Latest / Sleepy Facts About History / Why Did Woodrow Wilson's Promise of Self-Determination Fail the Colonized World? - Self-Determination Escapes: Anti-Colonial Petitions at the Paris Peace Conference | Sleepy Facts About History

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Why Did Woodrow Wilson's Promise of Self-Determination Fail the Colonized World? - Self-Determination Escapes: Anti-Colonial Petitions at the Paris Peace Conference | Sleepy Facts About History · Sleepy Facts About History

0:04
Welcome to Sleepy Facts About History. In the
0:12
winter of 1918, a young Vietnamese kitchen worker
0:16
named Nguyen Hoang Oanh Khanh, Afwood Corch,
0:21
grafted a petition in a rented room in Paris
0:24
and tried to deliver it to the doors of the peace
0:27
conference. Like millions of people across Asia,
0:30
Africa and the Middle East, he had taken Woodrow
0:33
Wilson's promises of self -determination literally.
0:37
This episode explores what happened when colonized
0:40
intellectuals, activists, and students from Egypt,
0:43
India, Korea, and China arrived in Paris seeking
0:47
a hearing, only to discover that the New World
0:50
Order was still structured by racial empire.
0:53
The episode traces the journeys of these petitioners,
0:57
from Saad Zaglou's arrested Egyptian delegation
1:00
to the Chinese students of the May 4th Movement.
1:04
It examines the structural and racial boundaries
1:07
of the peace settlement, including the rejection
1:09
of Japan's racial equality clause and the imposition
1:13
of the League of Nations mandate system. Far
1:16
from a story of naive misunderstanding, it is
1:19
an account of how colonized peoples weaponized
1:22
the moral language of the powerful to expose
1:24
the contradictions of the international system.
1:28
I wanted to understand why a principle spoken
1:31
for European nations acquired such force in the
1:35
colonies, and what happened to that idea when
1:38
it was turned away at the quiet all -saying.
1:40
The refusal of 1919 did not destroy the concept
1:44
of self -determination. Instead, it escaped its
1:48
author's intentions. Radicalized global anti
1:52
-imperialist movements. and laid crucial intellectual
1:56
groundwork for the struggles that would define
1:58
the rest of the 20th century. In the winter of
2:04
1918, a young Vietnamese kitchen worker in Paris
2:08
drafted a petition invoking an American president's
2:12
promise of self -determination. Then he carried
2:15
it through the streets to discover that the doors
2:18
of the peace conference were closed to him. They
2:21
were closed not by accident, but by design. What
2:25
happened to him? And to the Egyptian lawyers,
2:27
Korean teachers, Indian nationalists, and Chinese
2:31
students who made similar journeys is not a story
2:34
of misunderstanding. It is a story of what occurs
2:38
when a principle spoken in universal terms collides
2:42
with a world still organized by racial empire.
2:46
In the winter of 1918, a young Vietnamese kitchen
2:50
worker named Nguyen Nghia -om -am A -ca -oh was
2:55
living in Paris. He was following the news from
2:59
the war's end with unusual intensity. He had
3:02
left French Indochina years earlier, worked on
3:05
ships, spent time in London and New York, and
3:09
now found himself in the city where the peace
3:12
of the world was being arranged. Like millions
3:15
of others across Asia, Africa and the Middle
3:18
East, he had read and re -read the speeches of
3:21
the American president, Woodrow Wilson. Wilson
3:24
had spoken of self -determination. He had spoken
3:28
of peoples governed only by their own consent.
3:31
He had spoken of a new order in which the interests
3:35
of populations would matter more than the claims
3:37
of empires. Nungayuna, Kuna and Kuna believed
3:43
these words were meant for him too. Between shifts
3:47
in a Paris kitchen, he rented a small room not
3:50
far from the conference halls. He learned what
3:54
he could of the delegates' procedures. Then he
3:57
sat down to write a petition in French. He called
4:01
it The Claims of the Annamite People. Then he
4:05
carried it through the Paris streets toward the
4:07
Croix d 'Orsay and tried to deliver it himself.
