联合国与非殖民化

作为当今世界最主要的国际组织,联合国自成立伊始就不遗余力地推动全球范围内的非殖民化。本文以联合国有关人权和非殖民化的一系列文化为依据,论述联合国在非殖民化进程中所起的重要作用及所取得的显著成就,同时对联合国的非殖民化机构及其工作概况作一介绍。     

二战后英属各殖民地分离倾向探因

《大西洋宪章》的签订,各殖民地人民的战争历闻,英国的战时政策和德、意的政治宣传等等因素,促使英属各殖民地产生了越来越明显的离心倾向。此后,战争重创后的英帝国再无力维持其帝国地位,以终结帝国的命运告终。     

英帝国向英联邦转型探析——基于二战后丘吉尔政府非殖民化政策的历史考察

英帝国向英联邦的转型,经历了较漫长的渐进过程。二战后,丘吉尔政府继续推行非殖民化政策,继续推动英帝国向英联邦的转型。其政策原则和目标是在英联邦的框架内逐步实现殖民地的自治。导致这场转型的因素有:第一,民族主义运动对英国的殖民统治造成巨大的冲击;第二,英国国家利益是决策的基础;第三,冷战的新形势促使英国调整其政策;第四,反殖民主义运动成为世界潮流;第五,英国的资源和力量已经难以维持庞大的帝国体系。就丘吉尔个人因素而言,还在于:其一,丘吉尔将英国国家利益置于政府决策的优先位置之上;其二,丘吉尔在冷战中的立场也是一个重要因素;其三,丘吉尔将维持英美特殊关系视为对外关系的基石。总之,丘吉尔在相当程度上顺应了非殖民化的潮流,实际上违心地成为了大英帝国的掘墓人之一。因此,丘吉尔政府的非殖民化政策对英帝国向英联邦的转型的继续和完成,起到了承前启后的重要作用。     

殖民地法制统治功能与殖民地统治秩序构建——以伪满洲国为例

伪满洲国是日本帝国主义在东北建立的傀儡政府,在其他统治东北的十四年里,日本帝国主义操纵伪满政府制定一套殖民法制,通过彰显殖民法制的社会统治功能,构建其在东北的殖民统治秩序。     

缅甸殖民地时期的地主土地所有制

本文认为,在缅甸历史上,以土地私有权为基础的、以租佃关系为特征的地主土地所有制是在英国殖民统治时期形成的,这种土地所有制的形成和发展,不仅对当时缅甸农村的社会经济产生了很大的负面影响,也是导致领导缅甸走上独立发展道路的民族主义者们,在独立以后不久即在缅甸推行土地改革和后来选择"缅甸式社会主义"道路的一个重要因素。     

英国的法治传统对北美殖民地的影响

英国的法治传统对北美殖民地的影响是深远的,一直延续到美国建国,迄今为止在美国法治法律中尚有很多渊源可寻。概括地说,英国的法治传统对北美殖民地的影响主要体现在两方面,一是对北美殖民地法律建设进程的影响,一是对北美独立战争的催化。     

美国人口统计起源及其治理能力扩张

人口统计是现代国家治理的技术基础,统计水平与国家治理能力密切关联。美国是最早推行常规人口统计的西方国家之一,其人口统计制度和实践源于英国殖民时期。美国受英国“政治算术”传统影响,又吸纳政治经济学中的人口治理思想,于1787年联邦宪法中明确制定“统计条款”。然而,建国初期美国人口统计制度设计,与联邦政府低下的执行能力并不相称。“统计条款”将人口问题宪法化,造成1790年首次人口普查困难,反而限制了人口统计在社会治理中的应用。美国人口统计起源史推翻了其“弱国家”的假设,证明其政治制度设计最初就包含增强国家能力的“潜能”。     

英属北美殖民地契约移民性质新论

契约工制度是近代早期英国工场手工业时代劳动力的普遍雇佣方式。当英国人在北美创建殖民地之后,契约工并非是作为奴隶被引进的。一方面,契约工制度的运作始终未超出英国社会经济制度与法律体系的制约,殖民地不过是英国国内经济制度和劳动力市场的延伸;另一方面,在契约从签订到实施的全部过程中,价值规律在契约工交易、劳动力价格和工资等方面都有所体现。各殖民地的法律体系不仅凸显了私有财产不可侵犯的原则,而且也对契约工的社会地位和权利做出了周详的规定。雇主为榨取契约工剩余价值的残酷剥削行为确实存在,但因此在契约工制度上贴上奴隶制度的标签却有失偏颇。     

