Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-5g6vh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T11:03:57.670Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Intervention and colonial-modernity: decolonising the Italy/Ethiopia conflict through Psalms 68:31

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2013

ROBBIE SHILLIAM
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article I utilise the editors' conceptual frame of sovereignty/intervention/transnational social forces to argue that the relationship that ensues between these phenomena has to be understood in colonial-modern – rather than modern – terms. I thereby argue that intervention is a distinctive technology of colonial-modern rule, specifically, one that erects and polices the difference between sovereign and quasi-sovereign entities via a standard of civilisation. Additionally, I argue that transnational social forces struggle – cognitively, socially, and politically – over the upholding or refuting of this standard; and in this struggle, some might even defend particular sovereign entities against colonial interventions. I demonstrate my argument by explicating the global colonial context of the Italy/Ethiopia conflict in 1935–6, the nadir of the interwar crisis. I ‘decolonise’ received interpretations of the conflict through the heuristic of two differing catechisms of Psalms 68:31 proffered at the time: one, invoking a civilising mission of Africans; the other, invoking a project of self-liberation by Africans.

Type
Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 5: Intervention and the Ordering of the Modern World , December 2013 , pp. 1131 - 1147
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Cited in Pankhurst, Richard, ‘Pro- and Anti- Ethiopian Pamphleteering in Britain During the Italian Fascist Invasion and Occupation (1935–41)’, International Journal of Ethiopian Studies, 1:1 (2003), p. 164Google Scholar.

2 Cited in Post, Ken, Arise Ye Starvelings: The Jamaican Labour Rebellion of 1938 and Its Aftermath (The Hague; Boston: Nijhoff, 1978), p. 171CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Zimmern, Alfred, The League of Nations and the Rule of Law, 1918–1935 (London: Macmillan, 1936), pp. 449–50Google Scholar.

4 Morgenthau, Hans Joachim, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1948), p. 336Google Scholar.

5 Howard, Michael, War and the Liberal Conscience (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1978), p. 92Google Scholar; Gong, Gerrit W., The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 129Google Scholar.

6 See Schmidt, Brian (ed.), International Relations and the First Great Debate (London: Routledge, 2012)Google Scholar.

7 See Bhambra, Gurminder K., ‘Talking Among Themselves? Weberian and Marxist Historical Sociologies as Dialogues Without “Others”’, Millennium – Journal of International Studies, 39:3 (1 May 2011), pp. 667–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Dussel, Enrique, ‘Eurocentrism and Modernity’, Boundary 2, 20:3 (1993), p. 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Quijano, A., ‘Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America’, International Sociology, 15:2 (2000), p. 548CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 In IR, see for example, Lucy, Taylor, ‘Decolonizing International Relations: Perspectives from Latin America’, International Studies Review, 14:3 (2012), pp. 386–400Google Scholar; Krishna, Sankaran, ‘Race, Amnesia, and the Education of International Relations’, Alternatives, 26:4 (2001), pp. 401–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gruffydd-Jones, B. (ed.), Decolonizing International Relations (London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006)Google Scholar.

11 See Mignolo, Walter, ‘Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of De-Coloniality’, Cultural Studies, 21:2 (2007), pp. 470–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 See , Quijano, ‘Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America’; Bhambra, Gurminder K., Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007)Google Scholar; Mignolo, Walter, The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 See Bowden, B., ‘In the Name of Progress and Peace: The “Standard of Civilization” and the Universalising Project’, Alternatives, 29 (2004), pp. 43–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Keene, Edward, Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 As Aimé Césaire noted long ago, technologies of rule that are developed in the colonies usually return quite quickly to imperial centres, there to impact on the ordering of European societies and states and their immediate environs; Discourse on Colonialism (London: Monthly Review Press, 2000). In this respect, see the article in this Special Issue by Susan Woodward.

15 For a contemporary critique see Knox, Robert, ‘Civilising Interventions? Race, War and International Law’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 26:1 (2013), pp. 11–132CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 ‘Third World Approaches to International Law and Individual Repsonsibility in Internal Conflicts’, Chinese Journal of International Law, 2 (2003), p. 84.

