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After the Second World War, national self-determination became a recognized international norm, yet it only extended to former colonies. Groups within postcolonial states that made alternative sovereign claims were disregarded or actively suppressed. Showcasing their contested histories, Lydia Walker offers a powerful counternarrative of global decolonization, highlighting little-known regions, marginalized individuals, and their hidden (or lost) archives. She depicts the personal connections that linked disparate nationalist struggles across the globe through advocacy networks, demonstrating that these advocates had their own agendas and allegiances, which, she argues, could undermine the autonomy of the claimants they supported. By foregrounding particular nationalist movements in South Asia and Southern Africa and their transnational advocacy networks, States-in-Waiting illuminates the un-endings of decolonization-the unfinished and improvised ways that the state-centric international system replaced empire, which left certain claims of sovereignty perpetually awaiting recognition. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
List of contents
Introduction: Nation-Making; Part I. Nationalist Claims-Making: 1. Sovereignty in the hills; 2. Advocates of not-quite independence; Part II. International Advocacy: 3. The Anti-Algiers; 4. The spectre of Katanga; 5. Capital and claims-making; Part III. The Boundaries of Decolonization: 6. Marching into the great wall of state; 7. Postcolonial imperialism; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.
About the author
Lydia Walker is Assistant Professor and Seth Andre Myers Chair in Global Military History at The Ohio State University.
