In the shadow of the Second International: Social-democratic colonial policy in France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, 1936-1958.
Historical Context:
Prior to the First World War, the parties of the Second International were bound to a firmly anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist platform. Yet when social-democratic parties directly descended from the Second International were elected in France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom in the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s, they pursued, at best, a reluctant decolonization, and at worst, poured resources into maintaining overseas possessions. Central to my project is the question of why these parties seem to have undergone a massive shift in their attitudes towards colonialism prior to taking office.
Academic Context:
While the social-democratic shift on colonial policy has generated large amounts of writing specifically about it, proportionately little of that writing follows the standards of modern-day academic history. The majority of it is explicitly ideological, written by Soviet propagandists, Pan-Arabist and Pan-African revolutionaries, Maoist-Third-Worldist intellectuals, French politicians, and many others besides. It is often written as poems, party platforms, autobiographical books, polemical essays, and personal letters.
Opportunities and Dangers:
The nature of this catalogue of writing provides two opportunities, and one danger. As there is (relatively) little peer-reviewed work that is specifically focused on the evolution of social-democratic colonial policy, I have the opportunity to conduct independent research and come to my own conclusions about this phenomenon without directly shadowing another’s work.
The second opportunity comes in the form of the diverse and multi-disciplinary pool of sources that this ideological battleground provides. Politicians, philosophers, revolutionaries, and “ordinary” people alike were actively discussing the purported abandonment of strict anti-colonialism by European social-democratic parties for decades, providing no shortage of individual voices and lives to dive into.
At the same time, this rich background of writing is also a potential minefield. Many of the sources I plan to use are not merely ideologically biased; they are also self-consciously biased. Frantz Fanon and Ho Chi Minh wrote from particular ideological and cultural perspectives, while also being keenly aware of their own social, political, and historical context as they wrote. Critically analyzing both the texts themselves and the motives of their authors will be one of the most important tasks facing me in the course of this project.
Project Structure:
Due to the chronological scope of my project, I plan to split it into two sections. The first will be covered in the Short Essay, and the second in the Long Essay/”Full Project”.
The Short Essay will critically evaluate both the official stance on colonialism taken by the Second International before WWI and the personal beliefs about colonialism and “colonized peoples” held by prominent politicians and intellectuals within the organization. It will consider the impact the nature of the Second International as a de-facto whites-only organization, and the relative importance of electoral strategy vs ideology on colonial policy. The end goal of the Short Essay is to provide a firm intellectual and historical starting point from which the later evolution of social-democratic parties can be evaluated.
The Long Essay will critically analyze the four different interpretations of the social-democratic turn that I have found turn up most frequently in the primary and secondary sources of the mid-to-late-20th century.
The first interpretation, put forth most often by Soviet and Soviet-sympathizing Marxist intellectuals and politicians, is that the social-democratic turn on colonialism was first and foremost a betrayal by the intellectual elite of Western social-democratic parties that could have, and should have, been avoided.
The second interpretation, put forth most often by intellectuals and revolutionaries from colonial or formerly-colonial regions, is that this evolution was inevitable, given that the voting base of said parties being almost entirely located in the imperial core. Continuing colonial exploitation was directly in the material interests of citizens and politicians alike, outweighing ideological legacy.
The third and fourth interpretations are those most often put forth by those intellectuals and politicians who sought to defend social-democratic parties against the charge that they were betraying the legacy of the Second International. The third interpretation is that the political and economical realities faced by social-democratic parties necessitated a pragmatic approach to the colonies, and that a more radical approach would have resulted in worse results. The fourth interpretation puts social-democratic parties in a paternalistic role, portraying the colonies as a civilizing mission justifiably spreading modernity.
These intellectual currents will be critically examined, with an eye towards determining both their accuracy in the historical context as well as the motivations (ideological, personal, or otherwise) behind these views. The project will conclude with a determination of which interpretation (if any) is most accurate. If none comes close, I will seek to provide an alternative hypothesis that does, one that takes both my own research and the existing historical narratives into account.