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

Manela argues that the nationalist movements in each country erupted in part because of Wilson’s professed ideals and the perception that he was in a unique position to implement them. None of the movements were anti-western, but instead, attempts at applied western concepts of self-government to their own imperial relationships. Each also had an international component, making appeals to the United States and to world opinion.
Although the situation is that each country was very different, they reacted in fairly similar ways. Each sent a representative to Paris to appeal to Wilson and the peace conference, but their claims for self-rule were rejected. Some nationalist leaders blamed Wilson for failing to live up to his ideals, but show more the United States did not always share that blame. After the conclusion of the treaty, delegations were sent to Washington to appeal to the Senate. When those attempts likewise failed, nationalist leaders abandoned their hope in the United States. Manela suggests that after the failure these appeals caused nationalists in each country to find other, more radical, strategies to achieve self-rule.
Manela’s work is truly transnational, examining archives in at least five countries outside the United States, which was possible because of his fluency in Arabic, French and Chinese. The price of this breadth is that he sacrifices the depth that Kramer provides, giving only brief analyses of each movement, but it does allow him to compare four disparate nationalist movements. He demonstrates that each reacted in similar ways to the upheaval of the World War I and Wilson’s rhetoric, suggesting that even though Wilson failed to achieve his new international order at Versailles, his words drove it forward in a way he did not foresee. show less