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WORK TITLE: Decolonization
WORK NOTES: with Jurgen Osterhammel, trans by Jeremiah Riemer
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
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NATIONALITY: German
https://www.ghi-dc.org/ghi-staff/research-fellows/jan-c-jansen.html?L=0 * https://www.ghi-dc.org/fileadmin/user_upload/GHI_Washington/GHI_Staff/CV/jansen_cv.pdf * http://press.princeton.edu/releases/m10963.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL EDUCATION:
University of Freiburg (Germany), M.A., 2005; University of Konstanz (Germany), Ph.D., 2011.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Historian, researcher, and writer. School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, England, visiting research student, 2009; University of Konstanz, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, assistant professor of modern and contemporary history, 2009-11, fellow, Global Processes Research Group, 2011-14; Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb Contemporain (IRMC), Tunis, Tunisia, visiting researcher, 2011; German Historical Institute, Washington, DC, research fellow, 2014—.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including Das große Spiel: Archäologie und Politik zur Zeit des Kolonialismus (1860‐1940), edited by Charlotte Trümpler, Dumont, 2008; A European Memory? Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance, edited by Bo Strath and Malgorzata Pakier, Berghahn Books, 2010; Histoire de l’Algérie à la période coloniale (1830‐1962), edited by Abderrahmane Bouchène and others, La Découverte/Barzakh, 2012; and Erinnerungskulturen post‐imperialer Nationen, edited by Dietmar Rothermund, Nomos, 2015.
Contributor to professional journals, including Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, History & Memory, and Journal of Modern History.
SIDELIGHTS
Jan C. Jansen is a historical research fellow whose primary research interests revolve around the comparative history of the European colonial empires and decolonization. He has a particular focus on North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic world. A contributor to books and professional journals, Jansen is also the author, with Jürgen Osterhammel, of Decolonization: A Short History. The book, translated from the German by Jeremiah Riemer, focuses on the decline of European, American, and Japanese colonial supremacy from World War I to the 1990s. “Perhaps this book’s greatest virtue is reminding us of what a global phenomenon it was by concentrating on the vast French colonial empire, as well as the Portuguese, German, Japanese and, yes, American realms,” wrote Washington Times Online contributor Martin Rubin.
In Decolonization, which the authors revised and greatly expanded from the original German version, Jansen and Osterhammel emphasize that the end of colonial rule in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean ranks among the most important developments of the twentieth century. “In a way, decolonization is both among the most overrated and underrated historical processes of the twentieth century,” Jansen and Osterhammel remarked in an interview for the Princeton University Press blog. Jansen and Osterhammel went on to point out that “high expectations” were made concerning the demise of colonial rules, which many believed would usher in “a new age of social and international equality, post-racism, peace, empowerment of the South, economic redistribution, cultural self-determination, democracy, technological progress, etc.” Not all of these things took place, and some only partially occurred, said the authors, who added: “Hierarchies and inequality continue to shape the relations between formally independent states. It is thus only natural that many see decolonization through the prism of historical disappointment and disillusion. They regard decolonization as a failure.” Nevertheless, Jansen and Osterhammel went on to point out that decolonization did bring about change, altering “the norms that govern the word-wide relations between nations and peoples.”
Decolonization provides a comparative perspective on the process of decolonization. Taking into account the unique contexts in which the various instances of decolonization occurred, Jansen and Osterhammel identify the origins of decolonization arising following the aftermath of World War I when the authors believe a “fundamental legitimation crisis in colonial rule” began to take hold, as the authors write in Decolonization. Jansen and Osterhammel detail the various stages in the rise of decolonization following World War I.
“Decolonization is interpreted here not simply as a historical and political development, but as a pervasive global transformation,” wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor. The authors begin with an examination of the process of decolonization and then discuss nationalism and late colonialism, as well as the two world wars. The book then features a chapter on the various paths taken to sovereignty. What follows are chapters on the worldwide economy and world politics and then a discussion of the legacies of decolonization. Among these is the authors’ belief that decolonization in some instances had significant cultural and intellectual influences that resulted in many newly sovereign nations-states, thus causing a significant restructuring of the international political and economic environment.
