The Fight Over Freedom in 20th-And 21st-Century International Discourse: Moments of Self-Determination' 1st Ed. Edition Rita Augestad Knudsen

The Fight Over Freedom in 20th- and
21st-Century International Discourse:

Moments of ‘self-determination’ 1st ed.
Edition Rita Augestad Knudsen
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-fight-over-freedom-in-20th-and-21st-century-inter
national-discourse-moments-of-self-determination-1st-ed-edition-rita-augestad-knuds
en/
The Fight Over Freedom
in 20th- and 21st-Century
International Discourse
Moments of
‘self-determination’
Rita Augestad Knudsen
The Fight Over Freedom in 20th- and 21st-Century
International Discourse
“From the battle between V.I. Lenin and Woodrow Wilson after World War I to
contemporary debates over the fate of Kosovo and other states in the making,
the idea of ‘self-determination’ has been as elusive as it is powerful. Which ‘self’
is involved, and what does ‘determination’ imply? Rita Augestad Knudsen’s study
of its trajectory is unprecedented not merely in its chronology leading almost up
to our own times, but in its conceptual depth and subtlety, reminding us that the
meaning of concepts emerges and evolves at pivotal moments in their history.”
—Samuel Moyn, Professor of Jurisprudence, Yale Law School, Professor of History,
Yale University, New Haven, USA
“This highly original book combines a history of events (‘moments’) with

conceptual history. Augestad Knudsen elaborates two concepts of freedom under-
lying calls for national self-determination proclaimed by Lenin and Woodrow
Wilson in 1917–18. These two concepts then enable analysis of key moments
in international relations extending from 1918 to the question of Kosovan inde-
pendence in 2008–10. With meticulous scholarship Augestad Knudsen shows
how these concepts competed, overlapped, and combined. This is a significant
contribution to understanding the politics and international law of a century: the
century of national self-determination.”
—John Breuilly, Emeritus Professor of Nationalism and Ethnicity, London School
of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London, UK
The Fight Over

Freedom in 20th-
and 21st-Century
International
Discourse
Moments of ‘self-determination’
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Oslo, Norway
ISBN 978-3-030-46428-8 ISBN 978-3-030-46429-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46429-5
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
Cover credit: Maram_shutterstock.com
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements
Of the many heartfelt thanks to be parted out here, the first must be
directed to my editor at Palgrave, Sarah Roughley who made the process
of completing this manuscript smoother and more enjoyable than I would
have been able to imagine. The other person essential to this book’s
materialisation in print is Dr. Aino Rosa Kristina Spohr, who supervised
my doctoral research at the London School of Economics and Political
Science (LSE) International History Department, on which this book is
based. Throughout my years of LSE M.Sc. and Ph.D. studies, Dr. Spohr
supported my academic development with supreme vigour and devotion.
Professor Quentin Skinner has been another invaluable source of inspi-
ration and guidance, especially on the meaning of freedom and indeed,
of discourse—he graciously offered his advice at several points during my
research. Professor John Breuilly and Dr. John Hutchinson at the LSE
were especially helpful in the early phases of developing the manuscript.
Several institutions have also provided crucial assistance: Above all, the
LSE’s Department of International History. The Department as well as
the LSE Postgraduate Travel Fund, and the Lise og Arnfinn Hejes Fond
all provided scholarships during my studies. I am also grateful to the
History Department and the Harriman Institute of Columbia Univer-
sity (CU) in New York, as well as to the Graduate Institute for Interna-
tional and Development Studies in Geneva (IHEID), Geneva for hosting
me and providing engaging intellectual environments during my research
stays in these two cities. The LSE-CU exchange bursary enabled my
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
visiting Columbia, and Foundation Pierre du Bois was central in making

possible my visit to Geneva. During my time at Columbia, Professors
Mark Mazower and Samuel Moyn in particular kindly found the time to
give me valuable advice, as did Professor Jussi Hanhimäki at the Graduate
Institute in Geneva. Professor Moyn in particular continued his support
for my project beyond my stay in New York, for which I am enormously
grateful.
I also wish to thank the archivists and librarians at the United Nations
in New York; and in Geneva, the staff at the United Nations and League
of Nations archives and libraries. In London, my work was made much
easier by the staff at the National Archives, Kew, as well as the librar-
ians at the LSE and the British Library. The staff and facilities at the
Webster contributed to making my stay in New York a uniquely rewarding
experience.
Last but not least of the institutions on this list is my present employer,
the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), where my
Group leader Dr. Karsten Friis, Academic Director Dr. Ole Jacob Sending,
and Director Ulf Sverdrup patiently allowed me sufficient time away from
my present portfolio on Counter-terrorism to complete this book. My
sincere thanks also to the whole Security and Defence Research Group at
NUPI for valuable input and encouragement on the book’s final stages,
and especially Ole Martin Stormoen for his incalculable assistance.
Finally, my parents, Kim P. Augestad and Sverre Knudsen, continue to
be immense sources of inspiration and support without which all of this
would have been much more difficult.
Any shortcomings of this book, however, are of course of my own
making.
Contents
1 Introduction: ‘Self-Determination’ and Ideas of Freedom 1

The Liberal-Conservative Idea 4
The Radical Idea 8
Capturing ‘Self-Determination’ 10
Moments of Self-Determination 12
One Hundred Years of ‘Self-Determination’ and Ideas of
Freedom 15
2 Lenin, ‘Self-Determination’ and the Radical Idea of

Freedom 33
Lenin and the Socialist Debate on the National Question 34
Lenin’s Opponents: The ‘Autonomists’ 37
Lenin’s Opponents: The ‘Rejectionists’ 40
Conditioning Self-Determination 41
Freedom as Equality 44
Lenin’s Discourse and the First World War 47
3 Woodrow Wilson, ‘Self-Determination’ and the

Liberal-Conservative Idea of Freedom 65
Context and Criticism 66
The Fourteen Points 69
Freedom as Peace and Non-Interference 71
Wilson’s ‘Self-Determination’ and Popular Sovereignty 72
vii
viii CONTENTS
Wilson’s Internationalisation 75
Regrets and Tensions 76
Wilson’s Self-Determination in Practice 82
‘Self-Determination’ Recast 85
4 ‘Self-Determination’ Enters International Law 101

Post-First World War Self-Determination: Radical Calls,
Liberal-Conservative Responses 102
Albania 102
The Aaland Islands 105
The United Nations Charter 113
5 Defining ‘Self-Determination’, Disagreeing on Freedom 133

Common Ground 136
Against ‘Self-Determination’ 139
Western Dilemmas, Maturity and Self-Determination 143
Self-Determination and Radical Freedom 147
A Definition of ‘Self-Determination’? 149
6 In Court: ‘Self-Determination’ and Freedom in the ICJ

Case on Kosovo 173
Historical and Legal Background 174
The Emergence of the ICJ Case 178
Debating ‘Self-Determination’ at the ICJ 181
‘Internal Self-Determination’ 181
Sui Generis and ‘Remedial Self-Determination’ 184
Independence and International Statebuilding 188
The Final Word 191
7 Conclusions: The Fight over Freedom at Moments of

Self-Determination 211
Ideas in Contention 211
Agents in Contention 214
Self-Determination ‘Selves’ and Freedom Today 217
Index 225
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: ‘Self-Determination’ and Ideas

of Freedom
In early 1918, on one of the last days of the coldest January recorded
by that point in time, American President Woodrow Wilson took his wife
and his closest advisor on a leisurely drive. It was the President’s first
day outside the White House after suffering from a bad cold. Seemingly
in good spirits after several days in bed, Wilson was happy that he was
able to have ‘one or two real talks’ with the two people to whom he
was closest. Meanwhile, the First World War was entering into a dramatic
phase, with hectic diplomacy and public exchanges on the preferred terms
for peace for the belligerent participants. In a provocative statement in
late 1917, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and the Russian Bolsheviks asked the
Allies what their commitment to ‘self-determination’ really was. Reading
their statement, some of Wilson’s advisors urged him to appropriate this
language, while others warned against it. In early January 1918, Wilson
delivered his Fourteen Points speech to the U.S. Congress without citing
‘self-determination’. A few days before that cold January afternoon, the
German Chancellor, Georg von Hertling, publicly presented his reply to
Wilson’s Fourteen Points.
Until Wilson’s motoring excursion, the President was unsure of what
his next public move should be. The international situation appeared to
be approaching conditions favourable to peace, and a misguided initiative
could jeopardise this development. In the car, Wilson told his wife that
he wanted to take a stand against the German Chancellor’s preference
© The Author(s) 2020 1

R. Augestad Knudsen, The Fight Over Freedom
in 20th- and 21st-Century International Discourse,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46429-5_1
2 R. AUGESTAD KNUDSEN
for the ‘old diplomacy which has brought the world into such difficul-
ties’. Almost two weeks later, on 11 February 1918, Wilson laid out his
position in another speech to Congress. He effectively proclaimed that
von Hertling was missing the point; fatally, the Chancellor was ignor-
ing the principle of ‘self-determination’. Before Wilson’s speech, ‘self-
determination’ had been associated with Lenin, and it was Lenin who
ensured that this term became part of the war’s discursive exchanges. But
with Wilson’s February 1918 address, the President both claimed and
properly internationalised this language. Wilson’s role in the history of
self-determination has often been exaggerated—but he did ensure that
the specific phrase ‘self-determination’ reached a worldwide audience.1
This book tells a story of how important statements on ‘self-
determination’ in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have con-
tained and reflected a battle over the international meaning of freedom.
It does so by examining how a struggle between two ideas of freedom
has emerged in international discourse about ‘self-determination’ at key
historical moments. I call these two ideas a ‘radical’ idea of freedom and a
‘liberal-conservative’ idea of freedom. Although the battle over the inter-
national meaning of freedom has also appeared in many other domains
and forms of discourse, this book focuses on the ways in which the
struggle between these two ideas of freedom has played out through key
international discourse of ‘self-determination’ of the last hundred years.
Before outlining the radical and the liberal-conservative ideas of free-
dom that have been central to international ‘self-determination’ discourse,
it is important to sketch the mechanics linking this discourse with the
ideas of freedom. Since the early twentieth century, every important inter-
national reference to ‘self-determination’ has depended on one of these
two ideas of freedom as its standard of legitimation.2 Like any other
political or legal actor, the key international agents who have used the
language of ‘self-determination’ over the last hundred years—politicians,
diplomats, lawyers, judges and international institutions—have sought
legitimation for their arguments and ideas in order to convince their
immediate audiences and enhance their general moral authority. And each
of these agents, as will be shown, has relied on one of two ideas of free-
dom when doing so.
1 INTRODUCTION: ‘SELF-DETERMINATION’ AND IDEAS OF FREEDOM 3
Given the logic informing the legitimation of discourse, one would not
expect these historical agents to have created their own legitimising stan-
dards or to have been drawn to unusual or peculiar ones. Only by invok-
ing standards already known and valued in the international forums and
formats in which they operated could they have realistically expected to
be persuasive.3 The legitimising ideas of freedom that they drew upon in
their historical discourse about self-determination may have even been so
dominant and taken-for-granted that some presenters likely were unaware
of using them.4 The discourse of ‘self-determination’ and the ways in
which it has been legitimised at various moments can therefore be anal-
ysed as a reflection of the ideas of freedom already present, dominant and
appealing in the international arenas in which such discourse appeared.
The focus of this book departs from that of most scholars of ‘self-
determination’, many of whom have been preoccupied with defining
‘self-determination’—frequently by trying to establish the boundaries
of the ‘self’ to which it might apply. For instance, might this ‘self’ or
‘self-determination unit’ be defined in national, ‘ethnic’ or territorial
terms? Might self-determination itself be understood as a ‘right’, a ‘rem-
edy’, a ‘principle’, a ‘process’ or a ‘claim’? Is it a ‘plebiscite principle’,5 a
‘human need or urge’,6 ‘self-government’,7 a ‘doctrine of the legitimacy
of political institutions’8 or perhaps a ‘struggle for inclusion’?9 Can the
concept of self-determination be equated with the process of granting
independence to former colonies, or does it necessitate other policy solu-
tions? What criteria should apply to implementing self-determination in
practice? And where does the conceptual ancestry of this term lie—with
the French revolution,10 nineteenth-century philosophy,11 the German
Enlightenment,12 ‘early medieval Western Europe’13 or ‘ancient times’?14
Recent interest in ‘self-determination’ has added to this range of ques-
tions by addressing its connection to human rights, with disagreement
often being focused on the role of self-determination in the history of
human rights.15 Concentrating on the process of decolonisation, some
scholars have argued that granting self-determination as statehood for
former colonies facilitated the international rise of human rights.16 Oth-
ers have claimed that prioritising self-determination as independence for
colonial peoples partly came at the long-term cost of individual human
rights.17 Still others have considered self-determination itself as a human
right.18 But most contributions have seen self-determination as being syn-
onymous with colonial independence and have also tended to place the
concept on the state side of a ‘state rights versus individual rights’ frame-
work.19
Most of these scholarly and discursive questions and points of disagree-
ment about ‘self-determination’ have persisted for decades, effectively
overshadowing what has remained constant in the twentieth-century
and twenty-first-century international discourse about self-determination:
ideas of freedom have consistently been used to legitimise it. Along
with the twentieth-century formalisation of ‘self-determination’ in inter-
national law, the connection between this term and ideas of freedom
is what has enabled it to endure as an authoritative international refer-
ence point. Examining the connection between self-determination and
freedom in international discourse is not only key to understanding the
role of self-determination in contemporary international affairs, but it also
enables a better understanding of how, and which, ideas of freedom have
appeared in international discourse over the last hundred years.
The Liberal-Conservative Idea