17 Sovereigns, Quasi Sovereigns, and Africans: Race and Self-Determination in International Law (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), p. 15.

18 Anghie, Antony, ‘The Evolution of International Law: Colonial and Postcolonial Realities’, Third World Quarterly, 27:5 (2006), pp. 741–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Ibid., p. 743; Bowden, Brett, ‘The Colonial Origins of International Law: European Expansion and the Classical Standard of Civilization’, Journal of the History of International Law, 7 (2005), p. 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Anghie, Antony, Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 52–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oguamanam, Chidi, ‘Indigenous Peoples and International Law: The Making of a Regime’, Queen's Law Journal, 30:1 (2004), pp. 353–7Google Scholar.

21 Grovogui, Sovereigns, Quasi Sovereigns, and Africans, p. 745.

22 Anghie, Making of International Law, 58–9; Bowden, ‘The Colonial Origins of International Law’, p. 16.

23 Roxburgh, Ronald F. (ed.), International Law: A Treatise vol. 1 (3rd edn, New Jersey: Lawbook Exchange, Ltd, 1920), p. 222Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., p. 233.

25 Ibid., ch. 10.

26 Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity.

27 Nietzsche, Friedrich, ‘The Genealogy of Morals: An Attack’, The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals (Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1956), pp. 170–1Google Scholar.

28 See Shilliam, Robbie, ‘Decolonising the Grounds of Ethical Inquiry: A Dialogue Between Kant, Foucault and Glissant’, Millennium, 39:3 (2011), pp. 649–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Allain, Jean, ‘Slavery and the League of Nations: Ethiopia as a Civilised Nation’, Journal of the History of International Law, 8 (2006), p. 217CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 See in general, Jonas, Raymond Anthony, The Battle of Adwa: African Victory in the Age of Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Ladarola, Antoinette, ‘Ethiopia's Admission Into the League of Nations: An Assessment of Motives’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 8:4 (1975), p. 603Google Scholar.

32 Ullendorff, Edward and Beckingham, C. F., ‘The First Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty’, Journal of Semitic Studies, 9:1 (1964), p. 196CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 See, for example, ‘Slavery and the Slave Trade as International Issues 1890–1939’, Slavery & Abolition, 19:2 (1998), pp. 16–37.

34 In general, see Crawford, Neta, Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Miers, ‘Slavery and the Slave Trade’, p. 20.

36 On these issues see Cooke, Raymond M., ‘British Evangelicals and the Issue of Colonial Self-Government’, Pacific Historical Review, 34:2 (1965), pp. 127–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Laidlaw, Zoë, ‘Heathens, Slaves and Aborigines: Thomas Hodgkin's Critique of Missions and Anti-slavery’, History Workshop Journal, 64:1 (21 September 2007), pp. 133–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Heartfield, Jams, The Aborigines' Protection Society: Humanitarian Imperialism in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Canada, South Africa, and the Congo, 1837–1909 (London: Hurst & Company, 2011)Google Scholar.

37 Grovogui, Sovereigns, Quasi Sovereigns, and Africans, pp. 79–81.

38 See Miers, Suzanne, ‘Humanitarianism at Berlin: Myth or Reality?’, in Förster, S., Mommsen, Wolfgang J., and Robinson, Ronald (eds), Bismarck, Europe, and Africa: The Berlin Africa Conference 1884–1885 and the Onset of Partition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 333–45Google Scholar.

39 Miers, ‘Slavery and the Slave Trade’, p. 19.

40 Ibid., p. 23.

41 Ladarola, ‘Ethiopia's Admission Into the League of Nations’, p. 608.

42 Ibid., p. 621.

43 Allain, ‘Slavery and the League of Nations’, p. 222.

44 Fieldhouse, H. N., ‘Noel Edward Buxton, The Anti-Slavery Society and British Policy With Respect to Ethiopia, 1932–1944’, Historical Papers/Communications Historiques, 7:1 (1972), p. 293Google Scholar.