In their discussion of evolving norms, the authors address a wide range of issues, from the nature of anticolonialism and late colonialism to decolonization’s place in world politics and its impact in terms of legacies and memories within the former colonies. The book “provides a refreshing contrast to … evolving orthodoxy, partly because of its emphasis on posing questions rather than rushing to judgment,” wrote Rubin, who went on to note: “The authors have a sharp eye for false nostrums and facile associations, allowing them to separate the wheat from the chaff among a vast historiography from which to draw.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Jansen, Jan C., and Jürgen Osterhammel, Decolonization: A Short History, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2017.
PERIODICALS
Choice, October, 2017, J.D. Moon, review of Decolonization, p. 270.
Foreign Affairs, September-October, 2017, Nicolas van de Walle, “Africa,” includes review of Decolonization, p. 195.
Publishers Weekly, January 9, 2017, review of Decolonization, p. 56.
ONLINE
German Historical Institute Website, https://www.ghi-dc.org/ (October 23, 2017), author profile and curriculum vitae.
Princeton University Press Blog, http://blog.press.princeton.edu/ (March 10, 2017), “Jan C. Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel on Decolonization,” interview with authors.
Washington Times Online, http://www.washingtontimes.com/ (March 29, 2017), Martin Rubin review of Decolonization.
Jan C. Jansen is a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC.
Jan C. Jansen
Research Fellow
German Historical Institute
1607 New Hampshire Ave NW
Washington DC 20009
U.S.A.
Phone +1.202.387.3355
jansen@ghi-dc.org
Biographical Summary & Research Education & Fellowships Publications Full CV
Biographical Summary
Jan C. Jansen joined the GHI as a research fellow in May 2014. His main research interests concern the comparative history of the European colonial empires and decolonization with a particular focus on North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic World. Prior to working at the GHI, he was a fellow and lecturer at the University of Konstanz as well as a visiting researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and at the Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb Contemporain in Tunis. He is the author of Erobern und Erinnern: Symbolpolitik, öffentlicher Raum und französischer Kolonialismus in Algerien 1830–1950 (2013) and co-author, with Jürgen Osterhammel, of Kolonialismus: Geschichte, Formen, Folgen (2012). He recently published Decolonization: A short history (co-authored with Jürgen Osterhammel, Princeton University Press, 2017). He is currently engaged in a research project on cross-border sociability in the Atlantic World during the age of revolutions (circa 1770s–1850s).
Main Areas of Interest
Modern European, North African, and Atlantic History
Colonialism and Decolonization (18th - 20th centuries)
Memory Studies
Migration Studies
Global History of Sociability and Freemasonry
GHI Research Project
"Realms of Sociability? Freemasons and Empires in the Atlantic World (c. 1770s-1850s)"
Professional Positions
since 2014
Research Fellow, German Historical Institute Washington DC
2011 - 2014
Fellow, Research Group "Global Processes", Modern and Contemporary History, University of Konstanz
2011
Visiting Researcher, Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb Contemporain (IRMC), Tunis
2009 - 2011
Assistant Professor (Akademischer Mitarbeiter), Modern and Contemporary History, University of Konstanz
2009
Visiting Research Student, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London
CV: https://www.ghi-dc.org/fileadmin/user_upload/GHI_Washington/GHI_Staff/CV/jansen_cv.pdf
Jan C. Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel on Decolonization
March 10, 2017 by Debra Liese
DecolonizationThe end of colonial rule in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean was one of the most important and dramatic developments of the twentieth century. In the decades after World War II, dozens of new states emerged as actors in global politics. Long-established imperial regimes collapsed, some more or less peacefully, others amid mass violence. Decolonization by Jan C. Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel takes an incisive look at decolonization and its long-term consequences, revealing it to be a coherent yet multidimensional process at the heart of modern history. Recently, the authors answered some questions about their new book:
You describe the dissolution of colonial empires as a major process of the twentieth century. What makes decolonization important?