Of the two ideas of freedom drawn upon to legitimise twentieth-
century and twenty-first-century international discourse about ‘self-
determination’, the ‘liberal-conservative’ idea has dominated.20 In
unmistakably liberal terms, discourse built upon this idea presented
interference with action as being the greatest threat to freedom. Free-
dom, in this line of thought, means non-interference: if interference is
present, freedom is constrained. To establish freedom means to min-
imise interference. In the international language on ‘self-determination’,
this outlook has most often led to endorsing the principle of non-
interference with states —especially regarding their boundaries and their
freedom of trade—and sometimes, as an even more conventionally liberal
concern, the freedom of individuals from state interference. The liberal-
conservative perspective has tended to be relatively inattentive to peoples,
groups or other non-state collectives, and it has not weighed as heavily
potential ways that freedom can be impaired other than by interference.
Peace and stability further defined the content of the liberal-
conservative idea of freedom, as seen through the discourse regarding
‘self-determination’ of the last hundred years. Not unlike the ‘liberal
peace thesis’ of international relations theory,21 the liberal-conservative
discourse of ‘self-determination’ portrayed order and stability, both
within and between states, as being the ultimate insurance against inter-
ference with the actions of states and individuals. Hence, it set up a deep
and intimate connection between peace and freedom. At one level, such
discourse presented peace as an ultimate form of freedom, since peace
in itself amounts to a form of absence of interference, such as violence,
disruption and instability. Simultaneously, the liberal-conservative idea
elevated ‘peace’ and ‘stability’ as more valuable standards than ‘freedom’
referred to on its own. From this point of view, the worth of ‘freedom’,
‘self-determination’ or any other value or standard is bound up with the
ability to ensure peace and stable order.
When positing peace in this way (i.e., as the ultimate standard and
the aim of all politics), language drawing upon the liberal-conservative
idea depicted political legitimacy as being closely linked to authorities’
capacity to preserve the peace. Since the maintenance of peace on this
account legitimates power, governmental sovereignty has been considered
legitimised if it produced or was likely to produce peaceful outcomes.
In international ‘self-determination’ discourse, an a priori assumption
of those of the liberal-conservative inclination has been that peace is in
the interest of all people, including those who have not articulated such
an interest for themselves. Consequently, the expressed preferences of
real-life ‘self-determination’ claimants have not been in focus; whatever
such claimants might say, peace should be the priority. Following the
liberal-conservative view, political authorities would be considered jus-
tified in taking any action to protect the peace, even in the absence of
bottom-up consultations with the subjects of their rule. Ideas of this
kind surfaced in the twentieth-century and twenty-first-century history
of international discourse, especially in Woodrow Wilson’s language of
‘self-determination’ from the First World War, as well as during the 1960
United Nations General Assembly debate on decolonisation.
These characteristics also display the conservative propensities of the
liberal-conservative idea. With robust appreciation of stability and free-
dom as non-interference, statements founded upon this outlook have
been keen to reject change and to opt instead for solidification of an exist-
ing order. In this view, change might only be allowed, if at all, gradually,
‘naturally’ and under guarantees of non-interference and peace. These
conservative components would seem to make the liberal-conservative
idea particularly attractive to those already benefiting from an existing
legal and political order; beneficiaries of the status quo might regard
disruptive changes as an interfering threat to (their own) freedom and
choose conservatism over radicalism. And indeed, over the course of the
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, those who were already strong
at a given moment have been the ones who have tended to express the
liberal-conservative idea through their international discourse on ‘self-
determination’. That it was such agents’ visions for self-determination and
freedom that ‘won out’ at each key moment could be taken to reveal a
conservative and self-consolidating tendency in international affairs as a
whole over this period.
The same prioritisation of peaceful, settled order that is free from
interference in the affairs of states or individuals has informed liberal-
conservative assessments of the practicalities of self-determination policy.
At different moments, the liberal-conservative idea has been behind inter-
national arguments for implementing self-determination only if this can
be accomplished in ways that serve the peace. The same idea has produced
the arguments rejecting the concept outright on the grounds that grant-
ing or implementing it would inevitably increase the risk of destabilisation
and disorder. Of those with the liberal-conservative mindset slightly more
positive towards ‘self-determination’, some have suggested a conditional
endorsement, which would rule out new state creation, since such an out-
come could be disruptive.
The liberal-conservative idea has hence also been at the heart of
the proposals that have periodically been put forth for realising self-
determination within existing state structures. Historically, such sug-
gestions have often entailed visions for allowing ‘self-determination’
(only) in the form of the provision of individual human rights, minor-
ity rights or possibly through some territorial autonomy inside already
established state boundaries. From the 1990s, positions of this kind
gained hold in the academic literature through the language of ‘internal
self-determination’, a phrase also cited in the 2008–2010 International
Court of Justice proceedings on Kosovo.22 According to the schol-
ars in the 1990s who settled on this phrase in the context of height-
ened international attention to human rights, this amounted to a ‘right
to democratic governance’,23 human rights within existing states24 and
possibly some autonomy25 or federalism.26 Those advocating ‘internal
self-determination’ typically argued that international law would per-
mit self-determination to only be realised internally, especially after the
1960 UN General Assembly’s Decolonisation Declaration restricted self-
determination as state creation to colonies alone.27
The language of ‘internal self-determination’, however, is nowhere to

be found in the legislation drawn upon in its support from the 1990s
onwards, such as the two International Covenants on Human Rights
(1966). Instead, this notion seems to have been the result of taking
the liberal-conservative idea so far as to make ‘self-determination’ almost
unrecognisable from how it had generally been perceived before the
1990s. Ever since Lenin talked about ‘self-determination’ in the early
twentieth century, the possibility of new state creation had been a conven-
tional, though sometimes implicit, association with the term. In line with
the liberal-conservative idea of freedom, ‘internal self-determination’ then
removed this implication—and turned ‘self-determination’ into some-
thing amounting to internal rights, rather than a concept that provided an
opening for interference with existing states through creating new ones.28
But while a non-secession variant of self-determination might be the pref-
erence of those who already have a state ‘of their own’, disregarding inde-
pendence as a possible outcome renders the concept meaningless to most
of its claimants. The intention in promoting this ‘internal’ notion seems
to be to ‘[take] the sting out’ of the wider concept and limit its scope.29
In fact, the cross-disciplinary scholarship as a whole—and not only
those favouring ‘internal self-determination’—has shown an overall ten-
dency to implicitly encapsulate the liberal-conservative idea. Tellingly,
most scholars frame self-determination demands as reactions against
interference. Without questioning whether the defence of approved
agents’ freedom against interference is at all a worthy end, they instead
typically move directly to discussing what sort of interference might legit-
imise claimants attaining self-determination. Some listed precise kinds of
interference against which self-determination could be granted, such as
non-democratic, ‘alien’ or ‘foreign’ rule.30 So far, however, only colo-
nialism has been widely recognised as a form of interference that warrants
granting anyone self-determination.31
Scholars ‘against’ self-determination as a rule rely on this same liberal-
conservative idea; for instance, when warning that the concept threat-
ens states’ freedom by allowing for interference with their sovereignty,
or when cautioning that realising self-determination could cause anar-
chy and violence.32 Thus far, no scholarship has raised the question of
whether ‘self-determination’ and the ideas of freedom implicated in cit-
ing and arguing about this term might involve (a claim to) freedom from
something altogether different and apart from interference.
The Radical Idea

What these scholarly, legal and policy positions have overlooked is the sec-
ond idea of freedom that has also functioned as a standard of legitimation
for the last hundred years’ international ‘self-determination’ discourse, an
idea which is here labelled ‘radical’.33 Rejecting the liberal-conservative
belief that interfering with action is the only way in which freedom may be
curtailed, international discourse that draws on this ‘radical’ idea has pri-
marily juxtaposed freedom against domination, dependence and inequal-
ity, rather than against interference alone. In the radical view, even if no
action has been interfered with, agents could be seen as unfree if they
have to depend on the arbitrary will of someone else. Dependence and
domination, in this line of thought, involve a level of unpredictability
and unaccountability, as well as a status of inequality that takes some-
one’s freedom away, even if the superior party did not actually interfere.
As long as this party has the power to interfere, and the ability to do so
arbitrarily, the subordinated, dependent agent is unfree. The similarities
and differences between this radical idea as spotted in international ‘self-
determination’ discourse and the idea of ‘republican’ liberty theorised by
Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit will be returned to in the next chapter
of this book.34
International language on ‘self-determination’ that is rooted in the rad-
ical idea implicitly presented freedom as equality—rather than freedom as
peace, as in the liberal-conservative orientation—as the main legitimis-
ing standard.35 Such radical discourse presented peoples’ demands for
self-determination as being legitimate if their status was one of inequal-
ity and arbitrary dependence on a dominating agent. Its proponents have
backed the realisation of self-determination as the freedom to (re)establish
a status of being one’s own law-maker. Liberating a group from condi-
tions of dependence to such an equal status, in the radical view, would
realise that group’s freedom. In terms of practical outcomes, radical ‘self-
determination’ discourse expressed that the concept must leave all options
open, including the option of a people establishing a new state on a par
with others in the international system. This shows that the radical idea’s
range of preferred policy outcomes differs from those of the superficially
similar notion of ‘self-determination as non-domination’, which favours
solutions that would not lead to secession. Inspired by republican theo-
ries of freedom, the ‘non-domination’ approach to self-determination has
primarily been advanced by scholars of political science who are looking

for compromise solutions to real-life conflict.36
Meanwhile, actual claimants of self-determination usually decree the
radical idea of freedom in demanding ‘self-determination’ as having a state
of their own. Sometimes, however, radical calls for self-determination as
equality have been expressed as demands for unification with another
body politic, as in the case of the Aaland Islands, and with Kosovo at
some points in its history. A related, albeit ‘less radical’ policy demand
has been the historical re-establishment of countries, as in the 1990 Ger-
man reunification and the 1991 restoration of independence to Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania after the Soviet period came to an end.
Although the focus here is on the international language of ‘self-
determination’,37 it should be mentioned that those expressing the radical
idea appear alert to conditions within a body politic, as well. As the name
suggests, the ‘radical’ concern with equality has gone from the ‘roots’
upwards: radically legitimised ‘self-determination’ discourse indicates con-
cern for a group’s individual members by, for instance, calling for a refer-
endum in which everyone has an equal say. It has been expressed that no
one can legitimately speak or act in the name of a group unless assigned to
such a position by the group’s equal members. This idea seems to present
a group’s equality as not only a question of collective freedom, but as a
condition for individual freedom as well. Thus, the radical idea cannot be
positioned as a ‘collective’ idea against an exclusively ‘individual’ liberal-
conservative orientation. Both ideas appeared in the group-centred inter-
national discourse of ‘self-determination’, and both have been attentive
to individual freedom as well.
On a point of more fundamental divergence between the two ideas, the
radical idea expressed that freedom is a matter of equal and independent
status, while the liberal-conservative idea focused on freedom as peace,
as an outcome or stage. Moreover, language based on the radical idea
has not presented peace as the supreme legitimising standard; from the
radical perspective, how a group might choose to achieve or act upon its
free status is irrelevant, even if its actions result in threats to the peace. In
fact, the radical ‘self-determination’ discourse has often disregarded both
peace and existing law and order. It has instead presented freedom and
equality as standards of legitimation in their own right, irrespective of the
contributions to stability.38 Indeed, those relying upon this idea when
talking about self-determination on an international level have generally
aspired to contravene established law and break up legally existing states.
Often, they justified the use of force in violent liberation struggles in the
name of achieving freedom.39
The radical idea accentuated the political dimensions of self-
determination in a different way than the liberal-conservative idea. Thus
far, it has been common among both scholars and actors in international
history to dismiss the language of ‘self-determination’ as being political,
sometimes by claiming that this language is too vague, ‘manipulative’,
meaningless and incoherent, ‘slogan-like’ and associated with ‘slipperi-
ness’ and ‘evils’40 ; the radical idea appears to have a particular capac-
ity to provoke such characteristics. While the two ideas of freedom are
both political, and both are ‘negative’ ideas, in terms of positing freedom
against and from something else,41 the radical idea is explicitly agonistic
in calling for freedom from the domination and ‘other-determination’ of
a certain ‘enemy’.42 In practice, those favouring the radical idea promote
total liberation from such an ‘other’ through the establishment of a new
body politic in the form of secession or unification.
In fact, by normatively demanding a new political and legal order, the
radical idea signified an ‘ultimate’ form of political dissent.43 Claimants of
self-determination, like the agents expressing this idea at the international
level in recent history, have not merely sought to improve an existing
order in terms of, for instance, human rights. Rather, they have demanded
liberation in the form of gaining the power to decide on the basic frame-
work in which laws are created and rights protected. In this way, ever
since ‘self-determination’ became part of international law, this language
has opened the possibility of disbanding the state units on which this law
rests, thereby undermining international law from within.
Capturing ‘Self-Determination’
Perhaps it is due to this subversive capacity that ‘self-determination’ has
often been contrasted with the territorial integrity of states, an antonymic
pairing that adds further reasons for many scholars’ and agents’ wariness.
While this purported opposition between the language and ideas of self-
determination and territorial integrity corresponds in part with the con-
tradiction between the radical and liberal-conservative ideas, the two are
not identical. First of all, the liberal-conservative idea has not simply been
‘against self-determination’; it has prevailed internationally among oppo-
nents and proponents of the term. Moreover, the liberal-conservative idea
has not been limited to a merely ‘pro-territorial integrity’ stance either:
discourse built upon this idea has focused on peace, order, absence of
interference, as well as orderly change (if any). The radical idea, in turn,
not only meant support for self-determination in terms of statehood; its
distinguishing feature when functioning as a standard of legitimation for
self-determination discourse has been to prioritise equality and freedom
from domination and dependence.
In addition, neither of the two ideas of freedom have posited self-
determination as a concept that fundamentally contravenes the principle
of states’ territorial integrity, although the radical idea in particular has
challenged the integrity of states actually existing. At the ideational level,
however, the radical idea also contained conservative features. Proponents
of the radical idea have typically not called for the creation of a completely
new type of political association. Instead, with their demands for ‘self-
determination’, they have aspired for new states, like those already exist-
ing, with the territorial integrity of these new states intact. In the twen-
tieth and twenty-first centuries, the central aim of radically legitimised
self-determination discourse has been to achieve a status of equality with
states and systems already in existence; such language has not sought to
elevate the status of pre-existing states or to arrange politics along wholly
different organising lines.44
On another rare point of convergence between the two ideas,
the radical idea also disparaged interference, especially of an arbitrary
nature. In contrast to liberal-conservative language, however, radical self-
determination discourse presented interference as inherently connected to
dependence and inequality. It rejected dependence and inequality because
of the role they play in leaving subjugated peoples vulnerable to arbi-
trary interference and condemned interference for producing—and being
a symptom of—conditions of dependence. And although the two ideas
have sometimes been united in rejecting interference, they have been sep-
arated by which legitimising standard they presented as primary. Liberal-
conservative peace and non-interference (for states and individuals) versus
radical equality and non-dependence (for currently ‘stateless’ groups and
the individuals within them).
The two ideas generally rejected different types of interference, as
well. Agents expressing the liberal-conservative viewpoint condemned the
obstruction of states’ freedom of action, including in the economic arena,
and were sometimes against state interference with individuals. In con-
trast, radical perspectives denounced the oppression and exploitation of
non-state groups—and indirectly, the obstruction of individual freedom

