Race, conflict, and the international order: From Empire to United Nations (The Making of the 20th century)

Front Matter....Pages i-2 Race and the Contemporary World....Pages 3-16 Imperial High Noon....Pages 17-38 The Melting-Pot of War....Pages 39-60 The End of Empire....Pages 61-77 A Defensive West....Pages 78-100 Strategies of Third World Advance....Pages 101-129 The Racial Spiral....Pages 130-135 Back Matter....Pages 136-157 When the non-whites were controlled by their imperial masters within their own distant countries, the gap between rulers and ruled permitted a blurring of racial or racist assertions of superiority. The imperial system was in control, and any black or brown subjects who arrived in the metropole as students, or even as permanent residents, formed no threat and could be easily accepted. In the imperial aftermath, with a large black and brown workforce actually within the metropolitan country, there was a tangible threat. In a sense, the anticolonial freedom movements had now arrived within the imperial, or ex-imperial gates. The challenges which brought about the collapse of white supremacist ideology and the erosion of the international power system threaten the continuation of prevailing structures of power internally. At a time when the West has to accommodate Third World demands at the international level, it is increasingly resisting demands made internally, within the metropolitan redoubt. The relationship between whites and non-whites has been greatly modified by becoming a worldwide relationship. When white dominance was at its peak it was usual for relations between governors and governed to be regulated by many different sets of rules to meet local requirements. Where non-whites were an insignificant minority, as in Europe or the northern United States, it was unnecessary to lay down rules; and it was usual to argue that these were open societies, accepting all without reference to skin-colour. Where whites were a small (though dominant) minority, as in India or tropical Africa, their power rested upon the support of administrators, police, soldiers, largely drawn from the subject people. Often a 'Divide and Rule' policy was developed, exploiting pre-existing differences between the indigenous communities; but over all, it was unnecessary to devise rules to separate whites and non-whites. Where whites formed a settler or 'boss' class within a mainly black or brown population, as in South Africa or Kenya, it was considered vitally necessary to enforce a complete set of rules to ensure white supremacy in every way: political, social, economic. In the American South, blacks formed an actual majority in one state only-Mississippi -though throughout the South they formed between one-third and one-quarter of the total population. This situation appeared even more threatening to white supremacy than in a 'settler' context: for it was in the American South that the rules, and their enforcement, were most rigorous. Until Gunnar M yrdal wrote of an American Dilemma, most northern ## \* The present work involves two fields of study: those of race relations and international relations. Both are strangely similar; unkind pedagogic persons might describe them as 'non-subjects'. Both call upon, and stray into, a number of disciplines: contemporary history, politics, economics, law, sociology-and, for race relations, anthropology. Both are recent fields of study, emerging in pioneer form in the 1920S and 1930s, and gaining full acceptance (if, indeed, they are yet altogether accepted) in the 1960s and 1970s. Both emerged as 'action' subjects; those who took them up believed that serious study could have repercussions upon actual circumstances. Both developed in response to a growing sense of crisis: a feeling thatthings were getting out of control. Other disciplines have come into being in response to an urge to put things right. Almost every serious philosopher, from Plato to Locke and Rousseau and on to Mill and Marx, has evolved his philosophy in order to create a better world, as he sees it. All the social sciences -politics, economics, sociology, etc. -have an action, or 'policy' aspect. \* In-\* Gunnar Myrdal observes: There can be no such thing as disinterested research. Valuations enter into social research not only when drawing policy conclusions but already when searching for facts and when establishing the relationship between facts. To have a view of society assumes a viewpoint' -M yrdal, 'Biases in Social Research', in Arne Tiselius and Sam Nilsson (eds), The Place 'if Value in a World 'if Facts (Stockholm, 1970) pp. 160-1. \* Slavery ended in the British Empire in 1834, and in the French Empire in 1848. However, France continued with a system of virtual slavery -the engages forces, until 1872. Slavery was abolished in the United States in 1865, and slaves in the Dutch Empire were liberated in 1870. Spain abolished slavery in Puerto Rico in 1872, but it continued in Cuba until the American occupation in 1898. Brazil finally abolished slavery in 1888. Thus, in the 1970s, there are many black people whose fathers were slaves. \* The word originally meant a plant, transplanted and acclimatised in the tropics. Perhaps the most famous Creole was Josephine de Beauharnais, Napoleon's first wife. \* Uzbeks over 9 million; Tartars nearly 6 million; Kazakhs over 5 million; Azerbaidzhanis, Armenians, Georgians, 3-4 million; Tadzhiks, 2 million; Turkmens and Kirghiz, It million. Most other non-European peoples under one million: there are 50 recognised nationalities in the Caucasus. \* The population of some of the newly formed African states was as follows: Gabon, 421,