In a way, decolonization is both among the most overrated and underrated historical processes of the twentieth century. On the one hand, many contemporaries pinned high expectations to the end of colonial rule: a new age of social and international equality, post-racism, peace, empowerment of the South, economic redistribution, cultural self-determination, democracy, technological progress, etc. Many of these expectations did not, or only partially, materialize. Hierarchies and inequality continue to shape the relations between formally independent states. It is thus only natural that many see decolonization through the prism of historical disappointment and disillusion. They regard decolonization as a failure. Yet we also have to see what decolonization did change: It dramatically altered the norms that govern the word-wide relations between nations and peoples. While in the late 1930s large parts of the world population still lived in territories that were under alien rule, this has become an anomaly in the present time. Racial hierarchy is no longer an accepted structuring principle of world order. This fundamental normative change is a major dimension—and yes, also an achievement—of the decolonization era. In general, it is important to go beyond these narratives of failure and success and to understand decolonization as a fundamental restructuring—and geopolitical fragmentation—of the international system. This is a perspective we put forward in the book.
How do you explain this international sea change?
This is a question that many contemporaries and witnesses of decolonization were already debating, and today’s historians and political scientists have inherited several ways of explaining the end of colonial rule: that the colonial powers simply could not stem against the rising tide of national liberation movements, that the new postwar international scene of the Cold War and international organizations forced Europe’s colonial powers to give up colonial rule, or that the colonial powers, in association with influential big business interests, realized that they could pursue their interests in more cost-effective ways than colonial rule, the classical “neo-colonialism” theory. In our book, in line with today’s excellent scholarship, we try to avoid overtly simplified models. Decolonization was a multifaceted and complex historical process, and its sheer geographical breadth should caution us against one-factor-theories. The book seeks to provide an analytical grid that takes into account various levels of historical action (local, imperial, international) and time frames. This grid may be used by our readers to analyze and describe specific cases, and may also help to explain decolonization in comparative perspective.
How irreversible is this process, in light of the current international scene? Are there no clear signs that the international order marked by decolonization is coming to an end?
Decolonization never did away with power structures between nations and peoples. Rather, it changed the ways in which these hierarchies are arranged and exercised. The formally sovereign nation-state—and no longer the empire—has become the basis of the international system. Despite the current renaissance of “spheres of interest” and “interventions,” as worrisome as these tendencies are, we do not see the reemergence of internationally codified hierarchies between “metropoles” and “colonies.” To be sure, the post-1989 international order has been under great pressure. Yet, there are no historical precedents for the reappearance of once collapsed empires. If current talk of a “Greater Russia” really leads to Russian “re-imperialization” remains to be seen. In that case, Russian ambitions will eventually clash with a self-confident China, ironically its old Asian rival, which, by the way, has never really ceased to be an empire. Elsewhere, the rise of xenophobic and racist movements throughout the Western world hardly seems to be inspired by the desire to be again at the pinnacle of a diverse and multi-ethnic empire. These movements want to minimize interaction with what they conceive as the inferior and dangerous other (be they Syrians, Eastern Europeans, or Mexicans); their new symbol is “the Wall.” Colonial re-expansion would necessarily go in a different direction.
You also argue that decolonization marked “a crucial phase in West European nation-building.” What do you mean by this?
Of course, decolonization did not bring about new European nation-states. This happened in the global South. Yet, it did have a considerable impact on the European metropoles, and also on Japan, which had built up its own colonial empire in Asia from the late nineteenth century on. These metropoles were closely tied to their overseas possessions, and it is one of the paradoxes of the decolonization era that such ties intensified at the very moment of imperial demise. After the Second World War, Great Britain and France, the two leading colonial powers, sought to facilitate mobility within their imperial spheres and set up, by today’s standards, relatively liberal citizenship laws for people from their respective empires. Decolonization, in this context, came as no less than a rupture in longstanding geopolitical orientations. It set off a new phase in European nation-building, a sort of nation-building by way of contraction. The metropoles had to dissolve or redefine the many—economic, political, social, also mental—ties to their respective empires. In light of increased immigration from their former colonial territories, they also had to redefine what it meant to be British, French, or Dutch. Though not produced by the end of empire, European supranational integration became enmeshed in European decolonization: the postcolonial European nation-states started to focus on Europe and the European market, which more than made up for their losses in former imperial trade. Great Britain, marked by a long-standing ambivalence toward continental Europe, made its first attempt to join the European Common Market in 1961, after the disaster of the Suez crisis and at the apogee of African decolonization. In a way, the 2016 “Brexit” vote to drop out of the European Union concluded this period of postimperial British supra-nationalism.