45 Oppenheim, International Law: A Treatise, vol. 1, ch. 10.

46 Allain, ‘Slavery and the League of Nations’, pp. 230–1.

47 National Archives UK, Foreign Office (FO) 141/640, ‘Austen Chamberlain to Mr Bentinck’ (15 October 1925).

48 Allain, ‘Slavery and the League of Nations’, p. 232.

49 Miers, Suzanne, ‘Britain and the Suppression of Slavery in Ethiopia’, Slavery & Abolition, 18:3 (1997), p. 271CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Lugard, Lord, ‘Slavery in All Its Forms’, Africa, 6:1 (1933), p. 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Allain, ‘Slavery and the League of Nations’, p. 236.

52 Zimmern, Alfred, ‘The Testing of the League’, Foreign Affairs, 14:3 (1936), p. 127CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 See Allain, ‘Slavery and the League of Nations’, pp. 241–2.

54 Fieldhouse, ‘Noel Edward Buxton, The Anti-Slavery Society and British Policy’, p. 298.

55 Zimmern, Alfred, ‘The Problem of Collective Security’, in Wright, Quincy (ed.), Neutrality and Collective Security (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1936), p. 76Google Scholar.

56 Benezet, Anthony, ‘Letters of Anthony Benezet’, The Journal of Negro History, 2:1 (1 January 1917), p. 85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 The following paragraphs synthesise a set of arguments found in Hutton, Clinton, The Logic and Historic Significance of the Haitian Revolution and the Cosmological Roots of Haitian Freedom (Kingston: Arawak, 2007)Google Scholar; Stewart, Dianne, Three Eyes For the Journey: African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Warner-Lewis, Maureen, Central Africa in the Caribbean: Transcending Time, Transforming Cultures (Kingston Jamaica: University of West Indies Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Drake, St. Clair, The Redemption of Africa and Black Religion (Chicago: Third World Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Schuler, Monica, ‘Alas, Alas, Kongo’: A Social History of Indentured African Immigration Into Jamaica, 1841–1865 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; and Raboteau, Albert J., Slave Religion: The ‘Invisible Institution’ in the Antebellum South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

58 Black Heretics, Black Prophets: Radical Political Intellectuals (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 19.

59 See Scott, W. R., Sons of Sheba's Race: African-Americans and the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–41 (John Wiley & Sons, 1993), ch. 2Google Scholar.

60 Drake, The Redemption of Africa and Black Religion, pp. 25–6; see also Raboteau, Slave Religion, ch. 5.

61 Stewart, Three Eyes For the Journey, pp. 168–9.

62 See, for example, Young, Robert Alexander, ‘The Ethiopian Manifesto’, in Stuckley, Sterling (ed.), The Ideological Origins of Black Nationalism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), pp. 30–8Google Scholar; Walker, David, David Walker's Appeal (The Journal of Pan African Studies, 2009), available at: {http://www.jpanafrican.com/ebooks/eBook%20David%20Walker%27s%20Appeal.pdf}Google Scholar.

63 Price, Charles Reavis, ‘Cleave to the Black: Expressions of Ethiopianism in Jamaica’, New West Indian Guide, 77:1/2 (2003), p. 42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 See in general, Price, ‘Cleave to the Black’.

65 Garvey, Marcus, Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey or Africa for the Africans; Two Vols in One, ed. Garvey, Amy Jacques (London: Frank Cass, 1967), vol. 1, p. 34Google Scholar.

66 Fredrickson, George M, Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 92Google Scholar.

67 Price, ‘Cleave to the Black’, pp. 52–4.

68 For overviews, see Lewis, W. Arthur, Labour in the West Indies: The Birth of a Worker's Movement (London: New Beacon Books, 1977)Google Scholar; Bolland, O. Nigel, On the March: Labour Rebellions in the British Caribbean, 1934–39 (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1995)Google Scholar.

69 Bisnauth, Dale, A History of Religions in the Caribbean (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1996), p. 172Google Scholar.