"六三法"的存废与台湾殖民地问题

“六三法”是日本殖民台湾时期的基本法,其本身存在只有十年,但其建构的殖民地法律模式,在台湾延续了50年。“六三法”最主要的特点就是委任立法。这种典型的殖民地立法程序,在明治宪政体制下是否违宪,曾引发日本朝野及学术界的热烈争论。有一些人为了美化日本的殖民统治,鼓吹说日本为在台湾实施宪法特意制定了“六三法”,而“六三法”是否违宪引起的争议,是围绕着“台湾是否是殖民地”而进行的,因此说台湾不是日本的殖民地。实质上“六三法”争议的真正本质,是有关新附领土统治政策之选择的政治性问题,而不是一般的法律问题。“六三法”争议的真正核心是谁有权来制定台湾的法律,其实质是为“六三法”的违宪性寻找法律依据,同时,也是政党势力与执政的军方势力就各自对台湾统治方针的妥协与斗争。     

清教在美国殖民地时期教育发展中的作用

美国教育源于独立之前的殖民地时期。清教在美国教育的兴起与发展过程中发挥了关键作用。普及宗教理念,服务宗教使命奠定了这一时期基础教育追求的目标,成为其原动力。造就教会高级人才,培养牧师队伍,催生了美国早期的高等学府。教派众多,繁荣了这一时期的高等教育,也迫使各个学院逐步放弃教派门户之见,实行宗教宽容与开放。随着时间的推移,在与社会互动的过程中,宗教办学宗旨日趋式微,满足社会需求,适应经济发展,培养各方面需要的人才,成为高等教育的主导理念和实践。在此过程中,殖民地时期的美国教育逐步完成了从宗教走向世俗,从出世走向入世的过渡,孕育出自由平等竞争、独立自主、多样化办学的特色,对后来美国教育的发展产生了导向性影响,成为当代美国教育本质特征形成的滥觞。     

Free Trade Empire to Commonwealth of Nations: India,Britain and Imperial Preference, 1903–1932

This article examines the dialogue between British tariff reformers and Indian nationalists over the application of imperial trade preference in India from Joseph Chamberlain's 1903 Birmingham address to the 1932 Imperial Economic Conference. For both groups, this issue was a focal point to assess India's constitutional status and national participation within an emerging British Commonwealth and international system after the First World War. Specifically, it marked a comprehensive challenge to the orthodoxy of free trade and liberal empire seen increasingly as a determent to reconciling national prosperity and imperial unity. It is argued that prominent tariff reformers’ well-studied criticism of an ‘unpatriotic’ cosmopolitan free trade made them also sympathetic to longstanding Indian grievances that this fiscal policy exacerbated economic exploitation and racial discrimination. After 1919, Indian nationalists, including ‘historical economists’, utilized metropolitan advocacy for imperial preference to demand fiscal and political autonomy from Britain and national, as well as racial, equality in collective imperial decision. At the 1932 conference in Ottawa, India's voluntary and negotiated acceptance of preferential trade with Britain, beside the white self-governing Dominions, helped transform the British Commonwealth into an egalitarian organization recognizable after 1947.     

‘An Alternative to Imperialism’: Leonard Woolf,The Labour Party and Imperial Internationalism, 1915–1922

This article examines writings by the British Labour Party theorist Leonard Woolf on international government, imperialism, and the League of Nations. Woolf was a leading member of a group of party officials who supported a deepening commitment to the League of Nations in the immediate post First World War period. Woolf, and his colleagues in the Labour Party, argued that transforming the practice of economic imperialism in European colonies would help to ease tensions between the European powers. The result of such arguments was to present empire as a canvas for displaying an improved sense of European virtue. In particular, abandoning the practice of economic imperialism could instead allow colonial powers to meet their responsibility to ready colonial peoples for self-government and full participation in the global economy. The reforms proposed by Woolf and his Labour Party colleagues could be considered a last gasp of early twentieth century British imperial internationalism.     

‘Navigating sovereignty under a Cold War military industrial colonial complex: US military empire and Marshallese decolonization’

Abstract

As World War II unsettled the global balance of power ushering in a wave of decolonization, the postwar period also saw the expansion of US military imperialism into Micronesia. In this central Pacific region, a new colonial era began rooted in US strategic concerns and mandated under a 1947 United Nations Trusteeship Agreement. During the Cold War, the United States buttressed its nuclear arsenal by testing its deadliest weapons of mass destruction (nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile) in the Marshall Islands, residing on the eastern edge of Micronesia. This weapons testing program would inform Marshallese struggles towards self-determination, ultimately shaping the contours of Marshallese sovereignty as the region achieved formal decolonization through a Compact of Free Association in 1986.     