How present is the history of decolonization today?
Remnants of the colonial past and the decolonization era are pervasive. They remind us that our current world was built out of the ruins of empire. For example, a large portion of international borders between states, including the conflicts they sometimes nourish, have been the result of colonial rule. Decolonization basically enshrined most of them as the borders between sovereign nation-states. Some of the most troubling conflicts in the world—such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the conflict between Pakistan and India—can be traced back to the decolonization era. Yet, notwithstanding the many apparent links, assessing the long-term impact of decolonization and the colonial past remains a tricky operation. Postcolonial countries have taken very different trajectories, sometimes starting from the same colonial system. Consider the two Koreas which had been under Japanese rule and which took diverging paths. The Syrian civil war, to cite another case, can hardly be seen as the ineluctable result of Franco-British quasi-colonial rule in the Middle East during the interwar years.
While the impact of the colonial past and the decolonization process may be fading with time, memories relating to this period have experienced a boom over the past two decades. Certainly, many episodes of the decolonization period remain largely forgotten. Who remembers the bloody repression of a major insurrection in Madagascar in 1947–49? Yet, debates about the colonial past and its end have attracted a great deal of attention not only in formerly colonized countries, but also in Japan and in many European countries. These memories have even become a concern in the diplomatic world. Internationally concerted efforts at remembering the effects—and the many victims—of colonial rule, similar to what we have seen with regard to the Holocaust or the world wars, however, are still no more than a wild dream by some historians.
Why did you write this book?
Decolonization has become an important topic in international historical scholarship, a development not completely detached from the memory boom we just talked about. Over the past two decades, historians and social scientists around the world have worked at piecing together a complex picture of this process and its reverberations. In many cases they have unearthed new archival evidence, a lot of which has only recently become accessible. Decolonization is in the process of turning into a highly productive—and specialized—research field. The wealth of new empirical studies, however, has been rarely accompanied by attempts at synthesis or general interpretation. The book offers such a broader survey. We sought to write it in a clear, accessible prose which addresses students and scholars, but also readers from outside the historical profession who are interested in this process.
Jan C. Jansen is a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC. Jürgen Osterhammel is professor of modern and contemporary history at the University of Konstanz. He is a recipient of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, Germany’s most prestigious academic award. His books include The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton).
Decolonization: A Short History
264.2 (Jan. 9, 2017): p56.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Decolonization: A Short History
Jan C. Jansen and Jurgen Osterhammel, trans.
from the German by Jeremiah Riemer.
Princeton Univ., $27.95 (264p) ISBN 978-0-691-16521-9
In this authoritative primer, German historians Jansen and Osterhammel record the dramatic post-WWII dissolution of colonial rule throughout Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. The authors ably synthesize the vast literature on this "potentially boundless topic," providing readers with a broad and meticulous yet accessible overview of the complex, multidimensional process of decolonization: "the disappearance of empire as a political form, and the end of racial hierarchy as a widely accepted political ideology and structuring principle of world order." Adopting a useful long-term perspective, the authors trace decolonization's roots to the aftermath of WWI--which had allowed "the first signs of a fundamental legitimation crisis in colonial rule to surface"--and investigate its many contemporary reverberations. Decolonization is interpreted here not simply as a historical and political development, but as a pervasive global transformation that had far-reaching cultural and intellectual implications and that radically restructured the international order with dozens of newly sovereign nation-states. The academic tone may not fully convey the dramatic, inspiring, and sometimes brutal nature of these events, but the purpose here is primarily informative. This clear, concise, and new interpretation will be welcomed by students, scholars, and general readers interested in one of the most defining and consequential developments of the 20th century. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Decolonization: A Short History." Publishers Weekly, 9 Jan. 2017, p. 56. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA477339332&it=r&asid=ddf793bac5ccd866b1ed98bbf35886d9. Accessed 25 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A477339332
Tracing colonialism and its dissolution
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By Martin Rubin - - Wednesday, March 29, 2017
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
DECOLONIZATION: A SHORT HISTORY
By Jan C. Hansen and Jurgen Osterhamme
Translated by Jeremiah Riemer
Princeton University Press, $27.95, 252 pages
The authors of this book translated from the German refer in their preface to the word they have used as their title as a “pallid term,” but there is nothing pallid about the subject or their discussion of it. What they go on immediately to say about it indicates not just its complexity but the questions it evokes:
“A plethora of meanings, ambiguities, conflicting memories, and completing narratives makes it the focus of political and scholarly disagreements. Was decolonization essentially about obtaining independence from alien rule, or at least to the same degree about economic or cultural self-determination? Is it tied to colonialism as a system of rule, or does it apply to non-colonial contexts? When did it start, or when, if ever, did it end? … And, in hindsight, was it a failure or a success? Are a great deal of the current problems in the world to be blamed on a botched or incomplete decolonization?”