70 Grey-Burke, B., A Brief History of the Shouter Baptist Faith in Trinidad and Tobago (Trinidad and Tobago: B. Grey-Burke, 2002), pp. 13–15Google Scholar; see also Zane, Wallace W., Journeys to the Spiritual Lands: The Natural History of a West Indian Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 156–7Google Scholar; Wood, Donald, Trinidad in Transition: The Years After Slavery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 67Google Scholar; Houk, James T, Spirits, Blood, and Drums: The Orisha Religion in Trinidad (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), pp. 71–5Google Scholar.

71 Grey-Burke, History of the Shouter Baptist Faith, p. 4; Thomas, Eudora, A History of the Shouter Baptists in Trinidad and Tobago (Ithaca, NY: Calaloux Publications, 1987), p. 57Google Scholar.

72 Grey-Burke, History of the Shouter Baptist Faith, p. 4.

73 Herskovits, Melville J. and Herskovits, Frances S., Trinidad Village (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1947), pp. 345–8Google Scholar.

74 Thomas, History of the Shouter Baptists, p. 17; Grey-Burke, History of the Shouter Baptist Faith, pp. 15–16.

75 Singh, Kelvin, Race and Class Struggles in a Colonial State: Trinidad 1917–1945 (Kingston, Jamaica: The Press, University of the West Indies, 1994), pp. 21–2Google Scholar; Thomas, Roy Darrow, The Trinidad Labour Riots of 1937: Perspectives 50 Years Later (St. Augustine, Trinidad: University of the West Indies, 1987), p. 238Google Scholar.

76 Singh, Race and Class Struggles in a Colonial State, pp. 151–3.

77 Thomas, The Trinidad Labour Riots of 1937, p. 241.

78 Henry, Frances, Reclaiming African Religions in Trinidad: The Socio-Political Legitimation of the Orisha and Spiritual Baptist Faith (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2003), p. 35Google Scholar.

79 Herskovits and Herskovits, Trinidad Village, p. 186.

80 Ibid., p. 265.

81 Weisbord, Robert G., ‘British West Indian Reactions to the Italian-Ethiopian War: An Episode in Pan-Africanism’, Caribbean Studies, 10:1 (1970), p. 36Google Scholar; Yelvington, Kevin A, ‘The War in Ethiopia and Trinidad 1935–1936’, in Brereton, Bridget and Yelvington, Kevin A (eds), The Colonial Caribbean in Transition (Kingston: Press University of the West Indies, 1999), p. 207Google Scholar.

82 Weisbord, ‘Reactions to the Italian-Ethiopian War’, p. 36.

83 Yelvington, ‘The War in Ethiopia and Trinidad’, pp. 200, 207.

84 Thomas, The Trinidad Labour Riots of 1937, p. 242.

85 Weisbord, ‘Reactions to the Italian-Ethiopian War’, p. 37.

86 Thomas, The Trinidad Labour Riots of 1937, p. 242; Yelvington, ‘The War in Ethiopia and Trinidad’, p. 213.

87 Labour History Archive, Manchester WG/TRI/145, ‘Cheque to British Labour Party’ (18 March 1936).

88 Yelvington, ‘The War in Ethiopia and Trinidad’, p. 200.

89 Weisbord, ‘Reactions to the Italian-Ethiopian War’, p. 37.

90 National Archives UK, Colonial Office (CO) 318/425/15, Friends of Ethiopia Committee, ‘Resolutions’ (1937).

91 Ibid.

92 CO 295/599/13, Governor of Trinidad, ‘Telegram to Secretary of State for the Colonies No. 117’ (1937).

93 Henry, Reclaiming African Religions in Trinidad, p. 35.

94 Jacobs, W. Richard (ed.), Butler Versus the King: Riots and Sedition in 1937 (Port of Spain: Key Caribbean Publications, 1976)Google Scholar.

95 Ibid.

96 CO 321/363/13, Governor of Windward Islands, ‘Report to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 12th Nov’ (1935).

97 Weisbord, ‘Reactions to the Italian-Ethiopian War’, p. 38.

98 CO 321/367/7, J. S. Barnes, ‘Letter to Under Secretary of State, Colonial Office, 11th Feb’ (1936).