Empires in the Origins of United Nations Thought

Empires in the Origins of United Nations Thought

——A brief review of "No Magic Palace: The End of Empires and the Origin of Ideas of the United Nations"

one

Mark Mazower is a British historian and a professor of history at Columbia University. He has won the Wolfson History Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. Domestic readers are more familiar with his "Balkan Five Hundreds". Year" book. In Mazor's recent book, No Magic Palace, he makes revealing the ideological origins of the United Nations a primary concern.

International relations historians generally agree that the United Nations is a twentieth-century invention, the embodiment of a new international order. This international order requires the rule of law in the world and the replacement of traditional balance-of-power politics with a system of collective security. It questions the legitimacy of war as a foreign policy tool, and it also controls international competition and reduces the space for states to act freely. This is undoubtedly a revolutionary change compared with the intense imperialist competition and the unbridled struggle for hegemony among the great powers in the late 19th century.

In the first half of the book, Mazor challenges this view, arguing that the United Nations was not the original creation of American idealists, and that British "imperial internationalists" also contributed to its emergence. He believed that the purpose of creating the League of Nations and the United Nations was to preserve the empire, not destroy it. In order to support this point of view, Mazor highlights the views and actions of two people: one is the South African Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts, who wrote the preamble to the United Nations Charter; the other is the British historian Alfred Alfred Zimmern, the most famous theorist of internationalism of his era, was also an ardent supporter of the League of Nations.

Let's start with Smuts, the author argues, "If the modern colonial empire was the product of a late nineteenth-century generation, then Smuts was the leader of a subsequent generation that sought to prolong the life of white-dominated empires through international cooperation. To put it bluntly, there is a straight . . . line that takes us from the constitutional restructuring of the last decades of the British Empire to the founding of the United Nations.” (p.

Here I need to introduce a little background knowledge to you, talk about who Shi Muzi is, and how he became a British imperialist. In 1795, the British entered South Africa and gradually became hostile to the local Boers (inhabitants of Dutch descent). In the Boer War between 1899 and 1902, the British deployed an army of almost one and a half times as many Boers, costing £220 million, and winning the war using a scorched earth strategy (the British locked up 110,000 Boers) into a concentration camp, where 28,000 people died). During this war, Smuts was a commander of the Boer guerrillas. Logically speaking, the Boers and the Smuts should all be feuds of the British. But this is not the case. This is because after the Boer War, the British quickly reformed and established a whole system of democratically elected and accountable government in South Africa. The British did not exclude the subjugated Boers from this political process. The Boers won the election by virtue of their numerical superiority, and gradually gained political dominance in South Africa. When the South African Union was formed in 1909, the Boer statesman Louis Botha was elected as the first prime minister. In other words, although the British won the war, they treated the Boers equally after the victory and handed over the entire South African regime. This kind of imperial bearing will inevitably turn battles into jade and silk. "Four years later, they gave us everything in our country except the name. Has this miracle of trust and magnanimity happened before?" He became a staunch British imperialist ever since.

Smutz held a number of cabinet positions in the Botha government. During the First World War, he led the South African army to fight in Africa. The imperial government looked at him differently and promoted him to the British Empire's wartime cabinet, which was a high-ranking position. He was one of the key British delegates at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Between World War II, he returned to South Africa as Prime Minister and was also a man of influence in imperial affairs. During World War II, he was appointed Field Marshal of the United Kingdom. He was a close friend of Churchill (Churchill had a metaphor of "two old lovers moulting together on a perch"), and it was believed at the time that if Churchill died or became incapacitated in war, he would be the successor to the British prime minister (within the government). There was indeed such a plan, and King George V endorsed it).