4:11
What happened next to Nguyen An and Ai Khoa,
4:15
Axe, and to the Egyptian lawyers, Indian nationalists,
4:20
Korean teachers, Chinese students, and countless
4:24
others who made similar journeys or raised similar
4:28
voices, is the subject of this episode. It is
4:32
not a story of naive misunderstanding. It is
4:36
the story of what happens when a principle spoken
4:38
in universal terms meets a world still organized
4:41
by racial empire. It is also the story of how
4:46
the collision between the two helped remake 20th
4:49
century politics across most of the globe. To
4:53
understand why Wilson's language travelled so
4:56
far and struck so deep, we need to begin with
4:59
the condition of the world in 1918. The First
5:03
World War had killed roughly 10 million soldiers.
5:07
It had shattered four empires, the German, Austro
5:11
-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian. It had left
5:15
the victorious powers, Britain and France above
5:17
all, exhausted and indebted. The war had also
5:21
created a crisis of legitimacy for empire itself.
5:25
Colonial troops had fought and died for European
5:29
powers. Colonial economies had been mobilized,
5:33
their resources extracted, their populations
5:36
subjected to wartime demands that fell heavily
5:39
on the poor. The war's immense violence had been
5:42
justified, in part, by the allied powers as a
5:45
defense of civilization and self -government
5:48
against German militarism. That language had
5:51
been heard in Cairo and Calcutta, in Seoul and
5:54
Saigon, as well as in London and Paris. Wilson's
5:59
speeches were printed in newspapers. They were
6:02
translated into Arabic and Chinese and Korean
6:05
and Vietnamese. They were passed hand to hand
6:09
in pamphlets. They were read aloud in meeting
6:12
halls and coffee houses. They were studied by
6:16
people who had every reason to take them literally.
6:20
Woodrow Wilson arrived in this landscape as a
6:23
figure of genuine moral authority in the eyes
6:25
of much of the world. He was not a radical. He
6:30
was a Southern Democrat, a former professor of
6:33
political science, a man whose racial assumptions
6:36
were conventional for his time and place. But
6:39
he had articulated more clearly than any other
6:41
world leader. a vision of post -war order that
6:45
seemed to break with the secret diplomacy and
6:47
imperial competition that had preceded the catastrophe.
6:51
His 14 -points address, delivered to Congress
6:54
on January 8, 1918, called for open covenanters
6:59
of peace and freedom of the seas. Its fifth point
7:03
called for a free, open -minded and absolutely
7:07
impartial adjustment of all colonial claims.
7:11
based on the interests of the populations concerned.
7:15
The phrase self -determination itself did not
7:18
appear in the 14 points. Wilson introduced it
7:22
more explicitly in a speech to Congress on February
7:25
11th, 1918. On that occasion, he declared that
7:29
national aspirations must be respected. He said
7:32
that peoples may now be dominated and govern
7:35
only by their own consent. He said that self
7:39
-determination is not a mere phrase. These words
7:43
were ambiguous by design. Wilson and his advisers
7:47
were primarily concerned with the reordering
7:50
of Europe. They were concerned with the claims
7:53
of Poles, Czechs, Yugoslavs and others emerging
7:57
from the collapse of the Habsburg and Romanov
7:59
empires. When Wilson spoke of colonial claims,
8:03
he meant, in the first instance, the disposition
8:06
of Germany's colonial possessions. and the territories
8:10
of the defeated Ottoman Empire. He did not mean
8:14
that Britain should immediately quit India, or
8:17
France abandon Indochina, or Japan leave Korea.
8:22
His own vision of international order included
8:25
a place for imperial tutelage, for the gradual
8:29
preparation of supposedly backward peoples for
8:32
self -government. Yet the language he used was
8:35
general, moral, and seemingly without boundary.
8:39
He spoke of the consent of the governed. He spoke
8:42
of self -determination. He spoke of the interests
8:46
of the populations concerned. This language traveled
8:50
along the cables and newspapers of the world.