that such oppression would entail.
As already mentioned, it was the former, liberal-conservative outlook
that dominated the language of ‘self-determination’ at each of the key
moments during the last hundred years when this term was cited interna-
tionally. That idea came to be reflected in all the important international
legal documents that used the language of ‘self-determination’ in the
twentieth century, while the radical idea would for instance appear in the
statements of Lenin, and at times during the 1950–1960 United Nations
debates that referenced self-determination. At the same time, the radical
idea seems to have functioned as the real driver behind the international
reappearances of ‘self-determination’ discourse. Each ‘self-determination
moment’, including the first such moment during the First World War
that cemented the place of this phrase in international discourse, started
with a radical pronouncement that triggered liberal-conservative attempts
to redefine the term’s meaning. By de facto initiating all the moments
of self-determination of the last hundred years through this dynamic,
the radical idea of freedom has consistently revived the international cur-
rency of ‘self-determination’ discourse and demonstrated its continuing
potency.
Today’s convention is to cite ‘self-determination’ with a primary ref-
erence to the liberal-conservative idea, with peace and order as the chief
standards against which the concept should be measured and legitimised.
Nonetheless, the radical idea, with its demand for equality as new state
creation, remains associated with the concept. The continuing disputes
over the meaning of ‘self-determination’ in scholarship, law and politics
not only indicate disagreement on what should count as interference—or
agents—in international affairs, but also lingering unease over the mean-
ing of ‘freedom’ in international discourse.
Moments of Self-Determination
When investigating how twentieth-century and twenty-first-century inter-
national self-determination discourse contained and revealed a struggle
between the two ideas of freedom, this book narrowly focuses on the
moments in which the language of ‘self-determination’ has been at the
heart of international affairs. This book is certainly not an attempt at a
full historical survey of the international meaning of freedom; indeed,
this topic has received dedicated attention by others.45 Instead, this book
explains how, at each of the central moments identified, the two ideas of
freedom shifted in functioning as the standard of legitimation for high-
level international ‘self-determination’ discourse.
It should be stressed that no agent talking about ‘self-determination’
at the international level ever referred to either of the two ideas in either
explicit or ‘ideal’ form. First of all, ‘radical’ and ‘liberal-conservative’ are
the labels chosen here to describe these two ideas due to their features as
they emerged through agents’ discourse, as described above. Moreover,
both ideas of freedom were present at every one of the moments identi-
fied, and sometimes one and the same agent was seen to express elements
of both ideas. Even the two men this book considers essential to placing
the language of ‘self-determination’ on the international agenda—Wilson
and Lenin—did not personify ‘pure’ versions of either idea. And although
both men were crucial in turning the discourse of ‘self-determination’
to the international level, they certainly did not consciously invent or
create the respective ideas of freedom. Instead, the two ideas of freedom
emerged in their international ‘self-determination’ discourse indirectly
and seemingly without any thought-out plan for promoting these specific
ideas of freedom, as with the rhetoric of other international agents
quoted in this book.
Despite no articulated conflict between the two ideas of freedom hav-
ing ever occurred during the moments in which the language of ‘self-
determination’ was internationally important, the rivalry between the two
ideas characterised all the central international utterances of the term.
At every moment of ‘self-determination’, each of the two ideas of free-
dom indirectly sought to take over the meaning of this language by serv-
ing as its standard of legitimation. While not using the terms ‘radical’
and ‘liberal-conservative’, agents signalled their conceptual affiliations by
choosing words such as ‘peace’, ‘stability’ and ‘equality’, or by lauding
violent struggle or calling for the creation of a new state without any
conditions attached.
This book focuses on high-level international ‘self-determination’ dis-
course and how it contained and expressed ideas of freedom; hence, its
chronology does not stretch further back in history than Wilson’s and
Lenin’s use of this language. While not the conceptual or theoretical
originators of either ‘self-determination’ or the two ideas of freedom,
both men were critical in lifting this language into the core international
domain. ‘Self-determination’ was not a central phrase of international pol-
itics or law before their times—but with their references, it was to become
so. And although their respective expressions did not present ‘pure’ ver-
sions of either of the ideas of freedom, they broadly represented one each:
Lenin, the radical idea of freedom; and Wilson, the liberal-conservative
idea.
Indeed, choosing a historical departure point before the times of Lenin
and Wilson—for instance in the nineteenth or eighteenth centuries—
would require studying how the battle over the meaning of freedom has
occurred in international history in ways other than through the discourse
of ‘self-determination’. Such an approach would extend beyond the scope
of this book and would pose a challenge in identifying which other phrases
may have been involved in this battle. Relatedly, stretching a discursive
history of ‘self-determination’ further back in history than from the time
when this term was explicitly cited would also present a significant diffi-
culty; for what then would be the criteria for pinning down the language
equivalents or predecessors to ‘self-determination’ during the moments
when this phrase was not itself a noteworthy part of international affairs?
Conceptually, one could argue that such a challenge would be insur-
mountable, if the concept of self-determination is to be regarded as insep-
arable from the phrase ‘self-determination’; the concept could then simply
not be expressed fully with different words.46 The historical record of the
language of ‘self-determination’ in international politics and law would
also seem to deter such definitional attempts; over the course of the past
century, this phrase has reasonably implied widely divergent meanings to
different people in different settings.47 Rather than providing either a
genealogy of ‘self-determination’ or a pre-history of the appearance of
this exact phrase in high-level international discourse, or a catalogue of
its possible meanings, this book merely offers a study of how an inter-
national battle over the meaning of freedom has been reflected through
the use of the specific language of ‘self-determination’ at key international
moments.48
A narrow focus on the ways in which the two ideas of freedom have
been expressed and fought over through high-level international appear-
ances of the specific term ‘self-determination’49 has made it clear that
this history did not unfold along a smooth, linear trajectory. Rather, the
language of ‘self-determination’ suddenly became important at certain
moments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, often decades apart:
the later stages of both world wars; in the immediate aftermath of both
these wars, when the United Nations formally dismantled colonialism;
and in the international environment that developed after the Cold War,
manifested and exemplified through the International Court of Justice

(ICJ) case on Kosovo’s declaration of independence. Each of these ‘mo-
ments of self-determination’ was characterised by dramatic international
change, and each appeared to hold possibilities of the regeneration of
political and legal orders.
One Hundred Years of ‘Self-Determination’

and Ideas of Freedom
The first major self-determination moment was characteristic in several
ways. When referring to ‘self-determination’ during the First World War,
both Wilson and Lenin positioned this language and the ideas associated
with it as having a global role in ending a conflict which, they some-
how agreed, had been produced by the corruption and non-sustainability
of an ‘old world’. Both men saw the times they lived in as challenging,
but also as being charged with great opportunity. In different ways, both
Lenin and Wilson seemed intent on using the war as a catalyst for a new
and better order, to be shaped according to their respective political ide-
als. While they greatly diverged in other respects, both presented ‘self-
determination’ as being at the heart of their visions for a new and better
world, and both made use of this language in order to win over their
respective audiences. Given the importance of these two men in the sub-
sequent discursive history of self-determination and ideas of freedom, this
book devotes one chapter to each.
After this first moment containing Wilson’s and Lenin’s uses of the
language of ‘self-determination’, which will be dealt with in Chapters 2
and 3 of this book, the central utterances of this term came not from indi-
vidual political leaders, but from state delegates debating legal language,
from international lawyers and judges, and from documents of interna-
tional law. Neither of these sources spoke in their private capacities, but
all represented the official positions of their states or institutions.
Despite the range of agents and statements referencing ‘self-
determination’ internationally at key moments, however, the political
statements of Lenin and Wilson and the primarily legal utterances of later
agents were all contributions to the same field of international discourse.
This book follows Martti Koskenniemi and others in assuming that, rather
than unfolding on a plane separate from politics, conflict or morality, the
creation and codification of international law appeal to and manifest the
same legitimising standards that at any given time shape international pol-
itics.50 Hence, this book sees the languages of international politics and
international law as emerging on the same field, in the same broad con-
text, and as making up one sphere of discourse directed towards the same
aim of legitimation.
The second key moment in which ‘self-determination’ became inter-
nationally important emerged in the aftermath of the First World War.
The international handling of the Albanian question that arose from
this war illustrates which ideas of freedom were associated with ‘self-
determination’ at the time, as does the League of Nations 1921–1922
Aaland Islands case. In both cases, populations cited ‘self-determination’
to achieve their visions of independence shortly after Wilson’s internation-
alisation of this language: the Albanians wanted separate statehood while
the Aaland Islanders sought to separate from Finland and join Sweden.
The fourth chapter of this book analyses these two cases, the interna-
tional role of ‘self-determination’ discourse within them and the ways in
which it conveyed competing ideas of freedom. Both cases are indicative
of how self-determination was conceptualised after Wilson’s ideas went
global. Although the cases played out very differently, their international
treatment each indicated that it was Wilson, rather than Lenin, who set
the terms for post-First World War international understandings of ‘self-
determination’.
Following from the Aaland Islands case, the inclusion of ‘self-
determination’ in the United Nations Charter in 1945 is probably the
most important legal moment in the history of this language. At a
time when the world again sought to formulate a vision for a better
post-war order, the term ‘self-determination’ was made part of interna-
tional law. Clearly, rights and international law are themselves contested
notions51 ; and disagreement persists on the exact legal status of ‘self-
determination’, and on what duties it places on states and international
organisations.52 Regardless of this, the inclusion of ‘self-determination’
in the United Nations Charter seemed to turn this concept into some
sort of a legal right, albeit one as of yet without definite implementation
options.53 In terms of ideas of freedom, however, this ‘United Nations
Charter moment’ neither challenged nor added to the core components
of Wilson’s discourse. This United Nations Charter moment effectively
worked as a conceptual continuation of the post-First World War moment
and is therefore addressed in Chapter 4 together with the Albanian and
Aaland Islands cases.
During the 1950–1960 United Nations debates on the two Inter-

national Covenants on Human Rights (ICCPR and ICESCR in their
final form, for the sake of brevity abbreviated here jointly as ICHR),
finally adopted in 1966) and the 1960 United Nations General Assembly
Decolonisation Declaration, the language of ‘self-determination’ again
gained international prominence.54 At this decade-long moment, ideas
about ‘self-determination’ and its links to freedom were on lengthy
international display through the discussions and dissections of this
language by state representatives at the United Nations. Apart from
the early twentieth-century emergence of the term ‘self-determination’
in high-level international affairs, no other self-determination moment
has been more important to its history. Similar to the time of the First
World War, at this 1950–1960 moment, ‘self-determination’ once again
became a significant reference point during a period of global change
and intense ideological competition. Arguments presented during these
years of debate at the United Nations reflected Cold War tensions as
well as the ongoing dismantling and delegitimisation of colonialism. The
often-heated rhetoric signalled that the stakes involved were high.
The three United Nations documents that resulted from this long
moment of ‘self-determination’ included this language in an identi-
cally formulated article, further adding to the standing of this phrase
in international politics and law. What is more, of these documents,
the 1960 United Nations General Assembly Decolonisation Declara-
tion made ‘self-determination’ legally implementable as decolonisation,
while also delineating its independence prospects to colonies alone. Dur-
ing the 1950–1960 United Nations debates preceding the adoption
of these texts, numerous state and United Nations officials disclosed
their understandings of ‘self-determination’ and associated ideas of free-
dom, variously echoing both Lenin and Wilson. Interestingly, while Cold
War ‘bloc’ affiliations obviously produced conflicting arguments on self-
determination policy and law, the radical versus liberal-conservative ver-
sions of ‘self-determination’ presented during these debates could not be
neatly pigeonholed according to Cold War ‘sides’.
The most recent major international moment of self-determination
was the 2008–2010 proceedings at the ICJ on Kosovo’s declaration of
independence. The Kosovo independence case had grown out of the col-
lapse of socialist Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and involved several of the
themes competing to define the post-Cold War legal, political and secu-
rity order. ‘Self-determination’ was referenced explicitly throughout the
ICJ proceedings, with most of the participating states citing the term
when either arguing for or against Kosovo’s right to statehood. The
case uniquely and explicitly laid out contemporary international ideas of
self-determination, and how the concept related to ideas of freedom, as
well as to broader issues of international affairs. While most of the states
involved talked about ‘self-determination’ in terms invoking the liberal-
conservative idea, the final language of the ICJ advisory opinion pointed
in different and more radical directions.
During the years since the ICJ Kosovo case concluded in 2010, the
language of ‘self-determination’ has appeared in connection with several
burning issues of international policy, including in relation to the post-
Soviet sphere, such as in the cases of Georgia and Ukraine. In none of
these instances, however, did ‘self-determination’ discourse again reach
high-level international centrality of a kind seen at the earlier twentieth-
and twenty-first-century moments selected for exploration in this book.
Meanwhile, whereas the language and force of ‘self-determination’ dis-
course might now seem to be partially dormant, ideas of freedom have
forcefully emerged at the forefront of international discourse, politics and
law.
Today, the explicit language of ‘freedom’ is used with apparently
increasing frequency by leaders on the world stage who are seeking to
appeal to international as well as domestic audiences, and its meaning and
ownership have become an ingrained part of controversies that involve,
for instance, the obligations and trade-offs of entering into and main-
taining international agreements, including those on trade, nuclear devel-
opment and climate change, as well as conflicting ideas and delineations
of ‘the people’ and how such a unit might become (more) free. With the
collapse of neat left/right political dividing lines, a lucid conceptual topol-
ogy of such current developments might seem out of reach. In this con-
text, this history of how (and which) ideas of freedom have battled over
the meaning of ‘self-determination’ in the twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries aspires to add some sorely needed clarity to how to interpret
present international discourse, facilitating a better grasp of what is con-
ceptually at stake and how to understand ideas of freedom.
Notes
1. For this sequence of events, see Arthur S. Link (ed.): The Papers of
Woodrow Wilson (PWW), Vol. 46, Princeton University Press, Princeton,
NJ, 1984: Diary of Colonel House, 27 January 1918, p. 114; House
diary 29 January, pp. 167–168; To House from Woodrow Wilson 30
January, p. 169; House diary February 8, pp. 290–291; House diary
February 10, pp. 316–318; ‘A memorandum by William Christian Bullit’,
29 January, pp. 162–167; Washington Post, 12 January 2012, ‘What Is
Washington, D.C.’s Weather Like in January? Breaking Down Norms and
Extremes’, accessed 10 December 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/blog
s/capital-weather-gang/post/what-is-washington-dcs-weather-like-in-jan
uary-breaking-down-norms-and-extremes/2012/01/09/gIQAVBzZtP_b
log.html.
2. See Quentin Skinner: ‘The Idea of a Cultural Lexicon’, pp. 158–174 in
Quentin Skinner (ed.): Visions of Politics, Volume I: Regarding Method,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002. Whereas Skinner refers
to legitimation of political action, I apply this to arguments and ideas
presented in international discourse. See also Koskenniemi 2005; Hurd
1999; Martti Koskenniemi: ‘Hierarchy in International Law: A Sketch’,
European Journal of International Law, 8, 1997, pp. 566–582.
3. Skinner 2002, p. 156; Murray Edelman: ‘Political Language and Politi-
cal Reality’, PS, Winter 1985, pp. 10–19, at p. 17; Morton A. Kaplan
and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach: The Political Foundations of International
Law, Wiley, New York, 1961, p. 343. This presupposes that the actors
have been rational—which I believe actors prima facie should be assumed
to be: Skinner: ‘Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Thought and
Action’, pp. 97–118 in James Tully (ed.): Meaning and Context: Quentin
Skinner and His Critics, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1988, p. 113; Mark
Bevir: The Logic of the History of Ideas, Cambridge University Press, Cam-
bridge, 1999, pp. 158–159. Why these standards are ‘already there’, how-
ever, is not a topic there is scope to pursue here, nor is the precise mechan-
ics of how standards change over time.
4. See also W. H. Walsh: ‘The Causation of Ideas’, History and Theory, 14(2),
1975, pp. 186–199, at p. 191.
5. Theodore Woolsey: ‘Self-Determination’, American Journal of Interna-
tional Law, 13(2), 1919, pp. 302–305, at p. 302.
6. Gerry J. Simpson: ‘The Diffusion of Sovereignty: Self-Determination in
the Post-Colonial Age’, Stanford Journal of International Law, 32, 1996,
pp. 255–286, at p. 275.
7. Avishain Margalit and Joseph Raz: ‘National Self-Determination’, Journal
of Philosophy, 87(9), 1990, pp. 439–461, at p. 440.
8. Summers 2007, p. 44.
9. Knop 2002, p. 13; also Ian Brownlie: ‘An Essay in the History of the
Principle of Self-Determination’, pp. 90–99 in C. H. Alexandrowicz (ed.):
Grotian Society Papers, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1968, p. 90; David
B. Knight and Maureen Davies: Self-Determination: An Interdisciplinary
Annotated Bibliography, Garland Publishing, New York, 1987.
10. Martin Griffiths: ‘Self-Determination, International Society and World
Order’, Macquarie Law Journal, 3, 2003, pp. 29–49, p. 30; Kolla 2013,
p. 717; Cassese 1995, pp. 11–22.
11. Betty Miller Unterberger: ‘The United States and National Self-
Determination: A Wilsonian Perspective’, Presidential Studies Quarterly,
26(4), 1996, pp. 926–941, p. 926.
12. Weitz 2015, pp. 463, 471. See also Thomas D. Musgrave: Self-
Determination and National Minorities, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997,
p. 1; Gilbert Murray: ‘Self-Determination of Nationalities’, Journal of the
British Institute of International Affairs, 1(1), 1922, pp. 6–13 on the
‘clearly’ German origin of the concept.
13. Summers 2007, p. 86.
14. Simpson 1996, p. 261; for a summary of some of the questions involved,
see also Uriel Abulof: ‘The Confused Compass: From Self-Determination
to State-Determination’, Ethnopolitics, 14(5), pp. 488–497, 2015.
15. See especially Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (ed.): Human Rights in the Twen-
tieth Century, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011; Lynn Hunt:
Inventing Human Rights: A History, W. W Norton & Company, London
and New York, 2007; Samuel Moyn: The Last Utopia: Human Rights in
History, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2010; Roger Nor-
mand and Sarah Zaidi: Human Rights at the UN: The Political History of
Universal Justice, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapo-
lis, 2008; Roland Burke: Decolonization and the Evolution of International
Human Rights, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA, 2010;
Weitz 2015; Brad Simpson: ‘The United States and the Curious His-
tory of Self-Determination’, Bernath Lecture, Diplomatic History, 36(4),
2012, pp. 675–694; Bradley R. Simpson: ‘Self-Determination, Human
Rights, and the End of Empire in the 1970s’, Humanity, 4(2), 2013,
pp. 239–260; Akira Irye, Petra Goedde, and William I. Hitchcock (eds.):
The Human Rights Revolution: An International History, Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2012; Jan Eckel: ‘Human Rights and Decolonization: New
Perspectives and Open Questions’, Humanity, Fall 2010, pp. 111–135.
16. Especially Moyn 2010; Simpson 2013.
17. Burke 2010; Hunt 2007. Also Moyn indicates that ‘self-determination’
overshadowed human rights until the process of decolonisation had been
completed—and that it then enabled human rights to become more
important; Samuel Moyn: ‘Imperialism, Self-Determination, and the Rise
of Human Rights’, pp. 159–178 in Irye et al. (eds.) 2012; Moyn 2010,
p. 117 puts this in terms of the end of empire providing an opportunity

