The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism Annotated Edition

by Erez Manela (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0195176155

ISBN-10: 0195176154

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During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, while key decisions were debated by the victorious Allied powers, a multitude of smaller nations and colonies held their breath, waiting to see how their fates would be decided. President Woodrow Wilson, in his Fourteen Points, had called for "a free,
open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims," giving equal weight would be given to the opinions of the colonized peoples and the colonial powers. Among those nations now paying close attention to Wilson's words and actions were the budding nationalist leaders of four
disparate non-Western societies--Egypt, India, China, and Korea. That spring, Wilson's words would help ignite political upheavals in all four of these countries.

This book is the first to place the 1919 Revolution in Egypt, the Rowlatt Satyagraha in India, the May Fourth movement in China, and the March First uprising in Korea in the context of a broader "Wilsonian moment" that challenged the existing international order. Using primary source material from
America, Europe, and Asia, historian Erez Manela tells the story of how emerging nationalist movements appropriated Wilsonian language and adapted it to their own local culture and politics as they launched into action on the international stage. The rapid disintegration of the Wilsonian promise
left a legacy of disillusionment and facilitated the spread of revisionist ideologies and movements in these societies; future leaders of Third World liberation movements--Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Jawaharlal Nehru, among others--were profoundly shaped by their experiences at the time.

The importance of the Paris Peace Conference and Wilson's influence on international affairs far from the battlefields of Europe cannot be underestimated. Now, for the first time, we can clearly see just how the events played out at Versailles sparked a wave of nationalism that is still resonating
globally today.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At the close of WWI, America seemed the foe of Western imperialism, according to this probing historical study. Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points peace framework and his rhetoric of self-determination and equality of nations appeared to expectant Africans and Asians like a formula for their liberation from European colonial rule. One Indian leader hailed Wilson as another Christ or Buddha, and a Chinese academic called him the number one good man in the world. Wilson was bombarded by petitions from colonial nationalist leaders (including Ho Chi Minh). who hoped he would champion their cause at the Paris Peace Conference. But the other Allies proved unsympathetic to self-determination in their colonial domains and Wilson backed off, provoking disillusioned nationalists from Egypt to Korea to stage uprisings and turn to Soviet communism for inspiration. Manela, an assistant professor of history at Harvard, offers a well-researched, if somewhat dry, survey of anticolonial politics during this fraught period. Wilsonian principles, he contends, laid the conceptual groundwork for the 20th century's nationalist revolutions; yet Wilson's betrayal ensured that anti-imperialism would shift from a liberal internationalist ideology to a radical, anti-Western one. The author presents an enlightening analysis of a shortsighted failure whose convulsive effects are still with us. 20 photos. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Manela's book is that rare thing in good history writing: it is concise and well-argued, the kind of book that you finish knowing not only what you just read but its obvious importance to the world around you. It is also that very rare thing in U.S. diplomatic history, for the book not only covers
what Wilson thought and said but also how people around the world interpreted his thoughts and actions. As much as this account is solid diplomatic history, it is equally a major contribution to a still largely inchoate field known as 'America and the world'...The Wilsonian Moment breaks important
new ground. It is an excellent piece of history."--Ussama Makdisi, Diplomatic History

"Trawling through four national archives, Manela has produced an immensely rich and important work of comparative politics."--Pankaj Mishra, London Review of Books

"This book will undoubtedly be definitive...Manela conclusively shows that Wilson, who had little interest in liberating colonial peoples, inadvertently planted among colonial peoples the seeds of national self-determination and disillusionment with a West that saw this concept applying to white
peoples only. Essential."--CHOICE

"This is the new 'international history' at its best."--John Milton Cooper, author of Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations

"A probing historical study. Manela presents an enlightening analysis of a shortsighted failure whose convulsive effects are still with us."--Publishers Weekly

"Sophisticated in its analysis."--The Weekly Standard

"A carefully researched and gracefully written example of the new transnational history at its best."--Jeffrey Wasserstrom, History News Network

"Indispensable to all scholars seeking to understand the political transformation of the colonial world in the aftermath of World War I."--Wm. Roger Louis, University of Texas at Austin

"Innovative and elegantly written...Manela makes a convincing case that the disappointment resulting from the 'Wilsonian moment' shaped the future of anticolonial nationalism."--The Historian

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; Annotated edition (July 1, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0195176154
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0195176155
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.43 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.2 x 1.1 x 6.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #962,720 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #777 in Nationalism (Books)
- #825 in Political Ideologies
- #9,636 in Political Science (Books)

Customer Reviews:
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Phillip A. Barlag

an important way to look at history

Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2021

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This is an important book. Much ink has been spilled over how the Versailles peace treaty sowed the seeds of WW2. Little has been said about how the same process set in motion the belief in and motivation for anticolonial movements around the world. It's engaging, detailed and well-researched, and has good pacing. In other words, despite its ambitious scope, it moves quickly and is accessible. It's a great read for those wanting to understand historical trends that shape the modern world.