8:53
It was translated into Arabic and Chinese and
8:56
Korean and Vietnamese. It was read by people
9:00
who had every reason to take it literally. The
9:03
gap between Wilson's intended meaning and his
9:06
global reception is not a story of simple misunderstanding.
9:11
Colonized intellectuals and activists were not
9:13
naive about the realities of power. They understood
9:17
that Wilson was a politician. They understood
9:20
that his words were strategic. They understood
9:23
that the United States itself held colonies in
9:26
the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere.
9:29
But they also understood something else. Wilson
9:33
had given them a language of enormous moral and
9:36
political force. He had given them a vocabulary
9:40
that could be wielded against the empires that
9:43
ruled them. To invoke Wilson's words was not
9:46
to accept his limitations. It was to challenge
9:50
them. The Egyptian nationalist Saad Zaghloul,
9:54
the Indian campaigners who would soon join Gandhi's
9:57
emerging movement, the Korean Christians and
10:00
patriots who drafted their Declaration of Independence.
10:04
The Chinese students who would march through
10:06
Beijing in May 1919, all of them took Wilson's
10:10
language seriously because they chose to. They
10:13
took it seriously because it offered a way to
10:16
make their claims audible in the international
10:18
arena. They took it seriously because they believed,
10:22
with some reason, that the post -war order could
10:25
not coherently limit self -determination to white
10:27
Europeans alone. By early 1919, this belief had
10:33
taken organized form. The Paris Peace Conference,
10:36
which convened in January and would continue
10:39
through June, was the focal point. The conference
10:43
was dominated by the Council of Four. Wilson,
10:47
Britain's David Lloyd George, France's George
10:50
Clemenceau, and Italy's Vittorio Orlando. Japan
10:55
was a fifth major power. The conference's business
10:59
was the settlement of Europe. It dealt with the
11:02
German borders, the reparations, the League of
11:06
Nations, and the new states of Eastern Europe.
11:09
But for colonized peoples, it represented something
11:12
more. It was the place where the principles of
11:15
the New World Order would be defined and applied.
11:19
If self -determination was to mean anything,
11:22
it would have to mean something here. The concrete
11:26
actions that brought colonized claims to Paris
11:29
were varied, strategic, and often courageous.
11:32
In Egypt, Saad Zagrou and his colleagues formed
11:36
a delegation, a waft, to present Egypt's case
11:40
for independence at the peace conference. Egypt
11:44
had been under British occupation since 1882.
11:47
It was technically still part of the Ottoman
11:50
Empire, but effectively controlled by British
11:53
officials. Zagrou, a lawyer and former government
11:57
minister, was not a revolutionary in the conventional
12:01
sense. He sought constitutional negotiation,
12:05
the end of the protectorate and Egyptian representation
12:08
at Paris. The British High Commissioner refused
12:12
to allow the waif to travel. He arrested Zoghlu
12:16
and three colleagues in March 1919 and deported
12:20
them to Malta. The response was immediate and
12:23
widespread. Strikes, demonstrations and violence
12:28
spread across Egypt in what became known as the
12:30
1919 Revolution. Women joined men in the streets.
12:35
The British eventually released Sagloo and allowed
12:39
him to travel to Paris. But the waft was never
12:43
granted a real hearing. The British retained
12:46
their control. Egypt would not gain even nominal
12:50
independence until 1922 and British troops remained
12:54
until 1956. In India, the engagement with Wilsonian
12:59
language had been building since 1917. In that
13:03
year, the British had issued a declaration promising
13:06
responsible government at an unspecified future
13:09
date. Indian nationalists, including the emerging
13:13
figure of Mohand Ascandi and the leaders of the
13:16
Kilifat movement, concerned with the fate of
13:18
the Ottoman Caliphate, had followed Wilson's
13:21
speeches with close attention. The Indian National
13:25
Congress planned to send delegations and petitions
13:28
to Paris, but the British government refused
13:31
to allow Indian representatives to appear before
13:34
the conference as claimants. It permitted only
13:37
loyalist delegates. who would not challenge imperial
13:40
rule. The disappointment of Paris was compounded
13:44
by events at home. In March 1919, the British
13:49
enacted the Rowlatt Acts, extending wartime emergency
13:53
powers of detention without trial. Gandhi calls
13:57
for a national heart -all, a strike and day of
14:01
prayer. The protests that followed were met with
14:04
violence. On April 13, 1919, at Jallianwala Bagh
14:10
in Amritsar, British troops under Brigadier General
14:13
Reginald Dyer fired on an unarmed crowd, killing
14:17
hundreds. The massacre became a defining moment
14:21
in the radicalization of Indian nationalism.