for ‘the reclamation of liberalism’ for a new era.
18. For example, Fabian Klose: ‘“Source of Embarrassment”: Human Rights,
State of Emergency, and the Wars of Decolonization’, pp. 237–257 in
Hoffmann (ed.) 2011; Normand and Zaidi 2008; the contributions in
Mortimer Sellers (ed.): The New World Order: Sovereignty, Human Rights
and the Self-Determination of Peoples, Berg, Oxford and Washington,
1996.
19. Moyn 2010; Burke 2010; Hunt 2007, p. 184; also Cassese 1995; see also
Frederick Cooper: ‘Afterword: Social Rights and Human Rights in the
Time of Decolonization’, Humanity 3(3), 2012, pp. 473–492.
20. As will be briefly returned to in Chapter 2, both ideas of freedom analysed
in this book have been influenced by the works on ‘republican’ liberty
of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit, e.g., Quentin Skinner: Hobbes
and Republican Liberty, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008;
Liberty Before Liberalism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998;
‘The Paradoxes of Political Liberty’, The Tanner Lectures on Human
Values, Harvard University, 1984; ‘On the Slogans of Republican Political
Theory’, European Journal of Political Theory, 9, 2010, pp. 95–102; ‘The
Republican Ideal of Political Liberty’, pp. 293–309 in Gisela Bock et al.
(eds.): Machiavelli and Republicanism, Cambridge University Press, Cam-
bridge, 1993; by Pettit: ‘A Definition of Negative Liberty’, Ratio (New
Series), II(2), December, 1989, pp. 153–168; ‘Freedom as Antipower’,
Ethics, 106(3), 1996, pp. 576–604; Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom
and Government, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997; ‘Freedom with Honor:
A Republican Ideal’, Social Research, 64(1), 1997, pp. 52–76; A Theory
of Freedom: From the Psychology to the Politics of Agency, Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2001; ‘Republican Freedom: Three Axioms, Four Theorems’,
Princeton Law and Public Affairs Working Paper Series, no. 07-004, 2008;
‘The Power of a Democratic Public’, pp. 73–93 in Reiko Gotoh and Paul
Dumouchel (eds.): Against Injustice: The New Economics of Amartya
Sen, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009a; ‘A Republican Law
of Peoples’, European Journal of Political Theory, 9, 2010, pp. 70–94;
Maria Dimova-Cookson: ‘Republicanism, Philosophy of Freedom and the
History of Ideas: An Interview with Philip Pettit’, Contemporary Political
Theory, 9, 2010, pp. 477–489; Pettit: On the People’s Terms: A Republican
Theory and Model of Democracy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
2012; Pettit: ‘Liberalism and Republicanism’, Australian Journal of
Political Science, 28 (Special issue), pp. 162–189, 1993a; Pettit: ‘Negative
Liberty, Liberal and Republican’, European Journal of Philosophy, 1(1),
1993b, pp. 15–38; Pettit: ‘Keeping Republican Freedom Simple: On a
difference with Quentin Skinner’, Political Theory, 30(3), 2002, pp. 339–
356. Their construction of liberalism has been criticised, e.g., by Charles
Larmore: ‘A Critique of Philip Pettit’s Republicanism’, Noûs, 35, Supple-
ment s1, October 2001, pp. 229–243, at p. 7. For various liberal perspec-
tives, e.g., Matthew H. Kramer (ed.): Rights, Wrongs and Responsibilities,
Palgrave, New York, 2001; Ian Carter: A Measure of Freedom, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 1999; Robert Nozick: Anarchy, State and
Utopia, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1990; John Christman and Joel Ander-
son (eds.): Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism, Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, Cambridge, 2005; Geoffrey Brennan and Loren Lomasky:
‘Against Reviving Republicanism’, Politics, Philosophy and Economics,
5(2), 2006, pp. 221–252; Richard Dagger: ‘The Sandelian Republic and
the Encumbered Self’, Review of Politics, 61(2), 1999, pp. 181–208
(Sandel replied with: Michael Sandel: ‘Liberalism and Republicanism:
Friends or Foes? A Reply to Richard Dagger’, Review of Politics, 61(2),
1999, pp. 209–214); John Rawls: A Theory of Justice, Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 1999 and The Law of Peoples, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA, 2002—see pp. 38–41 and 85 on ‘self-determination’.
21. The liberal peace thesis is often seen as related to ‘democratic peace
theory’, although the exact connection between the two is disputed. See,
e.g., Michael W. Doyle’s: ‘Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs’,
Philosophy and Public Affairs, 12(3), 1983, pp. 205–235; ‘Kant, Lib-
eral Legacies, and Foreign Affairs, Part 2’, Philosophy and Public Affairs,
12(4), 1983, pp. 323–353; Bruce M. Russett: Grasping the Democratic
Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World, Princeton University Press,
Princeton, NJ, 1993; Doyle: ‘Three Pillars of the Liberal Peace’, American
Political Science Review, 99(3), 2005, pp. 463–466; Christopher Layne:
‘Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace’, International Security,
19(2), 1994, pp. 5–49; John M. Owen: ‘How Liberalism Produces Demo-
cratic Peace’, International Security, 19(2), 1994, pp. 87–125; Henry Far-
ber and Joanne Gowa: ‘Common Interests or Common Polities: Reinter-
preting the Democratic Peace’, Journal of Politics, 58(2), 1997, pp. 393–
417; Sebastian Rosato: ‘The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory’,
American Political Science Review, 97(4), 2003, pp. 585–602; ‘Liberal
Peacebuilding Reconstructed’, International Peacekeeping, 16(5) (Special
issue), 2009; John Heathershaw: ‘Unpacking the Liberal Peace: the Divid-
ing and Merging of Peacebuilding Discourses’, Millennium 36(3), 2008,
pp. 597–621.
22. For the scholarship, see McCorquodale 1994, p. 869; Jean Salmon: ‘In-
ternal Aspects of the Right to Self-Determination: Towards a Democratic
Legitimacy Principle?’, pp. 253–282 in Christian Tomuschat (ed.): Modern
Law of Self-Determination, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001; Hurst
Hannum: ‘The Specter of Secession: Responding to Claims for Ethnic

Self-Determination’, Foreign Affairs, 77(2), 1998, pp. 13–19; Gentian
Zyberi: ‘Self-Determination Through the Lens of the International Court
of Justice’, Netherlands International Law Review, 56, 2009, pp. 429–
453, at p. 430; Alina Kaczorowska: Public International Law, Routledge,
London, 2010. For a very early expression, see Lee C. Buchheit: Secession:
The Legitimacy of Self-Determination, Yale University Press, New Haven,
CT, 1978, p. 14.
23. Thomas M. Franck: ‘The Emerging Right to Democratic Governance’,
American Journal of International Law, 86(1), 1992, pp. 46–91. See also
Anna Moltchanova: National Self-Determination and Justice in Multina-
tional States, Springer, London and New York 2009, p. 83.
24. See, e.g., Simpson 1996, p. 283; Hannum 1996, in particular pp. 458–
468; Hannum 1993b, p. 66; McCorquodale 1994, p. 872; Cassese
1995, p. 337; also Ian Brownlie: ‘The Rights of Peoples in Modern
International Law’, in Crawford (ed.) 1988, pp. 1–16; Georg Nolte:
‘Secession and External Intervention’, pp. 65–93 in Marcelo G. Kohen
(ed.): Secession: International Law Perspectives, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 72–73; James Anaya: Indigenous Peoples in
International Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004, pp. 103–106;
Rhona K. M. Smith: Textbook on International Human Rights, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 2010, p. 276; Allen Buchanan: Justice, Legiti-
macy and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law,
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004, p. 373.
25. Patrick Thornberry: ‘Images of Autonomy and Individual and Collec-
tive Rights on International Instruments on the Rights of Minorities’,
pp. 97–124 in M. Suksi (ed.): Autonomy: Applications and Implications,
Kluwer Law International, The Hague, 1998, at p. 111; Chris Arm-
strong: ‘Global Egalitarianism or National Self-Determination?’, pp. 253–
268 in Keith Breen and Shane O’Neill (eds.): After the Nation? Critical
Reflections on Nationalism and Postnationalism, Palgrave Macmillan, Bas-
ingstoke, 2010; Musgrave 1997, e.g., p. 207; Adina Preda: ‘The Principle
of Self-Determination and National Minorities’, Dialectical Anthropology,
27, 2003, pp. 205–225; Cassese 1995, pp. 348–352.
26. Patrick Thornberry: ‘The Democratic or Internal Aspect of Self-
Determination with Some Remarks on Federalism’, pp. 101–138; and
Otto Kimminich: ‘A “Federal” Right of Self-Determination?’, pp. 83–100,
both in Tomuschat (ed.) 2001; Edward McWhinney: Self-Determination
of Peoples and Plural-Ethnic States in Contemporary International Law:
Failed States, Nation Building and the Alternative, Federal Option,
Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden, 2007. See also Marc Weller: ‘Settling Self-
Determination Conflicts: Recent Developments’, European Journal of
International Law, 20(1), 2009, pp. 111–165, especially pp. 115–158;
Simpson 1996; also Jorge Vladez: Deliberative Democracy, Political legiti-

macy, and Self-Determination in Multi-Cultural Societies, Routledge, New
York, 2001.
27. The other documents enlisted in support of this understanding have
been the ‘Friendly Relations Declaration’, UNGA Resolution 2625 (XXV)
‘Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Rela-
tions and Co-operation Among States in Accordance with the Charter
of the United Nations’, 24 October 1970; the Helsinki Final Act, 1
August 1975 (a non-binding accord between North American and Euro-
pean states); and later, the Indigenous Peoples Declaration, UNGA Reso-
lution 61/295, 2007. See, e.g., Cassese, 1995, pp. 52–53, 65–66 and 70;
Hannum 1996, pp. 49 and 469. For earlier views expressing the same ori-
entation, see, e.g., Karl Josef Partsch: ‘Fundamental Principles of Human
Rights: Self-Determination, Equality and Non-Discrimination’, pp. 61–86
in Karel Vasak (gen. ed.) and Philip Alston (English ed.): The Interna-
tional Dimensions of Human Rights, Vol. I, Greenwood Press, Westport,
CT, 1982, at p. 65; UN official John P. Humphrey: Human Rights and
the United Nations: A Great Adventure, Transnational Publishers, New
York, 1984, p. 129.
28. See also Moyn 2010, p. 208; Weitz 2015, p. 466; Moltchanova 2009,
p. 5; Miéville 2005, p. 269; Christopher H. Wellman: ‘A Defense of
Secession and Political Self-Determination’, Philosophy and Public Affairs,
24(2), 1995, pp. 142–171; James Crawford: Creation of States in Interna-
tional Law, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2006, p. 107; Lea Brilmayer: ‘Seces-
sion and Self-Determination: A Territorial Interpretation’, Yale Journal of
International Law, 16, 1991, pp. 177–202; Tomuschat (ed.) 2001, p. 11;
Arnold Toynbee: ‘Art 7: Self-Determination’, The Quarterly Review, Lon-
don, 1925, pp. 317–338, at p. 317; Hannum 1993b, p. 39; Hannum
1996, p. 39; Tilly 1993.
29. Jan Klabbers: ‘The Right to be Taken Seriously: Self-Determination in
International Law’, Human Rights Quarterly, 28(1), 2006, pp. 186–
206, especially pp. 191 and 202–203; McCorquodale 1994, pp. 878,
884; Hannum 1996, p. 473; Wayne Norman: Negotiating Nationalism:
Nation-building, Federalism, and Secession in the Multinational State,
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006, p. 73; Eileen F. Babbitt: ‘Ne-
gotiating Self-Determination: Is it a Viable Alternative to Violence?’,
pp. 159–166 in Hurst Hannum and Eileen F. Babbitt (eds.): Negotiating
Self-Determination, Lexington Books, Oxford, 2006, at p. 165 and Weller
2009, pp. 112, 114; Marc Weller: Escaping the Self-Determination Trap,
Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden, 2008; Paul R. Williams and Francesca Jannotti
Pecci: ‘Earned Sovereignty: Bridging the Gap Between Sovereignty and
Self-Determination’, Stanford Journal of International Law, 40(2), 2004,
pp. 347–386; Asbjørn Eide: ‘In Search of Constructive Alternatives to