One person found this helpful

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The failure of the peace as seen from the periphery

Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2017

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I want to do a couple of things in this review. First, I want to briefly remark on the historical method of the Manela's books. If you find historiography to be the surest path to a loss of consciousness, then avoid this part of my review.
Second, I want to give a fuller summary than has been offered so far by the other reviewers.
Finally, I will offer a few thoughts on why this books is worthy of the broadest possible audience and who that audience might be.
The main point I want to make about the methodology is that this book is an excellent argument for the relatively recent broadening of historical writing by using both a transnational and an international perspective. Manela is clear on how he means these terms:

"...international in that it played out in an arena defined by the interactions between sovereign nation-states and in which such states were the primary actors. It was also transnational, meaning that the perceptions and actions of the actors regularly transcended and crossed existing political boundaries" (p.222, see also p. 13 for a similar definition).

Readers familiar with the work of historians like Timothy Snyder, Christopher Bayly and Thomas Bender will find themselves at home with this part of Manela's method.
Where Manela is a little more disturbing for this life-long reader of American history is that he is using this method as a way of telling how a bit of American history was seen from and impacted the nationalist movements on the colonial periphery.
Let me outline the book itself and perhaps the above will make more sense.
Manela's book has three thematic sections and a brief conclusion.

The first section looks at the emergence of Wilson's peace plans through several of Wilson's speeches, i.e., the Peace without Victory speech of Jan. 22nd, 1917 and the Fourteen Points speech of Jan. 8th, 1918. These speeches and some others that Wilson made created the Wilsonian Moment of Manela's title. They outlined a vision of a new approach to international relations in which all nations would be seen as equals and where an international tribunal would serve to adjudicate disputes.
Perhaps most importantly, there emerged from these speeches and some other developments the idea of the self-determination of peoples. Manela's discussion of how Wilson thought of self-determination and how that idea was appropriated by nationalists within a colony like India or Korea is a superb idea of how ideas take on their own lives.
Another interesting part of this section is how the United States created a propaganda campaign for Wilson's plans that helped to spread these ideas around the world and , at the same time, to turn Wilson into a sort of political saint/archangel; someone both superbly principled and powerful.

The second section looks at how these ideas were received in four countries- Egypt, India, China and Korea. The first two were British colonies, the fourth was a Japanese colony and China was being bullied by all the major powers. Wilson's ideas energized and radicalized the nationalist movements within all of these countries. A gradual reformism had seemed the best approach to their desire for self-government. Now in all four of these countries, it seemed possible to go to the Peace Conference and to demand to be seen a sovereign nation demanding its recognition and place in the new international community.
In all four cases they were denied anything like equal representation at the conference. In the case of the British colonies, the colonial nationalist leaders were denied the right to even go to France.

The third section is the story of the reaction in each country to the failure of the peace to take their nationalist movements seriously and the various ways that that failure served to further radicalize and popularize the movements. Among other things, the chapters in this section tells the stories how in each country, Wilson's stature fell and how the nationalist turned away from Wilsonian liberalism to, e.g., the Bolshevism of Lenin.

So now let's revisit that whole international/transnational thing for just a moment. These four separate national movements were aware of themselves as possible international actors. The Egyptians hoped that the Americans and Wilson would use their national power/status to help the Egyptians. The failure of the American government to (even seriously consider) supporting the Egyptians against the British is an international story.
The story of how Egyptians in England, France and the United States as well as Egypt organized to petition Wilson for support is a transnational story. I hope that makes the distinction clear.

All of this I found to be very well told and utterly convincing. And a very important read for the American audience. We like to think of ourselves as being special in a variety of ways. We have claimed (at various times) to be a paragon, to have a manifest destiny or to be the founder of the path for other nations to follow. Manela's books is about a couple of years when it seemed to much of the world that this was so. We failed to walk our talk in any serious way at that moment. Some of it was due to isolationist Republicans in the Senate (the more things change...), some of it was due to Wilson's failings and/or frailty (he did suffer a terrible stroke in Oct, 1919).
We could (and should) investigate and debate all the reasons why we failed to live up to our ideals at that moment. The point I want to make, however, is simply those ideals and our self-image are not just important to us.
If we want to be different, to be a nation representative of ideals and not just power politics than we sure as heck have to try harder.
Manela's history help us understand how to do that.

5 people found this helpful

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Nick

Pleased again

Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2021

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Yet another book bought at great value and excellent shipping for my college student.

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DannyCK

Informative, entertaining, and multilayered

Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2013

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The is groundbreaking work in global history. Manela is able to tell one story, the story of self-determination in the colonial world, from the American, European, Chinese, Indian, Egyptian, and Korean perspectives without deluding the narrative. This is my first review and I was inspired to do so based on the misguided perceptions of the first reviewer. For a history book it's well written, well researched, and will evoke feelings of frustration and admiration for those who were let down by Wilson.

6 people found this helpful

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Samuel W. Fleischacker

First-rate scholarly book, that will keep even non-specialists gripped.

Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2014

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Outstanding for anyone interested in national self-determination or anti-colonialism: beautifully written, researched, and argued. I picked it up because I was interested in self-determination as applied to the Israel/Palestine conflict, but people with a wide variety of other interests in the notion will find it equally valuable.

3 people found this helpful

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Anthony M.

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2014

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excellent read which simply demonstrates the beginings of the evolvement of the U.S. as a superpower.

One person found this helpful

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nicholas s

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2017

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well-written

One person found this helpful

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Sarah E Garcia

it wasn't the best read. Some parts were interesting

Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2018

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I had to get this for class, it wasn't the best read. Some parts were interesting, but overall, I would have stopped reading it if I didn't have to read.

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The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism Annotated Edition

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