Beitrag zum deutsch-englischsprachigen „Koloniales Erbe”

Im Sommer 2024 lud mich die Universität Krems ein, zum geplanten Sammelband „Koloniales Erbe in der Geschichtskultur“ beizutragen. De Bourgraafs Essay heißt: Vice Versa Versailles. The ignored decolonisation

Call Universität Krems, see the final of three points

Abstract

With the exception of American agency, most notably by the United States World War One Centennial Commission, the centenary of the 1919 Paris Conference was missed out on in a commensurately truncated series of Great War anniversaries (2014–19). My research centred on the conference's surprising opening. In the four weeks before the Anglo-American one-month break, the eventual diktat's tone was set. Following the second Armistice extension over the fourth week of Woodrow Wilson's protracted stay in Europe, the agreed opening on his innovative international organisation deal concealed a surprise. The British leadership turned up with a British Imperial Delegation under the lead of colonial war hero Jan Christian Smuts. In order to legitimize this novel body's participation, the colonial question was suddenly prioritized. As a consequence, nationalist respectively imperialist agendas became intricately interwoven with the ceasefire-based league debate. The novelty of a sub-imperialist agenda derived from Smuts' Empire delegates. The thesis is that this caused the fatality of a stillborn organisation. Both friend and were simply surpassed. First, the excluded Weimar Germany was literally dehumanized in the line-up of British argumentation for the Treaty and 'League of Versailles'. Second, when it seemed that the native voice, particularly the African one, was introduced, the British used it frankly for pushing through their war aims. As a result, the 1920s saw the rise of different emancipation and liberation movements. Was does this imply for the timely definition of the decolonisation movement, i.e. 1945–94? Smuts' colonists' overwhelming influence and the colonial question's primacy made Versailles strikingly different from the complementary treaties with Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey.

Following more than a decade after the postcolonial debate's extension to the public domain, the stunning lacuna of the conference's first stage can invariably be observed. Obviously, the role and input of the Global South may play an important role. Methodology varies from academic publishing to empirical research into commemorative events, for instance museum art. In 2020, Aufa100 was founded for this purpose.