Secession’, pp. 139–176 in Tomushcat (ed.) 2001; Asbjorn Eide: ‘Peace-
ful Group Accommodation as an Alternative to Secession in Sovereign
States’, pp. 87–110, at p. 87; and Kumar Rupesinghe: ‘Conflict Resolu-
tion: Current Options and New Mechanisms’, pp. 337–355, at p. 340,
both in Donald Clark and Robert Williamson (eds.): Self-Determination:
International Perspectives, Macmillan, London, 1996; Donald Horowitz:
‘Self-Determination: Politics, Philosophy, and Law’, pp. 181–214 in Mar-
garet Moore (ed.): National Self-Determination and Secession, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 1998. By contrast, Antonio Cassese (ed.): UN
Law/Fundamental Rights: Two Topics in International Law, Sijthoff &
Noordhoff, Alpen aan den Rijn, 1979, and Burke 2010 (pp. 47–55)
indicate that ‘internal’ self-determination expands the concept.
30. Thomas M. Franck: The Power of Legitimacy Among Nations, Oxford Uni-
versity Press, Oxford, 1990, pp. 169–170; Margalit and Raz 1990, p. 460;
Moltchanova 2009, p. xvii; Hurst Hannum: ‘Self-Determination in the
Post-Colonial Era’, pp. 12–44 in Clark and Williamson (eds.) 1996, at
p. 35; also David Lefkowitz: ‘On the Foundation of Rights to Political
Self-Determination, Secession, Non-Intervention, and Democratic Gover-
nance’, Journal of Social Philosophy, 39(4), 2008, pp. 492–511.
31. Buchheit 1978, p. 18; Hannum 1996, p. 469; also Burke 2010, pp. 37–
39; Jonathan I. Charney: ‘Self-Determination: Chechnya, Kosovo, and
East Timor’, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, 34, 2001, pp. 455–
468, p. 467; Hannum 1993b, p. 57; Kaczorowska 2010, p. 581; Smith,
p. 281. Even scholars arguing against limiting self-determination to colo-
nialism merely call for applying it to additional types of interference,
McCorquodale 1994, p. 883; Tomuschat 2001, p. 2; S. Prakash Sinha:
‘Is Self-Determination Passé?’, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law,
12(2), 1973, pp. 260–273, at p. 272.
32. See, e.g., Musgrave 1997, p. 181; Matthew Craven: ‘Statehood, Self-
Determination, and Recognition’, in Malcolm D. Evans (ed.): Inter-
national Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010, pp. 203–251,
at p. 233; Thomas Franck and Paul Hoffman: ‘The Right of Self-
Determination in Very Small Places’, New York University Journal of
International Law and Politics, 1976, pp. 331–386, at p. 384; Cassese
1995, pp. 333–334; Daniel Patrick Moynihan: Pandaemonium: Ethnicity
in International Politics, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 148.
33. As discussed in brief in Chapter 2, the ‘radical’ idea partially resembles
Pettit’s and Skinner’s ideas of ‘republican’ liberty, but also differs in several
respects. Above all, ‘republican’ freedom is bound up with a specific histor-
ical and philosophical scholarship, engaged with early modern republican
thinkers, while this book deals with the radical idea only in terms of its
appearance in international expressions of ‘self-determination’. Besides the
earlier references to Pettit and Skinner see Richard Dagger: ‘Autonomy,

Domination and the Republican Challenge to Liberalism’, pp. 177–203
in Christman and Anderson (eds.) 2005; for historical perspectives, see
Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (eds.): Republicanism: A
Shared European Heritage, Volume II: The Values of Republicanism in
Early Modern Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002; Z.
S. Fink: The Classical Republicans: An Essay in the Recovery of a Pattern
of Thought in Seventeenth-Century England, Northwestern University
Press, Evanston, IL, 1962; Bock et al. (eds.) 1993; Daniel J. Kapust:
Republicanism, Rhetoric, and Roman Political Thought: Sallust, Livy, and
Tacitus, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011; John W. Maynor:
Republicanism in the Modern World, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003; Hans
Baron: The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and
Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny, Princeton Uni-
versity Press, New Jersey, 1966. For political theory, see Cécile Laborde
and John Maynor: Republicanism and Political Theory, Blackwell, Oxford,
2008; Michael Sandel: Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a
Public Philosophy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996; Anita
L. Allen and Milton C. Regan Jr. (eds.): Debating Democracy’s Discontent:
Essays on American Politics, Law, and Public Philosophy, Oxford Uni-
versity Press, Oxford, 1998; David Boucher: ‘Oakeshott, Freedom and
Republicanism’, BJPIR, 7, 2005, pp. 81–96; Patricia Springborg: ‘Re-
publicanism, Freedom from Domination, and the Cambridge Contextual
Historians’, Political Studies, 49, 2001, pp. 851–876; M. Victoria Costa:
‘Neo-Republicanism, Freedom as Non-Domination, and Citizen Virtue’,
Politics, Philosophy and Economics, 8(4), 2009, pp. 401–419; Maurizio
Viroli: Republicanism, Hill and Wang, New York, 2002; Gerald Lang:
‘Invigilating Republican Liberty’, Philosophical Quarterly, 62(247), 2012,
pp. 273–293, at p. 288; Ian Shapiro: ‘On Non-Domination’, University
of Toronto Law Journal, 62, 2012, pp. 293–335; Michael David Harbour:
‘Non-domination and Pure Negative Liberty’, Politics, Philosophy and
Economics, 11(2), 2001, pp. 186–205.
34. See also Michael Thompson: ‘Reconstructing Republican Freedom: A Cri-
tique of the Neo-Republican Concept of Freedom as Non-Domination’,
Philosophy and Social Criticism, 29 January 2013; Philip Pettit: Just Free-
dom: A Moral Compass for a Complex World, W. W. Norton & Company,
New York, 2014; Pettit: ‘The Republican Ideal of Freedom’ in David
Miller (ed.): The Liberty Reader, Routledge, New York, 2006; Horacia
Spector: ‘Four Conceptions of Freedom’, Political Theory, 12 August,
2010; Charles Larmore: ‘Liberal and Republican Conceptions of Free-
dom’, Critical Review of International, Social and Political Philosophy,
pp. 96–119, 2010; Ian Shapiro: ‘Reflections on Skinner and Pettit’, Hobbes
Studies, 22, pp. 185–191, 2009.
35. This represents another difference with the ideas of Pettit and Skinner;
it is not clear how essential equality is to their ideas of republican free-
dom. See Pettit 1993a, p. 162; 1996, p. 586; Nadia Urbinati: ‘Competing
for Liberty: The Republican Critique of Democracy’, American Political
Science Review, 106(3), 2012, pp. 607–621, pp. 613–614; Daniel Kapust:
‘Skinner, Pettit and Livy: The Conflict of the Orders and the Ambiguity of
Republican Liberty’, History of Political Thought, 25(3), 2004, pp. 377–
401; Miguel Vatter: ‘The Quarrel between Populism and Republicanism:
Machiavelli and the Antinomies of Plebeian Politics’, Contemporary Polit-
ical Theory, 11(3), 2012, pp. 242–263; Maurizio Viroli: Republicanism,
Hill and Wang, New York, 2002, p. 10.
36. See Iris Young, e.g., in: ‘Self-Determination as Non-Domination: Ideas
Applied to Palestine/Israel’, Ethnicities, 5(2), 2005, pp. 139–159; ‘Two
Concepts of Self-Determination’, pp. 176–198 in Stephen May et al.
(eds.): Ethnicity, Nationalism and Minority Rights, Cambridge University
Press, New York, 2004; and Global Challenges: War, Self Determination
and Responsibility for Justice, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2007; also Michael
Murphy and Siobhán Harty: ‘Post-Sovereign Citizenship’, Citizen-
ship Studies, 7(2), 2003, pp. 181–197; Derek Kornelsen: ‘Circumscribed
Spheres of Belonging and Action: Framing Indigenous Self-Determination
in Terms of “Non-Domination”’, APSA Annual Meeting Paper, 2011;
James Bohman: ‘Republican Cosmopolitanism’, Journal of Political Philos-
ophy, 12(3), 2004, pp. 336–352; David Held: Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and
Realities, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2010, pp. 83–84; Kristina Roepstorff:
The Politics of Self-Determination: Beyond the Decolonization Process,
Routledge, New York, 2013. For an equally practically oriented critique
of Young, see Jacob T. Levy: ‘Self-Determination, Non-Domination, and
Federalism’, Hypatia, 23(3), 2008, pp. 60–78, at p. 69.
37. This is yet another feature distinguishing the radical idea from conven-
tional understandings of republican freedom (in particular Sandel 1996).
Although Pettit, Skinner and others have touched upon the international
implications of republican freedom, these perspectives remain relatively
little-studied. See the whole edition of European Journal of Political The-
ory, 9(1), 2010, including Skinner 2010, Pettit 2010 and Cecile Laborde:
‘Republicanism and Global Justice: A Sketch’, pp. 48–69.
38. This in stark contrast to republican ideas of freedom, which see the law
as a possibly non-arbitrary form of interference that might preserve and
enhance people’s freedom. Pettit: ‘Law and Liberty’, pp. 39–59 in Saman-
tha Besson and José Louis Martí (eds.): Legal Republicanism: National
and International Perspectives, 2009b.
39. For relevant international law analyses, see, e.g., Heather A. Wilson: Inter-
national Law and the Use of Force by National Liberation Movements,
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988; Noelle Higgins: Regulating the Use of
Force in Wars of National Liberation—The Need for a New Regime: A
Study of the South Moluccas and Aceh, Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden, 2010.
40. Simpson 1996, p. 259; Franck 1990, pp. 153–156 and 162; Eirin Jenne:
‘National Self-Determination: A Deadly Mobilizing Device’, pp. 7–36 in
Hannum and Babbitt (eds.) 2006, at p. 7; Amitai Etzioni: ‘The Evils of
Self-Determination’, Foreign Policy, 89, Winter 1992/1993, pp. 21–35.
See also Elizabeth Chadwick: Self-Determination in the Post-9/11 Era,
Routledge, London, 2011, p. 141; Griffiths 2003. Political philosophers
seem to more readily acknowledge the confrontational character of
self-determination, e.g., Charles Tilly, ‘National Self-Determination as a
Problem for All of Us’, Daedalus, 122(3), 1993, p. 31; The Politics of
Collective Violence, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2003; see also
Rogers Brubaker: ‘Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of National-
ism’, pp. 233–260 in Moore (ed.) 1998, especially pp. 234 and 240.
41. The most important distinction between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ concepts
of freedom was made in Isaiah Berlin’s ‘Two Concepts of Liberty: an Inau-
gural Lecture Delivered before the University of Oxford on 31 October
1958’, Clarendon Press, London, 1959; several other distinctions exist:
Benjamin Constant: ‘The Liberty of the Ancient Compared with that of
the Moderns: Speech Given at the Athenee Royal in Paris’, pp. 307–
328 in Biancamaria Fontana (trans. and ed.): Political Writings: Ben-
jamin Constant, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988; Charles
Taylor: ‘What’s Wrong with Negative Liberty’, in Alan Ryan (ed.): The
Idea of Freedom, Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin, Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 1979, pp. 175–193; Philip Pettit: ‘Agency-Freedom and
Option-Freedom’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 15(4), 2003, pp. 387–
403; Efraim Podoksik: ‘One Concept of Liberty: Towards Writing the
History of a Political Concept’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 71(2),
2010, pp. 219–240; also Gerald C. MacCallum Jr.: ‘Negative and Positive
Freedom’, Philosophical Review, 76(3), 1967, pp. 312–334; John N. Gray,
‘On Negative and Positive Liberty’, Political Studies, 28, 1980, pp. 507–
526.
42. See Chantal Mouffe: On the Political, Routledge, London, 2005; Carl
Schmitt: The Theory of the Partisan: A Commentary/Remark on the Con-
cept of the Political, Buncker & Humboldt, Berlin, 1963, p. 65; Jacques
Rancière: ‘Ten Theses on Politics’, Theory and Event, 5(3), 2001, pp. 1–
16.
43. See Schmitt 1963, p. 24; Brilmayer 1991, pp. 187, 191; Bill Bowring:
The Degradation of the International Legal Order? The Rehabilitation of
Law and the Possibility of Politics, Glasshouse, Oxford, 2008.
44. Craig Calhoun: The Roots of Radicalism: Tradition, the Public Sphere and
Early Nineteenth Century Social Movements, University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, IL, 2012, pp. 82–120 has pointed out that an appreciation of
tradition has also historically been part of radical movements.
45. See, e.g., Patrick Herron: State Freedom and International Relations,
PhD thesis, European University Institute, Florence, 2015; Dustin Howes:
Freedom Without Violence, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016; Anto-
nio Franceschet: ‘Sovereignty and Freedom: Immanuel Kant’s Liberal
Internationalist Legacy’, Review of International Studies, 27(2), pp. 209–
228, 2001; Jürgen Habermas: ‘The European Nation-State: On the Past
and Future of Sovereignty and Citizenship’, Public Culture, 10(2), 1998.
46. See Annabel Brett: ‘What Is Intellectual History Now?’, pp. 113–131
in David Cannadine (ed.): What Is History Now?, Palgrave Macmillan,
London, 2002, at p. 117; Quentin Skinner: ‘A Genealogy of the Mod-
ern State’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 162, 2009, pp. 325–370,
p. 325; Reinhardt Koselleck: Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical
Time, Columbia University Press, New York, 2004, pp. 84–85. Koselleck
has distinguished between ‘concepts’, which he sees as interconnected with
words, in contrast to ‘ideas’, which are not, but the distinction between
‘concepts’ and ‘ideas’ is not important in this book.
47. Here this book’s understanding of self-determination is somewhat sym-
pathetic to the idea of what Ernesto Laclau describes as a ‘floating signi-
fier’—a notion that does not per se denote a precise meaning that remains
constant once it has been articulated, but is (re)defined in situations of
change: rather than seeking to define such signifiers, we should under-
stand them in terms of the ongoing attempts to hegemonise their content
and fix their meaning. However, this book departs from Laclau on the
ever-changing content of floating signifiers. As will be shown, something
has remained constant in international articulations of ‘self-determination’,
especially the legitimation with reference to ideas of freedom. Ernesto
Laclau: New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, Verso, London,
1993, pp. 28, 18–19 and 31, respectively.
48. Recent key contributions include Eric D. Weitz: ‘Self-Determination: How
a German Enlightenment Idea Became the Slogan of a National Lib-
eration and a Human Right’, The American Historical Review, April
2015, pp. 462–496, which investigates the intellectual history of self-
determination from what Weitz defines as the concept’s origins in the Ger-
man Enlightenment; Jörg Fisch: The Right of Self-Determination of Peoples:
The Domestication of an Illusion, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
2015—a Koselleck-inspired conceptual history interested in the theory
and practicalities of self-determination ‘itself’, rather than the ideas of
freedom involved; and Edward James Kolla: ‘The French Revolution, the
Union of Avignon, and the Challenges of National Self-Determination’,
Law and History Review, 31(4), 2013, pp. 717–747, which focuses on
what Kolla sees as the concept’s central early articulations.
49. In English, in this book, only Lenin’s ‘self-determination’ references were
not originally, or officially, produced in English. The decision to neverthe-
less rely on English versions of Lenin’s words results from their interna-
tional import, especially the influence on Woodrow Wilson, whose inter-
nationalisation of ‘self-determination’ reacted not only to Lenin’s broader
ideas, but also to Lenin’s use of this word, as Wilson had read it in English.
50. See Martti Koskenniemi: The Politics of International Law, Hart, Oxford,
2011a; Martti Koskenniemi: From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of
International Legal Argument, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
2005; James Crawford and Martti Koskenniemi (eds.): The Cambridge
Companion to International Law, Cambridge University Press, Cam-
bridge, 2011; Ian Hurd: ‘Legitimacy and Authority in International
Politics’, International Organization, 53(2), 1999, pp. 379–408; China
Miéville: Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law,
Pluto Press, London 2005; Antony Anghie: Imperialism, Sovereignty and
the Making of International Law, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
2005; Cass R. Sunstein: Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict, Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 1996; Ronald Dworkin: A Matter of Principle,
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985. For diplomatic history perspec-
tives, see Mark Mazower: No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and
the Ideological Origins of the United Nations, Princeton University Press,
Princeton, NJ, 2009; Mark Mazower: ‘The Strange Triumph of Human
Rights, 1933–1950’, Historical Journal, 47(2), 2004, pp. 379–398, at
p. 380; Andrew Moravcsik: ‘The Origins of Human Rights Regimes:
Democratic Delegation in Postwar Europe’, International Organization,
54(2), Spring 2000, pp. 217–252; G. Fox and B. Roth (eds.): Democratic
Governance and International Law, Cambridge University Press, Cam-
bridge, 2000. For a different perspective, see Martin Loughlin: Sword
and Scales: an Examination of the Relationship Between Law and Politics,
Hart, Oxford, 2000, e.g., p. 217. In this book, ‘discourse’ straightfor-
wardly refers to statements and documents issued in high-level political,
legal and diplomatic contexts.
51. See, e.g., Costas Douzinas: The End of Human Rights: Critical Legal
Thought at the Turn of the Century, Hart, Oxford, 2000; Susan Marks: The
Riddle of All Constitutions: International Law, Democracy, and the Cri-
tique of Ideology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000; Matti Kosken-
niemi: The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International
Law 1870–1960, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, p. 500;
Miéville 2005; Costas Douzinas: Human Rights and Empire: The Politi-
cal Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism, Routledge, New York, 2007, p. 113;
Duncan Kennedy: A Critique of Adjudication (fin de siècle), Harvard