14:24
Gandhi, who had earlier cooperated with the British
14:27
during the war, launched his first non -corporation
14:30
movement in 1920. The path from Wilsonian hope
14:35
to imperial violence to mass nationalist mobilization
14:38
was direct and consequential. In Korea, the timing
14:43
was particularly stark. Japanese colonial rule,
14:47
imposed in 1910, had been harsh and assimilative.
14:51
Korean activists, drawing on Wilsonian language
14:54
and on a longer tradition of Christian and Confucian
14:57
resistance, prepared a declaration of independence.
15:01
They planned nationwide demonstrations for March
15:04
1, 1919. The date was deliberately timed to coincide
15:09
with the funeral of the last Korean emperor,
15:12
Kojong, which would gather crowds in Seoul. On
15:16
that day, 33 signatories of the declaration gathered
15:19
in a Seoul restaurant. They sent a copy to the
15:23
Japanese governor general. Then they proceeded
15:26
to Pagoda Park. where they read the declaration
15:29
aloud to a growing crowd. The document invoked
15:33
the eternal light of truth and the new era of
15:36
human civilization. It called for Korean independence.
15:41
It declared a non -violent movement of the whole
15:44
people. The Japanese response was swift and brutal.
15:49
Over the following months, thousands of Koreans
15:52
were killed and tens of thousands arrested. The
15:55
movement was suppressed. But the March 1st movement
15:59
transformed Korean nationalism. It demonstrated
16:03
the depth of popular resistance. It exposed the
16:07
violence of Japanese rule to international attention.
16:10
It shifted the center of nationalist activity
16:13
toward exile organizations and, the sum, toward
16:16
more radical methods. The petitioners who had
16:20
hoped for Wilsonian justice at Paris found instead
16:23
that the peace conference had nothing to offer
16:26
them. In China, The connection to Paris was even
16:30
more direct and explosive. China had entered
16:33
the war on the Allied side in 1917, with the
16:37
explicit understanding that German concessions
16:40
in Shandong province would be returned to Chinese
16:42
sovereignty. The Japanese, who had seized those
16:46
territories early in the war, had other plans.
16:50
They had concluded secret agreements with Britain,
16:54
France, and other powers recognizing their claims
16:57
to Shandong. At Paris, Wilson learned of these
17:01
agreements and faced a choice. He could uphold
17:04
the principle of returning Shandong to China,
17:07
or he could honor the secret treaties and keep
17:10
Japan inside the emerging League of Nations.
17:14
He chose the latter. The Versailles decision,
17:18
announced in late April 1919, transferred German
17:22
rights in Shandong to Japan rather than returning
17:24
them to China. The response in Beijing was immediate.
17:29
On May 4, 1919, some 3 ,000 students gathered
17:34
at Tiananmen, the gate of heavenly peace. They
17:38
marched toward the foreign legation quarter,
17:41
carrying banners denouncing the Versailles decision
17:44
and the Chinese officials they held responsible.
17:47
They burned the house of a pro -Japanese minister
17:50
and attacked another official. Many were arrested.
17:54
The May Fourth Movement, as it became known,
17:57
spread to other cities. It drew in merchants,
18:01
workers, and eventually, the Chinese government
18:05
itself, which refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles.
18:10
But the movement's significance extended far
18:12
beyond the immediate diplomatic issue. It marked
18:16
a generational rupture in Chinese intellectual
18:18
life. It marked a turn toward cultural and political
18:22
radicalism. It marked a rejection of traditional
18:26
Confucian values and Western liberal models alike.
