15 - Colonial Subjects and the Struggle for Self-Determination, 1880–1918

Summary

The overwhelming majority of the United Nations’ 193 member states were once colonies of Western empires. Most of these colonies gained independence during the era of decolonization that followed the Second World War. Despite their numbers and their nationalist struggles, these colonies-cum-countries have not attracted much attention in the standard works on nationalism. As the editors of this volume observe, those works are largely Eurocentric in their orientation. They generally portray the rise of nationalism in colonial dependencies as supplemental to, and largely derivative of, nationalism in the Western world.¹ Even Benedict Anderson, a specialist on Southeast Asia who was deeply knowledgeable about nationalist movements in the colonial world, characterized these movements in his hugely influential Imagined Communities as conforming to a modular design that originated with American and European nationalism and nations.²