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Immediately, it is apparent that this is a work not only valuable for its discussion of the topic, but for placing it in a context sorely needed in today’s hydra-headed discussions of the term and the word from which it is derived.
Inevitably, Anglophone readers tend to think of colonialism as a largely British phenomenon. How could we not after being endlessly reminded that “the sun never set on the British Empire” or that it occupied a huge slice of the world? Not to mention being bombarded with seemingly endless portraits of the Indian Raj on page and screen? Even our most recent ex-president focused attention on decolonization in Kenya, with his own complex paternal involvement in the process.
So it’s not surprising that even Americans associate colonialism with the British rather than our own mercifully brief foray into at it at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Perhaps this book’s greatest virtue is reminding us of what a global phenomenon it was by concentrating on the vast French colonial empire, as well as the Portuguese, German, Japanese and, yes, American realms.
“Decolonization” also traces the sometimes ludicrous echoes of this product of a previous age of globalism in our present version of it. It refers pointedly “to a special committee of the United Nations updating year after year a list of countries awaiting their release into independent statehood” — even now. It mentions the 1982 Falkland Islands war to maintain colonial rule by Britain and its conclusion in Hong Kong 15 years later, but I for one would have welcomed discussion of the special reasons why such islands as Bermuda and St. Helena, among a surprising number of others, remain colonies.
Similarly, I think the authors underestimate the part played by the notion of Pan-Africanism in not just accelerating but even enabling independent nations in sub-Saharan Africa. Without the seminal 1945 Pan African Congress held in Manchester, England — not mentioned here — I doubt that the “Wind of Change,” which struck British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan as a continental sweep toward national self-determination as he traveled through Africa, would have existed. Gandhi and Jinnah are mentioned, but contra Tolstoy and his determinist vision that if Napoleon hadn’t lived another similar figure would have stood in his place, would either India or Pakistan be as we know them today without the existence of those two figures on the subcontinent?
It is true that there is a certain amount of nostalgia for what an increasing number of number of folks in former colonies are finding in the good old days of foreign rule. Part of this is an inevitable disillusionment as a reaction to understandable euphoria following independence, but also because of the decline in the quality of leaders who have succeeded the founding fathers. I hear about this every time I purchase gasoline from the South-Asian immigrant near my home: his disgust with the state of his homeland and its decline in the seven decades since the end of colonial rule.
Few subjects have engendered as much tripe and nonsense as imperialism and colonialism, their discontents and dissolution, and the often ludicrous results of “postcolonial studies” increasingly entrenched in the academy and in countless articles and books. “Decolonization” provides a refreshing contrast to this evolving orthodoxy, partly because of its emphasis on posing questions rather than rushing to judgment. But also because the authors have a sharp eye for false nostrums and facile associations, allowing them to separate the wheat from the chaff among a vast historiography from which to draw.
The authors modestly aver at the outset that “This book does not claim to settle these controversies once and for all. Rather, it presents the issues as clearly as possible and outlines the most important arguments.” I think that they have succeeded in providing an admirable, if to my mind incomplete, overview. And it will allow readers to place their preferred pieces of the process into a reliable framework.
• Martin Rubin is a writer and critic in Pasadena, California.