18:29
For many young Chinese, it also marked an attraction
18:33
to Marxism -Leninism as a more thoroughgoing
18:36
anti -imperialist ideology. The disappointment
18:40
of Paris was not the sole cause of this radicalization,
18:44
but it was the catalyst that made the contradictions
18:48
of Wilsonianism visible to a generation. And
18:52
then there was Nguyen Yanan. Ante Okwak, the
18:56
young Vietnamese in Paris. His petition to the
19:00
peace conference, submitted in June 1919, was
19:04
precise and moderate in its demands. He asked
19:08
for amnesty for political prisoners, equality
19:11
of legal rights between French and Vietnamese,
19:14
reform of the colonial judiciary, freedom of
19:18
press and assembly, and eventual self -determination
19:21
for Indochina. He tried to deliver the petition
19:25
personally to the American delegation. He was
19:28
turned away. He tried other delegations. He was
19:33
refused. He attended socialist meetings and read
19:36
Lenin's writings on imperialism. Gradually, he
19:40
came to the conclusion that Wilson's liberal
19:42
internationalism offered no path for colonized
19:45
peoples. By 1920, he was a founding member of
19:49
the French Communist Party. In the years that
19:53
followed, he trained with the Comintern in Moscow.
19:56
He moved between cities and strategies. Eventually,
20:01
he returned to Vietnam to organize resistance.
20:04
By the 1940s, he had become Ho Chi Minh, leader
20:09
of a Vietnamese independence movement that would
20:12
defeat France and the United States. But this
20:16
trajectory was not inevitable. Many other Vietnamese
20:20
activists took different paths. The later wars
20:24
of independence depended on the specific conditions
20:27
of World War II and the Cold War as much as on
20:31
the experience of 1919. What can be said is that
20:35
the Parisian refusal was formative. It was in
20:39
the specific experience of being turned away
20:42
from the quai d 'Orsay that one young petitioner's
20:45
disillusionment took shape. What these cases
20:49
share is not a common misunderstanding of Wilson.
20:52
They share a common encounter of the racial and
20:55
imperial boundaries of the peace settlement.
20:58
The Paris Peace Conference was not simply a betrayal.
21:02
It was an institution with a specific logic,
21:05
and that logic was European. The mandate system
21:09
established under Article 22 of the League of
21:12
Nations Covenant made this explicit. Former German
21:17
and Ottoman territories were assigned to allied
21:19
powers as mandates. They were classified into
21:22
three classes according to their supposed level
21:25
of development. Peoples not yet able to stand
21:29
by themselves in the strenuous conditions of
21:31
the modern world, this was the covenant's own
21:34
language, would be placed under the tutelage
21:37
of advanced nations. The Middle Eastern territories
21:41
were classed as closest to self -government.
21:44
The African and Pacific territories were placed
21:47
under indefinite supervision. The system was
21:50
presented as a reform, a step beyond naked colonialism,
21:54
a new international responsibility. But to those
21:59
who lived under it, and to those who had hoped
22:01
for something genuinely new, it was transparently
22:05
imperial rule, with a League of Nations stamp.
22:09
Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine went to Britain
22:13
and France under mandate. German East Africa
22:16
went to Britain. German Southwest Africa went
22:20
to South Africa. The German Pacific Islands went
22:23
to Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. The populations
22:28
of these territories had no voice in their disposition.
22:32
They were assigned by property. Their futures
22:35
were decided in rooms they could not enter. The
22:39
racial dimension of the settlement was not incidental.
22:42
It was structural. and it was made visible by
22:46
one of the conference's most revealing episodes.
22:49
The Japanese delegation, seeking recognition
22:51
of Japan's status as a great power equal to the
22:54
Western nations, proposed the insertion of a
22:57
racial equality clause into the covenant of the
23:00
League of Nations. The clause was modest in its
23:03
wording. It would affirm the principle of equality
23:07
of nations and the just treatment of their nationals.
