{"id":1294,"date":"2019-03-08T16:44:23","date_gmt":"2019-03-08T16:44:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/?p=1294"},"modified":"2019-04-26T14:55:16","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T14:55:16","slug":"project-proposal-social-democracy-colonialism-and-the-legacy-of-the-second-international","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/2019\/03\/08\/project-proposal-social-democracy-colonialism-and-the-legacy-of-the-second-international\/","title":{"rendered":"Project Proposal: Social Democracy, Colonialism, and the Legacy of the Second International"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the shadow of the Second International: Social-democratic\ncolonial policy in France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, 1936-1958.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historical Context:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to the First World\nWar, the parties of the Second International were bound to a firmly anti-colonialist\nand anti-imperialist platform. Yet when social-democratic parties directly\ndescended from the Second International were elected in France, the\nNetherlands, and the United Kingdom in the 1930\u2019s, 40\u2019s and 50\u2019s, they pursued,\nat best, a reluctant decolonization, and at worst, poured resources into\nmaintaining overseas possessions. Central to my project is the question of why\nthese parties seem to have undergone a massive shift in their attitudes towards colonialism<\/strong> prior to taking\noffice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Academic Context:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the social-democratic\nshift on colonial policy has generated large amounts of writing specifically\nabout it, proportionately little<\/strong> of that writing follows the standards of\nmodern-day academic history<\/strong>. The majority of it is explicitly ideological,\nwritten by Soviet propagandists, Pan-Arabist and Pan-African revolutionaries,\nMaoist-Third-Worldist intellectuals, French politicians, and many others\nbesides. It is often written as poems, party platforms, autobiographical books,\npolemical essays, and personal letters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opportunities and Dangers:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nature of this\ncatalogue of writing provides two opportunities, and one danger. As there is\n(relatively) little peer-reviewed work that is specifically focused on the\nevolution of social-democratic colonial policy, I have the opportunity to conduct independent research<\/strong> and come to my own\nconclusions about this phenomenon without directly shadowing another\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second opportunity\ncomes in the form of the diverse and\nmulti-disciplinary pool of sources<\/strong> that this ideological battleground\nprovides. Politicians, philosophers, revolutionaries, and \u201cordinary\u201d people\nalike were actively discussing the purported abandonment of strict\nanti-colonialism by European social-democratic parties for decades, providing\nno shortage of individual voices and lives to dive into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Project Structure:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Due to the chronological\nscope of my project, I plan to split it\ninto two sections<\/strong>. The first will be covered in the Short Essay, and the\nsecond in the Long Essay\/\u201dFull Project\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Short Essay will\ncritically evaluate both the official stance on colonialism taken by the Second\nInternational before WWI and the personal beliefs about colonialism and\n\u201ccolonized peoples\u201d held by prominent politicians and intellectuals within the\norganization. It will consider the impact the nature of the Second\nInternational as a de-facto whites-only\norganization<\/strong>, and the relative importance of electoral strategy vs ideology\non colonial policy. The end goal of the Short Essay is to provide a firm intellectual\nand historical starting point from which the later evolution of social-democratic\nparties can be evaluated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Long Essay will\ncritically analyze the four different\ninterpretations <\/strong>of the social-democratic turn that I have found turn up\nmost frequently in the primary and secondary sources of the mid-to-late-20th<\/sup>\ncentury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first interpretation,\nput forth most often by Soviet and Soviet-sympathizing Marxist intellectuals\nand politicians, is that the social-democratic turn on colonialism was first and foremost a betrayal by the\nintellectual elite<\/strong> of Western social-democratic parties that could have,\nand should have, been avoided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second interpretation,\nput forth most often by intellectuals and revolutionaries from colonial or\nformerly-colonial regions, is that this evolution was inevitable, given that\nthe voting base of said parties being almost entirely located in the imperial\ncore. Continuing colonial exploitation\nwas directly in the material interests of citizens and politicians<\/strong> alike, outweighing\nideological legacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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, <\/strong>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<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/strong>. If none comes close, I will seek to provide an alternative hypothesis<\/strong> that does, one that takes both my own research and the existing historical narratives into account. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5wNtZ-kS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1297,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions\/1297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}