University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1997, pp. 318–319; Lauri Malksoo:
‘Justice, Order and Anarchy: the Right of Peoples to Self-Determination
and the Conflicting Values of the Law’, Juridica International, IV, 1999,
pp. 75–79, also Allen Buchanan: ‘What’s So Special About Rights?’, Social
Philosophy and Policy, 2(1), 1984, pp. 61–83, at p. 81; Stephen P. Marks:
‘Emerging Human Rights: A New Generation for the 1980s?’, Rutgers
Law Review, 33, 1980/1981, pp. 435–452, p. 435; Eugene Kamenka,
‘Human Rights: Peoples’ Rights’, pp. 127–139 in James Crawford (ed.):
The Rights of Peoples, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988, p. 135; Philip
Alston: ‘Conjuring up New Human Rights: A Proposal for Quality Con-
trol’, American Journal of International Law, 78, 1984, pp. 607–621, at
p. 607; Martti Koskenniemi: ‘The Effect of Rights on Political Culture’,
pp. 99–116 in Philip Alston (ed.): The EU and Human Rights, Oxford
University Press, Oxford 1999, p. 110.
52. See, e.g., Karen Knop: Diversity and Self-Determination in International
Law, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2002, p. 10; James Craw-
ford: ‘The Right of Self-Determination in International Law: Its Develop-
ment and Future’, in Philip Alston (ed.): People’s Rights, Oxford Univer-
sity Press, Oxford 2000a, pp. 7–67, p. 9; David Raic: Statehood and the
Law of Self-Determination, Kluwer Law International, New York, 2002,
p. 145; Robert McCorquodale: ‘Self-Determination: A Human Rights
Approach’, International Comparative Law Quarterly, 43, October 1994,
pp. 857–885, at p. 858; James Summers: Peoples and International Law:
How Nationalism and Self-Determination Shape a Contemporary Law of
Nations, Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden, 2007, pp. 379, 387, 393; Antonio
Cassese: Self-Determination of Peoples: A Legal Reappraisal, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 134–140; James Anaya: ‘A Con-
temporary Definition of the International Norm of Self-Determination’,
Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems, 3(1), 1993, pp. 131–164.
53. Hurst Hannum: Autonomy, Sovereignty and Self-Determination: The
Accommodation of Conflicting Rights, University of Pennsylvania Press,
Philadelphia, PA, 1996a, pp. 33, 45; Hurst Hannum: ‘Rethinking Self-
Determination’, Virginia Journal of International Law, 34(1), 1993b,
pp. 1–69, at p. 31; McCorquodale 1994, p. 858; Michla Pomerance:
Self-Determination in Law and Practice: The New Doctrine in the United
Nations, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1982, p. 73. However, Jan Hen-
drik W. Verzijl: International Law in Historical Perspective, A. W. Sijthoff,
Leyden, 1968, e.g., p. 324, as well as Fisch 2015, e.g., p. 196, disagree
that the inclusion of ‘self-determination’ in the Charter made it a legal
right.
54. The full titles of these three documents are ‘The International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights’; ‘The International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights’; and the ‘Declaration on the Granting of
Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, UN General Assembly
(UNGA) Resolution 1514’.
CHAPTER 2
Lenin, ‘Self-Determination’ and the Radical

Idea of Freedom
The international significance of the language of ‘self-determination’

primarily stems from the legitimation of the concept with reference to
freedom and from its position in international law. Both these features
must be understood in the light of the emergence of the specific term
‘self-determination’ in the language of international affairs early in the
twentieth century. When U.S. President Woodrow Wilson put the lan-
guage of ‘self-determination’ on the international agenda in 1918, he
came to mention it in response to Lenin’s earlier pronouncements. In
different ways, both these men set the terms for how ‘self-determination’
would recur in subsequent international discourse and how this language
would be legitimised with reference to ideas of freedom.
Lenin referenced the ‘right of nations to self-determination’ in numer-
ous publications between 1903 and 1917.1 Ideologically, his discourse
was a product of Marxist thinking. Politically, his earliest ideas on self-
determination were formulated in the context of intra-socialist debate on
how to approach the ‘national question’—whereas later, the First World
War was the central policy influence. To Lenin, the ‘national question’
and ‘self-determination’ belonged to the same conceptual problématique.
Interestingly, the later intense scholarly and policy preoccupations with
which ‘unit’ might be eligible for self-determination stands in stark con-
trast to the focus of the socialists of Lenin’s time. Defining this unit was
not central to Marxist discussions on self-determination or the national
question; instead, they referred loosely to ‘nations’.2
© The Author(s) 2020 33

R. Augestad Knudsen, The Fight Over Freedom
in 20th- and 21st-Century International Discourse,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46429-5_2
Lenin and the Socialist Debate

on the National Question
When Lenin began to mention the right of nations to self-determination,
there existed no ‘standard’ socialist approach to the national question.
Both Karl Marx and the first Socialist International (1866) left the ten-
sions between Marxism and nationalism unresolved. Neither had clarified
whether, or how, to reconcile ‘national’ solidarity with socialism’s insis-
tence on class being the chief foundation for political action. At the time
of Lenin’s earliest references to ‘self-determination’, the exact relationship
between socialist freedom and national liberation was as-yet undefined.
The right of nations to self-determination was a highly controversial topic
among Lenin’s socialist contemporaries.3
‘Self-determination’ was not originally pushed onto the socialist agenda
by urgent political developments that required policy action. Nor were
Lenin’s fellow socialists at that time in a position to take any such action.
True, Lenin’s writings on ‘self-determination’ sometimes referred to pol-
icy issues, such as the situation for nationalities living within the Russian
Empire.4 Moreover, he later incorporated the concept into his interna-
tional political theories of imperialism and the First World War. The lan-
guage of ‘self-determination’ also started to gain significance in Lenin’s
published writings and appeared in Russian Social Democratic Labour
Party (RSDLP or ‘the party’ hereafter) resolutions from 1903, a time
of socialist debate on the actual standing of national groups within the
socialist parties in Russia and Europe.5 But it was not primarily such con-
crete political or policy issues that drove Lenin and his contemporaries
in their preoccupation with self-determination. To them, the concept was
important for reasons of theory and ideology.
When this is said, Lenin and his socialist contemporaries took theo-
retical and ideological disputes extremely seriously. In the early 1900s,
the socialist discussions on self-determination characteristically unfolded
with strong positioning and hard fronts. Adding to the debates’ high
temperature, these discussions emerged at a time seen as being full of
dramatic promise of the socialists gaining the power to establish a new
political order. When Lenin started to engage in the discussion on self-
determination, the RSDLP was in a process of ideological and organi-
sational consolidation, albeit without firmly anchored leadership. Lenin
spent most of the early years of the new century outside of Russia, but he
had actively followed developments there.
2 LENIN, ‘SELF-DETERMINATION’ AND THE RADICAL … 35
In 1912, Lenin sided with the majority ‘Bolshevik’ faction of the party,
when the ‘Menshevik’ group finally completed the party rift. Lenin’s lead-
ership position was however not certain prior to his return to Russia
after the 1917 February Revolution; the Bolsheviks took power in Octo-
ber that year.6 It was precisely during this 1903–1917 period of socialist
infighting and intensifying political ambitions that self-determination, as
part of these broader power struggles, became a matter of ‘utmost’ and
‘specific importance’ for Lenin and the party.7
‘Self-determination’ thus arose in Lenin’s discourse through ideologi-
cally charged polemic exchanges with fellow socialists. It seems as though
his initial participation in the socialist debate might have been as much
about positioning himself as the leading figure of contemporary Marxism
as it was about self-determination per se. Almost all of Lenin’s discur-
sive interventions on the concept were combatively directed at various
critics of his positions, and his earliest statements targeted socialist adver-
saries above all. Achieving the power to realise his political vision necessi-
tated convincing fellow socialists of his approach on key issues; and since
‘self-determination’ at least since 1903 had become a central part of the
socialists’ debating programme, convincing others of his stance on this
issue became part of Lenin’s general drive to gain power.8
In fact, all of Lenin’s main discourse on ‘self-determination’ was articu-
lated during periods when he was fighting for either party, state or global
domination, goals that few expected he would be able to achieve.9 This
might have fuelled his eagerness for winning the argument. Certainly, the
intensity with which he argued for self-determination indicated that there
was a great deal at stake for him. According to Leon Trotsky, who became
the Bolshevik Commissioner for Foreign Affairs in 1917, Lenin tended to
concentrate all of his energy and all of his being into the cause for which
he was struggling.10 His 1903–1917 advocacy of ‘the right of nations to
self-determination’ certainly brought some of this intensity to the fore.
Given that the socialist debate primarily concerned the ideological cor-
rectness of backing ‘self-determination’ as an answer to the national ques-
tion, Lenin sought to assert the concept as being ideologically correct.11
When seeking to win over other socialists to his stance, Lenin cited cer-
tain authoritative texts. Aside from Marx’s rather unelaborated references
to issues of nationality and nationalism, Lenin relied upon a report from
the 1896 London Congress of the Second International. On the issue
of ‘self-determination’, he wrote in 1914: ‘No one can seriously ques-

tion the London resolution’. Quoting the German version of the Politi-
cal Action Commission’s report from the London Congress, Lenin stated
that the Second International supported ‘the full right of all nations to
self-determination’.12 He then used the Second International’s alleged
support for self-determination to prop up his own position.
According to Lenin, the Russian version of the Second Internation-
al’s report had ‘wrongly’ translated the German Selbstbestimmungsrecht,
turning it into the Russian equivalent of ‘autonomy’, rather than ‘self-
determination’.13 However, it is not clear why the German phrase should
be taken as the original here; there is reason to question whether German
was in fact the official language of the Congress of the Second Interna-
tional—and indeed if the conference had operated with any one official
language at all. The Congress was held in London, and, as the English-
language report from the event had noted: ‘Every speech or remark [had]
to be translated into French and German’ (i.e., from English, it would
seem).14 The English version of the report made no mention of ‘self-
determination’, referring instead to ‘the full autonomy of all nationali-
ties’.15 This leaves the actual stance of the Second International on ‘self-
determination’ unclear.
Nonetheless, Lenin never presented the Second International’s alleged
sponsorship of self-determination as the reason for his own advocacy and
ideas. He did, however, use the German report to justify his specific argu-
ments on what would later always be translated into English as ‘self-
determination’—including, crucially, in the texts that Wilson read and
reacted to in 1918.16 Above all, Lenin’s use of the report of the Second
International underlines his eagerness to legitimise self-determination as
being ideologically correct. The equivocal issues of translation involved in
Lenin’s precise choice of words gives rise to the question of how much
chance might have been involved when he launched the exact term that
Wilson would later make international as ‘self-determination’. Lenin did
not explain why he favoured the term ‘self-determination’ above ‘auton-
omy’. Nor did others follow up on this: neither his fellow socialists at the
time, nor later international agents drawing upon the language of ‘self-
determination’, tended to problematise or challenge the term as such.
2 LENIN, ‘SELF-DETERMINATION’ AND THE RADICAL … 37
Lenin’s Opponents: The ‘Autonomists’

When arguing for ‘self-determination’ in the early twentieth-century
socialist debates, Lenin explicitly attacked two other views held by other
socialists at the time. Since Lenin’s self-determination discourse took
shape in directly confronting these other two socialist positions, under-
standing these can increase the insight into Lenin’s own statements. The
first of the socialist positions with which Lenin disagreed answered the
national question, in short, with ‘autonomy’. Two groups of socialists
put forward such an argument, each promoting slightly different versions
of how granting groups autonomy (rather than the right to full indepen-
dence) should be the way to meet demands for greater national self-rule.
One variant of such an ‘autonomist’ position maintained that the
Social Democratic Party should be decentralised along national lines. The
national question socialists of this inclination sought to answer was hence
an intraparty one, and they did not phrase their response in terms of ‘self-
determination’. Lenin’s disagreement with such ‘autonomists’ peaked in
1903, when he fell out with the ‘Bundists’, a Jewish group in the RSDLP
that sought nationally based devolution and the formation of its own
party, the Bund. Countering the Bundists, Lenin argued that, for rea-
sons of ideology and organisation, the proletariat should not be divided
party politically according to language or nationality. Such divisions, in his
view, would only damage the socialist cause. In 1903, that very conflict
led to a rift between the Bundists and the party.17
Among the ‘autonomists’, Austrian socialists Otto Bauer and Karl Ren-
ner represented a different type of ‘autonomism’ against which Lenin
argued on self-determination and the national question. The response
of these socialists to the national question was to demand the reform
of existing political structures, and the provision of limited self-rule for
national groups within large multinational states. They held that national
and cultural autonomy within the borders of such states was the proper
Marxist response to the national question, rather than redrawing exter-
nal state boundaries. In ruling out secession and promoting solutions
within existing states, these Austro-Marxists presaged what scholars in the
late twentieth century would advocate with the language of ‘internal self-
determination’. They did not, however, articulate their position in such
terms. Arguing for ‘internal’ solutions instead of ‘self-determination’,
they did not claim that their preferred solution would be a way of actually
realising the concept.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
“February 28, Wednesday.—February closes: thank God for the
lapse of its twenty-eight days! Should the thirty-one of the coming
March not drag us further downward, we may hope for a successful
close to this dreary drama. By the 10th of April we should have seal;
and when they come, if we remain to welcome them, we can call
ourselves saved.
“But a fair review of our prospects tells me that I must look the
lion in the face. The scurvy is steadily gaining on us. I do my best to
sustain the more desperate cases; but as fast as I partially build up
one, another is stricken down. The disease is perhaps less
malignant than it was, but it is more diffused throughout our party.
Except William Morton, who is disabled by a frozen heel, not one of
our eighteen is exempt. Of the six workers of our party, as I counted
them a month ago, two are unable to do out-door work, and the
remaining four divide the duties of the ship among them. Hans
musters his remaining energies to conduct the hunt. Petersen is his
disheartened, moping assistant. The other two, Bonsall and myself,
have all the daily offices of household and hospital. We chop five
large sacks of ice, cut six fathoms of eight-inch hawser into junks of
a foot each (for fuel), serve out the meat when we have it, hack at
the molasses, and hew out with crowbar and axe the pork and dried
apples, pass up the foul slops and cleansings of our dormitory; and,
in a word, cook, scullionize, and attend the sick. Added to this, for
five nights running I have kept watch from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., catching
cat-naps as I could in the day without changing my clothes, but
carefully waking every hour to note thermometers.
“Such is the condition in which February leaves us, with forty-one
days more ahead of just the same character in prospect as the
twenty-eight which, thank God! are numbered now with the past. It is
saddening to think how much those twenty-eight days have impaired
our capacities of endurance. If Hans and myself can only hold on, we
may work our way through. All rests upon destiny, or the Power
which controls it.”
It is useless, however, to dwell longer on this melancholy record.
Kane saw that to abandon the brig was now the only resource: the
ice held it fast, there was no probability of its being released, and a
third winter in Rensselaer Bay would have been death to the whole
party. As soon, therefore, as the return of spring in some measure
recruited the health of his followers, he made the necessary
preparations for departure; and on the 20th of May the entire ship’s
company bade farewell to the Advance, and set out on their
homeward route. With considerable difficulty and arduous labour
they hauled their boats across the rough, hummocky ice, and
reached the open sea. On the 17th of June they embarked, and
steered for Upernavik, which port they calculated upon reaching in
fifty-six days. When they got fairly clear of the land, and in the course
of the great ice-drift southward, they found their boats so frail and
leaky that they could be kept afloat only by constant bailing; a labour
which told heavily on men already weakened with disease and want.
Starvation stared them in the face, when happily they fell in with and
captured a large seal, which they devoured voraciously; and this
opportune help recruited their failing energies. Thenceforth they
were in no lack of food, as seals were plentiful; and early in August,
after living for eighty-four days in the open air, they found themselves
under the comfortable roofs of Upernavik, enjoying the hospitable
welcome of the generous Danes.
Dr. Kane returned to New York on the 11th of October 1855, after
an absence of thirty months. His discoveries had been important, his
heroism worthy of the race from which he sprung, and none can
deny that he had well merited the honours he received.
Unfortunately, a frame never very robust had been broken down by
the trials of two Arctic winters; and this gallant explorer passed away
on the 16th of February 1857, in the thirty-seventh year of his age.
In 1860, Dr. Hayes, the companion of Dr. Kane, took the

