If the General Assembly had a power with respect to partition of Palestine, the question arose whether its resolution on partition had any binding effect, or rather whether it was a non-binding recommendation only. The resolution itself, it was argued, recited that only a recommendation was being made, and that the General Assembly did not claim to possess any broader power. Once it appeared that partition could not be achieved peacefully, the General Assembly considered an alternative of a United Nations' trusteeship over Palestine. The fact that the General Assembly did so was said to reflect the General Assembly’s understanding that its resolution on partition was a suggestion only. In response to that position, it was argued that while the resolution could be revoked, the resolution had reflected an acceptance of a right to Jewish statehood, and that that acceptance survived regardless of the fate of the resolution. It was also argued that the General Assembly’s resolution was an implied trust agreement between Britain and the United Nations and carried legal force on that basis. In response, it was argued that a trust agreement requires explicit acceptance between the United Nations and the state taking on the trust, and that this did not occur with respect to Palestine.

I discuss two episodes in India’s history that attracted significant attention worldwide. The first is the Great Revolt of 1857. I show possible links to contemporaneous events such as the European revolutions of 1848–9 and the Tai-ping rebellion in China to be largely speculative. Repercussions in the Islamic world are attested, but would need further research. The impact of the Revolt on the British Empire is well documented, although its consequences are uncertain, and was greatest at the level of representations as it inspired ‘sepoy ballads’ in Irish Fenian circles and a flurry of popular novels in different languages. The Partition of British India in 1947 attracted less attention worldwide at the time, but it became a staple of later analyses of partition by political scientists as a way of solving problems of territoriality and ethnicity. I explore the links of India’s Partition to the earlier Partition of Ireland and the contemporaneous Partition of Palestine through a survey of the literature, and end with an interrogation of the possible influence of India’s Partition on later episodes of decolonisation in the British Empire.