英国退出印度的官方心态调整

英国财政困境与殖民统治问题是英国从印度退却的现实背景,然而,英国政府错误地认为自己仍然是印度独立进程的主导者,维持印度统一并把印度羁留在英联邦正是英国在此心态影响下制定的双重战略。内阁使团失败表明印度主要矛盾已经从殖民者与民族主义者对立转变为印度国大党与穆斯林联盟之间的利益斗争。随着印度局势恶化,英国政府的主导者心态转变为焦虑与无奈。蒙巴顿在形势压力下放弃统一印度的主张,承认了印巴分治的事实。英国政府在印度独立进程中的心态调整表明英国主动权非常有限,印度政治局势才是理解非殖民化的关键。     

India’s Part in the Politics of Fiji’s Decolonization: From ‘Outworn Slogans’ to ‘Pragmatism and Realism’

United Nations (UN) demands for the unconditional ending of colonial rule troubled British officials confronted by local political difficulties impeding their efforts to establish self-government for Fiji, alarmed Indigenous Fijian leaders who initially resisted that reform, and encouraged the polarizing demand by Indo-Fijian leaders for a common franchise. India was initially at the forefront in maintaining UN pressure on Britain to move Fiji rapidly to independence with this franchise. Yet in the last two years of British rule, as ethnic tension in Fiji rose dangerously, India assumed the lead in urging moderation at the UN. India’s volte-face from antagonist to ally of the British helped open the way to the political accord on which Fiji’s independence constitution was based. The article highlights the major part played by the pre-eminent Indigenous leader Ratu Kamisese Mara in winning India’s support for a cautious approach to reform.     

Laying it down in stone: delimiting and demarcating Iraq's boundaries by mixed international commission

Mixed international commissions have been centrally involved in shaping the outer margins of the state territory of Iraq over the last century and a half. Laborious Anglo-Russian efforts to narrow the traditional Perso-Ottoman frontier in the seventy-year period before the Great War contrasted with the League of Nations' ostensibly speedy treatment of Iraq's more arbitrary northern and north-western territorial limits in the early inter-war years. Most recently, a team appointed by the UN Secretary-General finalised definition of Iraq's international boundaries with Kuwait when the emirate was liberated from Iraqi occupation in the spring of 1991. This article scrutinises the role played by these bodies in the boundary evolutionary process from a review of their primary records. It highlights the fact that the evolution of Iraq's (and those of its Ottoman forbears) international boundaries to the east, north and west was rarely straightforward and reflected both regional considerations and imperial contexts. The problem of reconciling inadequate textual definitions with features on the ground has been a constant phenomenon. Deciding whether commissions actually delimited or demarcated territory was as valid a question following the UN's Iraq–Kuwait settlement as in the mid-nineteenth century. Whether many historical treaty delimitations were ever designed to be anything more than territorial allocations is another theme explored in this article.     

4. IMPERIAL SOVEREIGNTY IN MUGHAL AND BRITISH FORMS

Azfar Moin's recent work on millennial sovereignty in Mughal India prompts a consideration of the evolution of sovereignty in modern South Asia more broadly. Although the sovereign principles of the Mughals differed from those of the British Indian empire, which ultimately succeeded it, these empires shared important similarities in their linking of sovereign authority to visions of a cosmos in immanent interaction with human affairs. This article explores these similarities and differences and speculatively considers their implications for both similarities and differences in Mughal and British principles of statecraft. These similarities and differences provide an important backdrop for thinking about the meanings attached to popular sovereignty in modern India as well.     

The British Empire and revolutionary national poetry

ABSTRACT. The British empire set off an explosion of poetry, in English and native languages, particularly in India, Africa and the Middle East. This poetry – largely neglected in the scholarship on nationalism – was often revolutionary both aesthetically and politically, expressing a spirit of cultural independence. Attacks on England and the empire are common not just in native colonial poetry but also in poetry of the British isles. This article discusses some of the most influential poets, including: Shawqi of Egypt, Tagore of India, Rusafi of Iraq, Yeats of Ireland, Iqbal of Pakistan, Greenberg of pre‐State Israel, and Kipling, the ‘poet of empire’. In contrast with other empires, many poets were inspired by British culture to create revolutionary art and seek political independence. Most strikingly, British rule was instrumental in the revival of vernacular Hebrew poetry after 1917 as the centre of Hebrew literature shifted from Odessa to Tel Aviv.