command of an expedition intended to complete the survey of
Kennedy Channel, and to reach, if it were possible, the North Pole.
His schooner, the United States, was brought up for the winter at
Port Foulke, about twenty miles south of Rensselaer Harbour; and
early in the following April, Dr. Hayes set out on a sledge and boat
journey across the sound, and along the shores of Grinnell Land.
From the eloquent record of his adventures, which does so much
credit to his literary skill, “An Arctic Boat Journey,” we have already
quoted some stirring passages; but the following extract we may be
allowed to repeat, on account of the clear light it throws upon the
nature of the difficulties Hayes encountered on his northward
advance:—
“The track,” he says, “was rough, past description. I can compare
it to nothing but a promiscuous accumulation of rocks closely packed
together, and piled up over a vast plain in great heaps and endless
ridges, leaving scarcely a foot of level surface. The interstices
between these closely accumulated ice-masses are filled up, to
some extent, with drifted snow. The reader will easily imagine the
rest. He will see the sledges winding through the tangled wilderness
of broken ice-tables, the men and dogs pulling and pushing up their
respective loads. He will see them clambering over the very summit
of lofty ridges, through which there is no opening, and again
descending on the other side—the sledge often plunging over a
precipice, sometimes capsizing, and frequently breaking. Again he
will see the party, baffled in their attempt to cross or find a pass,
breaking a track with shovel and handspike; or, again, unable even
with these appliances to accomplish their end, they retreat to seek a
better track: and they may be lucky enough to find a sort of gap or
gateway, upon the winding and uneven surface of which they will
make a mile or so with comparative ease. The snow-drifts are
sometimes a help and sometimes a hindrance. Their surface is
uniformly hard, but not always firm to the foot. The crust frequently
gives way, and in a most tiresome and provoking manner. It will not
quite bear the weight, and the foot sinks at the very moment when
the other is lifted. But, worse than this, the chasms between the
hummocks are frequently bridged over with snow in such a manner
as to leave a considerable space at the bottom quite unfilled; and at
the very moment when all looks promising, down sinks one man to
his middle, another to the neck, another is buried out of sight; the
sledge gives way,—and to extricate the whole from this unhappy
predicament is probably the labour of hours. It would be difficult to
imagine any kind of labour more disheartening, or which would
sooner sap the energies of both men and animals.”
After encountering difficulties like these, which wore out the

strength of most of his party, so that they were compelled to return to
the schooner, Dr. Hayes succeeded in crossing the sound, and
began his journey along the coast. But the difficulties did not abate,
and made such demands on the powers of endurance of the
travellers, that the strongest among them broke down, and had to be
left behind in charge of another of the party. The resolute Hayes then
pushed on, accompanied by Knorr, and on the 18th of May reached
the margin of a deep gulf, where further progress was rendered
impossible by the rotten ice and broad water-ways. From this point,
however, he could see, on the other side of the channel, and
immediately opposite to him, the lofty peak of Mount Parry,
discovered in 1854 by the gallant Morton; and more to the north, a
bold conspicuous headland, which he named Cape Union, the most
northern known land upon the globe. Beyond it, he thought he saw
the open sea of the Pole, which, from Cape Union, is not distant five
hundred miles; but the voyage of the Polaris, at a later date, has
shown that what he saw was only a land-locked bay.
On the 12th of July, the schooner was set free from the ice, but
she proved to be too much damaged to continue her dangerous
voyage; and satisfied with having proved that a direct and not
impracticable route to the Pole lies up Smith Sound and Kennedy
Channel, Dr. Hayes returned to Boston.
It is the opinion, however, of some geographers, though scarcely
warranted by ascertained facts, that the Pole may more easily be
reached by what is known as the Spitzbergen route. They argue that
to the east of this snow-crowned archipelago the influence of the
Gulf Stream makes itself felt; and they conclude that this great warm
current possibly strikes as far as the Pole itself. It is known that
Parry, to the north of Spitzbergen, attained the latitude of 82° 45’;
and it is recorded that a Hull whaler, the True-Love, in 1837,
navigated an open sea in lat. 82° 30’ N., and long. 15° E.; so that
she might probably have solved the problem and have gained the
Pole, had she continued on her northerly course.
Holding this belief, the illustrious German geographer, Dr.
Petermann, succeeded in raising funds for a German expedition in
1868; and the Germania, a brig of eighty tons, under the command
of Captain Koldewey, sailed from Bergen on the 24th of May, for
Shannon Island, in lat. 75° 14’ N., the furthest point on the
Greenland coast reached by Sabine in 1823. She was accompanied
by the Hansa, Captain Hegemann; and both ships were equipped in
the most careful manner, and liberally supplied with appliances and
stores.
On the 9th of July the expedition was off the island of Jan Mayen,
and at midnight on that day was sailing direct to the northward. A
heavy fog came on, and the two ships, even when sailing side by
side, could not see one another, and communication could be
maintained only by the use of the speaking-trumpet. Their crews
might then conceive an idea of that impenetrable chaos which,
according to Pythias, terminated the world beyond Thule, and which
is neither air, nor earth, nor sea. It is impossible to imagine anything
more melancholy than this gray, uniform, infinite veil or canopy;
ocean itself, far as the eye can reach, is gray and gloomy.
For five successive days the weather remained in this condition,
the fog alone varying in intensity, and growing thicker and thicker. On
the 14th a calm prevailed, and the Germania lowered a boat to pick
up drift-wood and hunt the sea-gulls. The ice-blink on the horizon
showed that the ships were drawing near the great ice-fields of the
Polar Ocean; and another sign of their proximity was the appearance
of the ivory gull (Larus eburneus), which never wanders far from the
ice. Occasionally the ships fell in with a rorqual, or nord-caper, as the
seamen call it,—a species of whale distinguished by the presence of
a dorsal fin.
On the morning of the 15th of July a light breeze blew up from the
south, and the two ships sailed steadily on their north-western
course through a sea covered with floating ice. An accustomed ear
could already distinguish a distant murmur, which seemed to draw
nearer and yet nearer; it was the swell of the sea breaking on the far-
off ice-field. Nearer and yet nearer! Everybody gathered upon deck;
and, suddenly, as if in virtue of some spell, the mists cleared away,
and the adventurers saw before them, within a few hundred yards,
the ice! It formed a long line, like a cliff-wall of broken and rugged
rocks, whose azure-tinted precipices glittered in the sun, and
repelled, unmoved, the rush of the foamy waves. The summit was
covered with a deep layer of blinding snow.
They gazed on the splendid panorama in silence. It was a solemn
moment, and in every mind new thoughts and new impressions were
awakened, in which both hope and doubt were blended.
The point where the Germania had struck the ice was lat. 74° 47’
N. and long. 11° 50’ E., and the icy barrier stretched almost directly
from north to south. The Hansa touched the ice on the same day, but
in lat. 74° 57’ N., and long. 9° 41’ E.
The two ships, which had separated in the fog, effected a union
on the 18th, and the Germania taking the Hansa in tow, they made
towards Sabine Island. After awhile, the towing-rope was thrown off,
the Germania finding it necessary to extinguish her fires and proceed
under canvas. They then followed up, in a southerly direction, the
great icy barrier, seeking for an opening which might afford them a
chance of steering westward.
On the 20th, the Germania found the ice so thick in the south-
west that she adopted a westerly Course, and hoisted a signal for
the captain of the Hansa to come on board to a conference. The
latter, however, misinterpreted it, and instead of reading the signal as
“Come within hail,” read it as “Long stay a peak;” crowded on all sail,
and speedily disappeared in the fog, which grew wonderfully intense
before the Germania could follow her. Through this curious error the
two ships were separated, and for fourteen months the crew of the
Germania remained in ignorance of the fate of their comrades’.
Before following the Germania on her voyage of discovery, we

propose to see what befell the Hansa among the Arctic ice.
Captain Hegemann had understood the signal of his senior
officer to mean that the ships were to push on as far as possible to
the westward, and, as we have seen, he crowded on all sail. But
when the fog closed in, and he found himself out of sight of the
Germania, he lay-to, in the hope that the latter might rejoin him.
Disappointed in this, he kept on his way, and on the 28th of July
sighted the rocky and gloomy coast of East Greenland, from Cape
Bröer-Ruys to Cape James.
The weather continued fine. By the light of the midnight sun,
which illuminated the fantastic outlines of the bergs, the adventurers
engaged in a narwhal-hunt. Nothing is more extraordinary than the
effect of the rays of the midnight sun penetrating into an ocean
covered with floating ice. The warm and cold tones strike against
each other in all directions; the sea is orange, leaden-gray, or dark
green; the reefs of ice are tinged with a delicate rose-bloom; broad
shadows spread over the snow, and the most varied effects of
mirage are produced everywhere in the tranquil waters.
THE CREW OF THE “HANSA” TRYING TO LASSO A BEAR.
THE MIDNIGHT SUN, GREENLAND.

A BEAR AT ANCHOR.
On the 9th of September, the Hansa found the channel of free
water in which she had been navigating closed by a huge mass of
ice, and to protect her against the drift of the floating bergs she was
moored to it with stout hawsers. A few days later, the ice was broken
up by a gale of wind from the north-east, and the hawsers snapped.
The ice accumulating behind the ship raised it a foot and a half. On a
contiguous sheet of ice, the explorers discovered a she-bear with her
cub, and a boat was despatched in pursuit. The couple soon caught
sight of it, and began to trot along the edge of the ice beside the
boat, the mother grinding her teeth and licking her beard. Her
enemies landed, and fired, and the bear fell in the snow, mortally
wounded. While the cub was engaged in tenderly licking and
caressing her, several attempts were made to capture it with a lasso;
but it always contrived to extricate itself, and at last took to flight,
crying and moaning bitterly. Though struck with a bullet, it succeeded
in effecting its escape.
On the 12th they again saw a couple of bears coming from the
east, and returning from the sea towards the land. The mother fell a
victim to their guns, but the cub was captured, and chained to an
anchor which they had driven into the ice. It appeared exceedingly
restless and disturbed, but not the less did it greedily devour a slice
of its mother’s flesh which the sailors threw to it. A snow wigwam
was hastily constructed for its accommodation, and the floor covered
with a layer of shavings; but the cub despised these luxuries of
civilization, and preferred to encamp on the snow, like a true
inhabitant of the Polar Regions. A few days afterwards it
disappeared with its chain, which it had contrived to detach from the
anchor; and the weight of the iron, in all probability, had dragged the
poor beast to the bottom of the water.
SKATING—OFF THE COAST OF GREENLAND.

The Hansa was now set fast in the ice, and no hope was
entertained of her release until the coming of the spring. Her crew
amused themselves with skating, and, when the weather permitted,
with all kinds of gymnastic exercises. It became necessary, however,
to consider what preparations should be made for encountering the
Arctic winter, one of the bitterest enemies with which man is called
upon to contend. The Hansa was strongly built, but her commander
feared she might not be able to endure the more and more frequent
pressure of the ice. At first, it was proposed to cover the boats with
sail-cloth and convert them into winter-quarters; but it was felt that
they would not afford a sufficient protection against the rigour of the
Polar climate, its furious winds, its excess of cold, its wild whirlwinds
of snow. And therefore it was resolved to erect on the ice-floe a
suitable winter-hut, constructed of blocks of coal. Bricks made of this
material have the double advantage of absorbing humidity, and
reflecting the heat which they receive. Water and snow would serve
for mortar; and a roof could be made with the covering which
protected the deck of the Hansa from the snow.
The ground-plan of the house was designed by Captain
Hegemann; it measured twenty feet in length, and fourteen feet in
width; the ridge of the roof was eight feet and a half, and the side
walls four feet eight inches in elevation. These walls were composed
of a double row of bricks nine inches wide up to a height of two feet,
after which a single row was used. They were cemented in a
peculiarly novel fashion. The joints and fissures were filled up with
dry snow, on which water was poured, and in ten minutes it
hardened into a compact mass, from which it would have been
exceedingly difficult to extract a solitary brick. The roof consisted of
sails and mats, covered with a layer of snow. The door was two and
a half feet wide, and the floor was paved with slabs of coal. Into this
house, which was completed in seven days, provisions for two
months were carried, including four hundred pounds of bread, two
dozen boxes of preserved meat, a flitch of bacon, some coffee and
brandy, besides a supply of firing-wood, and some tons of coal.
On the 8th of October, after the completion of the house, a violent