For private reasons, the British Empire was not rich in history. "People treat me with a nationalist, and I will repay them with a nationalist" is not only a Chinese principle. Yu Gong, the survival of the white South African society also depends to a considerable extent on the goodwill of the British Empire. Coincidentally, the British Empire at the end of the nineteenth century also had a taste of racist hierarchical governance. In the late nineteenth century, the entire British Empire was effectively divided into two circles. In the inner circle are the various white colonies established by Britain and British immigrants. The outer circle is the other non-white territory. Britain was very friendly towards the predominantly white colony, seeing it as a partner. In the words of the people at the time, "[The British Empire should be] a closer organic connection between a series of self-governing peoples under the rule of a monarch who share the same blood. . . . In terms of their relationship to each other , they are a democratic nation." The British at the end of the nineteenth century were obviously more focused on the inside than the outside. In their view, the white colonies were an extension of the British state, while India and other colonies were only the property of the empire. To Smuts, this taste of the racist layered governance of the British Empire was quite appetizing. Because in South Africa at the same time, it was the period when the racist segregation system was established. A small minority of whites lives in the vast ocean of blacks, and they feel anxious all the time and need to draw strength from imperial protection to maintain this apartheid system.

In this way, Smutz sees the British Empire as an ideal international order. In this international order, Britain exists as the head of the empire, leading the entire empire with its "moral spirit" and influence, but does not interfere and control the internal affairs of each dominion, but provides economic and political support for it. Empires exist as loose political ties, bound together by feelings, shared values, and economic interests. Smuts hailed the British Empire's model as "the only successful experiment in international government." (p. 43). He added: "The ancient British Empire once again proved its magical power, which closely linked the complete freedom and independence of each country with a cosmopolitan group of free countries, satisfying both national sentiment and international cooperation. trends, both of which are the most powerful forces of our time.” (p. 44)

So what poses the greatest threat to this ideal? It's a competition between empires. "Smuts argued that the First World War showed that old-style alliance politics within Europe could easily undermine Europe's mission of civilisation outside. Therefore, some kind of new international arrangement had to be reached after the war to solve this problem." (p. 42) Page) Therefore, in order to address this threat, Smutz strongly supported the extension of the British Empire model to the entire international sphere to achieve great power coordination and stabilize the colonial order. During the Paris Peace Conference, he vigorously promoted the establishment of the League of Nations, and after the end of World War II, he actively wrote the preamble to the United Nations Charter.

two

If the Smuts case mainly reflects the desire for a stable, white-dominated international order, then another prominent figure in the book, the British historian Alfred Zimmern, presents a A British imperialist's reflections on what form the League of Nations should take.

Interestingly, Zimmern also has some ties to South Africa. Zimmern is a member of the Knights of the Round Table. The group was formed by the South African High Commissioner, Lord Milner, who "has been seeking solutions to what they consider to be the most pressing international issues of our day, namely how to deal with growing nationalist sentiments in the white colonies of the British Empire and the continued domination of London. to reconcile.” (p. 86) So he brought together a group of young intellectuals in elite universities and asked them to think about the relationship between the Dominion and Britain, how the British Empire should be organized.

The result of Zimmern's reflections is that "the greatest strength of the Commonwealth/Empire is its flexibility. It is precisely because it lacks a clear centralized government or a clear constitutional system that it can evolve and adapt to the political aspirations of others: British Empire is strong because of the emergence of a common consciousness, not the result of political institutions. Like all enduring polities, it is essentially a social organism united by a common moral purpose and culture.” ( p. 87) In other words, he believes that the organization of the British Empire is best informal, not to have a unified centralized government, nor to have a political mechanism with clear rules to coordinate the relationship between the center and the colonies, but rely on a certain A 'Great British Society' to act as a solidarity.

Readers who are relatively new to the history of the British Empire may be a little puzzled after reading this, and do not understand what Zimmern intended. The whole story here is this: the British Empire has always been loosely organized. In fact, there is no unified command system between Britain and its Dominions and Colonies, and there is no constitutional document to regulate it. What is the relationship between the United Kingdom and Canada, Australia and other places, where is the central authority of the empire, etc., in fact, it has always been unresolved.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the world was entering an era of greater competition, when many Britons felt the need to consolidate their empire. For example, in 1883, JR Seeley, a professor of history at Cambridge University, pointed out in his famous book The Expansion of England: "What is done effortlessly in America, it (Britain) can do, That is to unite regions that are "far apart from each other" within one federal organization. At that time, the Empire Federation Movement emerged, which was a ideological and political movement that emerged in Britain and the Dominions after the 1870s. government, or the establishment of an imperial general council).

