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and is Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz. Dona Geyer is an independent translator based in Germany.

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Preface

The focus of research in the area of decolonization—undoubtedly one of the most influential fields in twentieth-century international history—was centered for a long time on depicting the course of events and particularly on analyzing the causes for the end of colonial rule after World War II. This field of research produced only a small number of comprehensive surveys, as opposed to a vast number of individual studies on certain regions and various colonial empires. Ever since the pioneering studies of the British historian John Darwin, one explanatory model for the end of colonial empires has emerged to link together various existing theoretical approaches and has thus become the model generally accepted by most historians. According to this model, decolonization is the result of developments within the ruling metropoles (metropolitan theory), the growth of anticolonial national movements (peripheral theory), and decisive shifts in power relations within the international system (international theory).

Although there is evidence of a growing trend in research that examines transnational factors of decolonization more intensively, the significance of international organizations is still given little attention. Very few studies emphasize the key role of the United Nations as an anticolonial forum where the colonial powers were diplomatically pilloried before the eyes of the world and foreign policy pressure exerted against them. A similar development is observable with regard to the international discourse on human rights. Only the most recent literature on the historiography of the human rights idea has linked decolonization with the debates on universal fundamental rights. Particular mention should be made here of the work by the American historian Paul Gordon Lauren. In his two books Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimination and The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen, Lauren explicitly addresses for the first time the importance of the human rights discourse for the end of colonial rule.

Recently, a still rather limited number of newer studies have appeared that do analyze the connection between the humans rights discourse and the collapse of European colonial empires, of which two deserve special mention, namely, Brian Simpson's Human Rights and the End of Empire and especially Roland Burke's Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights.

Another area that also played a subordinate role for a long time in academic debates was the history of the various decolonization wars, which not only became "white spots" in the national memory of the former colonial nations but also in the research landscape. The publications in this area confined themselves primarily to providing strictly event and military histories of major individual conflicts, such as in Malaya, Indochina, and Algeria. The first studies to provide overarching and comparative analyses of "contested decolonization" include The Process of Decolonisation, 1945-1975: The Military Experience in Comparative Perspective by Jacques van Doorn and Willem J. Hendrix and The Wars of French Decolonization by Anthony Clayton. The collected volume of essays resulting from a conference at the Institute for Commonwealth Studies in London and edited by Robert Holland, Emergencies and Disorder in the European Empires After 1945, contained not only articles on France's colonial rearguard battles but also a series of contributions on the British conflicts in Malaya, Cyprus, and Kenya, the military operations of the Netherlands in the Dutch East Indies, and Portugal's drawn-out wars against the national independence movements in its African colonial empire. At the colloquium "Décolonisations comparées" in Aix-en-Provence in the fall of 1993, various contributions focused on the comparative aspects of decolonization wars, although the major emphasis was on the French conflict in Indochina. Special mention should be made of the work Colonial Wars and the Politics of Third World Nationalism, in which the British sociologist Frank Füredi compares the three British "emergencies" in Malaya, Kenya, and Guyana in order to identify the special relevance of these conflict scenarios for the end of the empire and thereby reaches a conclusion that does more than merely question the British interpretation of "planned decolonization."

With their book Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia, Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper have produced an impressive study that systematically analyzes the various anticolonial conflicts in Southeast Asia during the immediate postwar period from 1945 to 1950. What remains to be written is a comprehensive comparative study of decolonization wars in the various overseas territories of European powers.

In recent years, an evident trend in international research involving the study of "contested decolonization" has emerged to examine the various forms of unchecked colonial violence. Subjects such as war crimes, the systematic use of torture, and colonial detention camps and relocation measures during the decolonization wars are being pushed more and more into the limelight of scientific interest, whereby a series of publications on the Algerian War have assumed a trailblazing role in this. For example, Rita Maran, an expert in international law, presented the first comprehensive analysis of the discourse on torture in Algeria in her book Torture: The Role of Ideology in the French-Algerian War, which was followed by the republication of books on the same topic by the French historian and contemporary Pierre Vidal-Naquet. Finally, in 2001, an excellent dissertation, based on new and extensive source material, was published by Raphaëlle Branche, La torture et l'armée pendant la guerre d'Algérie, in which she analyzes the torture system and the role of the French army. Other violent phenomena in the Algerian War, such as the detainment and resettlement measures, also became the subjects of new publications. Moreover, this new research trend has not simply narrowed its focus to French colonial history but expanded its view to include the decolonization wars of other European colonial powers. In 2005, the above-mentioned historical studies on the British Mau Mau War appeared. Whereas Caroline Elkins concentrated primarily on the British detention camps and resettlement measures in her book Britain's Gulag, David Anderson examined British repression policy in general and the increased use of the death penalty in particular in his work Histories of the Hanged.

Despite the increased scientific interest in this subject, no comprehensive comparative study has yet been written on the unchecked colonial violence in the various conflicts. Furthermore, a connection to the international human rights discourse has not yet been made except in a few places in Rita Maran's book. Therefore, the objective of this study is to close this gap in research at the interface between the history of the human rights idea and a comparative study on the wars of decolonization.

Sources

The constellation of case studies from two different colonial empires in combination with the international human rights discourse led to research both in Great Britain and France as well as at international organizations in Geneva and New York. Therefore, this study is based on a broad spectrum of source material from various international archives and research facilities, whereby the perspective of the metropoles is given the greater emphasis. The political explosiveness of the topic, the unbridled use of violence in the colonies, and the grave human rights abuses linked to that violence were the central reasons why access differed considerably among the various...

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Verlag
University of Pennsylvania Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2013
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0812244958
ISBN 13 
9780812244953
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
369
Kontakt zum Hersteller
preigu GmbH & Co. KG
mail@preigu.de

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