snow-storm broke out, which would assuredly have rendered its
construction impossible, and which, in five days, completely buried
both the ship and the hut. Such immense piles of snow accumulated
on the deck of the Hansa, that it was with the greatest difficulty the
seamen could reach their berths.
From the 5th to the 14th of October the drift of the current was so
strong, that the ice-bound ship was carried no fewer than seventy-
two miles towards the south-south-east.
Meantime, the pressure of the ice continued to increase, and the
Hansa seemed held in the tightening grasp of an invincible giant.
Huge masses rose in front, and behind, and on both sides, and
underneath, until she was raised seventeen feet higher than her
original position. Affairs seemed so critical, that Captain Hegemann
hastened to disembark the stores of clothing, the scientific
instruments, charts, log-book, and diaries. It was found that through
the constant strain on her timbers the ship had begun to leak badly,
and on sounding, two feet of water were found in the pumps. All
hands to work! But after half an hour’s vigorous exertions, the water
continued to rise, slowly but surely; and the most careful search
failed to indicate the locality of the leak. It was painfully evident that
the good ship could not be saved.
“Though much affected,” says the chronicler of the expedition,
“by this sad catastrophe, we endured it with firmness. Resignation
was indispensable. The coal hut, constructed on the shifting ice-floe,
was thenceforward our sole refuge in the long nights of an Arctic
winter, and was destined, perhaps, to become our tomb.
“But we had not a minute to lose, and we set to work. At nine
o’clock p.m. the snow-fall ceased; the sky glittered with stars, the
moon illuminated with her radiance the immense wilderness of ice,
and the rays of the Aurora Borealis here and there lighted up the
firmament with their coloured coruscations. The frost was severe;
during the night the thermometer sank to -20° R. One half the crew
continued to work at the pumps; the other was actively engaged in
disembarking on the ice the most necessary articles. There could be
no thought of sleep, for in our frightful situation the mind was beset
by the most conflicting apprehensions. What would become of us at
the very outset of a season which threatened to be one of excessive
rigour? In vain we endeavoured to imagine some means of saving
ourselves. It was not possible to think seriously of an attempt to gain
the land. Perhaps we might have succeeded, in the midst of the
greatest dangers, in reaching the coast by opening up a way across
the ice-floes, but we had no means of transporting thither our
provisions; and it appeared, from the reports of Scoresby, that we
could not count on finding any Eskimo establishments,—so that our
only prospect then would have been to die of hunger.”
The sole resource remaining to the explorers was to drift to the
south on their moving ice-floe, and confine themselves, meantime, to
their coal hut. If their ice-raft proved of sufficient strength, they might
hope to reach in the spring the Eskimo settlement in the south of
Greenland, or come to gain the coast of Iceland by traversing its
cincture of ice.
It was on the 22nd of October, in lat. 70° 50’ N., and long. 21° W.,
that the Hansa sank beneath the ice. Dr. Laube writes: “We made
ourselves as snug as possible, and, once our little house was
completely embanked with snow, we had not to complain of the cold.
We enjoyed perfect health, and occupied the time with long walks
and with our books, of which we had many. We made a Christmas-
tree of birch-twigs, and embellished it with fragments of wax taper.”
To prevent attacks of disease, and to maintain the cheerfulness
of the men, the officers of the expedition stimulated them to every
kind of active employment, and laid down strict rules for the due
division of the day.
At seven in the morning, they were aroused by the watch. They
rose, attired themselves in their warm thick woollen clothing, washed
in water procured by melting snow, and then took their morning cup
of coffee, with a piece of hard bread. Various occupations
succeeded: the construction of such useful utensils as proved to be
necessary; stitching sail-cloth, mending clothes, writing up the day’s
journal, and reading. When the weather permitted, astronomical
observations and calculations were not forgotten. At noon, all hands
were summoned to dinner, at which a good rich soup formed the
principal dish; and as they had an abundance of preserved
vegetables, the bill of fare was frequently changed. In the use of
alcoholic liquors the most rigid economy was observed, and it was
on Sunday only that each person received a glass of port.
The ice-floe on which their cabin stood was assiduously and
carefully explored in all directions. It was about seven miles in circuit,
and its average diameter measured nearly two miles.
The out-of-door amusements consisted chiefly of skating, and
building up huge images of snow—Egyptian sphynxes and the like.
The borders of the ice-floe, especially to the west and south-
west, presented a curious aspect; the attrition and pressure of the
floating ice had built up about it high glittering walls, upwards of ten
feet in elevation. The snow-crystals flashed and radiated in the sun
like myriads of diamonds. The red gleam of morning and evening
cast a strange emerald tint on the white surface of the landscape.
The nights were magnificent. The glowing firmament, and the snow
which reflected its lustre, produced so intense a brightness, that it
was possible to read without fatigue the finest handwriting, and to
distinguish remote objects. The phenomenon of the Aurora Borealis
was of constant occurrence, and on one occasion was so
wonderfully luminous that it paled the radiance of the stars, and
everything upon the ice-floe cast a shadow, as if it had been the sun
shining.
Near the coal-cabin stood two small huts, one of which served for
ablutions, the other as a shed. Round this nucleus of the little
shipwrecked colony were situated at convenient points the piles of
wood for fuel, the boats, and the barrels of patent fuel and pork. To
prevent the wind and snow from entering the dwelling-hut, a
vestibule was constructed, with a winding entrance.
The greatest cold experienced was -29° 30’ F., and this was in
December. After Christmas the little settlement was visited by
several severe storms, and their ice-raft drifted close along the
shore, sometimes within eight or nine miles, amidst much ice-
crushing,—which so reduced it on all sides, that by the 4th of
January 1870 it did not measure more than one-eighth of its original
dimensions.
On the 6th of January, when they had descended as far south as
66° 45’ N. lat., the sun reappeared, and was joyfully welcomed.
On the night of the 15th of January, the colony was stricken by a
sudden and terrible alarm. The ice yawned asunder, immediately
beneath the hut, and its occupants had but just time to take refuge in
their boats. Here they lay in a miserable condition, unable to clear
out the snow, and sheltered very imperfectly from the driving, furious
tempest. But on the 17th the gale moderated, and as soon as the
weather permitted they set to work to reconstruct out of the ruins of
the old hut a new but much smaller one. It was not large enough to
accommodate more than half the colony; and the other half took up
their residence in the boats.
February was calm and fine, and the floe still continued to drift
southward along the land. The nights were gorgeous with auroral
displays. Luminous sheaves expanded themselves on the deep blue
firmament like the folds of a fan, or the petals of a flower.
March was very snowy, and mostly dull. On the 4th, the ice-raft
passed within twenty-five miles of the glacier Kolberger-Heide. A day
or two later, it nearly came into collision with a large grounded
iceberg. The portion nearest to the drifting colony formed an
immense overhanging mass; its principal body had been wrought by
the action of the sun and the waves into the most capricious forms,
and seemed an aggregate of rocks and pinnacles, towers and
gateways. The castaways could have seized its projecting angles as
they floated past. They thought their destruction certain, but the
fragments of ice which surrounded the raft served as “buffers,” and
saved it from a fatal collision.
On the 29th of March, they found themselves in the latitude of
Nukarbik, the island where Graab, the explorer, wintered, from
September 3rd, 1827, to April 5th, 1830. They had cherished the
hope that from this spot they might be able to take to their boats, and
start for Friedrichstal, a Moravian missionary station on the south
coast of Greenland. However, the ice was as yet too compact for any
such venture to be attempted.
For four weeks they were detained in the bay of Nukarbik, only
two or three miles from the shore, and yet unable to reach it. Their
raft was caught in a kind of eddy, and sometimes tacked to the
south, sometimes to the north. The rising tide carried it towards the
shore, the ebbing tide floated it out again to sea. During this
detention they were visited by small troops of birds, snow linnets and
snow buntings. The seamen threw them a small quantity of oats,
which they greedily devoured. They were so tame that they allowed
themselves to be caught by the hand.
SNOW LINNETS AND BUNTINGS VISITING THE CREW OF THE “HANSA.”

From the end of March to the 17th of April, the voyagers
continued their dreary vacillation between Skieldunge Island and
Cape Moltke; a storm then drove them rapidly to the south. The
coast, with its bold littoral mountain-chain, its deep bays, its inlets, its
islands, and its romantic headlands, offered a succession of novel
and impressive scenes; and specially imposing was the great glacier
of Puisortok, a mighty ice-river which skirts the shore for upwards of
thirty miles.
Early in May they had reached lat. 61° 12’.
On the 7th, some water-lanes opened for them a way to the
shore; and abandoning the ice-raft, they took to their boats, with the
intention of progressing southward along the coast. At first they met
with considerable difficulty, being frequently compelled to haul up the
boats on an ice-floe, and so pass the night, or wait until the wind was
favourable. As this necessitated a continual unloading and reloading
of the boats, the work was very severe. At one time they were
detained for six days on the ice, owing to bad weather, violent gales,
and heavy snow-showers. The temperature varied from +2° during
the day to -5° R. during the night.
THE CREW OF THE “HANSA” BIVOUACKING ON THE ICE.
Their rations at this period were thus distributed:—In the morning,
a cup of coffee, with a piece of dry bread. At noon, for dinner, soup
and broth; in the evening, a few mouthfuls of cocoa, of course
without milk and sugar.
They were compelled to observe the most rigid economy in the
use of their provisions, lest, before reaching any settlement, they
should be reduced to the extremities of famine. Yet their appetite
was very keen; a circumstance easily explained, for they were
necessarily very sparing in their allowance of meat and fat, which in
the rigorous Arctic climate are indispensable as nourishment.
As no change took place in the position of the masses of ice

which surrounded them, they resolved to drag their boats towards
the island of Illiudlek, about three marine miles distant. They began
this enterprise on the evening of the 20th, making use of some stout
cables which they had manufactured during the winter, and
harnessing themselves by means of a brace passed across the
shoulders. That evening they accomplished three hundred paces.
Snow fell heavily, and melted as fast as it fell, so that during their
night-bivouac they suffered much from damp.
The next day they found before them such a labyrinth of blocks
and fragments of ice, floating ice-fields, and water-channels, that
they were constrained to give up the idea of hauling their boats
across it, and resolved to wait for the spring tide—which, they knew,
would occur in a few days. The delay was very wearisome. To
beguile the time, some of the seamen set to work at wood-carving,
while the officers and scientific gentlemen manufactured the pieces
for a game of chess. Others prepared some fishing-lines, eighty
fathoms long, in the hope of catching a desirable addition to their
scanty bill of fare.
On the 24th, the weather was splendid. The sun shone in a
cloudless sky, and wherever its genial radiance fell the thermometer
marked + 28° 5’ R. This was an excellent opportunity for drying their
clothes, which, as well as their linen, had been thoroughly soaked
innumerable times. The coverings were removed from the boats,
which, in the warm sunshine, exhaled great clouds of vapour. The
cook endeavoured to add to his stores of provisions; but the seals
churlishly refused to make their appearance, the fish disdained to
nibble at the fat-baited hooks, and the stupid guillemots were
cunning enough to escape the best directed shots.
M. Hildebrandt, with two seamen, made an attempt—in which
they succeeded—to reach the island of Illiudlek, which lay about
three miles off, and is from 450 to 500 feet in height. They found it a
desert; not a trace of vegetation; its shores very steep, and at some
points precipitous; its surface torn with crevasses and ravines. The
only accessible part seemed on the north; but as the evening was
drawing in, they had no time for exploration, and made haste to
return to the boats.
The castaways now came to a resolution to seek a temporary
refuge on this desolate isle. As the heat of the sun was sufficient to
render their labour very painful, and they suffered much from the
effects of the snow upon their eyes, they went to work at night,
dragging their boats forward with many a weary effort, and rested
during the daytime. In this way they reached the island on the 4th of
June.
Here they moored their boats in a small bay sheltered by a wall of
rocks from the north wind, which they named Hansa-Hafen. Next day
they shot two-and-twenty divers, which provided them with a couple
of good dinners. The supply was very valuable, as the stock of
provisions on hand would not last above a fortnight.
After a brief rest, the adventurers resumed their voyage, keeping
close in-shore, and struggling perseveringly amidst ice and stones—
and further checked by an inaccurate chart, which led them into a
deep fiord, instead of King Christian IV. Sound. On the 13th of June,
however, they arrived at the Moravian missionary station of
Friedrichstal, where their countrymen received them with a hearty
welcome. For two hundred days they had sojourned upon a drifting
ice-field, experiencing all the hardships of an Arctic winter,
aggravated by an insufficiency of food.
They reached Julianshaab on the 21st of June; embarked on
board the Danish brig Constance; and were landed at Copenhagen
on the 1st of September.
We must now return to the Germania.

Captain Koldewey made several bold attempts to penetrate the
pack-ice, but proved unsuccessful in all until, on the 1st of August,
he reached lat. 74°, where he contrived to effect a passage; and
though much delayed by a succession of fogs and calms, he made
his way to Sabine Island,—and dropped anchor on its southern side,
in lat. 74° 30’ N., and long. 29° W., on the 5th of August.

The Fight Over Freedom in 20th-And 21st-Century International Discourse: Moments of Self-Determination' 1st Ed. Edition Rita Augestad Knudsen

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Fight Over Freedom in 20th-And 21st-Century International Discourse: Moments of Self-Determination' 1st Ed. Edition Rita Augestad Knudsen

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Fight Over Freedom in 20th- and

21st-Century International Discourse:

“This highly original book combines a history of events (‘moments’) with

The Fight Over

ISBN 978-3-030-46428-8 ISBN 978-3-030-46429-5 (eBook)

Cover credit: Maram_shutterstock.com

visiting Columbia, and Foundation Pierre du Bois was central in making

1 Introduction: ‘Self-Determination’ and Ideas of Freedom 1

2 Lenin, ‘Self-Determination’ and the Radical Idea of

3 Woodrow Wilson, ‘Self-Determination’ and the

4 ‘Self-Determination’ Enters International Law 101

5 Defining ‘Self-Determination’, Disagreeing on Freedom 133

6 In Court: ‘Self-Determination’ and Freedom in the ICJ

7 Conclusions: The Fight over Freedom at Moments of

Introduction: ‘Self-Determination’ and Ideas

© The Author(s) 2020 1

The Liberal-Conservative Idea

The language of ‘internal self-determination’, however, is nowhere to

The Radical Idea

primarily been advanced by scholars of political science who are looking

non-state groups—and indirectly, the obstruction of individual freedom

manifested and exemplified through the International Court of Justice

One Hundred Years of ‘Self-Determination’

During the 1950–1960 United Nations debates on the two Inter-

p. 117 puts this in terms of the end of empire providing an opportunity

Hannum: ‘The Specter of Secession: Responding to Claims for Ethnic

Simpson 1996; also Jorge Vladez: Deliberative Democracy, Political legiti-

pp. 347–386; Asbjørn Eide: ‘In Search of Constructive Alternatives to

earlier references to Pettit and Skinner see Richard Dagger: ‘Autonomy,

Duncan Kennedy: A Critique of Adjudication (fin de siècle), Harvard

Lenin, ‘Self-Determination’ and the Radical

The international significance of the language of ‘self-determination’

© The Author(s) 2020 33

Lenin and the Socialist Debate

of ‘self-determination’, he wrote in 1914: ‘No one can seriously ques-

Lenin’s Opponents: The ‘Autonomists’

In 1860, Dr. Hayes, the companion of Dr. Kane, took the

After encountering difficulties like these, which wore out the

Before following the Germania on her voyage of discovery, we

THE MIDNIGHT SUN, GREENLAND.

SKATING—OFF THE COAST OF GREENLAND.

On the 8th of October, after the completion of the house, a violent

SNOW LINNETS AND BUNTINGS VISITING THE CREW OF THE “HANSA.”

As no change took place in the position of the masses of ice

We must now return to the Germania.

You might also like