But this idea and movement was opposed by many British people, including Zimmern. They believed that political order must have grown naturally. Forcing the construction of a large political community will only be counterproductive. This is actually the traditional view of British conservatives, who distinguish between "artificial solidarity" and "natural solidarity", arguing that imposing a formal empire will only bring "chaos, misfortune and weakness". The current situation is already very good. "Language, culture, communication, history, common habits, systems and ways of thinking" are sufficient to ensure the unity of the empire. Political unity is only form, appearance and consequences, and is not enough.

These conservatives are not blindly conservative, but see the inevitable political difficulties of organizing an international organization/empire in a nationalistic world. The ambiguity of the British Empire largely avoided disputes between sovereign governments.

When Zimmern considered the issue of the League of Nations after World War I, he naturally brought in the experience of the British Empire. He believed that it was unrealistic to establish a world government or a highly regulated international organization. "Zimmern suggested that the peace negotiators were thinking about something more permanent than occasional meetings, but much less than the establishment of a world state. The League of Nations would be formally established and persist, but essentially a great power. Forum.” (p. 95) “He criticized the suggestion that the League of Nations could preserve world peace simply by promoting a unified and standardized system of international law 'not only naive but also . . . absurd'”. (p. 99) Zimmern endorses the concept of "international society", arguing that "it is not governed by formal norms, much less by international organizations and their cumbersome and selfish bureaucracies, but by a shared sense of moral community linked got up". (pp. 113-114), and this international social/moral community had its leaders, Britain before World War I and the United States after World War I.

In short, the form of the League of Nations and the United Nations advocated by Zimmern is more of an international forum than a formal international organization binding on major powers. We will find that the League of Nations and the United Nations in the future will indeed reflect these characteristics advocated by Zimmern. This is of course a result of many synergies, but theorists like Zimmern do provide intellectual resources as well.

three

In my opinion, the book "No Magical Palace" is a typical "flowers will not bloom if they are deliberately planted, and willows and willows will become shady if they are inadvertently planted". Mazor's important conclusion is that "the United Nations is a product of empire" (p. 26), but neither the politician Kemalz nor the theoretician Zimmern seem to be able to influence the ideology of the United Nations signs. After World War II, Britain's national strength was weakened, and it was even less likely to play a leading role. Therefore, this conclusion is inevitably exaggerated. However, if we understand it from another angle, we should turn the question "Was the United Nations led by imperialists" to "How did the British liberal imperialists understand the League of Nations and the United Nations" or "The imperial order of the nineteenth century was the same as that of the twenty What is the inheritance relationship between the new international order in

This book does have an important insight - in the past, we generally believed that the United Nations was a revolutionary creation, an idealist denial of the imperial order, the empire was a set of realist systems of national hegemony, and the empire and the United Nations were incompatible. This book argues that this is not the case. The British imperialists of the late nineteenth century did have a template for a non-hegemonic international order, so later they were more able to accept new things like the League of Nations and the Is it a tool to curb European state competition and ensure the primacy of white civilization, or, as Zimmern sees it, as an informal mechanism of state cooperation (in which the great powers lead by their normative influence, and the sovereign states of without being overly restrained).

In this book, Mazor mainly criticizes the "imperial" element in the United Nations, arguing that the United Nations was influenced by imperialists at the beginning. In my opinion, these imperial elements are not necessarily bad things. The British imperialists in the late 19th century had already thought about international cooperation due to their own difficulties. It was these imperial elements that played a certain positive role. Helped to build a bridge between the old order and the new order. Just imagine, if the League of Nations and the United Nations really established a strict control mechanism for international affairs, with a central organization with centralized power, then the sovereign state and its fierce contradictions and conflicts can be foreseen. Although we sometimes laugh at the United Nations as a forum that "doesn't matter", if it really does, it's very likely that the entire mechanism of international cooperation will cease to exist. The nature of the forum of the United Nations may be "just right", it is too white for fans, and too red for Shi Zhu. In this sense, this vague state of the United Nations comes from imperial wisdom.