23:10
It was supported by a majority of the League
23:13
Commission. including the French and Italians.
23:16
But it was opposed by Britain, primarily because
23:21
of the resistance of the British Dominions, Australia
23:24
and South Africa above all, whose immigration
23:27
policies were explicitly racially discriminatory.
23:31
The Commission operated by majority vote on most
23:34
questions. But Wilson, as chair, ruled that the
23:38
racial equality cause required unanimous consent.
23:42
When the Dominions objected, he treated this
23:45
opposition as fatal. This prevented the clause
23:48
from being adopted, even though it had majority
23:50
support. The racial equality proposal was rejected,
23:54
not by a clear vote, but by this procedural maneuver.
23:58
The Japanese press and public registered the
24:01
humiliation. For colonized peoples watching the
24:05
conference, the message was unmistakable. The
24:08
new international order was not for them. Self
24:12
-determination was a principle for Europeans.
24:15
For non -Europeans, there was tutelage, supervision,
24:20
and the continuing reality of empire. Wilson's
24:25
own role in this requires careful assessment.
24:28
He was not the sole architect of the racial boundaries
24:31
of the peace. British and French imperial interests,
24:35
Australian racial anxiety, Japanese great power
24:39
ambition, and the sheer complexity of the European
24:42
settlement all played their parts. But Wilson's
24:46
limitations were real and consequential. His
24:50
vision of self -determination was, from the start,
24:53
a vision of European national self -determination.
24:56
It was applied to the fragments of defeated empires,
25:00
and constrained by the need to keep the victorious
25:03
powers cooperative. His racial assumptions, shaped
25:07
by his southern upbringing, by the conventional
25:10
scientific racism of his era, and by his belief
25:13
in the stages of civilization, made it difficult
25:16
for him to conceive of immediate self -government
25:19
for non -white peoples. He had re -segregated
25:23
federal offices in Washington. He had intervened
25:27
militarily in Latin America and the Caribbean.
25:30
He was in the Philippines a proponent of gradual
25:33
tutelage rather than immediate independence.
25:36
When colonized petitioners arrived in Paris,
25:39
they encountered not a man who had promised them
25:42
freedom and betrayed them. They encountered a
25:45
man who had never imagined them as full subjects
25:48
of the principle he had proclaimed. Yet the story
25:52
does not end with Wilson's limitations or with
25:55
the disappointments of 1919. The most consequential
26:00
development of this episode is what happened
26:02
to the idea of self -determination after it escaped
26:05
Wilson's control. The colonized peoples who had
26:09
invoked his language did not abandon it when
26:12
the peace conference refused them. They transformed
26:15
it. They took a principle that had been spoken
26:18
in universal terms and applied selectively, and
26:22
they demanded that the universality be made real.
26:25
Self -determination in their hands became not
26:29
a gift to be granted by enlightened powers, but
26:32
a right to be claimed by organized peoples. Very
26:37
language that Wilson had used to legitimize the
26:39
post -war order became a weapon against that
26:42
order's imperial foundations. This transformation
26:46
was not immediate, and it was not uniform. Different
26:50
movements drew different lessons from 1919. Some,
26:54
like the Egyptian Weft, continued to work within
26:58
constitutional and parliamentary frameworks for
27:01
decades. Others, like the Indian National Congress
27:06
under Gandhi, developed mass non -violent resistance
27:09
as an alternative to Wilsonian appeals. Still
27:13
others, like the young Vietnamese who became
27:16
Ho Chi Minh, turned to communist internationalism
27:19
as a more radical anti -imperialist framework.
27:23
The Korean movement split between exile organizations,
27:27
some seeking American support, others Soviet.