Four

There is one other thing worth mentioning in the book, and that is the dispute between Smutz and Nehru in the United Nations. The main purpose of this book is to use this dispute to illustrate how the United Nations has transformed from a "white man's tool" to a forum for the modern nation-state. But I think the content of this chapter is more indicative of the inner predicament of the British Empire.

Some modern empires (such as Britain and France) are very different from the ancient empires: these empires have achieved universal citizenship and inclusive social rights at home, and their ruling elites have been selected on this basis. . Whether (or not) these domestic political principles can be applied to the overseas territories they conquered, then, constituted a fundamental dilemma. If the political system and laws of the mother country are applied to the territory, it will either make the place unable to exercise arbitrary rule (thus losing the value of this place to the empire's homeland to a considerable extent), or enable the people of this place to participate in the politics of the empire's homeland. (thus posing a competition and threat to the imperial native society at the social level). However, if it is not applied and implemented, the ideology of the home country will have the worry of bankruptcy (the ideology of the first rise often appears in the face of the universal). It has been found that the resulting contradiction is almost insoluble. One tricky approach is to appeal to racism, arguing that some races are suitable for democracy, human rights, or the rule of law, while others are culturally incompatible. In this way, empires could be held together by some kind of "multicultural" system. But the problem with racism is that it also discourages those collaborators among the subjects, leading to large gaps in the governance structure of the empire.

Such was the British rule of India. As mentioned above, the British Empire actually has a considerable degree of racist hierarchical governance. It is very good for white dominions, but it is very discriminatory against non-white colonies. For the British, the question of "whether Indians are British or whether they can become British in the future" is relatively hesitant. After the great uprising in India, the British tended to answer: "No". This is reflected both in the British reluctance to establish a representative and accountable government in India, and in the fact that the British did not grant Indians British citizenship or imperial citizenship.

In South Africa, the Boers have a very strong sense of insecurity in the face of the overwhelming majority of blacks, and for this reason they have been promoting the establishment of an apartheid system. At that time, South Africa already had a group of Indian immigrants, which was the product of the population movement of the empire. The Boers wanted very much to regulate them too, and their attitude was "(Indians should not be given equal rights, lest) in the next few centuries the huge reservoir of Indian races . be submerged". (p. 178). This includes both removing the right to vote for Indians in South Africa, as well as prohibiting them from intermarrying with whites, or buying land, moving, and so on.

The reason why the anti-Indian sentiment among the Boers is high is that before the 1940s, the economic and social status of the Boers in South Africa was not the highest. In 1910, the Boers made up only 29 percent of the city's population, and by 1936 they exceeded 50 percent. Compared with the English-speaking population, these new urban immigrants are generally poor, less educated, inferior and insecure. Three quarters of them are working class. Compared with black South Africans, Indian immigrants are obviously more knowledgeable and skilled, and their ecological niche is closest to that of the Boers, so the Boers have the strongest psychological rejection of them.

Faced with the South African government's discriminatory policies against Indians, the new Indian government has protested. "Indian politicians want London to do something. But the British government has no intention of intervening because it cannot resolve the current impasse, and sees it as an issue between India and South Africa." (p. 191) Mazor directly pointed out that the British The root of the non-intervention attitude is that "if the Commonwealth is to remain cohesive, it means that there needs to be some kind of arbitration procedure to resolve disputes between members, but there is no such formal mechanism in practice, mainly because India is in the Status within the Commonwealth has not yet been established.” (p. 192). In other words, the British, because of their own racist attitudes, and the "informal nature" of the empire itself, actually hindered the unity and unity of the empire.

From the perspective of the new Indian government, if the problem cannot be solved within the British Empire/Commonwealth, then the only way to protest is to resort to a new international platform - the United Nations. This is the source of the dispute between Smuts and Nehru in the United Nations, and the evidence of the defeat of the British Empire.