27:30
The Chinese May 4th generation fragmented between
27:34
liberal, nationalist, and communist paths what
27:38
united them was not a single strategy but a common
27:41
experience they discovered that the international
27:44
order of 1919 was built on racial hierarchy and
27:49
that changing it would require more than petitioning
27:52
the powerful the long -term consequences of this
27:55
discovery unfolded across the 20th century the
27:59
mandate system for all its imperial continuities
28:03
also created new international institutions and
28:07
new forms of international scrutiny that anti
28:10
-colonial movements would later exploit the league
28:13
of nations itself however limited provided a
28:16
forum in which colonial claims could be raised
28:19
its successor the united nations would become
28:23
a crucial arena for decolonization after 1945
28:26
the language of self -determination Universalized
28:32
by colonized peoples in 1919 and after, was inscribed
28:36
in the United Nations Charter and in the 1960
28:39
General Assembly resolution on the granting of
28:42
independence to colonial countries and peoples.
28:45
The Wilsonian moment of 1919 was not the origin
28:49
of decolonization. That would require the Second
28:53
World War, the Cold War, economic transformation,
28:57
and decades of struggle. but it was a crucial
29:01
early chapter in the intellectual and political
29:04
formation of the anti -colonial world. What remains
29:08
uncertain, and what historians continue to debate,
29:12
is the precise weight at 1919 in these longer
29:15
trajectories. Some emphasize the continuity of
29:19
anti -colonial resistance before Wilson. They
29:22
argue that the movements of 1919 drew on longer
29:26
traditions of revolt, religious reform, and cultural
29:29
nationalism. Others stress the Catholic role
29:33
of the Bolshevik revolution and Lenin's anti
29:36
-imperialism. This offered a more radical alternative
29:40
to Wilsonian liberalism and attracted many who
29:43
were disappointed by Paris. Still others point
29:47
to the economic and demographic changes of the
29:50
interwar period, the Great Depression, and the
29:53
Second World War as the decisive forces that
29:56
weakened European empires. The disappointment
29:59
of 1919 was not sufficient to cause decolonization.
30:04
It was one among many conditions that made decolonization
30:08
possible and thinkable. What can be said with
30:12
confidence is that the encounter between Wilsonian
30:15
language and colonized aspiration at Paris in
30:18
1919 revealed something important about the nature
30:22
of political ideas. Broad moral claims, once
30:27
spoken, acquire lives beyond their author's intentions.
30:31
They travel across languages and continents.
30:35
They are heard by people in circumstances their
30:38
originators did not imagine. They are taken seriously
30:41
and tested against reality. When reality refuses
30:45
them, they do not simply disappear. They are
30:49
transformed, radicalized, and turned back against
30:52
the order that proclaimed them. This is what
30:56
happened to self -determination. It began as
31:00
a selective European principle. a tool for reordering
31:04
the continent after a devastating war. It became,
31:07
in the hands of colonized peoples who took its
31:10
universality seriously, a global revolutionary
31:13
demand. The racial boundaries of the peace settlement
31:17
were exposed not by Wilson's critics in the Western
31:20
capitals. They were exposed by the Egyptian lawyers,
31:25
Indian nationalists, Korean teachers, Chinese
31:28
students. and Vietnamese workers who approached
31:31
the doors of the quai d 'Orsay and discovered
31:33
that those doors were closed to them. The episode
31:37
of Wilsonian's self -determination and its colonial
31:40
disappointments is thus not a simple story of
31:43
hypocrisy, though hypocrisy there was. It is
31:47
not a story of naive misunderstanding, though
31:50
the gap between Wilson's language and his intentions
31:53
was real. It is the story of how a principle
31:57
spoken in universal terms and applied selectively,
32:01
was seized by those it excluded and made into
32:04
something its author never intended. The young
32:08
man who wrote a petition in a rented room in
32:10
Paris in 1919, the crowds who filled the streets
32:14
of Cairo and Seoul, the students who marched
32:17
through Beijing in May, they understood Wilson's
32:20
words well enough. They understood that self
32:23
-determination, if it meant anything, meant that
32:26
empire was illegitimate. And when the Peace Conference
32:30
refused to acknowledge this implication, they
32:33
drew the conclusions that would shake the politics
32:35
of much of the world for the century that followed.
32:39
Self -determination did not fail in 1919. It
32:43
escaped.